therefore, so far from putting a check upon philosophical investigation in reference to these topics, renders it, in fact, only so much the more necessary, and so much the more valuable in proportion as the superstructure, which by the aid of revelation we build upon it, becomes to us of the deeper importance.1

One more thought we throw out upon this objection-namely, that philosophy, by investigating upon natural grounds the state and tendency of human nature, often renders a very essential service to the evidences of revelation. Revelation brings to us a vast number of facts, which it commends to our reception on the ground of testimony and authority. Now, it is clear, that if any of these facts, which come to us primarily upon testimony and authority, can be verified by philosophy, they will carry with them a double evidence, and come home to us with a double weight. Men, who have thought most deeply upon the evidences of revelation, have ever felt how valuable was the accession of strength they attained, wherever scientific investigation could be made to bear upon them. How many, for example, have attempted (we say not how successfully) to elicit a verification of the Mosaic deluge and cos mogony, from the discoveries of geology; in how

1 See Appendix, Note A.

2 See Sharon Turner's "Sacred History of the Earth," and compare the far more scientific view of the question between Scripture and Geology given in Dr Pye Smith's Lectures "On the Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geological Science." Compare also Dr Buckland's "Reliquiæ Diluviana" with his Bridge

water Treatise.

many instances have we been called upon to hail some fresh light, which physiology has succeeded in throwing upon the scriptural account of the origin of the human family; and on the same principle, what believer in revelation does not rejoice to see the scriptural representations of man's mental and spiritual condition borne out by close and accurate research into the nature and tendencies of the human mind? The greater be the number of the facts of revelation, which we can show to rest upon the basis of science as well as authority, the better is it for us, both as it regards the strength of their evidence, and the character of their influence. Philosophy, by carrying certainty with it to a given length, and pointing out real difficulties where that certainty ends, is ever mild in its features and tolerant in its tone; on the other hand, the more implicitly we bow to authority, the less tolerant we become to those who choose not to bow as obediently as ourselves. The mind always seizes with a kind of convulsive grasp those truths, for which it can give no very satisfactory account, as though the tenacity with which they are held would go to make up the deficiency in their evidence; and on this ground it is that those who are most ignorant, to prevent the appearance of absurdity, commonly find it necessary to be most dogmatical. On the other hand, an abundance of knowledge and a strength of evidence, as they define more clearly the bounds of the known and the unknown, tend perpetually towards toleration; a fact, which should make every ray of fresh light that is cast from

any quarter upon religious truth, of additional value to us. There are many facts, moreover, brought before our attention by revelation, which, if they cannot be reduced to a philosophical form, and be shown to rest upon a scientific basis, are yet rendered antecedently probable by the analogy they may be seen to bear to the ascertained laws of nature, or of our own constitution. The analogies of the natural world, for example, in many respects point us to the fact of the soul's immortality; and still more strikingly do the elements of our own moral constitution point us to a perfect moral government, where the idea of human accountability shall find its ultimate completion. In all such cases as these, (which the reader may see admirably handled in the immortal work of Bishop Butler,) intellectual philosophy appears as the handmaid of revelation, not only aiding in making firm the foundation on which it rests, but by its results illustrating and confirming many of the most important truths which come to us on the authority of a divine inspiration.

SECT. III.-Rise of Philosophy inevitable.

Thus far we have attempted to remove the chief objections which lead many to consider the speculative philosophy, whether of a former age or of their own, as altogether valueless. Not only do we think, however, that these popular prejudices are

groundless, but we go a step further, and regard speculative philosophy as a thing absolutely inevitable—as inevitable as the wants, desires, and tendencies of the human mind can make it. If, from the fact of its universality, we may consider any branch of our mental activity whatever to be a necessary result of our constitution, assuredly we may do so with regard to the philosophic spirit. Every age of the world, and every nation, the mind of which has attained to any degree of cultivation, have had their different philosophies; that is, have attempted to unravel the problems of their own existence, and those of the universe they behold around them. The grave and contemplative Asiatic silently brooded over these subjects in the earlier stages of man's history; the lively and versatile mind of Greece could not fail to think deeply, and to grapple earnestly, with the same great questions; the Roman intellect, at first taken up with the practical toils of warfare and government, was constrained, so soon as the opportunity came, to tread in the same path, notwithstanding it had been already so diligently explored; and Christianity, when it offered peace to the spirit of man wounded by the consciousness of moral imperfection, and satisfied the heart's longing after immortality, did not repress, but rather incited the intellect to greater exertion in order to sound the depths of our being, and fully to comprehend our relation to the Infinite and the Eternal. The Middle Ages, which witnessed

the almost total decline of literature, present us still with the spectacle of the human reason struggling on amidst all the surrounding darkness, in order to look beneath the phenomenal world, and to seek after the foundations of human knowledge; and ever since the revival of our modern civilisation has given a fresh impulse to the human mind, the whole region of speculative philosophy has been one of the principal objects, upon which it has applied its awakened energies. It is no more possible for the spirit of philosophy to become extinguished, than for the poetic fire to die out of humanity, or the religious faculty to cease to operate within the mind of man; for as long as the impulse of the intellectual faculties exists, it will be ever seeking after satisfaction.

That philosophy, then, will ever flourish among mankind in every age, we may regard as a fair inference from past experience; but now we may go a step beyond experience, and show that its rise is rendered inevitable by the very nature of human knowledge, and the impulse we possess for acquiring it. To prove this we must establish two facts:FIRST, That the power of accurate generalisation is the true index, by which the extent of our knowledge is measured; and SECONDLY, That every branch of human knowledge, if generalised to its full extent, brings us into the region of metaphysical research.

To establish the former of these two principles,