THINKINGS FROM THOMAS COGAN.

(AUTHOR OF ETHICAL QUESTIONS,' &c.)

KNOWLEDGE INDISPENSABLE TO RIGHT ACTION.-It appears that knowledge, reason, judgment, are absolutely required to enable us to discover what sentiments, dispositions, or conduct are deserving of applause or disgrace. Mental culture, therefore, becomes necessary, that we may praise or blame according to the dictates of a sound understanding. We must be informed of what is right or wrong by an application to some standard, and we must be disposed to love the one and hate the other, before these feelings can be in salutary exercise.

SENSIBILITY.-We are, as it were, plunged into the universe, trembling alive all over, and rendered capable of receiving impressions, pleasant and unpleasant, from every object that addresses our senses; from every thing we perceive, and from every thing of which we can form an idea. Nothing in this vast universe can, at all seasons be totally indifferent to every person in it; nothing so inert as to be incapable of exerting some influence in one connexion or other, and of calling forth a corresponding passion or affection.

SOURCES OF RATIONAL CONVICTION.-The term self-evident, which is now so generally admitted, without hesitation and without excuse, as being itself an axiom, is manifestly an encroachment upon that kind of courtesy which permits words to pass current that are not perfectly accurate, if they be sufficiently expressive of a popular meaning. Self-evident is an emphatic substitute for immediately perceivable, or what may be received without deliberation : correspondent with the familiar phrase, "that speaks for itself," which cannot admit of a literal interpretation.

HABIT.-Frequent repetitions in every thing introduce HABIT; and habit in its effects is assimilated to instinct. Fortunately it is common to every thing we practise, without exception. Its incalculable advantages are equally the property of the unlearned and the learned, of the mere peasant and the accomplished scholar. Habit is, as it were, instantaneous in its operations; but the introduction of habit is frequently slow and difficult. Facilities are the result of much practice, and may have been acquired by much application and labour; although, after perfection is attained, we may forget the slow stages of gradual improvement, and censure those who are not so expert as ourselves.

ON A MORAL SENSE.-It is observable that the advocates for a moral sense, confine their ideas entirely to moral principles and conduct, imagining that moral agency is thus honoured with a peculiar faculty correspondent to its superior importance; but the arguments by which they support the tenet, are equally applicable to other mental sensations, or as it were percussions of sentiment, as well as those which are strictly moral; and these are extremely numerous. A sense of honour, the blush of shame, are as quick and vigorous as any which arise from moral causes. It may also be urged, that if the sudden effect produced upon a percipient, in moral subjects, be an evidence of a distinct mental sense, why may we not suspect that there may be an immoral sense, for it frequently happens, under the impetuosity of the passion, that sentiments and sensations instantaneously arise, not without consulting, but contrary to the dictates of reason.

NO INNATE PRINCIPLES OF RIGHT AND WRONG.-The ideas of right and wrong in human conduct, are never observable in a young child. How many little acts of an injurious nature would he commit if not restrained, without knowing that they were injurious. He seizes every thing within his reach, without any sensations relative to justice or injustice. The humoured child always thinks that he has a right to every thing that he desires, and resents a refusal as an injustice and cruelty. The little tyrant behaves, in his small circle, like great tyrants in the larger spheres, as if the whole creation were at their disposal, or formed for their sole gratification.

THE MOUNTAIN GLEN.

Away to the hills, where the red heather blooms,
And fair summer flowers shed richest perfumes;
Where the sweet voice of Nature is everywhere heard,—
In the hum of the bee,-in the song of the bird,
No pale slaves of Mammon are there to be found;
No tread of the tyrant; 'tis all hallowed ground:
Such evils are all far removed from the ken,
Of fairies that dwell in the lone Mountain Glen!

Away to the scenes where glad Nature alone
'Midst verdure and flowers has erected her throne;
Leave the smoke of the city-its turmoil and din,
Where gold-seeking vampires are struggling to win
From the sweat of the toilers more power and wealth;

While the millions are robbed of their food and their health:

Such selfish pursuits are unknown to the men

Who seek the calm shades of the wild Mountain Glen!

