Who knows Mr. Langford? What is his research? what his trustworthiness? They may be unexceptionable, but what guarantee have the public of it? As a young man it would have been wise in Mr. Langford to have furnished us the means of testing his historical declamations. Miss Martineau has condescended to this course in her recent History, and Mr. Langford might advantageously, at least to the readers, have followed such an example, We will not follow Mr. Langford through his repetition of the stale calumnies that scepticism results from confounding the abuse of Christianity with its beauties, or that the errors of the priesthood constitute the inspiration of all infidelity. So long as he displays no more knowledge and no more justice than this, we are quite easy as to any influence he may exercise in the ranks of our intelligent opponents. We content ourselves in quoting a few passages from his chapter on Religious Scepticism in England, upon which topic, from birth and opportunity, he is most likely to be well informed, from which the reader will see how little Mr. Langford is to be trusted.

Beginning on page 98, we read that Hume's 'system is one of entire negation, and that he may be placed at the head of the sceptical school in England.' Does not Mr. Langford see that entire negation,' if such be chargeable on Hume, excludes doubt, and consequently converts scepticism into positive disbelief?

Mr. Langford proceeds, page 99-'The teachings of Hume produced their natural consequence. Minds less philosophical even than his attacked religion with virulence.' The ablest thinkers who have succeeded Hume and opposed him, have not hesitated to accord to that great reasoner the tribute of highly philosophical powers; it remained for Mr. Langford to suggest Hume's small deserts in this way. We follow our guide further, who next tells us that 'With less scrupulousness, because with less investigation, they assailed all religious belief, and what they wanted in reason made up for in noise and venom. At the head of this class may be placed the otherwise justly celebrated Thomas Paine. The effects of his teachings were necessarily more general than the subtle and refined speculations of philosophic doubters could be. They reached the people. Combining, with vigour of language and strength of argument, virulence of abuse, appeal to prejudice and passion with a vulgar straightforwardness which makes great impression upon those who have quick eyes to detect discrepancies, and little leisure and less learning to investigate their cause-there cannot be a doubt but that the "Age of Reason" has made more infidels in England than any other single book. Paine was of the people, entered into their feelings, knew their prejudices, wrote for them, and, to a great extent, achieved his object. His followers have equalled him in the worst part of his character. Most of them have been merely abusers of a religion whose beauties their excited and misdirected feelings were unable to appreciate. They have committed the blunder which is only pardonable in the most ignorant, of confounding a

system with its teachers; of a faith with its professors. Richard Carlisle long occupied the unenviable position of being leader in this opposition. That he was honest and sincere, we have no reason to question. But honesty and sincerity are no guarantees of a man's fitness for the office he undertakes, and are no protection for having abused himself and misled others. He is in the grave, and but that his influence survives him, we should not, perhaps, have spoken so harshly of his life.'

Let the reader notice the words we have italicised, and he will be of opinion that it is hardly possible to crowd more inaccuracies in so small a space. Paine, like Robespierre, advanced arguments of originality and ability in favour of the existence of God, and therefore the 'class at which he was the head' cannot be truly represented as assailing all religious belief.' If Paine had 'strength of argument,' which cannot easily be denied him, he could not need to have recourse to noise and venom' to make up for want of reason:' even his 'vulgar straightforwardness' would save him from such a digression. The compliment to the followers of Paine in which Mr. Langford indulges, is not surprising in one who knows so little of their history as this author. Has Mr. Langford ever read the works of Richard Carlile? It would seem not, since he does not know even how to spell his name. We tell Mr. Langford that, living, Mr. Carlile would not accept his forbearance, and, dead, he needs it not. Let Mr. Langford speak as he listeth and hesitate not: those who represent Mr. Carlile's influence will not complain that Mr. Langford speaks harshly,' provided they recognise that he speaks truly.

Of Mr. Owen's religious views Mr. Langford speaks with equal inaccuracy. He says, page 101, they are entirely opposed to religion. Since those who wish they were dare not say so, how comes it that Mr. Langford ventures upon the assertion, except in that recklessness or carelessness which calculates that anything will pass unquestioned as philosophic history, if written against infidels?

