by reason alone, until some individual is produced, who, untaught, unaided and uninfluenced, has excogitated such a system for himself.

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That the Almighty hath never left himself without witnesses of his "eternal power and Godhead" in the works of his visible creation, is indeed a truth to which we fully assent, seeing that we have it on the evidence of his revealed Word. The force of conscience, also, and the sense of dependence and responsibility which it implies, we are ready to admit (though not included in Mr. Moore's first principles,) as natural proofs of the soul's immortality but the fall of man, the struggles of the soul with sin, not as a degradation of the dignity of man's nature, but as an offence to a holy God, and the promise of that redemption and renovation which should restore the image of God in his creatures to something of its original brightness, we maintain are doctrines of pure revelation, though finding a ready assent in the experience of every rational and self-examining mind. It is, moreover, a remarkable difference between Mr. Moore's philosophico-religious, and the Christian's revealed truth, that the depravity of nature which both acknowledge, is in one case superinduced and intellectual, and in the other, by transmission from the first sinner, inherent and moral; and in accordance with this distinction is the process necessary to its recovery, In the former, self is the source and centre of all discipline, moral or intellectual, In the latter, man is emptied, as it were, of self, and seeks the remedy for his moral disease in the strength and perfection of another. When Plato holds his arm for an hour in the position to which he had raised it to strike his slave, and says, "I am punishing an angry man," he performs an act of moral discipline; but his object being limited to the attainment of this self-command which is necessary to the perfection of his rational nature, this act can claim no connection with religion : but when Paul declares, that he "keeps under his body, and brings it into subjection, lest, when he had preached to others, he himself should be a cast away," we have a confession of religious accountability which levels to the dust all high imaginations of merit and perfection. It is by this difference of principle that religious and philosophical self-discipline are distinguished; the one, as we have said, having its origin in pride and self, the other laying its foundation deep in humility and self-renunciation.

The expedient of Theora to neutralize the mischief of idolatry, reminds us of certain recent apologies for forms of superstition, analogous, if not similar; and in truth seems as reasonable a defence of the worship of birds, and beetles, and bushes, as of relics and images, or any other modern symbols of Deity.

"Even in the temple itself, the anxious mother would endeavour to interpose her purer lessons among the idolatrous ceremonies in which they were engaged. When the favourite Ibis of Alethe took its station on the shrine, and the young maiden was seen approaching, with all the gravity of worship, the very bird which she had played with but an hour before, when the acacia bough, which she herself had plucked, seemed to acquire a sudden sacredness in her eyes, as soon as the priest had breathed upon it; on all such occasions, Theora, though with fear and trembling, would venture to suggest to the youthful worshipper the distinction that

should be drawn between the sensible object of adoration, and that spíritual, unseen Deity, of which it was but the remembrancer and the type."

We must hurry over the remainder of the story. In a few years Theora dies, with her last breath imploring Alethe to fly from this unholy place, to the protection of a Christian hermit, whose name and abode she imparts to her. An opportunity of effecting her escape happily occurs in the descent of Alciphron into the pyramid, and knowing that the priest's self-moving car stands ready for a journey to the place of one of his annual visitations, she arranges and executes her plan in the manner already described.

When they approach the abode of Melanius, (the holy man to whom the dying Theora had commended her daughter,) Alciphron, unable to bear the thought of parting with the object of his love, declares his resolution to adopt the creed, and share henceforward the desert retreat of Alethe; and in presenting her to the venerable hermit as the child of a former friend and pupil in the faith, offers himself also as a candidate for Christian instruction. His hypocritical profession is received by the maiden with delighted surprise, and by the hermit with simple confidence, and he is forthwith put upon his noviciate of study and devotion in a retired cave, with no company for the present but his own reflections, the tenor of which may be easily imagined. "Self-humbled (as he says,) into a soli tary outcast, the bypocritical pupil of a Christian Anchoret, without even the excuse of fanaticism, or any other madness but that of love, wild love, to extenuate his fall!" Hating his "den," as well he might in such a humour, he rushes out and wanders in the desert, till night and weariness drive him home, where he is agreeably surprised to find a light, and a small cross usually worn by Alethe, laid upon the book which the hermit had left for his soli

tary perusal.

