millions are to sink down under this ill-remunerated and crushing toil; if millions of our fellow-men and women and children-half-clad, half-starved, pale, trembling, almost denuded of their very humanity are to be the operatives of the world, humanity will not bear it; and indeed it were better to go back from our perilous freedom to the feudal relations of baron and serf, — nay, better to fly from the curse of liberty to the curse of slavery itself. O brotherhood of men! what is it when men die for lack of food, - when women, in the garrets and cellars of all our cities, are pining and wasting to death over their unrequited toil, and they weave their shroud in the gay garments which they fashion for the idle and opulent!

-

Yes, Brotherhood, Fraternity! well was that word uttered among the watchwords of the new republic of France. And France, Germany, America, the world, must learn what that word means. Selfish individualism is the curse of all men and communities, the root of all trouble and mischief, private and public. This is the poisonous element in all human conditions and relations. Extract that from the heart of society, and then wealth is good, and honor is good, and poverty is good, and toil is good, every thing is good. Take that away, and any political relations can be made to work well for human happiness and improvement. But let that accursed principle loose, to have free and unrestricted course, and Plato's republic, Washington's, Lamartine's, any republic, any system of liberty that the wit of man can frame, will but nourish the freer growth of monstrous evils, that will overshadow it, and weigh it down, and scatter it in the dust.

Solemn in our thoughts, therefore, deep in our hearts, must sink the deepest principles of religion, if we would build on these shores a happy realm, — if we would find in this free heritage a happy life. Religion, we say, in fine, must consecrate the true citizenship. To reverence God, the God of nations; to feel the grandeur of his authority in our consciences; to bind our hearts in fealty to his will; to live as in the great Taskmaster's eye; to further his purposes of wisdom and goodness in the world, and to remember the solemn account, when the breath that wafts us on this tide of time shall have

died away for ever, without this, this high and holy consecration of our being to the general weal, no freedom is good, no country is happy, no life is blessed.

We thank God that we do not hear now, from revolutionary France, the old cry of No religion! No Christianity! No Sabbath! No God, but reason! Evil and dark was the omen; and darkly was it fulfilled. The silent steps of retribution for ever proclaim the righteous authority that is over all. A miserable blasphemer* in the old revolution once stood up in the Assembly and said,in language almost too awful to repeat, thus he said: "God! if you exist, avenge your injured name; I bid you defiance! You launch not your thunder-bolts; who, after this, will believe in your existence?" No lightning-flash struck down the impious railer; no thunder-bolt gave answer to his blasphemous adjuration; but the unchained passions of a heaven-defying mob, the atrocities and woes beyond parallel of those awful days, gave answer; the guillotines, the butcheries, the suicidal stroke of the revolutionary axe, that cut off the heads of that hydra of impiety and rage, the boiling up from the lowest hell of human depravity of all that can curse the earth, all this gave answer. All this shows what a nation may be without religion, without God. † But it is not so now. Now no goddess of reason is installed and worshipped in the Champ de Mars. Now, when the image of Christ is brought forth from the sacked Tuilleries, the people pause; they say, "Reverence the Master"; and, with uncovered head and reverent homage, they bear the sacred form to the holy sanctuary.

-

* Monert, a comedian. Alison, Vol. II. p. 47.

Lamartine says, in his History of the Girondists, that "the spirit of the revolution was religious." Then we think we must have a new definition of religion. Chateaubriand, somewhere in his Etudes Historiques, replies to certain of his countrymen, who have attempted to philosophize the horrors of the French Revolution into a heavenly order and method of social regeneration, by pointing to its unspeakable atrocities, and among others to the fusillades, in which hundreds of children were gathered together and shot down in cold blood. Did we say, in cold blood? By bloodless fiends, rather. With Mr. Carlyle's remarkable writing on this subject we can go along, so far as to admit that the selfish and heartless inhumanity of the French nobles, for ages, provoked this horrible retribution, and deserved scarcely less. Still the fact stands, we think, incontestable, if we will take the pains to discriminate it, that the French Revolution was the most terrible boiling up of the deeps of human depravity, the most portentous ebullition of inhuman, of infernal passions, of mingled rage, cruelty, and blood, that ever was witnessed among civilized men.

This conduct of the French people, together with the wonderful order, self-restraint, respect for property, and even brotherly kindness, that appeared among them,and with all this, similar indications all over Europe,may well awaken in us a religious emotion. We may feel, without presumption, we hope, that the hand of God is among them; that the Father of mercies is shedding a portion of his own spirit upon them. We may hope in God that the days of violence and bloodshed are passing away. We may hope in God, that the great day of human fraternity is coming. Is it too much to hopeor must it for ever be a dream? - that men will yet learn to love one another, to help one another, to respect, befriend, strengthen one another, to give up pride and strife and sensual excess and base self-seeking and bad ambition, and to unite together for the common weal? We will not believe it is too much to hope. We see a new heaven and a new earth, yet to be. We see the earth cultivated by laborious hands, withdrawn from war and strife, cultivated to a bountifulness and beauty never before known. We see the dwellings of men more thickly planted on the now waste and barren deserts, but more richly replenished; the vile hovels, unfit for the residence of beasts, have disappeared; the pest-houses of filth and drunkenness and debauchery are gone. We see governments more just and benign, and the people more content and happy, and the nations dwelling together in amity. We see a race that can believe in law and love, in righteousness and peace.

