tionary wisdom that had its origin in inspiration; that these men referred the same power to the rup ảɛilwov ὑπὸ διοικοῦντος Λόγου; and that they were scarcely less express than their scholar Philo Judæus, in their affirmations of the Logos, as no mere attribute or quality, no mode of abstraction, no personification, but literally and mysteriously Deus alter et idem.

When education has disciplined the minds of our gentry for austerer study; when educated men shall be ashamed to look abroad for truths that can be only found within; within themselves they will discover, intuitively will they discover, the distinctions between the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and the understanding, which forms the peculium of each man, as different in extent and value from another man's understanding, as his estate may be from his neighbour's estate. The words of St. John, i. 7—12. are in their whole extent interpretable of the understanding, which derives its rank and mode of being in the human race (that is, as far as it may be contrasted with the instinct of the dog or elephant, in all, which constitutes it human understanding) from the universal light. This light therefore comes as to its own. Being rejected, it leaves the understanding to a world of dreams and darkness for in it alone is life and the life is the light of What then but apparitions can remain to a philosophy, which strikes death through all things visible and invisible; satisfies itself then only when it can explain those abstractions of the outward senses, which by an unconscious irony it names indifferently facts and phanomena, mechanically—that is, by the laws of death; and brands with the name of mysticism every solution grounded in life, or the powers and intuitions of life ?

men.

On the other hand, if the light be received by faith, to such understandings it delegates the privilege (¿čovoíav) to become sons of God, expanding while it elevates, even

as the beams of the sun incorporate with the mist, and make its natural darkness and earthly nature the bearer and interpreter of their own glory. Ἐὰν μὴ πιστεύσητε, οὐ μὴ συνῆτε.

The very same truth is found in a fragment of the Ephesian Heraclitus, preserved by Stobæus. Er vów λέγοντας ἰσχυρίζεσθαι χρὴ τῷ ξυνῷ πάντων· τρέφονται γὰρ πάντες οἱ ἀνθρώπινοι νόοι ὑπὸ ἑνὸς τοῦ θείου (Λόγου) κρατεῖ γὰρ τοσοῦτον ὁκόσον ἐθέλει, καὶ ἐξαρκεῖ πᾶσι καὶ πeρiyiverai.*—To discourse rationally (if we would render the discursive understanding discourse of reason) it behoves us to derive strength from that which is common to all men; (the light that lighteth every man.) For all human understandings are nourished by the one Divine Word, whose power is commensurate with his will, and is sufficient for all and overfloweth, (shineth in darkness, and is not contained therein, or comprehended by the darkness.)

This was Heraclitus, whose book is nearly six hundred years older than the Gospel of St. John, and who was proverbially entitled the Dark (ò σкoteιvós.) But it was a darkness which Socrates would not condemn,+ and which would probably appear to enlightened Christians the darkness of prophecy, had the work, which he hid in the temple, been preserved to us. But obscurity is a word of many meanings. It may be in the subject; it may be in the author; or it may be in the reader;—and this again may originate in the state of the reader's heart; or in that of his capacity; or in his temper; or in his acci

* Serm. III. Ed.

+ Diogenes Laertius has preserved the characteristic criticism of Socrates. Φασὶ δ' Εὐριπίδην αὐτῷ δόντα τοῦ Ηρακλείτου σύγγραμμα, ἔρεσθαι, Τί δοκει; τὸν δὲ φάναι, "Α μὲν συνῆκα, γενναῖα· οἶμαι δὲ, καὶ ἃ μὴ συνῆκα· πλὴν Δηλίου γέ τινος δεῖται κολυμβητοῦ. II. v. 7. Ed.

U

dental associations. Two kinds are especially pointed out by the divine Plato in his Sophistes. The beauty of the original is beyond my reach. On my anxiety to give the fulness of the thought, I must ground my excuse for construing rather than translating. The fidelity of the version may well atone for its harshness in a passage that deserves a meditation beyond the ministry of words, even the words of Plato himself, though in them, or no where, are to be heard the sweet sounds, that issued from the head of Memnon at the touch of light.-"One thing is the hardness to be understood of the sophist, another that of the philosopher. The former retreating into the obscurity of that which hath not true being, (τοῦ μὴ ὄντος) and by long intercourse accustomed to the same, is hard to be known on account of the duskiness of the place. But the philosopher by contemplation of pure reason evermore approximating to the idea of true being (τοῦ ὄντος) is by no means easy to be seen on account of the splendor of that region. For the intellectual eyes of the many flit, and are incapable of looking fixedly toward the God-like."*

*The passage is :

ΞΕ. Τὸν μὲν δὴ φιλόσοφον ἐν τοιούτῳ τινὶ τόπῳ καὶ νῦν καὶ ἔπειτα ἀνευρήσομεν, ἐὰν ζητῶμεν, ἰδεῖν μὲν χαλεπὸν ἐναργῶς καὶ τοῦτον, ἕτερον μὴν τρόπον ἥ τε τοῦ σοφιστοῦ χαλεπότης ἥ τε τούτου.

