teacher one of whose chief requisites for the duty he undertakes is humility; that although his mind was

replete with thoughts of other men," he was strangely ignorant of the fact that what he calls his system was little more than a reproduction of the long exposed and long exploded fallacies of Bolingbroke and Pope-that he reverses the process by which, as it seems to us, truths connected with man can be discovered without a revelation, and that he sets facts at defiance-that he refuses to hear his own oracle when it gives one of its very few intelligible responses, because it militates against his theory, or because it tells him unpalatable truth, or for both of these reasons together-that he borrows, perhaps unconsciously, some of his best ideas from "the Book" that he praises, but rejects-and that he may be numbered with many others also learned, and also possessed of signal virtues, who may yet be cited as instances of that darkness of delusion which forms the subject of a preceding chapter. This last observation is expressed still more strongly by one of the writers we have quoted, who tells us that "Mr. Parker concocted a creed which is neither that of Heathenism nor that of Christianity, and which having no root in any known fact, or in any natural consciousness, is the most utterly baseless and unsupported collection of ideas that is to be found among all the dreams of vain and presumptuous man."

But we have another reason for thus enlarging on the subject of Mr. Parker's system, and that is to show the straits to which a gifted man is driven in order to make out a religious system which wholly ignores the fall.

To deduce the relative perfection of man from the infinite perfection of God, he is obliged to deny that man is really wicked and sorrowful at all!!

We think, then, there is no occasion to consider Mr. Parker's authority as outweighing that of mankind in general, supported as it is by that of profound thinkers, both Heathen and Christian.

THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH,

PREACHERS OF THE DARKNESS.

One sun by day; by night ten thousand shine
And light us deep into the Deity.

The prospect vast,-what is it? Weigh'd aright
"Tis Nature's system of divinity,

And every student of the night inspires.

'Tis elder Scripture writ by God's own hand.

IN the preceding chapter we have tried to show that man's history presents us with a series of facts and phenomena of which some abnormal darkness affords an easy and an adequate explanation. One of them is a deep and general conviction on the part of mankind that our race is guilty before God, that it merits punishment, and that its present condition is one of degradation. But there are some writers who deny the conclusion which all this would seem to justify, and we have endeavoured to prove that of these one of the most influential found himself unable to fabricate a consistent system of theology that ignored the fall without virtually denying, despite of the most conclusive evidence, some of the best established of those facts and phenomena themselves.

If his system lead inevitably to the inference that after all there is no sin and no wretchedness in the world, most people, we suppose, will conclude that it refutes itself, and that his whole argument is a sort of "reductio ad absurdum." But the Scriptural doctrine that man is a fallen creature, denies, ignores, or evades nothing whatever that we require it to account for. In the language already quoted, "a fall of some kind or other is the fundamental postulate in the moral history of man: without it man is unintelligible; with it every phenomenon is explicable." As an hypothesis it will therefore stand until supplanted by another which has a better claim to validity. Whether such other can be suggested is a question to be considered hereafter. In the meantime we would call attention to a different sort of proof, and endeavour to show that an argument for the fall be founded upon the suggestive scenery of that natural period by which we have shown that it can be illustrated. This evidence, taken by itself, may have little weight, but we think it has some, and on such a subject no argument unless it have none at all should be neglected. Even supposing that it can be fully answered, the very facts on which it is based are full of interest and importance. We argue, then, that the ornaments of natural night favour the supposition of a spiritual, and suggest for its occurrence some such cause as that which Scripture has assigned. It is not wonderful that that magnificent spectacle which on a clear and cloudless night beautifies the boundless firmament has called forth from the earliest ages expressions not only of wonder but of worship, and that the splendid objects which Eastern shepherds in their

may

nightly watchings beheld in the glorious canopy above them were among the first of all created things to which in the ignorance of their "natural religiousness" men became idolaters. "The heavens," says David, " declare the glory of the Lord, the firmament showeth his handy work." And after that minstrel king who caught his inspiration directly from the God of all, every poet down to the latest who has sung "the voices of the night," has only, when alluding to the same gorgeous prospect in the same religious connexion, thrown into his own language the devotional feelings, guided in the Christian by a light from heaven, that struggled for expression in the full heart of some primitive gazer as his widening eye wandered over that glowing vault that seems like heaven's flooring "paved with stars." But to the modern observer who has a soul for the proper contemplation of this imposing sight, and studies it with the aid of science, words must be wanting to express his admiration. There is a part of the heavens as seen through a powerful telescope, of which it has been said that no one perhaps ever saw it for the first time without uttering "a shout of wonder." But the true philosopher, as he beholds the grandeur and the glory of the nightly firmament, gazes on a spectacle far more inspiring than that of external splendour, for he reads in that register of God's almightiness, of which the letters are the stars, convincing and amazing proofs not only of the outward beauty, but also of the perfect order and the wonderful harmony which appear to pervade the whole material universe. Far as, with his best instruments, the eye of a practised astronomer can pierce the spreadings of

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