The time is swift coming when misery shall cease,
And famine no longer death's victims increase;
When all-potent knowledge shall rise in her strength,
Blasting tyranny's minions! The despot, at length,
Will be forced to surrender the blood-shedding sword;
And Earth's children live happy in peace and accord.
At each sabbath-dawn, will the artisan then

Seek vigour and health in the far Mountain Glen.

In the yet distant Future even now we descry

Scenes which liven the heart, and which brighten the eye;-
Happy children sport blythely on meadow and green;

And prison and workhouse no longer is seen;

Superstition's dark sway is entombed in the Past,
And the voice of the tyrant unheard on the blast,
Which startles the fox in his lone woody den,
And bows the tall trees in the wild Mountain Glen!

At dawn of the morning, the lark's early song
Glads the heart of the hind as he hastens along;
Over mountain and valley, 'neath heaven's clear blue,
The violet and primrose lie smothered in dew:
When at close of the day, the sun sinks in the west,
And the happy wife rests on her fond husband's breast,
The heart of the rustic is fluttering then,

As he seeks his true love in his own Mountain Glen!

Those days of the Future! ah, would they were here!
When the plough shall take place of the sword and the spear;
When war shall be banished this fair world of ours,

And Mau's earthly path be through sunshine and .flowers:
No more will Earth's son wage war with his brother,

And the welfare of one be the curse of another;
But Kindness and Love will spring up amongst men,
As the flow'rets peep forth in the sweet Mountain Glen!

ALEXANDER BELL

Religion. It fares with religion as with the shuttlecock, which is stricken from one to another, and rests with none. The rich apprehend it to have been designed for the poor; and the poor, in their turn, think it chiefly for the rich. An old acquaintance of mine, whe omitted no opportunity of doing good, discoursed with the barber who shaved him, on his manner of spending the Sabbath, which was not quite as it should be, and the necessity of his having more religion than he seemed at present possessed of. The barber, proceeding in his work of lathering, replied, "that he had tolerably well for a barber; as, in his opinion, one-third of the religion necessary to save a gentleman would do to save a barber.”—Biskop Horne.

CRITICAL EXEGESIS OF GOSPEL HISTORY,

ON THE BASIS OF STRAUSS's 'LEBEN JESU.'

A SERIES OF EIGHT DISCOURSES; DELIVERED AT THE LITERARY INSTITUTION, JOHN STREET, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, AND AT THE HALL OF SCIENCE, CITY ROAD, ON SUNDAY EVENINGS, DURING THE WINTERS OF 1848–9, AND 1849–50.

BY THOMAS COOPER,

Author of "The Purgatory of Suicides."

VII. THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION.
(Continued from last number.)

LET us proceed to consider the accounts of the New Testament writers respecting the appearances of the risen Jesus beyond the immediate locality of his sepulchre. A great difficulty presents itself here. What locality did Jesus design to be the chief theatre of his appearances after the resurrection?

Matthew and Mark make Jesus, before his death, say-"After I am risen again I will go before you into Galilee;" and they also make the angels give the same assurance to the women on the morning of the resurrection, with the addition-"there shall ye see him." Matthew, besides, makes Jesus commission the women to say to the disciples-"that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me."

Well: is the journey into Galilee performed by the risen Christ? Yes; according to Matthew-who knows of no other appearance to the disciples. But Mark has no record whatever of the fulfilment of his own words: he relates no appearance of the risen Jesus in Galilee; but mentions others. The other two evangelists afford singular contrasts, on this point to Matthew and Mark. I quote Strauss:

"John knows nothing of a direction to the disciples to go into Galilee, and makes Jesus show himself to the disciples on the evening of the day of resurrection, and again eight days after, in Jerusalem: the concluding chapter, however, which forms an appendix to his gospel, describes an appearance by the sea of Gafilee. In Luke, on the other hand, not only is there no trace of an appearance in Galilee,-(Jerusalem with its environs being made the sole theatre of the appearances of Christ which this gospel relates,)—but there is also put into the mouth of Jesus when, on the evening after the resurrection, he appears to the assembled disciples in Jerusalem, the injunction: tarry ye in the_city_of Jerusalem (in the Acts, ch. 1., v. 4, more definitely expressed by the negative, that they should not depart from Jerusalem) until ye be endued with power from on high (Luke, 24 ch, 49 v.) Here two questions inevitably arise: 1st. How can Jesus have directed the disciples to journey into Galilee, and yet at the same time have commanded them to remain in Jerusalem until Pentecost? and, 2ndly, How could he refer them to a promised appearance in Galilee, when he had the intention of showing himself to them that very day in and near Jerusalem ?"

