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anything, but Freedom within the bounds of Law.' The Will revealed to us in religion is not -- any more than the Will revealed to us in nature an arbitrary Will, but one with which, in this respect, there is no variableness, neither shadow ' of turning.'

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We return, then, to the point from which we started. M. Guizot's affirmation that belief in the supernatural is essential to all religion is true only when it is understood in a special sense. Belief in the existence of a Living Will- of a Personal God is indeed a requisite condition. Conviction that He is' must precede the conviction that He is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.' But the intellectual yoke involved in the common idea of the supernatural is a yoke which men impose upon themselves. Obscure thought and confused language are the main source of difficulty.

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Assuredly, whatever may be the difficulties of Christianity, this is not one of them,- that it calls on us to believe in any exception to the universal prevalence and power of Law. Its leading facts and doctrines are directly connected with this belief, and directly suggestive of it. The Divine mission of Christ on earth- does not this imply not only the use of means to an end, but some inscrutable necessity that certain means, and these only, should be employed in resisting and overcoming evil? What else is the import of so many passages of Scripture implying that certain conditions were required to bring the Saviour of Man into a given relation with the race He was sent to save? It behoved Him. . . to 'make the Captain of our Salvation perfect through suffering.' It behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His 'brethren, that He might be,' &c.- with the reason added: 'for in that He himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to 'succour them that are tempted.' Whatever more there may be in such passages, they all imply the universal reign of law in the moral and spiritual, as well as in the material world: that those laws had to be behoved to be obeyed; and that the results to be obtained are brought about by the adaptation of means to an end, or, as it were, by way of natural consequence from the instrumentality employed. This, however, is an idea which systematic theology is very apt to regard with intense suspicion, though, in fact, all theologies involve it, and build upon it. But then they are very apt to give explanations of that instrumentality which have no counterpart in the material or in the moral world. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the manifest decay which so many creeds and confessions are now suffering, arises mainly from the degree in which at least the

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popular expositions of them dissociate the doctrines of Christianity from the analogy and course of nature. There is no such severance in Scripture -no shyness of illustrating Divine things by reference to the natural.' On the contrary, we are perpetually reminded that the laws of the spiritual world are in the highest sense laws of nature, whose obligation, operation, and effect are all in the constitution and course of things. Hence it is that so much was capable of being conveyed in the form of parable- the common actions and occurrences of daily life being chosen as the best vehicle and illustration of the highest spiritual truths. It is not merely, as Jeremy Taylor says, that all things are full of such resemblances,' it is more than this more than resemblance. It is the perpetual recurrence, under infinite varieties of application, of the same rules and principles of Divine government, of the same Divine thoughts, Divine purposes, Divine affections. Hence it is that no verbal definitions or logical forms can convey religious truth with the fullness or the accuracy which belong to narratives taken from nature-man's nature and life being, of course, included in the term:

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And so, the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the Creed of creeds.'

The same idea is expressed in the passionate exclamation of
Edward Irving:-'We must speak in parables, or we must
present a wry and deceptive form of truth; of which
'choice the first is to be preferred, and our Lord adopted
'it. Because parable is truth veiled, not truth dismembered;
and as the eye of the understanding grows more piercing,
the veil is seen through, and the truth stands revealed.'
Nature is the great Parable; and the truths which she
holds within her are veiled, but not dismembered. The pre-
tended separation between what lies within nature and what
lies beyond her is a dismemberment of the truth. Let those
who find it difficult to believe in anything which is above
the natural, first determine how much the natural includes.
When they have finished this search, they will find nothing in
the so-called supernatural' which is hard of acceptance or
belief-nothing which is not rather essential to our under
standing of this otherwise unintelligible world.'

ART. V.-Life in the Forests of the Far East.

By SPENSER

ST. JOHN, F.R.G.S., F.E.S., formerly H.M.'s ConsulGeneral in the Great Island of Borneo, &c. 1862.

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WHEN the subject of the burning of ships at sea arises in conversation, some sexagenarian present is pretty sure to speak of the burning of the Fame,' in 1824, as the most impressive case in the memory of the existing generation. The ship Fame' was bringing home from the Eastern Archipelago Sir Stamford and Lady Raffles and their one remaining child, and the treasures in natural history collected by them in Java and Sumatra, and a mass of papers by which that bright and rich part of the world was to be laid open to us. On the very first night of the voyage, the steward set fire to the ship by shameful carelessness: Lady Raffles and her family escaped with difficulty in their night-dresses; and everything they had was burnt. We still remember vividly the sensation excited by the news, and the keen and universal sympathy felt by educated persons with the indefatigable Eastern Governor, whose health had been sacrificed to toil and anxiety, and who saw all the records of that toil destroyed in one night, just when he was coming home. The sense of public loss was also very strong. The curtain was rising upon a brilliant tropical scene, full of promise of wealth to England; but suddenly it fell again, and we were obliged to be satisfied with what the travellers could tell us out of their memory and judgment. Perhaps they produced almost as strong an impression of what they wished to convey by their testimony as they could have done by any written evidence: but Sir Stamford Raffles did not long survive the shock of his various bereavements; and if his convictions were successfully communicated to certain minds, they did not influence society at large, as they would probably have done if his treasures had arrived safely in England, and his journals and other records had been delivered over to the intelligent curiosity of the nation.

