to suspect that I have reached, or approached, the bound set by God to my enquiries when I fail to get further,—not when you tell me that I am going too far. Every reasonable being must conscienciously work out the problems of philosophy, as those of mathematics, for himself. He who takes them on trust, abnegates, in that, his reason, and so far his character as Man. The carpenter who is shaping a chair or table for me may raise a perpendicular by rule, without understanding the geometrical principles involved in the process, and we regard him, so engaged, not as man but as carpenter,—the function of his mind being there akin to that of his compasses,-neither the mind nor the compasses being cognizant of the rationale of the operation which they are jointly concerned in carrying out. He who takes his philosophy or his theology on trust, will merit just as much of our reverence, if he claim it in the character of a philosopher or a theologian. The man who has no right to his opinion need not feel surprised if he find that he has no power to persuade its adoption. Grant that there are limits to human thought, am I blamable if I hesitate to accept implicitly the line drawn by a dogmatist whose claim to my deference is merely his avowed incapacity to pass that line himself? In stating my own views, I have had occasion to indicate the limits beyond which my own faculties cannot carry me; but I never seek to lay down these dogmatically as the limits of human thought.

To revert to the Record's declaration that the " suggestions" offered, in the Essay on Christianity contrasted with Hindú Philosophy, contain nothing to "cheer his heart," I would fain be told what should the missionary-if "worth his salt"want to cheer his heart," if not the friendly indication of a "screw loose" in his machinery, which prevents its effecting the desired result? When Daguerre was on the verge of despair because the sun-picture, which he strove to catch, always, like a Proteus, slipped through his fingers, faded away, and vanished when the tablet was removed from the camera,-what was the appro

priate thing to "cheer his heart," if not the suggestion that he had overlooked the necessity of a "fixing solution," to arrest the progress of the chemical action at the proper point? Hereally in earnest-would have felt very much more cheered, I take it, if you had helped him to some such "railway-break", to arrest the train of chemical transition, or even supplied him with a hint subservient to its possible discovery,—than if you had treated him to a soothing discourse on the text that "the day of small things" is not to be despised. By way of "cheering" the Indian missionary, I might with perfect sincerity have lauded him on the ground of his unwearied devotion to his comparatively thankless task,--his cheerful-his martyr-like-self-sacrifice in his journeyings, his privations, his self-exposure to climatic inclemencies, and-to sum up all-his zeal. I might have patted him on the back, and declared to him that he worked like a horse. But I am not content that he should work "like a horse." I would rather have him work like a man-like a man who is not the slave either of routine or of a short-sighted London Committee. I would not have him go on for ever in the old mill-round, grinding no grist, and yet, with a "vicious contentedness," resignedly accepting that result. I would not have him distil illicit comfort from the text in which St. Paul says "I planted, Apollos watered but God gave the increase,”—as if here man's part had been done, and the responsibility for the "no increase" must now rest elsewhere if anywhere. I would have him reflect candidly, whether he have not neglected some comparatively humble yet not unimportant thing. If planting and watering have not sufficed to make the tree bear fruit, might he not bethink himself of setting to work (—not without Scriptural warrant too-) to "dig about it and to dùng it?" But what if he have planted only, and not watered? Or-to put a more home question-what if peradventure he have been watering away where there was no plant? This is the delusion of those who would make "the head" nothing and "the heart" everything.

d;

They hammer away with their rhetorical enforcement and exhortation, before they have gained the slightest insertion for the logical sharp end of the wedge. They drop the seed upon the wayside, for the fowls of the air to carry it away, instead of rightly preparing such ground as is not prepared ready to their hand. And what is the natural result ?-We see it.

I profess no patience with the preference of sentimentality to truth-of persuasion to conviction. I do not even aspire to have it. Patience is a virtue-in its proper place ;-elsewhere it is a vice.

If there is a word in use which more than another jars upon my sense of fitness, it is the word "womanish." "Womanly" is a lovely word. Beauty, truthfulness, integrity, gentleness, divine instinct, modesty, delicacy, trustfulness, tenderness,—all the virtues and all the graces breathe like a breath of balm in the word womanly;" and it is vexing to think that the language which enshrines it should lend itself to the perpetration of the term "womanish." But we have the term, and we know its meaning well enough. Now the wilful preference of sentimentality to truth, -the flabby supersession of "the head" by "the heart,"-is "womanish,”—womanish in the sense which Byron had in view when he indited

"Men, with their heads, reflect on this and that,

But women, with their hearts, on-Heaven knows what."

