once more flying as rapidly, and for as brief a course, in a new direction. No subject is left untried: nothing can be hid by its profundity, or protected by its sanctity, from the application of the new canon. Long-settled truths, mysteries in which reason has despairingly acquiesced, are dragged from the deep foundations of the mind, and once more laid bare in their vast proportions before the unusual light of day. The purpose and the destiny of man, the creation of the worlds, the origin of evil, nay, even the mystery of the Holy Trinity, are thus brought as it were under the lens of probability.

But we should wrong our author, if we allowed him to rest under the charge of irreverence, which the bare mention of such awful topics naturally implies. There can be no doubt that his is a religious and reverential mind, deeply impressed with the truth and sanctity of the solemn themes, on which he feels he has a word to utter. If he speaks with his tongue, we do not doubt that it is because, after silence and musing, the fire is kindled within him. His preface to the chapter on The Triunity,' may stand not unfitly in the front of our notice of the book, as a word of warning to writer and reader.

'Another deep and inscrutable topic is now to engage our thoughts,the mystery of a probable Trinity. While we touch on such high themes, the Christian's presumption ever is, that he himself approaches them with reverence and prayer; and that, in the case of an unbeliever, any such mind will be courteous enough to his friendly opponent, and wise enough respecting his own interest and safety lest these things be true, to enter upon all such subjects with the seriousness befitting their importance, and with the restraining thought that in fact they may be sacred.-P. 34.

While, however, we give the writer full credit for reverence of intention, and are willing to allow him the praise of considerable skill in the execution of a conception, the very nature of which carries him over ground where a false step is ever probable, and may issue in unknown evils; we may be allowed to doubt of the wisdom of approaching these mysteries at all with the dim and flickering torch of reason. He has treated of them reverently, if it be allowable so to treat of them at all.

But to this question we may perhaps recur again. It is now time to lay before the reader the general object of the work. If the title should have led him to suppose that he is about to encounter fresh argument against the infidel, another evidence of Christianity,' we are happy in the ability to relieve his fears. He will not here at least have to work on that treadmill which grinds the air, to toil through that weary and unprofitable labour of proving step by step, by slow and irrefragable argumentation, a conclusion which he already holds far more

firmly and more intimately than the premises by which he proves it. Mr. Tupper undertakes to prove nothing; no, not so much as Bishop Butler's unanswerable proposition, that Revealed Religion may by possibility be true. This is a most important point to be observed; the very hinge, indeed, as it seems to us, upon which the whole merit of the book depends and turns. For proof, probability is most dangerous and untrustworthy; for illustration and confirmation, it is invaluable. Probabilities and analogies, fascinating as they are, and to a certain extent even satisfying, are yet liable to indefinite abuse. They are keen tools, which can hew error, as well as truth, into a shapely form; they are subtle instruments, which the skilful artist can turn with formidable effect upon almost any object. But we will let Mr. Tupper speak for himself, and show that he has not misconceived the range of his speculations.

