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One reason perhaps for this conduct is, that while LETTER we cultivate our natural philosophy so intensely, we leave in total neglect its most illuminating companion, Divine philosophy.

We look at visible nature, and study that, as if there was nothing else in existence.

We know nothing therefore of the one, while we are multiplying unceasingly every other acquisition. Hence it becomes insulated from all our other knowlege and power, and withers away from a considerable part of our social mind, because we will not cultivate it.

Thus our ideas and views on this remain unallied with all our other attainments, and do not grow up with them in fraternal unity, and mutually befriending and supporting attachment; and yet this result is evidence, that the more our science increases, the more a further knowlege of our God, and a more enlarged study of the principles and purposes in His ways and works, become indispensable, if they are to possess their due portion of human notice and belief.

It is the present tendency of the mind to search into the principles and causes of every thing; to inquire into the reasons, to examine the utilities, and to watch and estimate the propriety of the means employed, their working and their results. What it does in all other things, it also is doing with the creations of its God, with His providence, and with His revelations, and will continue to do so. This we may be sure of. The more our scientific researches enlarge, and the greater number of individual minds become active, the more this inquisitorial industry will spread and become influential, both on our thoughts and conduct. This certainty makes it

LETTER unadviseable to rest in ignorance or indifference

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about any point on which beneficial ideas or infor-
mation may yet be elicited. We must, if we wish to
keep unimpaired, or on its due footing, what we
most value, work out the further knowlege which
we need. We must think, and explore, and reason,
and study, until we can enlarge our perceptions of
the philosophy of the Divine Creation and Divine
Providence, into some nearer proportion to our other
certainties and investigations. The more we can
show that the principles and laws on which He con-
ducts and governs human affairs are in harmony with
those, which substantial Nature indicates in all its
movements and operations, the more we shall dig-
nify the general intellect, and multiply individual
happiness; for this will ever be the central point of
both,
,-the sun around which all human existence.
must ever revolve, and from which it will always
derive its truest light and joy. We have the out-
line of these principles and laws suggested to us, in
His own explanations of His conduct towards other
nations, which His recorded communications dis-
play. On these we must think and reason, until we
can put our thoughts and views into that lucid
order, that enlightening arrangement, which will
lead us to the truth we sigh for. He desires us
to know Him truly. The whole history of antiquity,
and of all modern Pagan nations, shows that any
other than the correct knowlege of Him only fills
the mind with the absurdest phantasms, and the
most degrading depravities. Any other ideas of
Him than what are just, nullify or falsify Him to us.
They depose the real God, and place before us and
within us a fantastic idol, or a moral deformity,

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instead. This experienced evil makes the Sacred LETTER Writings so important a portion of our intellectual library; in these He is pourtrayed as He exists and acts, and for this reason they have a value which nothing else possesses. It is a pity that so many able men, clever and informed in other respects, should throw these aside as unworthy their regard, because they find some things at variance with their preconceived ideas. But just so, the strongest minded men of antiquity would have thrown aside our systems of chemistry, geology, and astronomy, because their knowlege and believed opinions would have been irreconcileable with them.

For it is not because an opinion is true, that others will therefore adopt it. It must at the same time be congruous with our other impressions, and admit of being dovetailed into them, or it will be rejected; for it is judged of by its conformity to the previous acquisitions, and is disliked and condemned if incompatible with them. We see this fact remarkably illustrated in the opinions of Philolaus on the system of the world. He believed, what Copernicus has led our latter ages to establish as a certainty, that the sun is in the centre of the planets, and that they, with the earth, revolve round this luminary; a fragment of primeval tradition which had descended somehow into the Pythagorean school.13 But because this was the

13 Aristotle, in his discussion on the true place of the earth, which he thought was at rest in the centre of the universe, remarks,— 'But those who live in Italy, called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary; for they place the solar fire in the middle, and call the Earth one of the planets, and say that it is carried in a circle round this centre, and makes its own day and night.' Arist. de Cœlo, l. ii. c. 13. Plutarch mentions Philolaus as the Pythagorean who taught this. Plut. Phil. 1. iii. c. 11. Diogenes Laert. intimates that he was the

