recting, testing truths, that come, like a craftsman's experience, spontaneously to hand when they are wanted, is a state of mind seen in correct thinking on all subjects, and is indeed a necessity to correct thinking. The thinking of faith in God's love is a still more composite process and result than any other mental exercise presents. Like its inseparable love, it proceeds from heart and soul and strength and mind,— needing, besides common sense, common sensitiveness, affectionateness, and range of emotional capability.

an opinion

maker.

14. It would be instructive to apply to the various ab- Value of normal opinions upon revealed faith which have been most affected by conspicuous this test of the peculiar thinker's personal capa-the peculiarity bility of dealing well with the subject. The readers of scep- opiniontical books are by no means in so good a position for judging of their value as the intimate acquaintances of the writer are. The letters or set speeches of a man fond of setting forth his views of controverted or popularly discussed matters, in many cases lead strangers to form at once an estimate of the value of his opinion amusingly different from that formed by those who for some time have had an opportunity of valuing his judgment in other matters. Since it is the case, then, that the opinions set forth in any book must be taken by the mass of readers mainly upon the value of the writer's fitness to form those opinions, and since, in books on matters of religious faith, this element of authority must so far influence almost all readers capable of following the writer's argument, because reasoning on the matters belonging to faith is not the barely logical work of the intellect upon unexciting, objective ideas, but is a composite process in which moral and affectional sensibility at the same time contemplates those ideas, and judges of them by things which subjective consciousness presents at the same time,-a test is necessary to be applied, like that of intimate acquaintance, in valuing outré opinions set forth in books on religious subjects.

It would be a useful book on the value of human opinion which should collate with the strange opinions of celebrated men upon religious matters abundant illustrations, from minute biography, of the moral propensities of the peculiar think

ers, and the peculiarities they have shown in other things, and their amounts of common sense, common feeling and affection, and common honesty, and also how far bodily constitution or health had peculiar influence on their ways of thinking. Who would expect to find anything manly or anything morally respectable presenting itself much in the thoughts of Voltaire, after reading even Carlyle's short notices of the despicable facts of his character? Woolston's crack-brained enthusiasm in his university days in propagating new fancies of his own on biblical interpretation, and his extravagant offence at the clergy and speedy abuse of them for not adopting his allegorical theories, deprive of all respectability, all weight which any deference to his judgment might give, his subsequent soconfident scepticism on the subject of the Christian miracles. Hume's dogma, early adopted in his criticism on Leishman's Sermons, that we can only contemplate God intellectually, was of vast aid to him in rendering scepticism easier, as it fenced in the path of his thoughts from the corrective interference of the emotional facts of the Gospel. But we cannot appreciate aright the circumstance essential in judging of the value of Hume's opinion-viz., that a man of his reputed power of judgment adopted, or could adopt, such a maxim—until we come to know Hume's peculiarity of mind. He was very defective in the emotional element of human nature. Mr Buckle's theories upon collective human nature, notwithstanding the immense statistical learning which he brings to bear on his subject, are emptied very much of value as the opinions of one worth following as an authority, when we learn that he was deficient in the power, or practice, of estimating individual human nature, and that he allowed himself to think that so composite a subject could be substantially represented by means of statistics. The 'Philosophie Positive' owes its reputation in the reading world partly, perhaps in great part, to the commanding position assumed by its hierophant, M. Auguste Comte, as being a philosopher who had at his fingers' ends all the history of human knowledge, and who was himself a great discoverer in the honourable field. Dr Whewell exposed how erroneous his history of human thought is, and exposed also the error

