rience, that animals with a certain formation of teeth, and of the gastronomic canal live upon animal food, while those possessing another certain formation can derive their nourishment only from vegetable matter. Hence, when these formations are observed, the habitudes with which, in all-preceding instances, they were uniformly conjoined, are certainly, and from the nature of our mental constitutions, necessarily and irresistibly inferred. But is it only with respect to the inferior animals, that the inductive philosopher is permitted to predict future destiny from present functions? It is a principle, a fact true without exception, that every animal function has, in the developement and progress of animal life, a corresponding sphere of action. But is this correspondence limited to animal life? Is it only with respect to the intellectual existence of man that there are powers which can be directed to no object, and capacities that never can be called forth? Amongst the vast majority of mankind, from the beginning of the world to the present hour, the mental faculties, and the higher capabilities of moral and religious feeling, have been nearly as dormant and as unemployed as are the lungs and eyes of the foetus still in utero. If from the dormant state of the latter the naturalist deduces the habits and the element of the animal after birth, may not the theist, by a logic as legitimate, an induction as sound, predict, from the present inchoate condition of the intellectual and moral capacities of the human mind, its destiny after death? and a use. When accurate experience and ample induction have established the existence of intelligence, then the existence of intelligence becomes a general fact or principle, from which other facts may be logically inferred. An intelligent cause-a designing minddoes not operate without a purpose; its creations have an object Divine wisdom does not work in vain. From the valves of the veins and arteries Harvey, arguing to final causes, discovered the circulation of the blood; and from the moral powers and devotional feelings of the human mind, which seem to have no adequate and final object here, we are induced to conceive and impelled to believe, that man was destined by his Maker to live hereafter. From our innate desires, no less than from our moral powers and religious feelings, immortality may be inferred. It will be immediately obvious that, from the instincts of the inferior animals, their organization, their element and their destination may be certainly deduced. If a naturalist were assured that a brood of unknown birds, on breaking their shells, showed an instant desire to rush into the water and devour small fish, he would as instantly and as certainly VOL. LI. NO. CI. Q infer infer that they were of the aquatic genus, and he would feel as confident as if he had actually examined their structure that their organization corresponded with their instincts. Wherefore this confident anticipation of the results of an anatomical examination? Simply because it is a principle-a fact, true without exception, that in the animal kingdom instincts, and organization, and element correspond. Is this correspondence between instinct, and element, and destination, limited to merely animal life? Are the instincts of the soul the only instincts which are abortive and objectless ?—Is 'The ardent hope, the fond desire, The longing after immortality,' the only implanted anticipation, for the gratification of which no corresponding reality exists? When we contemplate the animal creation, we find that the most admirable harmony prevails; that wherever a desire exists something is provided to gratify it, and that every instinct which is implanted leads its possessor to something connected with his well-being. Now is the desire of immortality the only desire for which no gratification is provided? Were a new material substance presented to us, we should confidently conclude, without examination, that it possessed specific gravity; and, were we required to give a reason for so concluding, we could only answer, that all other matter coming under our inspection possessed this property, and that we could not resist the induction that the new substance possessed it also. In like manner, were we, in the animal kingdom, to discover a new instinct, we should as confidently expect that it pointed to something attainable, connected with the well-being of its possessor; and were we required to state the grounds of such expectation, we could only answer that all other instincts which had come within our knowledge were but means to an end, and led directly and unerringly to the attainment of that to which they are directed. As far as our experience extends, there are attainable objects corresponding to implanted desires; and it is a legitimate induction from this experience that those hopes and desires of higher and purer happiness than the present state affords, will be amply and permanently gratified. After the belief in invisible intelligence has once been formed, we are led, by a natural process, to conceive that, when the visible body perishes, the invisible intelligence which pervaded it may continue to exist. No particle of matter perishes. The elements of body, whatever form they may assume, or into whatever new combinations they may enter, continue to subsist; uniform experience convinces us that in the material world no particle or atom which has once existed can cease to be. Hence, finding finding that all things acting on the external senses are indestructible, we infer that things not affecting the external senses are indestructible also. That which is solid and extended is ever-during ; that which feels and thinks we, by natural induction, conclude to be the same. Uniform and universal experience assures us that the essence of body cannot perish; and it is a legitimate induction from this experience that the essence of mind is immortal. It cannot be fairly objected to natural theology, considered as an inductive science, that in the infancy of inquiry it has been disfigured by many gross and even mischievous errors; this is the fate of all merely human knowledge, which is necessarily progressive. In physics, inaccurate observation of facts, premature generalization, and the assumption of fictitious principles, for ages retarded the discovery of truth, and in a manner closed the book of nature to mankind; it cannot, therefore, be matter of wonder that in natural religion similar sources of error should have prevailed. If the human mind made innumerable mistakes respecting the