be detected when the judgment is no longer able to adjust the artificial expression to the natural tone of the feelings.

Provided, therefore, that due caution be observed, insanity, in some cases, tends rather to elucidate the religious condition of its victims, than to obscure it; for those extremes of thought and feeling, which are thrown by it to the surface, and which, to a casual observer, are so perplexing, are in reality the expression of internal feelings, which, but for the insanity, would never be disclosed to human observation. These eccentricities, when their moral quality can be distinguished, give an insight into the character more complete than can be had in any other case. When, from the loss of reason, the exact proportions of truth and the nice refinements of propriety cannot be discerned; and when the ordinary motives of human conduct cease to be influential, and the restraints are removed which, while reason holds its sway, are imposed by the desire to preserve a reputation for rectitude and intelligence, both the defects and the excellences of the character develop themselves in their undisguised forms and relative strength: the inner man is brought to light: and the lunatic, when he is assum ing the most extravagant pretensions, or giving vent to the wildest conceptions, may but be acting out-absurdly, indeed, yet still correctly -his true moral character. He may deny the reality of either his virtuous feelings under the influence of despair, or of his vicious propensities from hypocrisy; but his virtue in the one case will attest its own sincerity; and in the other case his hypocrisy will betray itself from the want of reason to direct it.

Nor do I think that any insuperable difficulty will be presented by the cases of religious madness, a form of insanity commonly thought to be so prevalent; but in reality limited to an insignificant number of the patients. Whenever the mind is unsound, religion may share, in common with other subjects, the effects of the patient's illusions; but it is to cases in which religion gives the distinctive character to the disorder, that reference is made; and a little examination into the extent and nature of this description of insanity will at once disappoint those who would draw inferences from it prejudicial to religion itself, and remove the anxiety of others who are at a loss to understand how reason can be overthrown by a faith which comes from heaven, and is designed to recover men from all that is erroneous and hurtful.

I need hardly remark, that religion, rightly understood, is a practical, and not, exclusively, a theoretical system, exacting and providing the power required for complete self-government, and the performance of every relative duty. Religious madness, therefore, if it is to be correctly so termed, must arise from an excess of devotedness to God, or of love to man. But, by a strange inversion of language, this is termed religious madness, which receives its characteristic impression from the defect or total want of religion.

There are lunatics whose madness assumes a tone of hostility to sacred things. Such are they who arrogate blasphemous pretensions to themselves, and they who malign the being, or the word, or the ministers, of God. It may be thought that these ravings of the mad. man afford no indication of the state of the heart; that there is no

malignity in his daring conceptions, and no reality of feeling in his diabolical expressions. When this is conceded, the malady must be assigned to physical causes, and religion is but accidentally the subject on which the passions expend their fury. But if moral character is at all attributable to these cases, there can be no argument required to prove that they constitute a form of irreligious madness.

Indeed, I would submit that "irreligious insanity" is the term that would in all cases most correctly designate the disorder when religion is at all implicated in it. The patients of this class are very frequently affected with delusions more or less connected with religion, which in turn foster and are fostered by an excessive selfconceit. There are others who entertain erroneous impressions on the subject, the result of a speculative study of revelation, perhaps of a daring intrusion into forbidden mysteries. But in which of these cases can the insanity, whether it be the result of pride or of presumption, be correctly termed religious? "Doubtless," Dr. Burrowes says, "the understanding may be disordered by an entire devotion to abstract theology, as it may by intense application to any abstruse subject in morals, physics, or politics. But a religion like Christianity will never so operate, unless it become an object of entire abstraction or be improperly applied." Teachableness and humility are among the first duties imposed by the gospel; and although much that is pious and excellent may exist where these graces remain defective, yet it is absurd to refer to a religion consequences which result from the violation of its fundamental principles. It is not for us to assign a judicial character to the visitation in any individual instance, but it may surely be regarded at times as a judgment from the Divine Being, by which he brings down the arrogance of the proud, and vindicates the violated sanctity of his own revelation.