This book he finds to be "the Hebrew Scriptures;" and though "the frauds of the Memphian priesthood had dispelled all his trust in the promises of religion," (qu. how could they dispel a trust which never had existed?) he sits down to fulfil his task of enquiry. "Could admiration have kindled faith, (he says,) I should that night have been a believer-so elevated, so awed was my imagination by that wonderful book;-its warnings of wo, its announcements of glory, and its unrivalled strains of adoration and sorrow."

We must pause a moment to express our assent to Mr. Moore's very just distinction between admiration and faith, and our wish that it were not so often exemplified in the literary practice of some of our most popular and agreeable writers, by the profane and presumptuous appropriation of the awful beauties and soul awakening truths of holy writ, to ornament the productions of a sportive or licentious fancy, and thus cheat the simple Christian into the company of the father of evil, while he peradventure imagines himself conversing with an angel of light. We would, moreover, earnestly caution our young and sanguine readers against confounding the spurious or imaginative feeling of admiration for the sublime poetry and eloquence which are but the vehicles of divine

truth with the one efficient principle of faith in its heavenly origin, and submission to its holy precepts, which the light of God's Spirit alone can produce. It may be apropós to observe here, that the existence and personality of either of the above-mentioned agents, are doctrines which find no place in Mr. Moore's scheme, or in that of the venerable Christian whom (it may be presumed,) he exhibits as the standard of his own orthodoxy.

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We must pass over the preparatory discussions, which lead our philosopher through the opening twilight of Judaism, to the full glory of the Gospel; but which, like the veiled skeleton of one of his early adventures, disappoint his enthusiasm by continually reminding him that "all are of dust, and shall to dust return." all the doctrines and sanctions, promises and predictions, of the Jewish Scriptures, pointing to earth, and to earth alone, as the scene of man's brief existence, he finds no prospect of this boasted immortality; and "forgetting his hypocrisy in his feelings," (for we must recollect that his desire of Christian instruction is but a feint to obtain the hand of Alethe;) he avows to the hermit all his doubts and fears, which the holy man answers in the following

manner:

"Thou art yet, my son, but upon the threshhold of our faith. Thou hast seen but the first rudiments of the divine plan: its full and consummate perfection hath not yet opened upon thee. However glorious that manifestation of Divinity on Mount Sinai, it was but the forerunner of another, still more glorious, that in the fulness of time was to burst upon the world; when all that had seemed dim and incomplete was to be perfected, and the promises shadowed out by the spirit of prophecy realized when the silence that lay as a seal on the future was to be broken, and the glad tidings of life and immortality proclaimed to the world !"

He traced through all its wonders and mercies, the great work of redemption, dwelling upon every miraculous circumstance connected with it: the exalted nature of the Being, by whose ministry it was accomplished; the noblest and first created of the sons of God, inferior only to the one self-existent Father: the mysterious incarnation of this heavenly Messenger; the miracles that authenticated his divine mission; the example of obedience to God, and love to man, which he set as a shining light before the world for ever; and lastly, and chiefly, his death and resurrection, by which the covenant of mercy was sealed, and "life and immortality brought to light."

"Such was the Mediator promised through all time, to make reconciliation for iniquity,' to change death into life, and bring healing on his wings' to a darkened world. Such was the last crowning dispensation of that God of benevolence, in whose hands sin and death are but instruments of everlasting good, and who, through apparent evil and temporary retribution, bringing all things out of darkness into his marvellous light,' proceeds watchfully and unchangingly to the great final object of his providence-the restoration of the whole human race to purity and happiness."

Among the discoveries of this inventive age, that of a royal road to knowledge through the flowing pathos of extract, and abstract, and beauties, and selections, may be deemed from its popularity

one of the most important:-but we fear that it will be found to cloud the understanding of the student, with as much dust as Mr. M'Adam's parallel improvement of our "Kings high-way," throws into his material eye, when he issues forth "from classic halls and academic bowers," to refresh himself with a drive or a walk after his morning's labour. On this discovery, however, Mr. Moore's genius has improved; by presenting for the benefit of light and lazy readers, a condensed system or semblance of Christianity, which, retaining some of its principal terms, divests them of their whole scriptural significance and import; and thus the more effectually "turns the truth of God into a lie," if deceptiveness constitute the moral turpitude of falsehood.

