cidentally that we know that even they sympathise with our low and lost estate. Again, too, we urge the principle of "seclusion;" and ask, besides, if the inhabitants of other planets (supposing such there be) are unfallen, might not the knowledge of a fallen earth damp their joy? if they are fallen, might it not encourage their rebellion?

The sixth sermon is perhaps the most powerful of the seven. Fervet immensusque ruit. Towards the close especially it becomes a torrent of fire. After describing the great contest of angels and demons over the dead Patroclus, Man, he says:

"But this wondrous contest will come to a close. Some will return to their loyalty, and others will keep by their rebellion; and in the day of the winding-up of the drama of this world's history, there will be made manifest to the myriads of the various orders of creation both the mercy and the vindicated majesty of the Eternal. Oh! on that day, how vain will this presumption of the infidel astronomy appear, when the affairs of men come to be examined in the presence of an innumerable company; and beings of loftiest nature are seen to crowd around the judgment-seat; and the Savior shall appear in our sky, with a celestial retinue, who have come with him from afar to witness all his doings, and to take a deep and solemn interest in all his dispensations; and the destiny of our species, whom the infidel would thus detach in solitary insignificance from the universe altogether, shall be found to merge and mingle with higher destinies; the good to spend their eternity with angels-the bad to spend their eternity with angels; the former to be re-admitted into the universal family of God's obedient worshippers-the latter to share in the everlasting pain and ignominy of the rebellious; the people of this planet to be implicated throughout the whole train of their never-ending history with the higher ranks and more extended tribes of intelligence.'

This passage is not only exceedingly eloquent and solemn, but seems to contain the strongest argument in the volume for the importance of man. The only weak point in the sermon perhaps lies in his apparently supposing that the universe is now aware of this mighty contest which is going on between purely spiritual beings for the possession. As well say that all Europe was literally looking on Waterloo on the very day

of the battle when its fate was decided. This earth will not assume its real aspect of dignity and importance, till after its wonderful history is over, and perhaps itself burned up.

The seventh sermon is on the slender influence of mere taste and sensibility in matters of religion; and appears indeed to be an eloquent apology for the whole series, and a virtual admission that in it he had rather pleased the taste and touched the sensibility, than informed the judgment, confirmed the faith, or refuted the adversary. We look, in fact, upon this volume as not worthy, as a whole, of its author's talents. It is a mass of brilliant froth. The thought is slight and slender, when compared to the abundance of the verbiage which clothes it. The language is often loose and coarse to the last degree. The argument, so far as we know, never convinced a gainsayer; and, indeed, none but a very silly infidel could have been convinced by it: we were going to say that none but a very feeble thinker could even have started the objection, till we remembered, not only that it seems to have rested at one time like a load upon Chalmers's own soul—and he, need we say, as his "Bridgewater Treatise" proves, could be as subtle at times as he was eloquent always

but that Daniel Webster was long puzzled and kept back from embracing Christianity through its influence. But Webster, to be sure, thought generally like a lawyer, seldom like a legislator or philosopher. He was one of those men of whom Burke says "Aristotle, the great master of reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight and propriety, against a species of delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, as the most fallacious of all sophistry."

Let us now try ourselves with all diffidence to meet the objection fairly and fully in the face; and we would do so, first, by asking what has magnitude to do with a moral question? secondly, what, above all, has magnitude to do with a moral question, unless it be proved to be peopled by moral beings? and, thirdly, what is magnitude compared to mind?

First, What has magnitude to do with a moral question? what has the size of a man to do with his soul? is not the mind the standard of the man? What has the size of a city to do with the moral character of its inhabitants? what have size, number, and quantity, to do with the intellectual or

moral interest, which may be or may not be connected with the plains of a country? Whether is Ben Nevis or Bannockburn the dearer to a Scottish heart-though the one is the prince of Scottish hills, and the other only a paltry plain, undistinguished except by a solitary stone, and by the immortal memories of patriotism and of courage which gather around that field wherein the "Scots who had wi' Wallace bled" bade "Welcome to their gory bed, or to victory?" Whether is Mont Blanc or Morgarten the nobler object, though the one be the monarch of mountains, and the other only an obscure field, where the Swiss met and baffled their Austrian oppressors, and first in the shock was the arm of William Tell? Whether is dearer to the Christian's mind Caucasus or Calvary?-the one the loftiest of Asia's mountains, the other only a little hill, a mere dot on the surface of the globe? So may there not issue from this tiny earth of ours-from the noble deeds it has witnessed, from the high aspirations which have been breathed up from it, from the magnificent thoughts which have been conceived on its surface, from the eloquent words that have stirred its air into music, from the poets who have wrought its words into undying song, from the philosophers who have explained the secret of its laws, from the men of God who have knelt down in its temples-a tide of glory before which the lustre of suns and constellations shall tremble and melt away.