Sir Stamford Raffles opened to us glimpses of an ancient civilisation in the Malay countries which was certainly that of the Malay people; and he held that those people could certainly rise again to the elevation from which they had sunk. He showed us what their actual depression was under the malign influence of the Dutch, to whom they have long borne much the same relation that the African race bear to their masters in America. He told us what reason there was to suppose that the treasure countries of the Eastern Archipelago were as rich

as those of the Western continent which drew over the Europeans since established there. He believed that the most enviable power yet to be acquired in the world was reserved for the nation which should act the wisest part with regard to the Eastern races, and especially the Malays: and he warned us, the more earnestly as his time grew visibly shorter, that the opportunity was brief, as the encroachments of the Dutch were doing mischief which could scarcely be repaired. As for what the wise part was, his explanations were very clear. Commercial settlements would not suffice: missionary settlements would not suffice much less would the strong hand develope the soil and the people. There must be territorial possession, for the sake of creating and expanding common interests between the natives and the Europeans: but the social system should be that which was found on the spot; the administrators should be, as far as possible, the natives themselves; and the power of the European element should be coextensive with its natural influence, through the superior intelligence and experience of the Western race. The nation which should plant itself down most naturally on any island of that Archipelago, should arrive at the best understanding with the people, and by superior wisdom obtain the lead of society, would be the supreme power in the East, would command its wealth, would guide and elevate its people, and would enjoy all the advantages of empire without incurring the fearful risks and damning responsibilities of conquest. Such were the views which have been discussed in the nooks and corners of English society, where Sir Stamford Raffles was remembered or simply appreciated, for five and thirty years past. A new generation has now before its eyes illustrations of the opposite methods of rule, the one which Sir Stamford Raffles reprobated and the one which he recommended. At the same time, our interests in the Far East are in a state which renders a just view and a right course more important than ever before.

men.

We need not spend many words on the unfavourable speciMr. Money's work on Java caused such a sensation last year that we may assume our readers to be in a general way aware of its purport. Appearing when we were looking about in all directions for guidance in our task of governing India, and assuming, as it did, that our aims in India were, or ought to be, those of the Dutch in Java, the book was not only eagerly read, and much talked about, but adopted in its main argument with a docility which we trust many of our neighbours are now heartily ashamed of. The first question was Why cannot we 'make India pay as the Dutch make Java pay?' But this was

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soon succeeded by the other question, Would it be wise to make India pay in the same way that the Dutch make Java pay?' We now see that a system which is based upon the virtual slavery of the indigenous population, and the main condition of which is that the people shall never learn anything new, nor become anything better, is no system for us.

Whatever mistakes we have made about India, we do sincerely intend to administer it for the people of India; and we do strongly desire that the inhabitants should grow wiser and better and happier under our rule, and through our rule. Mr. Money's book has at least served to illustrate the truth of the doctrine that commercial settlements, however successful, will not fulfil the higher conditions of empire in the Eastern Archipelago.

The other illustration affords a pleasanter topic. The children of England have been taught, for two or three generations, that Borneo is the largest island in the world. Which of us forgets saying that in class? and which of us failed to see in Borneo and the neighbouring islands the paradise of our globe? Does not the shiver of delight come over us again now when we call up that early imagery; the calm, translucent seas; the palmy islets studding the shining waters; the villages standing out on piles above the tide; the darting fish below, the gaudy birds and flashing butterflies and glittering reptiles above: the amethyst mountains rising from plains of dazzling green; the reedy lakes with their flamingoes; the deep woods more noisy than the towns with the jabber of monkeys, and the cry of the deer, and the clatter of bamboos and palms, and the trumpet of the elephant, and the roar of the tiger; and everywhere the dark, supple Malay catching fish, or smoking bees, or snaring deer, or hunting buffalo, or waylaying enemies to steal their heads? Such was the scenery, appearing through the morning mists, or under the flood of noon sunshine, or the lustrous midnight sky, which was called up, and is still called up, before the mind's eye by the name of Borneo, the largest island in the world.

It has so happened that these associations met in one mind, as doubtless in many more, the ideas suggested by Sir Stamford Raffles. Many, no doubt, contemplated, as James Brooke did, the actual scenery of those regions in combination with the moral scenery of the future which Sir Stamford Raffles sketched on behalf of the Eastern races; but not one youth in a million can act upon his early conceptions as James Brooke has done. The idea having once become clear in his mind that the Malays were a race worth cultivating, he was bent on ascertaining for himself what they were like, and on offering the wisdom of the Western world to them for their guidance, if they were disposed to

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