And the worst of it is-in India-that by doffing the manly character and assuming the "womanish," you gain nothingnot even the women. To the Hindú enquirer, with his speculative difficulties, which you refuse to entertain, your fluent rhetoric, about the hardness of his heart, and the "delusions of Satan" -as the Record styles the Hindú Philosophy-), sounds just like—" Heaven knows what." His difficulties are not to be turned aside in that way, any more than the hard edge of a scimitar is to be turned aside by the flourish of a carrot. Do I deny that the man's heart is hard? No indeed, no more than I deny the hardness of the

C.

sword-edge. And do I ignore the wiles of Satan ?-So far from it, that I am sometimes shrewdly tempted to suspect that these same wiles may have had something to do with the plan of wielding nothing save the carrot against the sword-edge.

You may indeed say,—perhaps with quite as much laziness as piety, that God has chosen the weak things of the earth to confound the strong; but it does not follow that you ought purposely to make yourself a "weak thing" in order to furnish God with an opportunity of manifesting His Glory through your supererogatory weakness. A right-minded philanthropist does not fling himself into the Serpentine in order to let the Humane Society get the credit of his resuscitation.

If the tone of these remarks strikes the reader as irreverent, it is probably because he forgets that I, though undertaking to be a commentator on Scripture, am not at this moment commentating on Scripture, but am seeking to place an error in its proper light. If the error, when so placed, appears ludicrous as well as ugly,— whose fault is that? "I ought to be serious when treating serious things ;”—true ;—and I am serious ;-but it doesn't follow my good friend, that I should best address you as solemnly as if you were the prophet Jeremiah. When I assail a mischievous error, shall I allow the enemy to prescribe to me my plan of attack? Shall I bind myself to treat an extant silliness more solemnly than Isaiah treated the priests of Baal? Expect it not. It is the vulgarest of vulgar errors to estimate a man's seriousness by the solemnity of his tone,-to ignore Minerva when unattended by her owl. It is almost as easy as it would be inept to cite against me my own hero of heroes, St. Paul, with his tenderness for the "weaker brethren." Weak people, when they have the vice of pelting other people with disconnected texts-with brickbat samples of the building,―ought, if only for their own sakes, to be reminded that the pet brick is not the building, nor their pet text perhaps the entire truth contemplated in Scripture,-any more than we

were given the whole truth, though the language was strictly scriptural, when the texualist contended that "there is no God,"—the notable citer of this scriptural warrant for atheism overlooking the context that "The fool hath said in his heart." St. Paul was tender with those "weaker brethren," and their questionable crotchets, only so long as they did not set themselves up as tyrants and Popes, "to bring us into bondage." When they did, they received St. Paul's prompt rap over the knuckles-" to whom we gave place, by subjection,-no,-not for an hour."

The anile sayings and doings of professedly devout persons have repelled many from the Truth. Don't let such imagine to get off by alleging that the Devil does it all,—as if so great and fearful a result could be accounted for by diabolic agency alone. It is lamentable to think what "dire events from trivial causes spring ;"but that they do so is indisputable. A poor penny-worth of arsenic suffices to send a human soul,-it may be "unshriven, unannealed," -into the presence of its Judge. Eratosthenes and Martin were poor creatures enough, in all conscience,-yet the agency (-diabolic if you will-) of their lucifer-match destroyed the Ephesian temple, and at least the screen-if we remember rightly-of York Minster. Sin may not all be weakness, but weakness is often little, if at all, better that sin. When the scruples of the "weaker brethren" are not harmless, these queasy scruples must just lay their account with being scarified-like an "indolent tumour,”— however bitterly they may resent such untender surgery.

It is perfectly idle to tell the Hindú thinker that his speculative belief is a "delusion of Satan." You yourself would be the first to exclaim "Pooh, pooh", if a missionary Shaman from Siberia were to demand your allegiance to his creed, he not tendering to you its justification or its evidences, but relying on the rhetorical flourish that your Christianity is a wile of Satan, and yourself a stiffnecked misbeliever. The obtruding of Satan, as working those speculative convictions which unaided reason-reason not aided but