carry with them the weight of antiquity. The newness of an opinion is to the one class a great recommendation; they are apt to extol it as a grand modern discovery! a fresh and glorious proof of the march of intellect! To the other the same circumstance of its newness is matter of inveterate prejudice; they cannot consent to give up their own former opinions - they like the good old way, and are determined to adhere to it. The different age and circumstances of individuals render some more liable to the former prejudice, some to the latter; and at different times the same person may be subject to both.

One class of minds have a great predilection for what is great and vast; they spurn at commonplace ideas,-they disdain to find the truth something plain, and easy, and simple, they cannot limit their strides to any common pace, and when the truth is lying in the way before them, why, they take a mighty stride, and step clear over it.

Another class are constantly aiming at what is deep and metaphysical. Their minds are engaged with first principles, which they seek out and set in order, ready to be applied as tests of truth or falsehood; and any truth which disagrees with their favourite first principles is at once condemned. Sometimes the process of its examination resembles an electrical experiment, in which, by passing an electric shock through a piece of gold or silver leaf, the leaf is made to ignite, and

pass away into vapour. They take a potent first principle, and apply it to the truth under investigation. The effect is similar to what I have described; there is a flash, and then the truth seems to ascend in smoke. Then with a high tone of ridicule the metaphysician asks you what has become of your truth, and he laughs at you for believing that it was a truth at all. In such a manner the truths of revelation have been treated, and thus has the infidel triumphed in his own. heart and laughed. But he considered not that in the vapour which he saw ascending after the experiment, in that illusive form the indignant truth fled from under treatment so rough, and ascended to the throne of God, there to bear testimony against him.

Another class of minds have no fellow-feeling for any thing that is not plain, and simple, and common-place. Refinement of sentiment they deride under the name of poetical stuff and nonsense; sublimity of feeling they sneer at as high-flying; energy of thought and conduct they stigmatise as enthusiasm. Commend them to common sense, and nothing less or more than common sense, and by no means bother them with metaphysics.

But I have no intention of enumerating all the cases in which the true spirit of philosophy is wanting. I only wish to suggest some familiar cases which may bear me out in my general

assertion, that, even in this philosophic age, the genuine spirit of philosophy is little influential. There are comparatively few, very few, who love the truth for its own sake,- who will consent to adopt it whether it is new or old, lofty or common-place, simple or complicated, common sense or metaphysical, poetical or not poetical.

It is obvious that what I have said applies much more to the study of the philosophy of mind, than to that of any of the sciences which have material phenomena for their objects. In the study of these, doubtless, the true principles of philosophy are generally followed, and hence the amazing success with which they have been prosecuted. But in that higher range of philosophy which embraces the living part of the universe, the relations of living agents to one another, and the duties consequent upon these relations,-which confines not its views to one science, but, employing the deductions of every science to extend its knowledge of the constitution and government of the universe, considers the whole system of material nature in connection with the world of mind, and rises through nature up to nature's God, it is in that sublimest, and most interesting, and most important range of philosophy, that we find men chiefly ignorant of its genuine principles, or most neglectful of their practical employment. Here many seem to have thought that they had fair scope for the exercise of unbridled imagination: they have spurned the

path of patient inquiry, and have risen in airy flights above the world. Philosophy disowns such conduct, and blushes when her name is associated with the visions of these votaries of romance. Others of darker and more grovelling spirit have attempted to throw over the whole field the mists of doubt and unbelief, and would chain these immortal souls down to the earth on which we tread, engage them for ever in the study of material nature, and forbid a thought beyond it. Few, perhaps, there are, who go to all the extent of this, but there are many degrees of it, and it is to be lamented that too many men of science are more or less chargeable with it. Analogous to these, is the class of those who are too much engaged in the pursuit of wealth, or the business or pleasures of the world, to spare time for inquiries after truth, truth which not all their wealth can purchase, nor all their business supersede, nor all the pleasures of this world compensate. And when we cast our eyes over the controversial writings with which the shops are filled, we cannot but observe with a sigh that victory more than truth is the object of most of their authors, in much of what they say. They seem to deceive themselves in this respect, and, by multiplying ingenious arguments in support of a position, they mistake ingenuity for truth; and both they and their readers are apt to forget that, if an opinion be wrong, all the ingenuity in the

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world cannot make it right. Among this class of writers the genuine spirit of philosophy is little to be looked for, and seldom to be found. If we would cherish that spirit, we must enter on inquiries not in the pride of maintaining an opinion: Philosophy, Lord Bacon justly and beautifully observes, must be entered, like the Kingdom of Heaven, in the spirit of a little child.

And here I may be permitted incidentally to observe, that in this we have a manifestation of the wisdom which dictated the sacred oracles of truth, in their insisting so much on the necessity of humility. For pride shuts up the avenues by which truth may find its entrance to the mind, and humility opens them. Scepticism pretends to doubt only from the impartiality with which it views different opinions; but impartiality is no feature of its character. Scepticism is the offspring of pride, and by pride the infidel is maintained in a state of doubt. Could his mind be brought to humility, he would then weigh opinions in a more impartial balance, and the truth would preponderate. The sceptic puts, it is true, opposite opinions into the two scales, but then the pride of scepticism holds the beam of the balance firmly by the centre, determined to maintain an unnatural equilibrium. In this respect, then, how much superior is the wisdom of the scriptures to that of the ancient schools of philosophy, which were all too much chargeable with pride,