properties of matter, how could it escape from error with respect to the attributes of God? A rude and ignorant people, deriving their religious belief from the light of nature only, will be polytheists and idolaters. This has been clearly shown by Hume in his Essay on the Natural History of Religion. A knowledge of the existence of one God, the only Governor of the Universe, as it is one of the most difficult, so it is one of the latest triumphs of inductive philosophy. This view of the necessarily tardy progress of natural theology, considered as a branch of human science, sheds new and additional light upon the evidence for revealed religion. If the first narrow and imperfect induction of an ignorant people give birth to the errors of polytheism-and if to establish the doctrine of pure theism by reason alone was the latest and most difficult achievement of human intellect-how came it to pass that, in a period of semi-barbarism, the Jews acquired. their knowledge of the true God? At the time that they acquired this knowledge the progress of the human mind, even amongst nations far more advanced than they, had not been sufficient to overthrow the most irrational forms of idolatry. The prevalence of this idolatry demonstrates that the belief in one Almighty Governor of all things is not an instinctive and universal principle of our nature. Whence, then, was the pure theism of the Jews derived? If not innate, and if not acquired in the progress of science, it could have been obtained only by a communication from above. The knowledge of the true God, which the Jews possessed in the earliest and rudest times, is in itself an irresistible proof that a revelation was made to man. Q 2 Should Should the view of the subject which we have now ventured to open, and at which we have thus accidentally and briefly glanced, bear the test of careful examination, it may lead to important results. For ourselves, we entertain sanguine expectations of the good which is likely to accrue from the application of the inductive philosophy, as well to revealed as to natural religion. Lord Bacon happily observes, a little philosophy makes men atheists,' -a great deal reconciles them to religion. Human improvement, and human happiness, even in this world, are necessarily and inseparably connected with the developement and diffusion of religious truth. When we deprive man of his immortal character, and of the halo shed around him by his connexion with Omnipotence, and reduce him to a bundle of sensations and ideas, he sinks in our esteem; and the shadowy and unsubstantial form, which glides about for its hour and then passes into nothingness, engages but little of our attention and regard. With the fading dignity of man philanthropy decays, the ardour of benevolence and the glow of sympathy subside. Thus, in a moral sense, while religion is an attracting, irreligion is a repelling, power,—it diminishes our respect for man; what we cease to esteem we cease to love; and as we cease to love we cease to sympathize. In this manner scepticism weakens those feelings of fellowship which bind the human family together, and by multiplying our sym pathies enlarge our existence. 8vo. By ART. IX.-1. Tracts on the Corn Trade and Corn Laws. William Jacob, Esq. F.R.S. 2. Public Economy Concentrated; or a Connected View of Currency, Agriculture, and Manufactures. By an Enquirer into First Principles. Carlisle. 1833. 3. An Enquiry into the Expediency of the Existing Restrictions on the Importation of Foreign Corn; with Observations on the Present Social and Political Prospects of Great Britain. By John Barton. London. 1833. 4. Report from the Select Committee on Agriculture. 1833. 5. Report from the Select Committee on Manufactures, Commerce, and Shipping. 1833. THE HE various opinions which at present exist upon the subject of the Corn Laws may be reduced to these three:-1st, that the present system of protecting the corn-growers by a fluctuating, that is to say, a graduated scale of duties, should continue un changed; changed; or 2dly, that a fixed duty should be substituted for that scale; or, 3dly, that all restrictions on importation should be abrogated, and that free trade in corn proclaimed which the AntiBread-Tax Societies' demand, and which, unless it be speedily and graciously conceded by the obedient legislature, is to be forced from it, vi et armis;-for this is declared to be the alternative by those leaders of public opinion, who in these days have it but too much in their power to bring about the fulfilment of their own predictions. 'It is something,' says the Times,* to set the question astir; for sure we are, that if amendments, as well in the Poor Laws as the Corn Laws, be not made in the form of legislative enactment, discreetly, soberly, but diligently, and without any avoidable procrastination, by the recognized authorities of the state, changes in them will be made in a far different and, indeed, a frightful form,-from necessity, from passion, furiously, improvidently, in spite of authority, and to the subversion of all constituted power, by those who will plead no other justification but that their wants and their sufferings cannot any longer be endured; and that to them no change is imaginable which must not alleviate some acute distress, and lead to some yet unknown enjoyment.' It was upon occasion of the Poor Laws that these remarks were made-laws, the amendment or alteration of which, it is quite certain, will never be attempted by popular violence; but it is upon the Corn question that they are meant to bear. The same journal holds up to indignity what is calls the blind and chimerical warfare of the landholders against the wants of the great body of the nation.' 'What,' it asks, is the exclusion of foreign bread from the British market, but a restraint upon the export of British manufactures, with the collateral merit of throwing hundreds of thousands of native workmen out of employment, and pinching the meals of all the others?' "Tis not so great a cunning as men think To raise the devil; for here's one up already: In favour of the first opinion, that the present system of a fluctuating duty should be continued, there is this fact, that under this system 'the price of wheat for the last five years has been more steady than for any other period of five years since 1797, beyond which time. no official return of accuracy can be produced.''t That the necessaries of life should be maintained (as far as possible) at an equable price, is an object most worth the attention * Thursday, 5th Dec.-Monday, 25th Nov. 1833. of |