But, secondly, what has magnitude to do with a moral question, if it cannot be proved that that magnitude is peopled with moral beings? Science, indeed, may and does hope that each fair star has its own beautiful and happy race of immortal intelligences; but science does not know. For aught science knows, there may be no immortal intelligences except man, angels, God, and devils, in the wide creation. For aught science knows, those suns and systems may be seen only by our eyes and our telescopes; for aught she knows, the universe may only be beginning to be peopled, and earth have been selected as the first spot for the great colonization. The peopling of our own planet was a gradual process. Why may not

*This was written and published years before the masterly treatise on the "Plurality of Worlds," attributed to Whewell, appeared.

the same be concluded of the universe of which our earth is a part? May not earth in this sense be an Eden to other regions of the All? Are appearance and analogy pleaded as proofs that the universe is peopled throughout? Appearance and anology here utter an uncertain sound; for are not all the suns, or what we call the continents of creation, seemingly burning masses uninhabitable by any beings we can even conceive of? Do not many of the planets, or islands, appear either too near or too remote from the central blaze to support animal existence? The moon (the only planet with which we are particularly acquainted) has manifestly not yet arrived at the state necessary for supporting living beings, and science remembers that innumerable ages passed ere even our globe was fitted for receiving its present population, and that, according to the researches of geology, the earth rolled round the sun for ages, a vast and weltering wilderness. Here, then, science is totally silent, or utters only a faltering "perhaps." Is it said, that but for intelligent beings space would be empty? How! empty if it contain an entire Deity in its every particle? Is God not society enough for his own creation? Shall you call the universe empty, if God be present in it, even though he were present alone? Science, indeed, grants it probable that much of the universe is already peopled; but she grants no more. But as long as his probability is not swelled to a certainty, it can never interfere in any way whatever with the fixed, solid, immutable evidences of our Christian faith.

We ask, thirdly, what is material magnitude compared to mind? The question is: Why did God, who made the vast creation, interfere to save the human spirit, at such immense expense, and by a machinery so sublime and miraculous! Now, in reply to this, we assert the ineffable dignity of the human spirit. The creation, large and magnificent as it is, is not equal in grandeur to one immortal mind. Majestic the universe is; but can it think, or feel, or imagine, or hope, or love? "Talk to me of the sun!"-one might say, standing up in all the conscious dignity of his own nature, "but the sun is not alive; he is but a dead luminary after all; I am alive, I nev

*We quote this passage from the "First Gallery," as necessary to our argument here.

er was dead, I never can die; I may therefore put my foot upon that proud orb, and say, I am greater than thou. The sun cannot understand the geometry of his own motion, nor the laws of his own radiating light. I can do both, and am, therefore, immeasurably greater than the sun. The sun can

not with all his rays write on flower, or grass, or the broad page of ocean, his Maker's name. A child of seven years old can, and is therefore greater than the sun. The sun cannot from his vast surface utter one articulate sound; he is dumb in his magnificence; but out of the mouth of babes and sucklings' God perfects praise. The sun cannot love one of the planets which revolve round his ray. You and I can love all beings; nay, were our heart large enough, we could, in the language of the German, 'Clasp the universe to our bosom, and keep it warm.' The sun shall be plucked from its sphere, and perish, but I have that within me which shall never die.

'The sun is but a spark of fire, a transient meteor in the sky; But I-immortal as his sire, shall never die !"

And if greater than the sun, I am greater than the entire universe. It might indeed rise and crush me, but I should know it was destroying me, whilst it would crush blindly and unconsciously. I should be conscious of defeat; it would not be conscious of victory. The universe may be too great now for the grasp of my intellect, but my mind, I feel, can grow to grasp it. The universe, in fact, is only the nursery to my immortal mind, and whether is greater-the nursery or the child? The universe, you may call it what you please; you may lavish epithet upon epithet of splendor upon it, if you please; but you can never call it one thing-you can never call it a spirit; and if not a spirit, it is but a great and glorious clod. But I am a spirit, though a spirit disguised in matter; an immortality, though an immortality veiled in flesh; a beam from the source of light, though a beam that has gone astray; and therefore I dare to predicate even of my own fallen nature, that there is more dignity, and grandeur, and value in it, than in the whole inanimate creation; and that to save no more but me, it were worth while for the Saviour to have descended, and for the Saviour to have died."