of his pretences to discovery, or even to great knowledge, in the subjects he claimed upon, and his ridiculous self-esteem, which led him, after receiving temporary aid from his English admirers, upon being cast off by his own more intimate countrymen, to claim it thanklessly in permanence as a just tribute to his philosophical greatness. That exposure, of necessity, followed the worship of M. Comte's opinions by some thinkers of this country, whose voices made him famous in England. Had Dr Whewell's criticism, and some other facts belonging to M. Comte's own history, been presented as a preface to his book, and had thereby his dictation of new philosophy been received at first in connection with these revelations of his own value, the Philosophie Positive' would not have been taken so much on credit, as manifestly it had been, as being a true representation of the natural order and limits of human inquiry; but his assertions would have been examined by his English disciples as well as by his English critics, and been seen to be misrepresentations largely of the history of human knowledge, and his positive one invented instead of observed, a range of observation arbitrarily confined so as to exclude part of the material to be considered. That his name should continue a name of authority, after his later self-exposure as a philosopher in his new religion of the social goddess-the worship of abstract female excellence in the concrete person of mother, sister, or friend, by a homage consisting in the solemn manipulation of phrenological bumps-makes questionable the hold his followers keep of common sense when upon the Comtean hobby. That their admiration, given, evidently so far upon credit, to his philosophie, should be but little affected by such exposure of error and self-exposure of capability, must detract much from the estimate to be formed of their own philosophical judgment. His English representative, Mr J. S. Mill, betrays his own appreciation of the emotional element in human nature by supposing a political economy in which affairs of the heart should be so quietly managed that a large family of heirs would, in concione, elect which of them should fall in love and marry.

15. These few cases show that important light can be thrown

ty, why of

value.

Judgment upon the value of outré opinions by some knowledge of the of posterisubjective of the opinion-maker, such as his intimate friends could possess; who are seldomer among the disciples of such a one than strangers are, who only know what he tells of himself in his guarded writings. Minute biography is often not attainable while a writer's opinions are new. It is an acquisition which is in the power of posterity chiefly; and it accords with this, that posterity more frequently forms a truer estimate of an author than his contemporaries do; and the excitement which one generation has felt on subjects of speculation appearing under some new name, has often been looked upon by the next with more of surprise, and something like sympathising pity, than respect. What is the worth which this consideration gives to the fact that posterity has always hitherto returned to hold by the Bible as a true record of a historical religion, and always forgotten abnormal faiths, except as curiosities of speculation, and so generally forgotten them that, when offered to a succeeding generation, they have been widely looked upon as quite new discoveries?

Importance of the

16. The biography of an opinion is of especial consequence biography in an age of quick production of books. Popular writers, the chief disseminators of new opinions, are mostly but reporters

of an

opinion.

of less widely read speculation. Adding no authority to the opinion, they do add the impulse of their own credit, which should not belong to the new opinion, except partially, any more than a story is to be accepted without proof more readily when it has been often repeated than when it was first told on hearsay. In this case, reviewers, able to deal historically with published speculations, become the necessary protectors of public opinion. The history of singular misbeliefs should, for safety, always, if possible, be brought in this way to illustrate their value as the opinions of those who first held them. For sincere belief in uncommon religious doctrines is propagated chiefly by the force of example, conversion to them being often, in most part, a tribute to the personal worth of their adherents; and the secret history of the peculiar creeds would generally be found to be less respectable, and to be owing to separation from a religious body for some mostly

personal reason, followed by the necessity of adopting some profession in a state of society which holds necessary a presentable reason for differing in so important a matter from others.

ness of one

creeds.

17. The coincidence of one prominent profession of faith Worldliwith great worldliness is a historical observation. The class historical of creeds constructed on the notion that man's relation to God class of is a formal, instead of both a formal and moral relationshipan adoption in arbitrary covenant to a purely forensic position— a union by covenant without being a union of mutual affection and of character-stands along the page of history always in some marked way as a faith dislocated from holiness, the origin of which is therefore suspicious, though it may not be traceable. The faith of the Pharisees in whatever they meant by salvation, because they were Abraham's seed and had Moses for their teacher, and their making a religion out of confession without service, was a dissent from the common religious judgment of human conscience; and was essentially the same, in its want of connection with holiness, as that of the Anabaptists of the Reformation and the Latter-Day Saints of various names-Mormons, &c.—whose uncommendatory origin is so far well known. The progress traceable in the Judaising teaching which obstructed the labours of the apostles in the Gentile cities, is very instructive on this subject of the religious value of an opinion as the opinion of certain persons or classes of men. Judaising Christianity changed its views and its prominent teaching with the exigency of worldly circumstances during the Church's progress. The whole law of Moses, which the Jewish Christians sought to impose upon their Gentile co-believers in Judæa as essential to salvation, was given up, all but circumcision and the doctrine of meats, in the disputes raised in the heathen cities, where to hold the whole law would have endangered the continuance of the Jewish leadership of the quickly-extending Christian Church. With the same worldly ambition, the Judaising teachers soon diverged more from their first essential principles. Paul was the great preacher of the spirituality of the Christian law; and his teaching of that doctrine, which removed from the faith all