Harmonists have endeavoured to get over this difficulty; but the great critic Michaelis, confesses himself obliged to wonder how-if Luke does not mean by that prohibition of Jesus to exclude the journey into Galilee, why is it that he alludes to this by no single word? and in like manner, if Matthew knew that his direction to go into Galilee was consistent with the command to remain in the metropolis, why has he omitted the latter, together with the appearances in Jerusalem? An unprejudiced mind must perceive, at once, that the diverging accounts are based on diverging ideas as to the locality on which the risen Jesus appeared. But how could this be, if there were the slightest basis of fact in the accounts themselves ?

A summary of the various appearances of the risen Christ, as narrated by the New Testament writers, will shew us, still more, the impossibility of reconciling their accounts :

1. Matthew has two appearances: one on the morning of the resurrection, to the women; (28 ch., 9 v.) and the other, the time of which is undetermined, to the disciples in Galilee (28 ch. 16v.)

2. Mark enumerates three: the first, to Mary Magdalene on the morning of the resurrection; (16 ch. 9 v.) a second, to two disciples going into the country; (16 ch. 12 v.) and a third, to the eleven as they sat at meat, doubtless in Jerusalem (16 ch. 14 v.)

3. Luke narrates only two: one to the disciples going to Emmaus on the day of resurrection; (24 ch. 13v.) and the other to the eleven and the other disciples in Jerusalem, according to 24 ch. 36 v. on the evening of the same day :-according to the Acts (ch. 1 v. 4.) forty days later. But, when the travellers to Emmaus, on rejoining the apostles, are greeted by them, before Jesus has appeared in the midst of them, with the information -"the Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon" (24 ch. 34 v.)here, a third appearance is presupposed, which was granted to Peter alone. 4. John has four: the first, to Mary Magdalene at the grave; (20 ch. 14. v.) the second, to the disciples when the doors were shut; (20 ch. 19 v.) the third, in Jerusalem, eight days later, when Thomas was convinced; (20 ch. 26 v.) the fourth, of which the time is unspecified at the sea of Galilee (21 ch.)

5. Paul has five-if we deduct (for the present) his account of the appearance of Christ, granted to himself: one to Cephas; one to the Twelve; one before more than 500 brethren at once; once to James; and one before all the apostles (1 Corinthians, 15 ch. 5 v.)

Granting that Luke has omitted the first appearance, yet we have three accounts of it, in the remaining authors: according to Matthew it was to the women, according to Mark and John it was to Mary Magdalene alone, and according to Paul it was to Cephas (Peter). Suppose we fix on Mark's account of the second appearance, and take it to be the same with the first of the two appearances recorded by Luke;--the journey to Emmaus will be uncorroborated by three out of these five writers. Suppose, again, we endeavour to fix on one of the other appearances as the third, what will be the result? Say that Mark's account of the third appearance is the same with Luke's second account, in his gospel-yet Luke himself places it 40 days later, in the Acts! After this; it is in vain to attempt to harmonise the accounts. It is evident that, at an early period, uncertain and very varied reports were current concerning the appearance of the risen Jesus; and on such untrustworthy foundations these varying relations were built.

Yet it is clear, from the passage in the 1st epistle to the Corinthians, (which is held to be genuine, and to have been written about A.D. 59, consequently but 29 years after Christ's death)--that many members of the primitive church who were yet living at the time when this epistle was written, especially the apostles, were convinced that they had witnessed appearances of the risen Christ. We shall have to enquire hereafter, whether this involves the admission that some objective reality lay at the foundation of this conviction.

