WHEN one looks at the amount of theoretic law and morality extant in the world, it seems a wonder that it should not be a deal better than it is.

The precepts and injunctions recommended and enforced are enough to make one believe not only in the perfectibility, but the actual perfection of human nature. There seems no need of any new doctrine when we are so far from living up to what we have already. But there is the mischief; we are become now deaf and insensible to the good things rung in our cars; they have become a sort of refrains to which it never strikes us to attach a practical meaning; they have ceased to lay hold upon our consciences. We do not disbelieve exactly, but we have got to-Never mind. It would be social excommunication to express a doubt of any of the points of accredited morality, but the amount of practical belief we show in our life and actions is wonderful for its infinitesimal smallness, it shows the immense surface over which a grain of reality may be attenuated.

There is hardly a man to be found who has faith enough to stake the most trifling practical result on the abstract principle he would argue the most loudly to support; it must come recommended by some more tangible advantage than being merely a point of law or gospel, before he will give it the preference. The fact is, points of morality are no longer obligatory; there is universally felt to be an appeal from them to the private judgment of common sense and immediate policy; and yet there would be much virtuous clamour raised against any one who should venture to impugn any received maxim of morality in words.

In the present day, all the practical faith going seems to have been invested in the business by which men gain their daily bread; they believe, THAT, if well followed out, it will work their salvation in this world in the shape of money, influence, and what not. Oh, yes! if" FAITH be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," those who are able show this forth by the trust they have in the floating property they may possess in esse, though as yet it be not realised; and for this hope they are con

tent to endure actual privation and inconvenience. This hope they trust to make manifest, and they have long patience for it; but for any doctrine or principle, which of them dares to-live? for that requires more courage than to die. Those men who have a belief in some abstract principle, and shape their actions by it, seem enthusiasts to practical people, who are made of the stuff the world is made of,-who are adepts in the mechanical dexterity by which the routine of life is carried on, but who never trouble themselves about the principles on which, in the first instance, those rules were founded.

It is a startling fact, that the men who have the most practical faith are MADMEN, and they are shut up in lunatic asylums to keep them from acting on their delusions. They would have been heroes, from their intense and steady reliance on their own inward convictions, had they not chanced on points which are capable of demonstration as practical fallacies,-things that are not; but the distance between theoretic wisdom and practical madness is not great. There is scarce a madman shut up for his wild projects and inconvenient attempts to realise them, whose THEORY has not one time or other been supported by some philosopher,—some theoretic man who gained name and fame by giving utterance to the speculation, but who proved his sanity by not allowing it to influence his practice.

"The inspired and desperate alchemists" of old, engaged over the "GRAND PROJECTION" on which their life was staked, were not engaged in a crisis half so fearful as that in which a sincere and noble nature endeavours to reduce to practice an exalted speculative conception, staking not life and gold alone, but throwing reason itself into the crucible. All the wisdom, all the instruction, all the religious teaching, which has been given to the world, and which the world has ceased to regard, has been conquered for men, made articulate, rendered safe and practical guides for them, out of the dread and shadowy realms of madness and confusion.

A man who dares to hold by the invisible, is like the apostle walking on the water,-if the hand from above be not stretched out to save him, he must sink down into the whirlpool of madness that lies beneath. There is a most touching meaning in that Eastern superstition of madmen being made the special protection of Heaven.

But whilst men with one accord seem to lave reti ed their

faith from the forms and maxims of belief which guided their fathers, there is everywhere an extraordinary speculative activity they seem all waiting to hear some new thing; or else are engaged in altering and remodelling what they believed before; but none are resting tranquilly in that inheritance of belief to which they were born;-with all this, there is perhaps less practical faith in the teaching and doctrines extant, than there ever was since Christendom began. It is always thus on the eve of great events. At such periods the foundations of the world are out of course, and the fountains of the great deep broken up. All authority is superseded (universal authority, we mean). Every man who can get a hearing has the privilege of speaking; and the world is well disposed to give ear, if so be it may catch the accents of that "large utterance which can give unity and intelligibleness to the stammering and discordant tones in which individuals strive to embody the vast unknown thought of God which lies heavy on their souls. In this state of things, where there is no longer a CHURCH, nor a Supreme Teacher, the "POWER OF THE KEYS," as it is called, that mysterious authority derived from no human source, is removed, and every individual is invested with an importance he could not have in old and more settled times. These are days of general disorganisation, when no one mode of religion or belief "holds solely sovereign sway and masterdom." Any man who will sincerely and simply utter his own experience, his own earnest idea of what it is right or desirable to do, and to believe, becomes a hope, and an oracle, to his fellows; and a man who can utter in sincerity what he finds in his own heart, is light shining in a dark place." In every man is lodged an oracle of the Deity, which has been opened to no other; for though he may stand close beside us, touching us, yet is he separated from us by an impenetrable veil of flesh, as much as if he belonged to an unknown world we know not for a certainty whether the visible objects on which we gaze at the same moment, present the same aspect to him,-the things that please us, are indifferent to him,-the same things do not affright him,— the words that move us to joy or sorrow, do not touch him; whilst, again, he is moved by things which take no effect on us. He has his own soul, and his own organisation, through which it is made manifest; but, though he may stand beside us, though we may call him brother, and the same mother may have brought us forth, yet is he a mystery to us, we can know nothing of what appears

