It is a condition of human existence, to be surrounded with but moderately diffused light, that instructs the understanding, and illimitable haziness, that excites the imagination; and the question suggests itself, whether the obscurity as well as the light, is adapted to call forth any sentiments within us, or in any way tend to the perfection of our nature. And happily the reply to this question immediately suggests itself, upon referring to the case of children. How lovely in a child is that modesty, which springs from an unaffected consciousness of ignorance, especially when joined with a belief that others know. When new knowledge puffs up, and amiable diffidence is lost, all feel that a bad exchange has been made. If so, we attain one fixed point. We perceive that the region of dimness is not wholly without relations towards our moral state. There is a proper effect which it ought to produce upon us, and which deserves to be more closely analyzed.

The case of the child will still farther aid our examination. Reverence towards parental judgments not only is approved as salutary, in order to gain the advantage of a wiser guidance; but in itself, especially in the earlier years of childhood, commends itself to all as a beautiful and excellent state of feeling. A very young child has no measure whatever of a parent's wisdom; it is to him unbounded. He neither knows, nor expects ever to know, the limits of it; and therefore his reverence is capable of being absolute. A whole world of sentiment is wrapt up in the relations felt and acted upon by such a child; sentiment which none are brutish enough to fail to appreciate.

Not all the knowledge, nor all the wisdom, nor all the prudence and self-control, nor all the manly independence, which a child of five years old could, under human limitations, attain, would compare in value to the loving reverence, sure trust, and unreflecting joy which such a child may exercise towards a parent whose wisdom and goodness appear to him illimitable.

Are then these exercises of heart a source of happiness and of moral perfection in infancy, and are they not desirable for the adult? Or are they desirable, yet not possible, for those, whose understandings have opened wide enough to see that all human minds are limited, all human hearts shallow, and that no object worthy of absolute reverence comes within the reach of sense? Certainly it is no artificial dogma, that the man who has reverence for nothing, has a hard, dry and barren soul. In the English tongue, indeed, the very word Soul appears to have been intended to express that side of our nature by which we are in contact with the Infinite. The Soul is to things spiritual what the Conscience is to things moral; each is the seat of feeling, and thereby the organ of special information to us, respecting its own subject. If all human Souls and Consciences felt absolutely alike, we should fitly regard their enunciations as having a certainty on a par with the perceptions of Sense; only, as Sense is matured in an earlier stage, and is less dependent on higher cultivation than the Conscience and the Soul, the decisions of Sense are undoubtedly far easier to ascertain not therefore more certain when ascertained. F. W. Newman.

102 THROUGH THE SOUL ONLY WE KNOW THE INFINITE.

Our knowledge of God is limited as is our knowledge of the Infinite Heaven, by the susceptibility of (mental and bodily) eyesight, which he has vouchsafed to us. Up to the limit of such perfection as the human soul can attain, our knowledge of God may reach; no higher; and as He is infinite, and we are finite, there will always be in Him an immeasurable depth unsounded.

It is to me axiomatic, that man can no more fully comprehend the mind of God, than a dog that of his master. Our clearest notions must be rude outlines; our vocabulary is all one of transference, and of course enormously vague; yet he who, anxious for scientific accuracy, refuses to become experimentally acquainted with the facts, is the last man to succeed in heightening our conceptions or perfecting our phraseology. Meanwhile, as a dog lives on his master's smile, and rejoices, so is it fit that we should live on the smile of God, though knowing only the outer edge of His heart and mind.

Not by subtlety of thought, but by specific sense, do we gain any acquaintance with the realities of things; and the Soul is the specific sense by which we come into contact with God. Let us not deal more slightingly with its testimony, than with that of the Touch or the Taste.

The active part of man consists of powerful instincts. Some are gentle and continuous, others violent and short; some baser, some nobler, all necessary. A moral control over them all is desirable; and by all means let any vagaries of the Soul (as in all fanatical religion) be severely checked by our moral principle. With this limitation, the

instincts have an inherent right to exist and to act, and the perfection of man depends on their harmonious energy. As operating alike on all ages, perhaps the instinct which seeks after God and the Infinite is the most powerful in man. ib.

As we can neither wish nor have a better rule concerning the things which a common moralist calls "indifferent " than the Law of the Spirit within us, so real spiritual progress will be attended by the clearing and strengthening of this inward instinct; in short, therefore, by the overspreading growth of a healthy enthusiasm. This is the greatest charm of character, even where it is partial and independent of spiritual influences; but the highest idea of human perfection is, that this should pervade the whole man, and, in consistency with the truest wisdom, should animate every set of actions, while the instinct guides through all delicate questions of right and wrong. The upright and faithful soul knows and feels what things do, and what things do not, impair communion of heart with its God; this is its great clue to its wrong and right; so it is alternately scrupulous where a moralist would be bold, and bold where a moralizer would be prudish. Again, by the nourishment of its generous affections, it gains a power of impulse, by which it is enabled to carry into effect its right conceptions. All know that in the practical world enthusiasm is the chief moving power, and is very effective even when joined with narrow and distorted judgment. Our misery has been, that the men of thought have

no religious enthusiasm, and the enthusiastically religious shrink from continuous and searching thought. That the instincts of the soul are of first-rate importance must be confessed even by those who know nothing of them; for if the instinct of brutes be the guidance of God within them, what else is the soul's instinct but the Spirit of God? But be it granted that such analogies are deceptive; still, by what else but this instinct was Divine existence ever discovered at all? What, but the Soul, groping after Him, taught all nations of men to be familiar with those high ideas?

The pure and pervading enthusiasm to which the Soul should tend, is a very different thing from eccentricity, and would not show itself in superficial excitement, much less in fickle and wayward conduct. Nothing is more unworldly than enthusiasm in every form; in Art, in Scicence, in Politics, in Trade, it is an inveterate antagonist of selfishness; nor is there any character for whom the worldly (or selfish) man feels so much contemptuous pity, as for an enthusiast, until some undeniably great result forces him to confess that enthusiasm is a powerful reality. The enthusiasm, however, of which we speak, is not, like these, a partial and one-sided impulse, but implies a warm love of everything Good and True, with as warm indignation against their opposites; both feelings rising out of the sympathy of the Soul with the centre of all Goodness, and its forgetfulness of self in the great interests all round at stake.

As we advance towards a deeper spirituality, self-con