GLOSSARY TO THE APPENDED DIALOGUE.

As all my readers are not bound to understand Greek, and yet, according to my deepest convictions, the truths set forth in the following combat of wit between the man of reason and the man of the senses have an interest for all, I have been induced to prefix the explanations of the few Greek words, and words minted from the Greek :

Cosmos-world. Toutos cosmos-this world. Heteros-the other, in the sense of opposition to, or discrepancy with, some former; as heterodoxy, in opposition to orthodoxy. Allos-an other simply and without precluding or superseding the one before mentioned. Allocosmite-a denizen of another world.

Mystes, from the Greek μúw-one who muses with closed lips, as meditating on ideas which may indeed be suggested and awakened, but cannot, like the images of sense and the conceptions of the understanding, be adequately expressed by words.

Where a person mistakes the anomalous misgrowths of his own individuality for ideas or truths of universal reason, he may, without impropriety, be called a mystic, in the abusive sense of

the term; though pseudo-mystic or phantast would be the more proper designation. Heraclitus, Plato, Bacon, Leibnitz, were mystics in the primary sense of the term; Iamblichus and his successors, phan

tasts.

"ETEα wovтa-living words.-The following words from Plato may be Englished ;-" the commune and the dialect of Gods with or toward men ;" and those attributed to Pythagoras ;— "the verily subsistent numbers or powers, the most prescient (or provident) principles of the earth and the heavens."

And here, though not falling under the leading title, Glossary, yet, as tending to the same object of fore-arming the reader for the following dialogue, I transcribe two or three annotations, which I had pencilled, (for the book was lent to me by a friend who had himself borrowed it) on the margins of a volume, recently published, and intituled, "The Natural History of Enthusiasm." They will, at least, remind some of my old school-fellows of the habit for which I was even then noted and for others they may serve, as a specimen of the Marginalia, which, if brought together from the various books, my own and those of a score others, would go near to form as bulky a volume as most of those old folios, through which the larger portion of them are dispersed.*

* See the Author's Literary Remains.-Ed.

N

HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM.

I.

"Whatever is practically important on religion or morals, may at all times be advanced and argued in the simplest terms of colloquial expression."p. 21.*

NOTE.

But

I do not believe this. Be it so, however. why? Simply, because, the terms and phrases of the theological schools have, by their continual iteration from the pulpit, become colloquial. The science of one age becomes the common sense of a succeeding. The author adds-" from the pulpit, perhaps, no other style should at any time be heard." Now I can conceive no more direct means of depriving Christianity of one of its peculiar attributes, that of enriching and enlarging the mind, while it purifies and in the very act of purifying the will and affections, than the maxim here prescribed by the historian of enthusiasm. From the intensity of commercial life in this country, and from some other less creditable causes, there is found even among our better educated men a vagueness in the use of words, which presents, indeed, no obstacle to the intercourse of the market, but is absolutely incompatible with the attainment or communication of distinct and precise conceptions. Hence in every department of exact know

* 7th edit.

ledge a peculiar nomenclature is indispensable. The anatomist, chemist, botanist, mineralogist, yea, even the common artizan and the rude sailor discover that" the terms of colloquial expression," are too general and too lax to answer their purposes and on what grounds can the science of self-knowledge, and of our relations to God and our own spirits, be presumed to form an exception? Every new term expressing a fact, or a difference, not precisely and adequately expressed by any other word in the same language, is a new organ of thought for the mind that has learned it.

II.

"The region of abstract conceptions, of lofty reasonings, of magnificent images, has an atmosphere too subtle to support the health of true piety.

* In accordance with this, the Supreme in his word reveals barely a glimpse of his essential glories. By some naked affirmations we are, indeed, secured against grovelling notions of the divine nature; but these hints are incidental, and so scanty, that every excursive mind goes far beyond them in its conception of the infinite attributes."-p. 26.

NOTE.

By "abstract conceptions" the Author means what I should call ideas, which as such I contradistinguish from conceptions, whether abstracted or generalized. But it is with his meaning, not with his terms, that I am at present concerned.

Now that the personeity of God, the idea of God as the I AM, is presented more prominently in Scripture than the (so called) physical attributes, is most true; and forms one of the distinctive characters of its superior worth and value. It was by dwelling too exclusively on the infinites that the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato excepted, fell into pantheism, as in later times did Spinoza. "I forbid you," says Plato, "to call God the infinite! If you dare name him at all, say rather the measure of infinity." Nevertheless, it would be easy to place in synopsi before the Author such a series of Scripture passages as would incline him to retract his assertion. The Eternal, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient, the one absolute Good, the Holy, the Living, the Creator as well as Former of the Universe, the Father of Spirits-can the Author's mind go far beyond these? Yet these are all clearly affirmed of the Supreme One in the Scriptures.

III.

The following pages from p. 26 to p. 36 contain a succession of eloquent and splendid paragraphs on the celestial orders, and the expediency or necessity of their being concealed from us, lest we should receive such overwhelming conceptions of the divine greatness as to render us incapable of devotion and prayer on the Scripture model. "Were it," says the eloquent writer, "indeed permitted to man to gaze upwards from step to