and that eternity and self-existence entirely forbid the possibility of it: this is but one of the many propositions of this kind which daily pass current in the world. If, therefore, an accurate notion of the nature of the ruling power on whom we depend be requisite to the understanding our position, and regulating our actions, it is of no small importance to awaken men's minds to the logical consequences of their admitted creed. Indeed, were this course generally followed, there would be an end of the dissensions which now disgrace the Christian world; for a really false opinion would soon manifest itself to the mind of the inquirer by the absurdity of its consequences, and all other differences,-which arise merely from taking words for ideas and then imagining that our neighbor means differently, because he uses a different word, would merge in the one truth which all love, and either seek, or think they have attained. I believe that if each of the words which have in turn been made the "Shibboleth" of a party, had been subjected to such a process, we might now be living in peace, one fold, under one shepherd." Sure I am, that as the THE TRUTH can be but ONE, there must be a fault in the course pursued, or those who have honestly sought it could not have remained, as,-alas for Christian charity!-many wise, and otherwise good men have remained,-in bitter opposition to each other.

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“The man is other and better than his belief,” says Coleridge; so deep a thinker ought to have gone further, and told us why it is so; for the maxim is a true one. Is it not that the conviction of the heart, from which his actions flow, finds imperfect expression in words, and that even those words fail to convey to others the meaning he has intended to give them? His words are attacked, and he defends

them as the visible signs of what he thinks and feels; but are they so? Let any man try to express his own interior conviction in accurate terms, and see how many deep feelings of unseen realities, how many humble prostrations of human weakness before Divine perfection, are unsusceptible of any expression at all; and when he begins to attempt a definition, how his very soul groans over the unsuited tools he has to use; and when he has felt all this, let him, if he can, condemn his neighbor's creed, when he sees his neighbor's life, and reads in that what he must have intended to express.

We have now seen what are the necessary conditions of self-existence. Will either Unitarians or Trinitarians dissent from this? Athanasius, the most decided of Trinitarians, expressed himself in nearly the same terms that I have used. Priestly could hardly have wished for any other definition. Why then have they been considered of different sects? Because each has attacked or defended words; and the things which those words were intended to convey a notion of, have not been duly considered; and then, when controversy once begins, and passion enters where placid reasoning alone should find place, adieu to the hope of brotherly fellowship! Evil feelings are engendered; the church of Christ is split; and he who endeavors to make peace by showing each party that in the heat of dispute both have gone too far, is looked upon as lukewarm in the cause, or perhaps as a traitor to that very faith which he isendeavoring to preserve "in the bond of unity."

The tradition of the church tells us that when the apostle John, sinking under the pressure of years and infirmity, could no longer preach to his converts, he was wont to be carried in a chair into the midst of them, where he pronounced simply these words,

"Children, love one another." If this was the last lesson of the disciple "whom Jesus loved," of one who had heard the gracious words of Him who "spake as never man spake,' surely we shall do well to remember that" brotherly love" is orthodoxy, and that charitable indulgence, not unmeasured zeal, is "the fulfilling of the law."

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PSYCHOLOGY.

IF Theology has been embarrassed by inadequate conceptions of the nature of the Self-Existent, Psychology has suffered no less from confined notions of the nature of man. Though it has been very generally believed that this nature is compound, and though the words "soul" and "body" are in every one's mouth, yet we find no distinct ideas respecting the functions of each, even among those who are the most decided in their assertion that such are

the component parts of man. We find no great laws established by experimental proof, as in other sciences; no accurate classification; and he who, without a previously formed theory of his own to guide him through the labyrinth, should take up any of the works professedly written to explain the subject, would very probably find himself more bewildered when he had finished than when he began.

When a science is in this state of chaotic disorder, there is no chance of progress; the very first step towards its advancement, therefore, must be a classification which may at least reduce the subjects it embraces to something like arrangement. It may be imperfect, it may even be erroneous; but at any rate, the objects requiring attention will have been disentangled from each other, and so placed that they may be viewed separately, and examined on all sides; it is easy then to shift their position if, after such examination, it should appear necessary.

But the very thing which makes classification needful makes it also difficult. Whoever may attempt it will be met by his cotemporaries with the taunt, "What new sense has been given to you, that you imagine yourself able to do what abler minds have not accomplished?" Those who think that the adytum of the temple ought to be dark, or lighted only by the torch of the mystagogue for the entrance of the initiated, will denounce the endeavor to admit daylight as a sacrilege. What have the people to do in such matters? and what can a Pariah know of them? All this and more must be expected, but it alters not the case; a first step must be made, or a second never can be: and if the people, the multitude, the o no220 (I care not by what term of contempt I and my compeers may be denominated), if the masses, I say, are to be what God made them to be, something more must be done than to tell them that they have instinctive feelings given them by a benevolent Deity, which it is a sin to indulge; for which reason severe laws abridge their gratification as far as possible and that they have a soul destined for an immortality of spiritual enjoyment which they have no means given them of preparing for. Something more than this, I repeat, is needful to make us fit denizens of heaven: we must know how much of what we now feel is to go with us beyond the grave, how far it is to be controlled; how far indulged. We must, in short, ascertain the boundary line between the animal and the immortal nature; and this must be done, not for the few who have grown pale over their midnight studies, but for the many; for those who can only snatch a moment from the labors of the day for a short book, and whose toil has made them sleep too

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