In the cases of depression arising from forebodings of the Divine displeasure, it has already been suggested, that the morbid feeling may, in some instances, be connected with a fatal departure from the paths of peace, or with a long, and certainly a culpable, neglect of the light and the aid afforded by a fellowship in the gospel. It is to be traced frequently to other causes; but, in all cases, it can subsist only with a false conception of the Divine character, in which the wrath of God and not his mercy is exclusively apprehended. This is a state of mind only known under the gospel as a premature sentence of condemnation, judicially impressed upon the heart of the reprobate; a frenzy, of which examples are to be seen in the last hours of Voltaire, and others of that class of madmen. Such, however, is not the fear of the desponding lunatic. And yet, even with him the despair must be referred to a deficiency of religion; certainly it can never result from the excess of it; for whether it be attributable to moral or to natural causes, and whether there be or be not any just ground for self-condemnation, the absence of hope can co-exist only with ignorance of God, or a distrust in his promises. Christianity is a religion of grace, in which Mercy is represented as triumphing against Judgment; but when its truths are distorted, or partially suppressed, it ceases to be itself; and when it is thus transformed into "another

gospel," either by the error of the teacher, or by the misconception of the hearer, any baneful effect that may be produced is clearly chargeable upon the innovation, and not upon the original doctrine. "Some," Dr. Burrowes writes, in a tone of just indignation, worthy the Christian physician," some, either in contempt or ignorance, have directly imputed insanity to religion in the abstract.".. "It is clear that, under certain circumstances, it may be said insanity is occasioned through the agency of religion. It is not, however, from the agency of the Christian faith, in its pure and intelligible form, but from the perversion of it, that many become the victims of insanity.".. "There is not a tittle of evidence to substantiate that Christianity, abstractedly, ever produced that effect. Such accusations are the abortions of infifidelity, or of those who lack knowledge." Religion, correctly understood and faithfully complied with, supplies, in all these cases, not the cause but a remedy for the disorder.

These are some of the features which a lunatic asylum presents in relation to the important question which it was proposed to investigate. My observations were formed exclusively among pauper patients, but they will be applicable, more or less, I believe, to all classes. It will be obvious, however, that remarks of so general a character give but a very imperfect outline of the subject, and admit of many exceptions. I am, Sir, your faithful servant,

PRESBYTER.

VESTIGES OF CREATION AND ITS ANSWERS.

MY DEAR SIR,-Some weeks ago, a plausibly written volume was placed in my hands, entitled, Vestiges of Creation. It is entirely popular in its nature, skimming over the surface of almost all natural philosophy; and there is a neatness and unity in the argument which has made it but too attractive to minds unprepared with a knowledge how much must be assumed, how much overlooked, and how much falsified, before it can be made good.

We see, for example, nebulæ in every state of apparent condensation until they merge into stars, which analogies lead us to regard as suns, and to suppose surrounded by systems. These presumptions, and the appearance of the zodiacal light, seem to point to such an origin of our own system. This, then, looks like the result of a law impressed by the Divine artificer on the primal nebula-a law of disintegration and combination, by which planets were detached from a cooling vapour, united in masses, and endowed with motion. Again, having thus placed the Creator at the remotest possible distance from the creature, the author proceeds to the construction of the world, and the development of animal and vegetable life. The lowest forms of both are much the same, he tells us, nucleated cells reproductive of their like, and assuming in the vegetable world all those forms of combination which are exhibited in the electric brush, and in arborescent crystallization, according to circumstances. In the animal world, also, nature always commences at the cell, and the human fœtus goes

through all the conditions of monad, fish, turtle, bird, rodent, ruminant, digitigrade, quadrumana, before it arrives at the development of man. Hence the author infers, that all these are merely advanced forms of the same germ, and indicate that originally the polygastric monad produced the radiate and articulate animals, until, in due time, as the gradual operations of one great cause fitted the world for each class of inhabitants, the same cause operated in prolonging the gestation of the parent, until the offspring took the proximate form. Thus, once upon a time, man was born from a pair of Singalese monkeys, and what may, after countless ages, be born from him, remains to be seen.