ΞΕ. Ὁ μὲν ἀποδιδράσκων εἰς τὴν τοῦ μὴ ὄντος σκοτει νότητα, τριβῇ προσαπτόμενος αὐτῆς, διὰ τὸ σκοτεινὸν τοῦ τόπου κατανοῆσαι χαλεπός. ή γάρ;

ΘΕΑΙ. Εοικεν.

ΞΕ. Ο δέ γε φιλόσοφος, τῇ τοῦ ὄντος ἀεὶ διὰ λογισμῶν προσκείμενος ἰδέᾳ, διὰ τὸ λαμπρὸν αὖ τῆς χώρας οὐδαμῶς εὐπετὴς ὀφθῆναι· τὰ γὰρ τῆς τῶν πολλῶν ψυχῆς ὄμματα καρτερεῖν πρὸς τὸ θεῖον ἀφορῶντα ἀδύνατα. s. 84.-Ed.

There are, I am aware, persons who willingly admit, that not in articles of faith alone, but in the heights of geometry, and even in the necessary first principles of natural philosophy, there exist truths of apodictic force in reason, which the mere understanding strives in vain to comprehend. Take, as an instance, the descending series of infinites in every finite, a position which involves a contradiction for the understanding, yet follows demonstrably from the very definition of body, as that which fills a space. For wherever there is a space filled, there must be an extension to be divided. When therefore maxims generalized from appearances (phænomena) are applied to substances; when rules, abstracted or deduced from forms in time and space, are used as measures of spiritual being, yea even of the Divine Nature which cannot be compared or classed; (For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. Isaiah lv. 8.)-such professors cannot but protest against the whole process, as grounded on a gross metabasis εἰς ἄλλο γένος. Yet still they are disposed to tolerate it as a sort of sanative counter-excitement, that holds in check the more dangerous disease of Methodism. But I more than doubt of both the positions. I do not think Methodism, Calvinistic or Wesleyan, the more dangerous disease; and even if it were, I should deny that it is at all likely to be counteracted by the rational Christianity of our modern Alogi (λóyos míotɛwç ãλoyos!) who, mistaking unity for sameness, have been pleased by a misnomer not less contradictory to their own tenets than intolerant to those of Christians in general, to entitle themselves Unitarians. The two contagions attack each a wholly different class of minds and tempers, and each tends to produce and justify the other, accordingly as the predisposition of the patient may chance to be. If fanaticism be as a fire in the flooring of the Church, the idolism of the unspiritualized understanding is the dry

rot in its beams and timbers. Ὕβριν χρὴ σβεννύειν μãλλov ĥ πvpkałýv, says Heraclitus.* It is not the sect of Unitarian Dissenters, but the spirit of Unitarianism in the members of the Church that alarms me. To what open revilings, and to what whispered slanders, I subject my name by this public avowal, I well know: άπiσTOVS γὰρ τινὰς εἶναι ἐπιστύφων Ηράκλειτός, φησιν, ἀκοῦσαι οὐκ ἐπισαμένους οὐδ ̓ εἰπεῖν· ἀλλὰ καὶ, κύνες ὥς, βαύζουσιν ὃν ἂν μὴ γινώσκωσι.

(E.)

The accomplished author of the Arcadia, the star of serenest brilliance in the glorious constellation of Elizabeth's court, our England's Sir Philip Sidney, the paramount gentleman of Europe, the poet, warrior, and statesman, held high converse with Spenser on the idea of supersensual beauty; on all "earthly fair and amiable," as the symbol of that idea; and on music and poesy as its living educts. With the same genial reverence did the younger Algernon commune with Harrington and Milton on the idea of a perfect State; and in what sense it is true, that the men (that is, the aggregate of the inhabitants of a country at any one time) are made for the State, not the State for the men. But these lights shine no longer, or for a few. Exeunt: and enter in their stead Holofernes and Costard, masked as Metaphysics and Common-sense. And these too have their ideas. The former has an idea that Hume, Hartley, and Condillac have exploded all ideas, but those of sensation; he has an idea that he was particularly pleased with the fine idea of the last-named philosopher, that there is no absurdity in asking What color virtue is of? inasmuch as the proper philosophic answers would be black, blue, or bottle-green, according as the coat, waistcoat and small-clothes might