But first, let us consider how we are to represent to ourselves this continuation of the life of Jesus after the resurrection, and especially the

nature of his body in this period. For critical reasons I prefer, again to quote Strauss, here:

"According to Matthew, Jesus on the morning of the resurrection meets the women as they are hastening back from the grave, they recognize him, embrace his feet in sign of veneration, and he speaks to them. At the second interview, on the Galilean mountain the disciples see him, but some doubt, and here also Jesus speaks to them. Of the manner in which he came and went, we have here no precise information.

"In Luke, Jesus joins the two disciples who are on their way from Jerusalem to the neighbouring village of Emmaus; they do not recognize him on the way, a circumstance which Luke attributes to a subjective hindrance produced in them by a higher influenceand only Mark, who compresses this event into a few words, to an objective alteration of his form. On the way Jesus converses with the two disciples; after their arrival in the village complies with their invitation to accompany them to their lodgings, sits down to table with them, and proceeds according to his wont to break and distribute bread. In this moment the miraculous spell is withdrawn from the eyes of the disciples, and they know him; but in the same moment he becomes invisible to them. Just as suddenly as he here vanished he appears to have shown himself immediately after in the assembly of the disciples, when it is said that he all at once stood in the midst of them, and they terrified at the sight, supposed that they saw a spirit. To dispel this alarming idea, Jesus showed them his hands and feet, and invited them to touch him, that by feeling his flesh and bones they might convince themselves he was no spectre; he also caused a piece of broiled fish and of honeycomb to be brought to him, and ate it in their presence. The appearance to Simon is in St. Luke, described by the expression wp0n (appeared, or been seen); Paul, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, uses the same verb for all the Christophanies (appearances of Christ) here enumerated; and Luke in the Acts comprises all the appearances of the risen Jesus during the forty days, under the expressions otravóμevos (having appeared, or having been seen), and έμpavñ yevéolai ("shewed him openly," in our common translation). In the same manner, Mark describes the appearance to Mary Magdalene by ¿pávn (appear, or shine, or become visible), and those to the disciples on the way to Emmaus and to the eleven by épavepwon. John describes the appearance at the Sea of Tiberius by parépwoev kavτòr ("shewed himself," in our common translation: also made himself visible, or made himself shine out); and to all the Christophanies narrated by him, John applies the word parɛpwon (appeared, shone, or became visible). Mark and Luke add, at the close of the life of the risen Jesus, that he was taken away from before the eyes of the disciples, and (by a cloud, according to Acts i. 9.) carried up to heaven. In the fourth gospel, Jesus first stands behind Mary Magdalene as she is turning away from the grave; she, however, does not recognize him even when he speaks to her, but takes him for the gardener, until he (in the tone so familiar to her) calls her by her name. When, on this, she attempts to manifest her veneration, Jesus prevents her by the word: Touch me not, and sends her with a message to the disciples. The second appearance of Jesus in John occurred under peculiarly remarkable circumstances. The disciples were assembled, from fear of the hostile Jews, with closed doors: when, all at once, Jesus came and stood in the midst of them, greeted them, and presented-apparently to their sight only-his hands and feet, that they might recognize him as their crucified master. When Thomas, who was not present, refused to be convinced by the account of his fellow-disciples of the reality of this appearance, and required for his satisfaction, himself to see and touch the wounds of Jesus the latter, in an appearance eight days after, granted him this proof, making him touch the marks of the nails in his hands and the wound in his side. Lastly at the appearance by the sea of Galilee, Jesus stood on the shore in the morning twilight, without being known by the disciples in the ship, asked them for fish, and was at length recognized by John, through the rich draught of fishes which he procured them; still, however, the disciples, when come to land, did not venture to ask him whether it were really he. Hereupon he distributed among them bread and fish, of which he doubtless himself partook, and finally held a conversation with Peter and John."

(To be continued in next number.)

HUMAN HAPPINESS.-Well being and happiness are not an inheritance of which we take possession from the hour of our birth, and which we are destined to enjoy at our ease; they are to be searched after with unwearied assiduity. We enter into life destitute of everything but simple existence. All that we enjoy in our passage through life are acquisitions; they are the result and the rewards of our own diligence and care, or communicated by the diligence and care of others.