'It is very material to keep in memory the only scope and object of this Essay. We do not pretend to add one jot of evidence, but only to prepare the mind to receive evidence; we do not attempt to prove facts, but only to accelerate their admission by the removal of prejudice. If a bed-ridden meteorologist is told that it rains, he may or he may not receive the fact from the mere force of testimony; but he will certainly be more pre-disposed to receive it, if he finds that his weather-glass is falling rather than rising. The fact remains the same, it rains; but the mind,-precluded by circumstances from positive personal assurance of such fact, and able only to arrive at truth from exterior evidence,—is in a fitter state for belief of the fact from being already made aware that it was probable. Let it not then be inferred, somewhat perversely, that because antecedent probabilities are the staple of our present argument, the theme itself, Religion, rests upon hypotheses so slender; it rests not at all upon such straws as probabilities, but on posterior evidences far more firm. What we now attempt is not to prop the ark, but favourably to predispose the mind of any reckless Uzzah, who might otherwise assail it; not to strengthen the weak places of religion, but to annul such disinclination to receive truth, as consists in prejudice and misconception of its likelihood. The goodly ship is built upon the stocks, the platforms are reared, and the cradle is ready; but mistaken preconceptions may scatter the incline with gravel-stones rather than with grease, and thus put a needless hindrance to the launching: whereas a clear idea that the probabilities are in favour, rather than the reverse, will make all smooth, lubricate, and easy. If then we fail in this attempt, no disservice whatever is done to truth itself; no breach is made in the walls, no mine sprung, no battlement dismantled; all the evidences remain as they were; we have taken nothing away. Even granting matters seemed anteriorly improbable, still, if evidence proved them true, such anterior unlikelihood would entirely be merged in the stoutly proven facts. Moreover, if we be adjudged to have succeeded, we have added nothing to truth itself, no, nor to its outworks. That sacred temple stands complete, firm and glorious from corner-stone to topstone. We do but sweep away the rubbish at its base; the drifting desertsands that choke its portals. We only serve that cause, (a most high privilege,) by enlisting a pre-judgment in its favour. We propose herein an auxiliary to evidence, not evidence itself; a finger-post to point the way to faith; a little light of reason on its path. The risk is really nothing; but the advantage, under favour, may be much.'-Pp. 14-16.

The thoughts in this passage are so true, and the imagery in general so just and beautiful, that we should be unwilling to draw attention to the somewhat unexpected metaphor of the goodly ship, launched amidst gravel-stones and grease down its lubricate and easy' slides, if it did not seem to indicate a defect of mind at once natural and dangerous to a writer on Probabilities. It betrays an insensibility to the ridiculous, which every now and then peeps out throughout the volume. No sense of harshness, no violence of transition appears to deter him from the pursuit of a favourite analogy. Adolphus and Stebbing occur in close juxtaposition to Joshua and Hezekiah; and between the stages of an historical review of Christianity we suddenly alight upon the Grand Stand among the gentlemen on the turf.' It is true Mr. Tupper, on one occasion, deliberately justifies this usage; but we cannot think, successfully. After a really eloquent description of the imaginary throne of the Most High, he breaks in with these words:

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'I have just cut the following paragraph out of a newspaper is this the ridiculous tripping up the sublime?--I think otherwise: it is honest to use plain terms. I speak as unto wise men: judge ye what I say.'P. 163.

We do not wish to deprecate honesty; but she need not dress herself like Columbine. A grave and matronly garb would be a more seemly habit, and yet no false disguise. A few fit words of explanation, or even a passing allusion, would have served the purpose of this obnoxious newspaper paragraph; or, if it must needs come in, it might have modestly retired into a foot-note or an appendix.

Our author is not ignorant of the powers of ridicule: he at once deprecates and defies it.

'The expression,' he writes in another place, 'of a thought by no means improbable, gives an easy chance to shallow punsters; but ridicule is no weapon against reason.'-P. 168.

It is true. Ridicule is no weapon against reason; but it is a fair and a fit weapon against much that shelters itself beneath that august name. A perception of the absurd is a natural faculty, which few men wholly lack; and those who have the misfortune to be without it, themselves commonly afford a most unwilling testimony to the fact of its general existence. It is a concise method of detecting fallacies; an instinct, by which we are saved the trouble of unravelling thread by thread a skein of laboriously tangled sophistries. Of course, like all other natural faculties, it is capable of being perverted to abuse; but it does not, therefore, follow that it has no legitimate

use.

