hell, I agree to the statement: but then the fact comes out clearer than ever, that, instead of saving men, Christianity has become corrupt, and tends to degrade them :—a liability which could not occur to a saving revelation. If it is now wanting in purity, and was always wanting in universality, it seems perverse to claim for it the dignity of a revelation sent to save the human race.

And then comes the obvious question which must always recur in regard to any revelation. Is that which is said to be revealed within the compass of the human faculties, or is it not? If not, we have a mere jingle of words. If the matter cannot be received and comprehended, it is no revelation. If, on the other hand, it can be compassed by the human faculties, it could, of course, be attained by them through their natural action. The common escape from this question is by the assertion that revelation anticipates Man's natural knowledge. To say nothing of the bareness of the assumption here, it is clear that when the knowledge is arrived at in natural course, the revelation expires. It is proved an instrument of temporary use, and falls to pieces when done with; an end far different from that which is supposed to await Christianity.

But how very different from this is in truth the direction of our faculties! How very far is the knowledge they give us from confirming the essential doctrines of any religion declared to be revealed! The history of the rainbow, as instanced in one of your letters, is a good epitome of the history of the

connection of the universe with the mind of Man from the beginning. Everything that moved,everything that was not permanent and stationary,was at first a sign and a revelation, in the absence of science. From the moment when science was conceived of, the exorcism began; and it has been going on ever since. Spirits have been driven out wherever she has turned her light, wherever she has fixed her gaze, wherever her firm and gentle voice has bidden them come forth, and trouble the timid no more. There is much yet to do; but enough is done to show what must be the fate of all remaining dreams and delusions. The fresh dawn of science has for some time been brightening upon the nightmare period of theology; and the full and perfect day is the surest prophecy afloat in the universe. The great step of all is achieved,-the learning what knowledge is. Even theologians have got so far as to struggle to show that science and revelation can be made to agree. In this, we know, they will not succeed; but it is a testimony to the strength and consideration which science has attained. While to those who are outside of the theological haze, the prospect of the issue appears as clear as the horizon at noonday, it is a strange spectacle to them to witness the tumult caused by Popish aggression, and other quarrels within the theological enclosure, at the same time that a power greater than that of Pope or Prerogative, of Councils or Churches, is steadily advancing to the overthrow of them all. It should,

:

however, be called rather a renovation than an overthrow for Science can abolish nothing but what is unreal; and then, only in order to substantiate what is real. Her office is to take out the vital principle from forms, once beautiful, when they begin to grow hideous with age, and to transfuse it into new forms of beauty which we may love without fear and without disgust. She comes to relieve us from our hag-ridden state, and to bring about us forms as fresh as the morning, and as beautiful as the spring. When we see the Pope and the Church about to fly off,-two old witches on broomsticks,-it is an odd sight to see their wrangling before they start; and but for the genuine affections and serious moral associations of so many persons that are involved in the struggle, it would be purely ludicrous.

I have run on till I may have reminded you, to my own disadvantage, of Bacon's warning not to think about theology when pursuing science, or science when pursuing theology. But I believe it has been natural to us both, and even inevitable, to contemplate theology to the extent that we have done, because it is at present an impediment in the way of science. We do not turn aside after it, I think; but finding it in our way, we discuss it, and pass on. Will you now pass on to the questions I asked you? -about the connection between light and sight; and about how you conceive our consciousness of identity to run through all our life, while the material of life is incessantly changing; and also about how

you conceive we may set to work to imagine the manner of the fact that we know to be fact,—that dying people impress others at a distance with a knowledge, by sensation, that the process of death is taking place?

XXII.

H. G. A. To H. M.

How natural it was for men to use false similes! for instance, to liken to the making of a loaf of bread the material existence and growth of the corn out of which the bread was made. We are so apt to forget that man creates nothing; that to invent or make, is but to place materials in juxtaposition; and that Nature does all the rest! All the effects of Nature, and all the doings of Man, who is part of Nature, are the consequents of the interaction of matter, of the influence of body on body. Science has brought us to this; and we must not let the truth escape us. "The mind of Man," says Bacon, "is like an enchanted glass; full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced.""Nay, it is not credible, till it be opened, what a

* Advancement of Learning. Idols of the Mind.

number of fictions and fancies the similitude of human action and arts, together with making of Man communis mensura, have brought into natural philosophy, not much better than the heresy of the anthropomorphites, bred in the cells of gross and solitary monks; and the opinions of Epicurus, answerable to the same in heathenism, who supposed the gods to be in human shape. And therefore, Velleius, the Epicurean, needed not to have asked why God should have adorned the heaven with stars, as if he had been an Ædilis; one that should have set forth some magnificent shows or plays. For if that great Workmaster had been of a human disposition, he would have cast the stars into some pleasant and beautiful works and orders, like the frets in roofs of houses; whereas one can scarce find a posture in square, or triangle, or straight line, among such an infinite number; so differing an harmony there is between the spirit of Man, and the spirit of Nature.”

In the infancy of knowledge, men look upon the growth of a tree and the birth of an animal as miraculous. The bursting forth of the foliage in Spring is as if the earth had been touched by the wand of a magician as if a great magician had said, "Let there be new growth and beauty over the earth;" and growth and beauty were. The sunset was the showing forth of glory, and the stimulus to praise and worship. The rainbow and the eclipse are as signs in the heavens. The sun is made to shine for man: the moon and the myriad stars are lights set up to shine for man,-the lamp-lighting for the