in societies, and members of institutions that have for their professed end, good. We do not mean to cast a slur upon them for their connexion with these great and praiseworthy associations; we will not presume to reprobate them for their gifts, far from it; but we do not like the Pharisaical boasting of their charities; we do not love to see their names gilded and exhibited to the world, their munificence spoken of, and their virtues blazoned on walls and monuments. What do we care for their wealth; we are content to love and to respect the men. "Let not thy left hand know what thy right giveth." Do they place their dignity, their moral worth, in the value of their possessions? Is this the spirit of Christ's Catholic Church, which is the embodied philosophy of religion? Who built the cathedrals that adorn our land? Who went forth to evangelize heathen worlds long before "records" and "missionary registers" sprung into being? Men whose names we know not; they are, indeed, written in the Lamb's book of life, but only glorified saints are permitted to read them; but as to gilded, and carved, and advertized benefactors, do they feel the "philosophy of religion?" Can any one suppose they do? Nonsense! Look at that man now standing with his keen gaze bent skyward; he is clad in russet, but his grey eye sparkles with health and intense pleasure, his hand is hard and horny, but his heart is childlike, tender as a woman's, and his brow is swart with many an hour of willing toil. Above his head there stretcheth out broadly the silent solemn heaven, paven with its "patines of bright gold;" one by one, do the soft tender lights spring into life upon the waveless surface, peeping, like the eyes of angels gazing through the crystal floor of heaven. On they march, making grand awful music, as Kepler quaintly tells us, on the strings of the woven air; and, oh, how beautiful they are! We love the stars, and ever have done so, and we would not give much for the human thoughts that did not love them; there is something beyond the power of words to convey, something so tender, so sweet, so gentle, and so beautiful; all this may be intensely felt, though it may baffle words to describe, and this toil-worn man loves them as much as we do, for there he is yet standing. Now he listens to the low whispers that pass from leaf to leaf, creeping gradually and stealthily to the tree tops. He hears the rush of the gentle breeze, and he bares his brow with reverence and love, that it may fan his warm forehead. He is standing in God's first temple, where the rejoicing winds sing anthems on the many-toned harps-the trees, that swell grandly in the night beneath the gorgeous, star-flashing canopy. Now he departs, and as he casts his look downwards, made tender and loving, as in the gentlest moments of his infancy; for through nature he hath held communion with God. What on the face of the creation can equal his heart at this moment? He was in verity speaking SPIRIT TO SPIRIT; religion was a dense atmosphere around him, which he inhaled, and felt it warming him through spirit, soul, and body-for the soul is an immediate emanation of God. We love the theories of Plato, and some two or three others of the heathen philosophers on this soultheology, their remarks were calm, dignified, and almost Christian. And all this, beautiful as it is, is but the intellectual and sentient life. It is what Mr. Mackenzie calls the "rational part of the mind" brought into unison with the glories of nature. All this time, though natural religion be thus awakened, and may give proof of the favourable condition of the spirit of man to receive the divine life, that divine life may not be kindled. Let us not confound this love and perception of the beautiful with the love of God; yet at the same time, we would seek to awaken in the youthful mind, while it is yet tender to receive impressions, the spirit of natural religion. It will make spiritual religion both more lovely, and more truly apprehended. A greater than we hath said, that man may "Find tongues in trees, books in the running brook, And we believe that he was right. Who that hath sat down in the cool of a summer's evening, hath not felt better and wiser in gazing upon the fantastic clouds that form themselves into purple islands around the setting sun; afar off might be heard the tinkle of the sheep bell, or the low of the browsing kine on the sloping meadow; above are the blithe birds carolling, and gazing forth into the depths of the vast boundless ocean-you look intensely into the blue expanse, fancying that the eye may pierce its filmy substance, and see crystal cities afar off in space. Turning again to earth, you note the sleeping shadows, that unperceived, are lengthening into darkness-or your look falls upon the flowers that fascinate you (who but a God could have created such lovely things?)—there they are, bright, beautiful, but frail, teaching us a deep lesson on the brevity of life. While we are admiring their gorgeousness, who does not feel their poetry touch him? If stars be the poetry of heaven, they are the poetry of earth, being likest to the stars. The bee is finding a rest for the evening amidst the honey and the sweet odours; breaking the dreary silence and the reverie into which you have been plunged, are the jocund voices of happy children. Who, we ask, gazing on such a scene as this, would not give himself up to the intense human delight that fills his heart? Man, at such moments, is naturally religious; he is elevated by his noble thoughts of the many bright things around him; he dreams of God, of eternity; he forgets the heartless bustle of the world, the ring of gold, and the selfish strife of hearts-and he forgets the toils of life, and the sacrifices of mammon. Such moments are of often occurrence. Let man, when they do come, think there is a deep philosophy to be gathered from such musings, and that they are essentially a natural religion. And that which is here but indicated to him, revelation makes certain; that which natural religion gives him now and then in scanty measure for a few moments, spiritual religion gives him constantlyboundlessly-for ever! Who shall stretch forth his ambitious hand into the future, shaping his own destiny in that which is to come, grasping at the shadows which his own heart forms, thoughtless of the deep midnight—the “blackness of darkness" that may shroud him and his hopes; forgetting, that ere he is aware, he may cross the dark waters, forgetful of the hand that sustains him, and of the power that holds him from sinking, boasting as if life were in his own hands, and that he had but to wish to have. Who dares to say, "such will I have," and "that thing will I do ?" Is the future of more value than the present? The hopes of man