judices, preserved the former long from the inroads of unsound philosophy. It tainted not the vitality of their religion, until the gnostic heresies were ingrafted on the ancient stem, and created that monstrous abortion of human intellect, the Cabbala (7). From this period, the circumstances of both became almost precisely similar, a due allowance being made for the different actings of the same spirit on elements so formally dissimilar, as were the Levitical and the Christian institutions.

We commence therefore our retrospect with the intellectual annals of the Greeks, the widely extended influence of whose literature asserted for their modes of thinking an ascendancy so permanent and unrivalled.

The first dawn of philosophy amongst that ingenious people is perceptible in the relics of the Homeric age, and from them we possess the means of judging of the early influence operated by it on religious opinion. In the writings of their immortal Epic, and in those of the poet of Ascra, polytheism and materialism are simultaneous ingredients. We behold the germ of that philosophy, which, in after ages, peopled the universe of matter with the personified attributes of its almighty Framer.

A few ages elapse, and we behold the philosophers of Ionia immersed in the contemplation of first principles. Thales produced his aque

ous element-Heraclitus, his fire: the atomical philosophy was moulded into a regularity of form by Democritus and Leucippus Epicurus embraced, and transmitted, the doctrine through his native Greece, which the first genius of ancient Rome invested in a succeeding age with all the sublimity of his imagination;-a dangerous gift, when we consider, that the minds of men were, by this confirmed materialism, still farther alienated from a rectitude of conception on subjects unappreciable by sense.

Thus,

at a period more exclusively our own, we have seen the aid of science invoked to prop the rude fabric of the Epicurean physics, and to endue it with a symmetry, if not of essence at least of form, better beseeming the philosophy of the eighteenth century (8).

The first we meet with amongst the Grecian sages, who essayed to free the human mind from those fetters of materialism, is Anaxagoras. Yet even this great man affords a remarkable instance of the feebleness of the efforts of unassisted reason towards effecting a reformation so important. The supreme Intelligence was, it is true, assigned by him his due rank in material creation;-yet was the doctrine of the philosopher of Clazomenæ on this point not entirely unaffected by the absurdities of the atomic system. The spirit of materialism accompanied him in his approximations to the

ism; illustrations derived from mechanical causes neutralised the results of his intellectual theory (').

To the illustrious Socrates was due a more complete demolition of the material philosophy. His was purely ethical, and, in proportion as he operated a renunciation of the sophistry and the unmeaningness of the former, so far was there a progress effected towards a rational and a consistent theism. In the conflict of sentiment however which was thus excited-in which this light of Grecian philosophy became the victim of popular frenzy and individual rancor-as in the aberrations of Platonism in subsequent ages, we cannot but recognise the effects of the Epicurean system. The influence of this atheistical doctrine impeded the efforts of the Gentile sage, in a manner analogous to that, in which its descendant of the modern era has essayed an opposition to the faith of Christ.

In the infancy of that faith, the principal existing sects were those of Zeno and Epicurus, Plato and Aristotle. The influence of the firstmentioned was comparatively limited; and the second had incorporated itself, in a great measure, with the transcendental speculations of the pupil of Socrates, and the sensible system of the Stagyrite. It may be useful to present you with a few observations on this latter rudiment one which despotised so long over the habits and the attitudes of thought, and distorted

"the form of sound words" by the intermixture of metaphysical refinements.

The philosophers of Greece, in consequence of their gratuitous adoption of synthesis in physical researches, wavered between the opposite extremes of universal doubt, and as universal assertion. Their character of mind was such, therefore, as might be expected from this vacillation in their systems. They were profound in theories, yet in their practical adaptation superficial. They valued not so much the concinnity of a whole, as the external beauty of its isolated parts. The dogmatist, with a perversion of method induced by the Aristotelic philosophy, referred all systems to the arbitration of his principles, neglecting to ascertain the propriety of the standard (°); and, by a route altogether different, the Pyrrhonist arrived at the same conclusions with him respecting the pretensions of our revealed doctrines. In him, the principle of undiscriminating scepticism operated to the prejudice of all contemporary systems, and Christianity was not excluded from the number. In him, imbecility of intellect produced the same fatal result, which self-sufficiency of intellect caused in the Peripatetic. The doubt of the one arose ex præcognitis et præconcessis; that of the other was the basis of his philosophy.

The preceding remarks are, in their strict

ness, applicable to the state of things when Christianity was first promulged-as a system of doctrines to correct opinion, and a body of precepts to regulate conversation-as an announcement of "things hoped for," though yet "not seen," and a word "profitable for reproof, for instruction in righteousness" (").— How long it preserved those elements in their original purity, as they issued from the mouths of its Divine Founder and his followers, unalloyed by the admixture of subtle inventions and abstract reasonings, it requires no very diffuse research over our church's annals to discover. The brief compass of three centuries, commencing with the atheistical gnosticism of a Simon, and terminating with the Platonic Christianity of an Origen, contemplated in all its intermediate stages of Asiatic austerity and Egyptian superstition, suffices to establish the fact, that philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men and the rudiments of the world," have ever marred the integrity of scriptural doctrine.

We will suppose now that Christianity has emerged from the lowliness of its first estate, and has become invested with the gorgeous apparel of this world, enshrined apparently in its innermost affections, protected by political ordinances, and hailed alike by the philosopher and the legislator-insomuch that "the world's