Assuredly this is a more attractive theory than that of the last attempt to classify and arrange the discoveries of modern science into an infidel system. In a work published a few years since, and shewing quite as much ability as the Vestiges, although I do not apprehend that it ever gained any considerable circulation, the very opposite conclusions were arrived at. Instead of being on the march to some unknown perfection, we were there supposed to be living in the extreme old age of the world. The shortening month and shortening year, proved that in the lapse of a very few hundred millions of years we should fall into the sun, the fate anticipated successively for all the planets, and visibly approaching Enke's comet; and the moon, like a series of her predecessors, whose debris now cover the earth's surface, would be dashed to pieces on her primary, as the moons of Venus and Mercury have already been on theirs, by the necessary operation of the laws by which they are at present governed. The same laws would gradually increase the density of the earth. The progressive crystallization of the superior strata would absorb them into their granite foundation; their fertility, originally capable of the spontaneous production of giant plants and animals, would decline, until the present verdure of the earth should be succeeded by universal barrenness. Already, the generative power which called man and all the superior animals into existence, had waned away until it could only produce infusoria mites in chocolate, and maggots in cheese. In short, the two authors who have most recently traced the vestiges of creation, rejecting the revealed testimonies of the Creator, have found them all turned in opposite directions!

A volume you noticed in your reviews last month, from the pen of Dr. Whewell, consisting of extracts from his already published works, and a preface obviously alluding to the Vestiges of Creation, contains the outline of a complete argument against its inferences, and such an exposure of its errors in matters of fact as might counteract its impression, if the truth ever overtook the falsehood in time to prevent its doing mischief. The gratification I had received from Mr. Bosanquet's Principia, made me glad that he had undertaken the task of entering the lists more pointedly with an antagonist whose nameless title page might render it indecorous for Dr. Whewell to attack him, and I was surprised that you should have noticed his Vestiges Exposed without commendation. But his book convinced me very soon that you were right-nay, even made me wish that your disapproval had been more emphatic than silence.

When I read the Vestiges, I felt, these facts do not bear out these conclusions, but I should like some person, thoroughly versed in the whole circle of natural philosophy, to tell me how far they are facts, and how far fancies. I can trace a good deal of incompetence myself, but not enough to destroy the argument, if all is true that I cannot contradict, and all unimportant which is here treated as such: but I know men living as Christians, and devoutly believing the sacred history of man as delivered in the Bible, and feeling no difficulty in the Mosaic cosmogony, who are at the same time deeply versed in natural philosophy, and in the van of modern discoverers. If one of them would condescend to tell me, without much extraneous disquisition, how much or how little of this work they believe, I should be much obliged to them, and others might perhaps be saved from the Deism of the Vestiges.

I was well satisfied, then-nay, really grateful-to find asserted in Dr. Whewell's preface, and proved to as great extent in his extracts as their space rendered possible, that there is no established inconsistency in the revealed and inductive history of the world—that the doctrine of final causes has been the great instrument of every step of discovery from Galen to Cuvier-that the doctrine of new and peculiar conditions operating on the embryo, and carrying it to a higher stage, however plausible in this general shape, is not supported in detail by geology or zoology. For example, that the human embryo, described by characteristics of the heart and brain, never passes through any stage comparable or analogous to a permanent condition of the same organ in any invertebrate animal, and the same is true of the position of the spinal cord and the heart.

That geology offers as formidable difficulties to this new system. The existence of polygastric monads in the earliest fossiliferous rocks has not been proved, but they manifest the higher types of echinodermal, articulate, and molluscous animals, while the human germ passing at once from the monad to the vertebrate, never enters or typifies the radiate or articulate. Nor will the law of development hold good in the superior strata, as vertebrates exist in the Silurian rocks, where they should not, and one of the saurians most nearly approaching a mammal is found beneath the ordinary beds of saurians; birds have left their traces in the elder of the new red sandstone, and monkeys in the older tertiaries. Finally, Dr. Whewell, in 1845, who knows what is going on in the scientific world, declares, that the assertion of the origin of a living being without an egg or living parent, is at variance with the latest and most careful, as well as with all preceding experiments of eminent physiologists. And here I take the opportunity to point out a few very inconsiderable misstatements I noticed in the Vestiges-every one of which, however, is a feather thrown in the wind, and illustrates its power and direction. Thus with regard to the production of acari in silicate and ferrocyanide of potash, nitrate of copper, and other solutions, by means of a sustained galvanic current, which created so strong a sensation when

Preface to Indications of a Creator, with reference, for the last assertion, to Owen's Lectures, p. 33.