sceptical in religious matters? and men of science, too, who soon feel the real boundaries of their inquiries-why are they so often sceptical in a like manner? and why does it often happen that they are more inclined to be so than others who have not these advantages?

One reason certainly is, that they, the men of science, at least, have not made religion sufficiently a point of their study to know the force of the arguments that have been urged in its favour their pursuits are for the most part limited to one point, and it cannot, or ought not to be expected that single-eyed science can -furnish them with all which such a subject naturally demands. It is by extending the view more widely round the horizon, that the great truth will become necessarily obvious to the sight. We may indeed assert of those philosophers who have so enlarged their prospects, that their religious feeling has increased in the same proportion in which their sphere of vision was expanded; and they have been, that is, the wisest and ablest of them, the very persons who have enrolled themselves in the lists as the most zealous champions of religion.

Milton was one of the most learned persons of whom we have any account from history; he wrote on education, on politics, composed poetry, as is well known, both in Latin and English; and yet employed his pen also on religious subjects, many of which are given in his works; and an additional theological treatise lately discovered, is now about to be published to the world.

Locke was eminently distinguished for the variety of his attainments, as the style of his essays will attest. He is celebrated by Sydenham for his skill in medicine, and his writings embrace not merely the philosophy of the mind, but, civil government, the value of money, education, and (though a layman) also theology.

Of Lord Bacon-his official employments, and the manner in which he discharged them, prove his extended knowledge of the world and of mankind. Of the general nature of his acquirements too, we have in print abundant testimony; but, we have moreover, the authority of Fr. Osborne, to prove that these were extended to a degree of universality that would otherwise have appeared under circumstances almost incredible; I have heard him,' says

he, entertain a country lord in the proper terms relating to hawks and dogs; and at another time to outcant a London chirurgeon.' And he extols him to the skies for his marvellous extent of knowledge-such an one was the zealous advocate of religion, Lord Chancellor Bacon. Mathematician, philosopher, chronologist, theologician-as eminently useful in his office in public life, as before he had proved himself in the management of the University -such was Sir Isaac Newton.

There is another reason, and that perhaps a still stronger one for the disinclination to religious belief, on the part of some men of science, namely, that being so much in the habit of seeing causes explained and developed in the course of their labours, of seeing certain activities of matter (in the one instance, and of mind in the other,) springing up as it were, from beneath their hands, they lose sight of that mystery attached to the idea of a first cause, which is in all cases the foundation of natural religious sentiment. They are in the habit of expecting such demonstration constantly to develope itself, and are disappointed and rebutted

wherever it does not occur. We must recollect too, that if ever they do touch by chance upon any thing beyond these visible and tangible manifestations, if ever the idea of a creative power occurs to them, it is not as of an Almighty God; it is of him under the name of the first cause, of the God of distinctive elements; it is as of something which they have made out; it is indeed, if we may use the phrase, as of an idol of their own. Thus it is, that the anatomist finds in his anatomy, the geologist in his geology, the metaphysician in his philosophy of the human mind—the all-sufficient cause of scepticism. The reason therefore will be found, as Kant would say, to exist in themselves, and the nature of their scrutiny, not in those subjects on which they are employed.

We may add one reason more, of a description that is not by any means unimportant in our inquiry; it is this. The strongest impression which is made upon the minds of these scientific persons arises, of course, from that which they actually do know, rather than from the sense of that which they do not know or in other words, their minds are more alive to the

positive, than to the negative items of their knowledge. But, under the supposition of their discovering the existence of God as of something beyond all their researches, as the unknown quantity, one may say, in all their calculations; his idea is connected with the latter instead of the former, and accordingly is but little dwelt upon.

There is, besides, a vast difference between merely knowing a thing to be thus or thus, and really feeling it to be so; and in this case it forms all the difference between religion or no religion. It is this intimate sensation of the truth, the conviction that arises from a sense of our human feebleness and incapacity, that of itself creates a belief in the mind of a religious man; and this is the feeling that becomes the basis of our faith.

Now there are many persons who cannot bring themselves to deny themselves some little indulgences, which they know notwithstanding, to be hurtful to them: it occasionally happens, that in some one instance, the gratification of their desires in such a case is followed by a severe visitation, and they receive such a warn