One further passage we quote, it is so characteristic of Mr. Langford's way of not doing what it was his business to do, that it will amuse if not instruct the reader :-'Round this veteran [Mr. Owen] of unbelief has congregated a band of earnest, zealous, and devoted disciples. Their progress has been considerable, but is at present rather on the decline. Were our object to write a simple catalogue, there are many names to enumerate. But this, for many reasons, we refrain from doing. To treat of living writers is a subject delicate in the extreme; and as this is unnecessary for the attainment of our purpose, we refrain from doing so. If it were needed, and likely to effect any useful purpose, we should not shrink from our duty, however unpleasant. This is not the case; we therefore leave them unnoticed, contenting ourselves with naming the founder and his school.'

If Mr. Langford found nothing in the existing phases of scepticism and

atheism which he thought of any interest, he had undoubtedly a right to hold his peace. But he will hardly venture to say that Scepticism and Infidelity have undergone no changes in this century among the only parties who have ever accepted the name; yet his book recognises no features but those drawn by pulpit artists a century ago. What is the value of a book which has no relation to existing aspects of the question upon which it treats? If not written to be useful it is written in vain-and if it affords no information, no wisdom, no guidance to the living, what is its use? If Mr. Langford has written merely upon the churches and for the believer, he had no right to borrow our name, nor pretend to represent us to the public. To tell us it is 'delicate in the extreme to treat of living writers,' can have no meaning unless it implies that they might answer again, for we know of none who would think of objecting to anything Mr. Langford might say. We are quite sure that neither Mr. Owen nor any who have the honour of belonging to his school,' would pass one sleepless night in consequence of any disquietude this new historian would give them. We will not deny that if Mr. Langford did take the trouble to weigh the matter over with that earnestness which he displays in other things, that he might speak words which we should ponder with attention and respect, but while he writes in that tone which ignores the conscience and understanding of others, he does not establish that claim on our regard we should for many reasons, private as well as public, be happy to feel.

We fear Mr. Langford will take it ill of us, but we must say that the pleasure we should have had in contemplating his book as addressed to the churches, is diminished by our perceiving a want of adaptation to their case in it, which must render it greatly inoperative. Mr. Langford's views of church government and policy are very crude. He writes like an anarchist. He seems never to have put himself in the place of those whom he censures, nor asked himself what he would do had he their objects in view. Looking at the conduct of successive hierarchs from their point of sight, we should judge them with much less ascerbity than Mr. Langford. Opposed much more than he to their doctrines, we should have a much more friendly word than he to write on their characters and motives. Mr. Langford writes with that virulence of inference which infidelity has happily shaken off. To the Christian world Mr. Langford's book is a particularly unjust one. It has an assault on the conduct and character of leading churches, such as no wellinformed infidel would, under any circumstances, pen.

Viewed in comparison with previous effusions from Mr. Langford's pen, impatient, redundant, crude, and enthusiastic, this work, which we now have considered, has the merit of soberness, consonance, and thought. It displays all the features of the writer's character-emulation, perseverance, the effort of the student and the fervour of truth, though not its accomplishment. His aim is generous, and his ideal lofty; and though, in our opinion, he has fallen short in this work, it cannot be that one so gifted will fall short long. GEO. JACOB HOLYOAKE.

OIL FOR THE SPRINGS OF THOUGHT; OR, PONDERINGS ON THE PENTATEUCH, WITH NOTES.

PREFACE.

Honest Reader,-An honest writer has ventured to throw together the following pages. He has done so in no scoffing spirit, in no spirit of unfriendly antagonism to any one of those numerous denominations of Christian faith into which the religious world is divided. As believers he respects them all, as far as he himself believes them to be sincere. He pities them when wandering in what he conceives to be the path of error and delusion, but holds out the right hand of brotherhood to all as children of a common father. To the Christian and infidel, Turk and Jew, he feels his heart bound by the sacred precept, Love one another.' If he has offended any by the freedom of his pen, impute it to a want of judgment, and not to an intentional breach of courtesy, for he despises none, and would persecute none on account of their creed. Do you ask what his own creed is? He is one of those who 'profess and call themselves Christians,' and who would gladly realise in his life the sublime example patterned out in the pure and transcendent genius of the Carpenter's Son :

Wherever Genins, Truth, and Virtue dwell,
Polished in courts, or simple in a cell,

All views of country, sects, and creeds apart,
These, these he loves, and holds them to his heart.