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first who
asserted

LETTER natural truth, did Aristotle therefore adopt it, and

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the rest of the philosophers of Greece, or any of its subsequent mathematicians? Scarcely any. Aristotle only cites it, in order to attack it. It opposed his other prepossessions, and therefore he condemned it as unfounded. The greatest astronomers of the Alexandrian school equally discredited it.14

14

Did these just notions carry the mind of Philolaus himself to the other truths that were connected closely with them? Not at all. He thought and reasoned as wildly beyond the few realities he had imbibed, as if his whole mind had been one labyrinth of mistake.15 A Numa, indeed, adopted the opinion, and regulated the temple and rites of his Vesta, his goddess of sacred fire, according to it. But even

asserted it; 1. viii. s. 85; tho he also notices Nicetas, a Syracusian, as the same opinion; to whom Theophrastus also assigned it. Cicero, Lucullus, p. 95.

14 Aristarchus, the Samian, is mentioned by Archimedes as stating the Sun and the Stars, not planetary, to be immoveable, and the Earth to be carried round the Sun in the circumference of a circle. Psam. p. 449. Plutarch also ascribes the opinion to him; de Fac. Lun. But neither Hipparchus, nor Eratosthenes, nor Posidonius, nor the later Ptolemy adopted it. It remained a discountenanced truth till Cardinal Cusa pressed it on the notice of his contemporaries in the fifteenth century; after which Copernicus happily espoused it. You will find Cusa's work quoted in my Modern Hist. Engl. v. iii. p. 10.

15 Philolaus thought that our Earth consisted of two separate earths, one the antipodes to the other. He placed the fiery body in the centre as the Vesta or focal hearth of the world, and in the second place the earth of the antipodes. The third station he gave to the Earth which we inhabit. This he said was opposite to the antipode one, and turned round it, which was the cause why we could not see its inhabitants.' Plut. Phil. 1. iii. c. 11. He also inculcated that the water of the Moon was thrown out of it by the circumvolution of the air, and by the exhalation of this the world was nourished. Plut. Phil. l. ii. c. 5. He had several other strange fancies. His master, Pythagoras, taught likewise various things, which prove that he was either a great impostor or a very self-deluded man.

16 We learn this fact from Plutarch: It is said that Numa made his

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this patronage did not make the truth popular, either LETTER to the vulgar or to the learned. The error was preferred to the reality, until centuries of more knowlege disposed the human mind to accredit it.

Hence it is our wisdom and our duty to be always self-mistrusting; never to make our individual opinions the standard of what is true or false; never to avert our eyes from what is better, because we dislike it; and reverentially to refrain from disregarding the sacred light that has been provided for us, because it is at first inconvenient or disturbing to us, or may bring with it some images or prospects that do not harmonize with our expectations or existing prepossessions. Let us then fix our determination to give a due portion of our leisure time to the study of the Divine Philosophy." Let us keep our mind

his temple to Vesta circular, for the sacred fire to be kept unextinguished, intimating thereby the oxnua of the whole world, in whose centre the Pythagoreans thought fire to be situate. For they do not believe the Earth to be immoveable or in the middle of the circumferent space, but to be carried as in a circle round the fire.' Plut. Vit. Numa.

17 It is interesting to see how prone the intelligent mind in all nations appears to be to muse upon the Deity. An instance of this occurs in the autobiography of Nana Farnewis, a Mahratta nobleman and minister, born 1742, and who was in the battle of Paniput in 1761. Tho attached to his Hindoo paganism, and injuriously affected by it, yet he could think and write thus:- Let me consider what is the semblance of the face of God. It is the emblem of truth; full of animation, and resplendent with its own effulgence. God passes His existence in watchfulness, in sleep, and in contemplation. His watchfulness is apparent throughout all Nature: His contemplation is displayed in the light of day: His sleep is typified in the stillness of night. He to whom we attribute these qualities is the ONLY ONE; THE SPIRIT.'

It is HE who, in the plenitude of His power, displays Himself in every thing. He is every where present at the same moment; moving without feet, seeing without eyes, touching without hands, hearing without ears; pervading all space. If it be asked, from what