deal extensively in the supposed or real materials of human knowledge, there is a class of persons who are perhaps the most unfortunate of all others; -they not only extend their researches into distant regions, but pass the limits of all the ordinary arrangements of human life-and having conceived a distaste to every thing that is established, or has gained the assent of mankind—or fancying that they can discover things more valuable than any that have yet been used, though they know not exactly what it is they seek, they pass into those desolate regions where all life seems to have ceased, and which are the proper abodes only of desolation, and darkness, and despair.

To speak without a metaphor, there are persons -and they are not few in number-who in times of great change and of general excitement, are especially apt to appear—and who, having begun with an apprehension, that the mere institutions of society are ill-constructed, soon extend their dissatisfaction to all truth and all the maxims of conduct --and look for satisfaction only to a state of things of which they have formed no definite idea, but which is different from every other they have yet heard of or seen. They are not mere sceptics as to the value or truth of present arrangements, but they have a dogmatic conviction that society and intel

lect have become entirely artificial and false, and that a completely new state of the world must be produced—although, if questioned on the subject, they could not say exactly what that state is-before the condition in which nature intended man to live can be realized, or the true happiness for which he is competent, can be obtained.

Persons of this turn of mind are, we have said, by no means few in number-and they are especially apt to appear in times when society is undergoing great or sudden changes. It would form, too, a very curious subject of investigation to ascertain what is the precise condition—or what the morbid state of the understandings of those who thus have relinquished all confidence in truths which are most firmly believed by the great multitude of their fellow creatures-and perhaps a good service might be done to many of the patients by such a development of the sources of their malady-as they are often persons not unwilling to admit truth, though, like all diseased intellects, they have no other perception of their own malady except, perhaps, what is forced on their notice by the sensations of misery which accompany it. But these sensations themselves ought at least to go so far to convince them that there is something in their condition different from the healthy state which na

ture intended—and feeling themselves as they do to be like persons walking among ruins which they themselves have brought upon their own heads, and with no home for their hearts or their understandings or like the bird sent out over the waste of waters, which could find no sign of human life, nor any rest for the sole of its foot—they ought to be aware that there is something fatally wrong in their habits of conception-or a disease in their minds, of which it is for their interest that they should know the cause-and from which they should endeavour instantly to relieve themselves.

The truth is, that the disease may be traced both to misdirection of the imagination-and to an error of judgment-to the former being disposed to wander into regions which are altogether beyond the cognizance of the human intellect and to an unwillingness on the part of the latter to draw its materials of thought from the actual arrangements of life-and an inclination to consider all things that have an actual existence as in an essential and great measure faulty, and worthy only of rejection and contempt. The disease, therefore, having such an origin, is only to be remedied by such a change in the constitution, or in the prevailing modes of sentiment and thought—as may send a more healthy tone of reasoning and of feeling

through all the exertions both of the imagination and of the heart.

In the last place, it is essential to any system of faith destined to endure throughout all possible changes of human society, and all the progressive conditions of human intellect, that it should be characterized by the following things:-In the first place, that it should present a high and faultless model for the contemplation of the human mind; secondly, that that model should, however, be not so far removed from human life and human interests as to have no affinity to the labours and endurances which actually fall to the lot of man, and which constitute the great field of his peculiar trial. In the third place, that the end which it proposes should be at once simple and magnificent, and fitted to be accomplished only by a gradual and progressive change.-And lastly, that its positive appointments should be so few and simple as to be easily adapted to all the changes which society may undergo and to every progressive condition in which, during the coming ages of the existence of mankind, the human intellect may be found to exist.

Now, all of these are peculiarly the characteristics of the Christian faith-for its model is the highest-the purest-the most amiable-and

the best fitted to elevate the imagination, that can be conceived to be presented to the heart or fancy of man. Yet that model was exhibited amidst duties and trials similar to those which every human being has also to pass through. The end which it proposes is nothing less than the establishment, by a gradual melioration of the human condition, of the "kingdom of heaven upon earth;" -and all its institutions and positive appointments are so simple and unobtrusive, that they may be associated easily with every condition in which men shall ever be found-and with all the most improved forms of thought at which, throughout all its coming history, the human understanding can be conceived capable of arriving.

This, therefore, is pre-eminently a system of faith adapted to a world, the destinies of which are progressively to be evolved throughout an indefinite series of ages-and to a race of beings who, though labouring amidst many humble toils and severe discouragements, are yet gifted with high capacities of future attainment-and as, by these characteristics, it shews its conformity with the grand scheme of Divine Providence, it ought also, by the same considerations, to secure the support of all persons who either venerate the will of God,