"

а

to him, except as he reveals it to us; and therefore it is that in times like these, the individual becomes of importance, and we are willing to listen to all, because we cannot know of a surety whether they may not see points hidden from our eyes.-We know how badly we ourselves decide, we know our own weakness, but we know only the apparent strength of another.

A truth to take hold of men, must have an affinity to their mode of thought,-to their bias of feeling,-otherwise it is not a truth to them; it is nothing. When a fact, however true, has ceased to be in sympathy with those who bear it, it dies out of their heart, unless it be connected with them by the links of their desires or their interests. They cease to believe it; their heart is hardened against it, and it cannot influence them; it must appear to them in a new shape. THEN, if one will arise and utter the thought of his own heart, it is like a new revelation, and it works like leaven in the whole mass.

The innate, indestructible reverence we have for our brethren at the bottom of our souls, makes us believe our own thoughts more readily, if uttered by another, than when presented in our own mind we may think by the mere force of our own intellect, but we only truly believe when we find another in the same mind as ourselves.

Men are ever yearning after repose and unity of belief; they cannot bear to be out of sympathy with their fellows; they would constrain all to swim in their own element; hence, they who are in advance of their age, who are the first to feel the insufficiency of the existing order of things, excite anger, uneasiness"seem despisers of that which is good." They are railed against; put down as far as may be with a strong arm. They are thrown down to make a bridge and a high-way for those who come after to pass over. They are the martyrs who needs must perish,

"Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth ;"

but the word they have spoken has struck an answering chord in the hearts of a few; the spectacle of seeing men so fully persuaded of the reality of that which is invisible, has a metaphysical influence, which no truth, however logically detached from the great rock of that which is unknown, can ever have without this quickening impulse, this sympathetic faith.

They who can so far believe the thing they profess, who have faith enough in it to "endure as seeing that which is invisible," may lay hold of this assurance, that in proportion as that is a

truth which has led them, that has its root in the everlasting life of man, and does not deal with fleeting appearance, but goes down deep into the real wants and aspirations which lie dormant in men's hearts, awakening them, and giving them utterance, their words will go forth to the whole earth; there will be neither speech nor language where their words will not find an echo. It is a mission, for which it is a privilege to be allowed to suffer, that of rousing men to "press onwards towards the mark of their high calling, to forget those things which are behind, and to reach forward to those which are before."

But in no one form or mode of belief can truth be long imprisoned; no scheme nor theory for human guidance can last for ever. They who have been the first in the career of progress, become in time the last,-are over-passed by their followers; the peculiar form in which they shaped their doctrines,—the burning words by which once

"The world was wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not,"

will in time become cold and obsolete, the meaning will fade out of them. Then is their mission ended; well and bravely have they done;"they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them."

Men are always frightened and displeased at being turned out of the spell which has given shape to their life, and in the defence of which they would have "dared to die." They endeavour to linger in it long after it has become too strait for them, endeavouring to compress the life within them rather than go forth with their souls naked and unfenced into he "wilderness where no man dwelleth." They require one to arise able to be their leader and guide, to say, "Arise, let us depart hence."

In times of need, such a leader has always been sent the "transparent prison of the Past" enlarges not its bonds with the growth and progress of men; they require one to set them free from it. There is an indestructible veracity in human nature, which prevents its continuing long in a system of belief which has fallen into a ruin of words which convey no meaning. A state of general disbelief and deadness to the vital significance of professed principle cannot continue long, for this is not the world of the dead, but of the living.

Why should we of the present day fancy that there is no spiritual future for us? Why suppose that WE alone of all ages from the beginning of time are to be stereotyped into the form to receive