Far be it from us to attribute the sin of deliberate falsehood to Mr. Moore. We do really hope that his very crude and unscrip-. tural statement is the result of sheer ignorance; and we only deny his right to assume the office of a religious teacher, till he has more deeply studied that "wonderful book," of which he professes such admiration. We are not among those monopolists who would limit to the Levites the right of touching the ark: indeed, we rejoice to see many laymen in the present day, bringing as their title to a share in its service, the motto of Aaron's signal, ("Holiness to the Lord,") and would gladly from our hearts say with old Samuel, "would to God that all the Lord's people were prophets !"—but while we can hold a pen or raise a voice in warning or remonstrance, we will call upon our readers to beware of sentimental and poetical religion: to beware of the sophistry which would veil under a Christian garb the tenets of a sensualised Platonism; to scrutinize strictly those general and declamatory professions which an enforced deference to the taste of a Christian public may have elicited, and to weigh in the balance of the sanctuary every particle of every creed, that comes to them upon the faith of man's proposition or adoption.

We shall conclude with a few remarks on this final exposé of Melanius, which we think we have fairly assumed to express Mr. Moore's own views of Christianity.

To give the name of Arianism to this anomalous sketch, would be treating it more respectfully than it deserves. It discards at once the Deity of the Saviour, the doctrine of atonement by his death as a vicarious sacrifice for sin, the office, personality, and even the existence of the Holy Spirit, and the whole moral and probatory character of the Christian dispensation. The mission of Christ is indeed acknowledged to be divine, but that mission is simply "to set an example of obedience"-his death and resurrection are stated but only "to seal a covenant of mercy," of which no previous mention is made, and the terms and nature of which are of course left in perfect obscurity. That he came to bring life and immortality to light," is also averred "in good set terms"-but at what expense the blessing was purchased, or through what medium it is to be obtained, we do not discover. We are told, indeed, that this noblest and first created of the sons of God came "to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring healing on his wings" phrases which might imply some notion of an atoning and

illuminating and restorative office in the Saviour, but which are not merely neutralized, but flatly contradicted by the preceding statement. The last, and "crowning". articles of this poetical creed, is the "benevolent doctrine" of "the temporary nature of all future punishments, and the final restoration of the whole human race to purity and happiness." We have not space to enter into a disquisition upon the scriptural evidence of this doctrine, which we take to be a more important point than its benevolence; seeing that of the one we are qualified to judge by an honest perusal of our Bibles, while respecting the other we cannot decide, without a knowledge of the Divine government and ultimate purposes, utterly unattainable by man, or perhaps, by any finite or created being. "Canst thou by searching find out God-canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection-it is high as heaven, what canst thou know-deeper than hell, what canst thou do? The measure thereof is wider than earth, and broader than the seas."

With such a warning before us, we retire from a subject too deep and sacred for the familiar touch of the light and lively novelist, or poet, till he has quaffed his draughts of inspiration

from Siloa's fount, that flowed

Fast by the oracles of God,

And we strongly recommend to Mr. Moore to follow our example, and not again to exhibit himself as a teacher of theology, till he has lengthened the cords and strengthened the stakes of his own orthodoxy.

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After all, our ingenious countryman may laugh at this serious criticism, and say, we have produced a mountain from his little mouse, instead of a mouse from the mountain but if we have been enabled to lead a single mind to form a right estimate of this strangely popular performance, we shall deem our own labour of writing, and still greater labour of reading, abundantly well bestowed.

For the satisfaction of our juvenile readers, though very few such, we hope, are acquainted with Alciphron, we will just state, that his ready assent to the Hermit's lecture obtains for him the hand of the fair Egyptian. A new persecution breaking out against the Christians consigns her and her venerable guardian to the flames; their fortitude in suffering, effects what argument had failed to accomplish, and combining with his grief for the loss of his dear Alethe, leads him to adopt in sincerity the Christian (or rather Arian) faith,* and to devote his remaining days to prayer and penitence in the desert cell of Melanius.

Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Education Inquiry.- London, 1827. We have before us the Ninth and last Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Enquiry; a most important and in

* In his neat little apparatus of divinity notes, Mr. Moore endeavours to evade the anachronism of attributing the Arian doctrine to this period.