But alas! we do not believe in them yet. We believe in wealth and pleasure, in force and will, in armies and battlements. But faith in higher things, in truth and right and moral power, in the only and everlasting resources of humanity, has not yet come. And yet, therefore, must we implore all the solemnity and safeguard of religion to come down and dwell among us.

Nev

And never, we think,― never so much as now. er, we believe, since the world began, was there such a crisis in the world's affairs as now. Never was there occasion for so deep a thoughtfulness and solicitude and prayer for the world's welfare as now. Among all nations, in all dwellings, in all solemn temples, should it be deeply meditated upon. For now, the PEOPLE'S REIGN

has commenced! Whether in the form of a republic or not, is immaterial; all power has visibly gone, or is fast going, into their hands. Now the PEOPLE'S REIGN has commenced! And now, therefore, the hope of the world lies in true citizenship,-in true, disinterested, fraternal, religious citizenship.

O. D.

ART. IV. -SCEPTICISM IN SCIENCE.*

NOTHING is so well established in religion or morals, in history or science, as not to be doubted or denied by some one. The more presumptuous this doubt or denial, the more is it likely to excite attention, and obtain a momentary, if not a permanent influence. All human knowledge, even the most positive, is tainted by scepticism. Even the physical sciences, which deal directly with present and sensible facts, are not clear from this stain. Geometry, in its first elementary steps, no less than in its highest walks where it seems scarcely to touch the earth, does not tread so firmly and see so clearly as

* 1. Outlines of a System of Mechanical Philosophy, being a Research into the Laws of Force. By SAMUEL ELLIOTT COUES. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown. 1851. 12mo. pp. 330.

2. Unity of Purpose, or Rational Analysis, being a Treatise designed to disclose Physical Truths, and to detect and expose Popular Errors. By AuGUSTUS YOUNG. Boston: Printed by S. N. Dickinson & Co. 1846.

3. On the Motions of the Earth and Heavenly Bodies, as explainable by Electro-magnetic Attraction and Repulsion, and on the Conception, Growth, and Decay of Man, and Cause and Treatment of his Diseases, as referrible to Galvanic Action. By P. CUNNINGHAM, Surgeon, R. N. London: Cochrane & McCrane. 1834.

4. Essay on the Theory of Attraction. By JOHN KINNERSLEY SMYTHIES. London: Richard & John Edward Taylor. 1850.

5. A Million of Facts, or Correct Data and Elementary Constants, in the entire Circle of the Sciences and in all Subjects of Speculation and Practice. By SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS. London: Darton & Co. 1848.

6. The Anomalies of the Present Theory of the Tides, elucidated by Additional Facts and Arguments. Together with Remarks on the newly discovered Planet, its Negative Disturbing Power, etc., etc. By THOMAS KERIGAN, R. N., F. R. S. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. 1847.

7. Notes on the Kinematic Effects of Revolution and Rotation with Reference to the Motions of the Moon, and of the Earth, which are assumed in the present System of Astronomy. With experimental Illustrations. By HENRY PERIGAL, Esq., F. R. A. S., etc. Second Edition. London. 1846-50. 8. An Examination of the Astronomical Doctrine of the Moon's RotaVOL. LI. 4TH S. VOL. XVI. NO. II. 19

to command universal assent to all its demonstrations. The anathemas of the French Academy of Sciences, which banished particular subjects, such as a "perpetual motion," the "quadrature of the circle," and the dispute concerning the "vis viva" and the "vis mortua," from its deliberations, have not been sufficient to convince or silence the disputatious.

The Newtonian law of gravitation, if it now stands on a firm foundation, does not owe its stability to the forbearance and gentleness of those who have ventured from time to time to assail it. John Hutchinson exalted the Principia of Moses above Newton's Principia. He declaimed against all human learning, and looked to the Scriptures for a complete system of natural philosophy. As the law of gravitation is not mentioned in the sacred physics, the law of gravitation was rejected as not true. But to assail the law on theological or metaphysical grounds is less marvellous than to declare that it is irreconcilable with facts. Le Seur and Jacquier, who published the second volume of their commentary on Newton's Principia in 1742, made this degrading decla

ration:

"Newton, in his third book, adopts the hypothesis of the mo

tion.

Black.

"Strike me, but hear." By J. L. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles 1847.

9. Treatise on the Nature and Effects of Heat, Light, Electricity, and Magnetism, as being only different Developments of One Element. Cambridge. 1827, by Marshall Tufts. 8vo.

10. Principles of Natural and Metaphysical Philosophy, intended as a new Account, concise and popular, plain and more consistent also with later Improvements than the Cartesian or Newtonian. Cambridge: Hilliard & Brown. 1829.

11. The Universe as it is: wherein the Hypothesis of the Earth's Motion is refuted, and the true Basis of Astronomy laid down. By WILLIAM WOODLEY. London. 1829. 8vo.

12. A New Theory of the Tides. By CAPTAIN FORMAN. London. 1822. 8vo.

13. On the Proximate Causes of Material Phenomena and the Two Principles of Universal Causation. By SIR R. PHILLIPS. London. 1821. 8vo. 14. Protest against the prevailing Principles of Natural Philosophy with the Developments of a Common-sense System. By SIR R. PHILLIPS. London. 8vo.

15. New Elements of Geometry. By SEBA SMITH. New York: G. P. Putnam. London: Richard Bentley. 1850.

16. On the Correlation of the Physical Forces being the Substance of a Course of Lectures delivered in the Royal Institution, in the Year 1843. By W. R. GROVE, Esq., M. A., F. R. S., Barrister at Law. London: Samuel Higley. 1846.