of connexion, to all the arts and sciences; and lastly, the force that nations have acquired from this activity, to resist oppres sion, and break the chains which civil or religious tyranny had forged.

Such being the moral and political condition of the world, it was manifest that no flagrant abuse could long withstand the searching inquiries which were directed into every corner of our social system. Moral and physical instruments were in operation, which nothing could prevent accelerating the impulse that the human mind had received; and though the disgusting corruptions of the Church were the immediate cause of the explosion which ended in its overthrow, an intellectual necessity. the enfranchisement of thought from the trammels of authority -was the true character of the reformation.

Ecclesiastical power, aided by general ignorance, had previously been sufficient to restrain, if not entirely to repress, its developement; but the spirit of improvement had grown too strong for the empty pretensions and specious importance of the Court of Rome. Society was no longer directed by its dictates, but had assumed the government of its own interests, and questioned the propriety of unauthorised interference. The overthrow of the moral supremacy of the Church completed what the events which preceded it had begun. But the spirit which animated the Reformers did not produce a real freedom of religious sentiment. Each religion in the country in which it prevailed had no indulgence but for certain opinions. As the different creeds, however, were opposed to each other, few opinions existed that had not been canvassed or supported. Things were viewed in new lights, and associations discovered and advanced as arguments which would never otherwise have been perceived. Thus were new combinations formed in the mind by which the sphere of human knowledge was enlarged and its objects multiplied; and although the human mind was not yet free, it had learned the important truth that it was formed to be free.

History exhibits few steps of actual progress towards liberty at this period. Governments apparently do not seem to have kept pace with the spirit of the age, but we find more order and efficacy in their operations, and in their subjects a juster sense of their rights and duties. The political relations of Europe were materially changed. The place of its different nations in the political scale was in a great measure fixed, and the balance of power was beginning to be in some degree established. Diplomacy had succeeded force; and combination of power, acted upon by general interests, restrained the inordinate elevation of one country to the permanent detriment of the rest. Its various governments had become sufficiently strengthened

to restrain the excesses of individuals; and their laws were better combined, and appear to be less frequently the immature and shapeless productions of circumstance and caprice. The engine of public opinion was brought to bear upon the operations of society; and although often perverted by prejudice, and directed against its true interests, kept alive a spirit of competition, which stimulated exertion, and proved a powerful stimulus to improvement.

The events which have taken place since the sixteenth century, if not productive of effects of such magnitude, nor exercising so marked an influence upon the progress of human affairs as those which immediately preceded them, present a most pleasing picture of the progress of civilisation. A glorious harvest has been reaped from the seeds which were then sown.

Navigation, commerce, philosophy, literature, science and manufactures, have been carried to a perfection and extent to which they never before attained. Nor has this improvement been confined to any particular class; all have participated in its advantages, and a lever has been thereby applied which has raised the whole mass of society. The industry created by an increased commerce, has been aided by the discoveries of science. Man has lightened his labour, by calling to his assistance the agency of nature, and subjecting the elements to his will. The laws which regulate the world have been discovered and systematised, and the absurd notions of speculative theorists destroyed. The march of the sciences has indeed been rapid and brilliant;-Bacon, Galileo, and Des Cartes, pointed out and exemplified the true method of philosophising, by employing the three instruments with which nature has furnished usobservation, experiment and calculation-by a proper application of which, Copernicus and Newton unfolded to our view the harmony and mechanism of the heavens-whilst improvements in navigation and chemistry have extended our knowledge of the geography and productions of the earth. Every branch of literature has also kept pace with the progress of science-they have indeed exercised a reciprocal influence upon each other, notwithstanding the efforts of ignorance and folly to disunite and render them inimical. Poetry, history, and philosophy, have been cultivated with a success which rivals the most splendid productions of antiquity; and through their agency, the truths of science have been rendered popular, and a moral elevation thereby given to the great mass of society, which ensures duration to the progress of improvement, by whatever political changes the world may be shaken. Would that its progress may be as rapid hereafter as it has been for the two last centuries! Nor do we doubt but that it will be. Modern society is built upon a sound foundation. Unlike that of an

cient times, it has not risen to its present state of elevation by fictitious and unnatural means; but rests entirely for sup port upon the industry of its members-the only true source of national prosperity. The influence of mind is becoming every day more powerful. All men seem alive to the great interests of society, and education is in every country strengthening and extending its power amongst all classes of the community. What may we not reasonably expect from the free and enlightened republics of the Western World? Will not the fermentation, which now agitates Europe from its lowest depths, work out its moral and social redemption? We are convinced that civilisation must progress. The tide of improvement is in its flow; and notwithstanding partial obstructions, must roll on. The sense of human rights, and of human duties, is not now confined to a few, and therefore liable to be lost-but is stamped in living characters upon millions of hearts.