may be in the future; they are so, for the word "hopes" implies an expectation to be fulfilled: but he is in the present, he has around his hearth, in his daily walk, in the manifold objects and pursuits of life, the pledges of the present ever before him. Let him not be forgetful of them-let him not forget the value of his own soul, let him not deem that he lives in a state of self-absorption, and that the future alone can awaken him; he incurs (if he do so), great peril, he braves a dread responsibility. Let man live hoping, but not forget the present, and live IN hopeit is a fallacy destructive and terrible. And here would we expostulate with those who imagine that they can educate the spirit alone-that they can teach the young mind, with all its fresh and vigorous impulses upon it, with all its lightness and buoyancy, its love of the beautiful, and its admiration of the vast, to overlook the world, and to regard only the future, a future too, which though certain to arrive, and bearing a promise of happiness, is nevertheless perfectly vague and indistinct, as to the mode by which this happiness is to be conferred, and in which it is to be enjoyed. Such pure spiritualizers as these, quite forget that the visions of the prophets were visions of power and splendour, the divine word flowed from their lips in strains of the most magnificent poetry, and that when in his most tremendous revelation, the rapt apostle was lifted within the veil, all that he saw bore similitude to earthly objects, refined indeed, and magnified, and glorified beyond comparison, but still visible, audible, sensible, palpable. Again, the Church hath her songs and her symphonies, the contagion of extatic devotion, her versicles and her responses, the lofty aisles of her cathedrals, The storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light; the fretted roof reverberating with the solemn anthem. Do not these things teach us to enlist the intellectual as well as the spiritual, on the side of God? In other words, to cultivate natural religion, even were it only to prepare the mind for a more enlarged perception of spiritual religion? We are well aware that there are some who will object to all this, and call it worldly and sensual, and perhaps devilish; but we will venture upon one analogy, which must not be cavilled at. If living in the future be condemnable with regard to this life, surely it is to be condemned more severely if it have reference to the world which is to come. Let us look to the man who virtually arrogated to himself the disposal of the future, forgetful that this was the prerogative of God. Had he been reminded of this, he would deprecatingly have disclaimed any such thought, he would have shrunk from the literal assertion. This formally religious man would have denied, have indignantly repudiated, such an attempt, but he lied to his own soul; he knew it, yet he thought to deceive himself, and he lived in the future. "THE FOOL!" Came there not a voice in the awful stillness of that night, when the darkness had closed, and sleep had clasped many a weary head in its embrace; aye, when his dreams were amid his silver and his gold, his household gods, a solemn voice came, his soul was required of him!" How was he prepared, we dare not think; and the ghastly agony of his last moments are left to be imagined; what words could describe them-the grey dawn saw him cold, pale ashes. Alas! could he not have bribed Death? The haggard smile upon his frozen lips answered the question. Reader, is this from the purpose; or have we shown the Philosophy of Religion? We would fain think that there is a lesson taught, and a moral to be drawn from this. There is a high grandeur, a healthy morality, in the lessons that the old Fathers have taught us, who, in an age, as yet dark, cruel, and obdurate, bore testimony to the invincible spirit of religion. Its philosophy was deeply impressed upon their minds. The vision of St. Peter, at Joppa, destroyed the ancient conventions of a peculiar people, and gave early notice that there was no limit placed to the extended mercy; that there was neither "clean nor unclean" in a people in the sight of God-Greek or barbarian, bond or free; they had all human souls, and quickly did they obey the calls. From the low, the illiterate, the ignorant, was the first selection made. To simple shepherds was the annunciation of an event unparalleled in any history given. Some of the apostles were poor fishermen ; yet neither Titian nor Raphael, nor any other comprehensive genius, of any age or country, had higher conceptions of the grand, the severe, the beautiful, than they had. One was a painter; and Paul, the "least worthy," but the bold undaunted Paul, with his great eloquent soul and fearless brow, sat down with his companions to patch old tents. Let no man dare to call any lawful employment "low" or vulgar, after this. In the above great examples we see the Philosophy of Religion exemplified. Here do we find the true test of worth, the measure of man's nobility, which despising the narrow feelings of contracted minds, could see honour in that, which not honouring, was itself honoured by the man. We, too, who have designated, and we feel rightly designated, the Church Catholic, as the embodied Philosophy of Religion, may hear her august voice speaking to us of the natural equality of all men before God, and of the true nobility which she offers us-a brotherhood, not merely with the wise, and good, and great of our own æra, but with prophets, and saints, and martyrs, and apostles; yea, even, with reverence be is spoken, with the Captain of our salvation himself. And the Fathers of that Catholic Church are our spiritual ancestors, the transmitters to us of our inalienable nobility. In dungeons, beneath tortures most inhuman, even in the stern agony of death, they still speak to us with their distant voices. Ages, centuries, have elapsed, yet, over the mists of time, above the confusion of the world, and the chaos of conflicting passions, their voices come to us like sounds from a bark, floating over the billows of some black, misty sea; with gentle hallowed whispers do they touch our hearts; still do we feel the purifying influence of their presences around us. For nigh two thousand years hath the banner of Christianity floated triumphantly above the blasts of oppression, of tyranny, of hate; the stronger the storm the higher it waved. It was a mark for the universe to gaze upon as it floated through seasons of plague, pestilence, famine, battle, and murder, over the ruins of empires-and the devastations of half the world, and will float until time shall be no more. Fierce fanatics as they were, bloody in their lives and schismatic in their religion, we find somewhat to admire in the stern |