Who has not often heard the grave remark, the solemn

argument, to which a laugh or a jest formed the obvious and natural reply? Nor let this be thought merely the triumph of the successful disputant; we do not simply exult over a silenced adversary; the satisfaction lies deeper. The sense of justice, the yearning after adequate compensation is gratified; there is a fitness and mutual adaptation between the ridicule and the ridiculous, which creates a sense of incompleteness while the latter stands alone,-of satisfaction when it meets and closes with its natural foe and complement. The unfit, the absurd, the inappropriate, the manifestly inconsequential, are the proper prey of ridicule. Its magic wand lays bare at a stroke the manifold enfoldings of pretended reason, and curbs within due limits the else-unchecked vagaries of imagination. And it is for this reason that we could wish a due respect were paid to it in a work such as that which we are now examining. Probabilities are everywhere; analogies are infinite; and the hand of strict reason is not able, because it does not profess, to rule them. There is no event, past, present, or to come, for which a probability might not be made out. The crime was likely,' is the philosopher's argument in the mouth of the rhetorician, and therefore it was committed:' or, 'it was unlikely, and 'therefore still it was committed; for so the criminal might hope to escape detection.' There is no fancy so wild, for which an ingenious mind cannot frame an analogy; no two things so dissimilar, as to refuse to yield one point of likeness to the determined theorizer. The author of the 'Proverbial Philosophy is not ignorant of the intricate comminglings of Truth and Error. As he writes,

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'Verily, there is nothing so true, that the damps of error have not warped it;

'Verily, there is nothing so false, that a sparkle of truth is not in it.'

These indistinct and shadowy realms, the border-lands and marches of the kingdom of Reason, form the great theatre in which the Comic loves to expatiate. Indeed the topics that here fit to and fro in the twilight, scarcely acknowledge any other bounds than the barriers of the absurd. Within these they know they must not enter; but let them beware of these landmarks, and the world may listen and applaud.

We have digressed a little from our intended course; but not without good reason. By his real or assumed contempt for ridicule, Mr. Tupper does great injustice both to himself and to his readers. He is delivering earnest thoughts on solemn topics in a peculiar cast of reflection, which of itself is not unlikely to provoke the flippant jest and the shallow laugh. Surely, he is even therefore more bound than others to keep clear of real absurdities, to give no occasion for the deserved

sarcasm. In the midst of much sober meditation, he occasionally diverges into an unhappy illustration; and we fear the natural result may be, that the ridicule which fairly belongs only to a small portion, will be profusely poured over the whole.

But we return once more to the book itself. It is but fair to state the general drift of it in the author's own words, though we think he has not done himself the justice of exhibiting it in its most favourable light.

'The line of thought proposed is intended to show it probable that anything which has been, or is, might, viewed antecedently to its existence, by an exercise of pure reason, have by possibility been guessed: and, on the hypothesis of sufficient keenness and experience, that this idea may be carried even to the future. Anything, meaning everything, is a word not used unadvisedly; for this is merely a suggestive treatise starting a rule capable of infinite application; and notwithstanding that we have here and now confined its elucidation to some matters of religious moment only, as occupying a priority of importance, and at all times deserving the lead; still, if knowledge availed, and time and space permitted, I scarcely doubt but that a vigorous and illuminated intellect might so far enlarge on the idea, as to show the antecedent probability of every event which has happened in the kingdoms of nature, providence, and grace: nay, of directing his guess at coming matters with no uncertain aim into the realms of the immediate future.'-Pp. 8, 9.

We think that a fear of legitimate ridicule might very fairly have deterred a writer from such an announcement as this; but, as we hinted before, it probably conveys a very incorrect impression of the real merits of his treatise. Mr. Tupper is no prophet; he has no thoughts of reviving the study of judicial astrology; he cherishes no project for diverting the popular breeze from Partridge, or Moore, or Murphy. He is content to busy himself with the past, nor, we are happy to say, does he often stray beyond the empire of the known. The reasonableness, so to speak, of things as they are-how moral and metaphysical mysteries, and the unsearchable dealings of Providence with man, have their probable as well as their improbable phase; how, all-inscrutable as they are, they may yet be placed in such a light as to give evidence of symmetrical form and regular construction, if we could but reach its law-this is the real and valuable object of the 'Aids.' Inevitably mixed up as we are in the consequences of past causes, and the inextricable convolutions of present action, we can scarcely take a dispassionate view of the universe, or reflect with impartiality on our own place and destiny in it. Our author, a moral Archimedes, seeks an external station, from which he may observe the mighty picture in the proper light, and at the required distance. He takes his stand at the origin of all things, and strives to contemplate as a spectator the gradual work of Creating Wisdom.