F. H.

ON THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH,

IT is both pleasant and useful to trace the workings of individual minds on any of the great concerns of humanity, since we are thus enabled to catch glimpses of the essential laws which regulate the operations of thought-to observe the modifications which abstract principles receive in their applications in particular cases-to acquire increased assurance of the reality and value of truths which have been wrought out by our own unaided resources, and to feel the bonds, multiplied, strengthened, and perhaps endeared, by which we are united with the brotherhood of man. For these advantages there needs in the subject studied to be no more than the sincerity which belongs to every good man; for human nature, even in its humblest garb, contains so much order, beauty and power, as to afford its investigator ample remuneration for his pains. The benefit, however, is enhanced when distinguished abilities and distinguished excellence arrest the attention, because principles are then put to the severest test, display their power in its amplest results, and are fitted as much to win as they are to instruct.

The character of Sir James Mackintosh was one of no ordinary elements. Possessed of an original strength of mind which could not have failed to raise him above the crowd, whatever had been his social position, and having enjoyed superior advantages for the cultivation of his faculties advantages the improvement of which was the work of a long life he laid up stores of knowledge in all the great branches of moral science, brought all his acquirements to bear on the formation of his

opinions and the regulation of his life, and therefore exhibited in his character blended knowledge, goodness and power, in dignified and lofty forms.

If we view him as a religionist, perhaps we may see reason to feel a peculiar interest. The testimony of such a man, whether favourable or adverse to religion, can be of no ordinary importance. But there was something unusual in his position, as well as in his personal culture. In one sense of the term, he was a man of the world; for if literature had his affections, politics engrossed the better part of his energies-so that, from the period when he quitted the groves of the academy, even till the exhaustion of his frame, he was exposed to influences which too many have found uncongenial not only with the high and delicate interests of religion, but even with the purity and integrity of the moral sense. Nor must it be forgotten that his career began when the deluge of infidelity, springing from the caverns of chaotic France, was fast sweeping over the whole of European civilisation, and submerging alike the domestic and the social altar. Deceived, as many of the best men and purest patriots were, by the fair exterior which the spirit of innovation wore, Mackintosh hailed its approach and aided forward its progress. The wonder is, not that so powerful and discriminative a mind at last detected its real nature, but that he retained no taint from the irreligious infection with which it was charged. His religion, whatever it was, grew not up in the gentle fascinations of domestic retirement, but came forth from the battle and the breeze' of conflicting opinions, and rose superior to the scorn and contempt which withered the faith of thousands.

He was, too, educated in a country where the severe and repulsive aspect which religion wore had driven many into the arms of infidelity. Unlike Mackintosh, they had knowledge and power enough to make them doubt and impeach, but not enough to conduct them from the portals into the temple of Truth. He, on the contrary, with as much perspicuity and discrimination as strength, separated the sound from the corrupt, and while he cast away the traditionary, clung but the more tenaciously to the eternal.

We have now implied that Sir James Mackintosh was a religious man; and none but those who restrict religion to certain external forms can deny, if they have studied his life, that he possessed all the essential elements of the religious character. We waive, for a moment, the question, which asks if he were a Christian, in order to assert that every feature of the man bore a religious aspect. It is possible, surely, for Nature and Providence to imbue the soul with devotion and benevolence, apart from any distinct recognition of the truth of the Gospel. The fact is not impeached, if it should appear that the deepest and most

refined devotion, and the widest and warmest benevolence, are the exclusive fruits of Christian principles, for of degrees of religious influence we are not speaking, nor putting Mackintosh into competition with a Fenelon or a Howard. At all events, those who see the power of the Gospel operating, indirectly it may be, yet mightily, in moulding the great influences of social life, will readily admit that a person who even disowns the Christian name may possess no scanty portion of Christian excellence. Let such survey the life of Mackintosh, and they will be satisfied that he was a religious man. He had a benevolence of disposition which opened his breast to all the domestic endearments, and made his home a school of the gentler affections and the pure refinements of humanity. Home to him was home; it was his resting-place-his delight-his sphere of special usefulness; and the picture of the father educating his family by reading to the assembled circle the best of our English classics, with the accompaniments of his own instructive comments, and of the general conversation which often ensued, presents a scene to be loved, a model to be imitated, and reminds one of that all but perfect sketch of a father's supervision, which he has drawn with exquisite grace in his 'Life of Sir Thomas More.' And what is the whole of his public career, from his first great effort in favour of human liberty, when he took up the gauntlet of the mighty champion of prescription, or at a later period, when having assumed the awful functions of the judicial office, he formed and strove to realise the wish that his ermine might be unstained with human blood, down to his long-sustained and generous efforts for the mitigation of our penal code, the enfranchisement of conscience, and the enlargement of civil liberty; what is the whole of his public career but one continued expression of the same benevolence which adorned and endeared his social intercourses? Nor did his benevolence acknowledge the barriers of nationality. It is true that he loved his country and his home, but it is equally true that he loved his kind. In him the persecuted missionary found an eloquent advocate, and the now emancipated African might not even yet have lost the weight of his chains had not Mackintosh thought, and written, and spoke.

So pure and tender was his benevolence, that he does not appear to have been capable of revenge. It is almost needless to say that he had injuries and provocations to suffer under; but, with a rare exception to what is usual even with good men, he bore them without anger, and requited them, if at all, with kindness. For myself, I know of few men whose mind was more thoroughly pervaded with enlightened benevolence. Light, power, and love were the constituents of his character. And thus it is that in all his writings, in all his meditations, so far as