Condemn him not then, virtuous reader, he is a man, and so art thou. He has read the first five books of the Bible, and has reflected upon each page. Would that all who peruse that mystic volume could give the rein to thought, and could read with an intellect alive rather than with a mind burdened with the corpse of Faith! The old-Time fetters forged by selfish ignorance are fast mouldering away, and the human soul is gathering nerve for its day of emancipation. The age of mental thraldom is waving in the distance, and a brighter period is greyly dawning in the East. Yes, it WILL come. Have trust in God, have trust in truth, have trust in the universe. These three are one. THE PONDERER.

The writer of Genesis commences his work by telling us that, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' In six days the work of creation was completed, and on the seventh day God rested from his labours. This is the simple Mosaic account. But are we to receive it literally or only figuratively? Was it written by the enigmatical pen of occult philosophy, or was it merely the vague echo of an old tradition? Did God create the world out of nothing? What is the meaning of the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters?' Were the waters' prior, co-created,

or subsequent to the earth? Is it not probable that the globe was gradually developed out of a fluid mass during a long series of ages,* and that the six days are not to be understood as six days like our own at present, consisting of 141 hours, but as six periods of indefinite extent? Modern investigation appears to have reduced this to a certainty. That water was the origin of things or the first matter, and that God was that mind which formed all things from water, was a prevalent opinion amongst some of the ancients. Thales taught this doctrine. The notion of the deity resting is evidently a figure of speech, or if not, the teaching of ignorance. The chronology of theologians is, in truth, 'a bundle of bladders of wind.'t

Astronomers tell us that the moon shines not by its own but by a borrowed

* The researches of geologists have shown that the world we inhabit was at first in a fluid condition; that crystalline rocks were deposited before animal or vegetable life began; that then came the lowest orders of zoophytes and of vegetables; next fishes and reptiles, and trees in vast forests, giving origin to our present beds of coal; then quadrupeds and birds, and plants resembling those of the present æra, but all of which, as species, have utterly perished from the earth; that next came alluvial rocks, containing bones of mammoths and other gigantic animals; and that last of all came man.-Combe's 'Constitution of Man.'

The Church of England, if we may judge by the writings of those placed in authority, has hitherto considered it to have been expressly stated in the book of Genesis, that the earth was created about 6,000 years ago. Those observers and philosophers who have spent their lives in the study of geology, have arrived at the conclusion that there exists irresistible evidence that the date of the earth's first formation is far anterior to the epoch supposed to be assigned to it by Moses; and it is now admitted by all competent persons, that the formation even of those strata which are nearest the surface must have occupied vast periods-probably millions of years-in arriving at their present state. Many of the most distinguished members of the Church of England now distinctly and formally admit the fact of such lengthened existence of the earth we inhabit. It is so stated in the eighth Bridgewater Treatise, a work written by the professor of geology in the University of Oxford, himself holding an office of dignity in that church, and expressly appointed to write upon the subject by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. The professor of Hebrew at the same university has proposed a new interpretation of those passages in the book of Genesis which were hitherto supposed to be adverse to the now admitted facts. Such being the present state of the case, it surely becomes a duty to require a very high degree of evidence before we again claim authority for the opinion that the book of Genesis contains such a precise account of the work of creation, that we may venture to appeal to it as a refutation of observed facts. The history of the past errors of the parent church supplies us with a lesson of caution which ought not to be lost by its reformed successors. The fact that the venerable Galileo was compelled publicly to deny on bended knee a truth of which he had the most convincing demonstrations, remains as a beacon to all after time, and ought not to be without its influence on the inquiring minds of the present day.-Babbage's 'Ninth Bridgewater Treatise,' pp. 78-80.