with saying that it is supported by not even a decent show of proof, and rests only on the critic's inability to harmonise the parts of a doctrine that passes quite beyond his range. It is hardly compatible with the rules of honourable literary judgment, for the critic thus to turn his own logical incapacity into a change of baseness and hypocrisy against a great philosopher. Bacon's intellectual position is in truth perfectly intelligible. He totally separated the spheres of science and of religion; and regarded the former only as approachable by the path of Induction, the latter by the flight of Faith. He drew a distinction between the handiwork and the image, of God. Nature was the structure he had made, and like the machine of human contrivance, could reveal nothing of the character, only something of the skill and power, of the author. Man alone is in the likeness of God, and furnishes the type from which the divine nature can be interpreted.* From this point of view he would contemplate the outward universe, without expectation of discovering there the particular thought and sentiment of the Creator: and his aversion to the study of final causes as a part of the philosophy of nature becomes intelligible. Yet is he far from excluding the quest of design in its due place: and qualifies his objection thus :

"Not because those final causes are not true, and worthy to be enquired, being kept within their own province; but because their excursions into the limits of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in that track. For otherwise, keeping their precincts and borders, men are extremely deceived if they think there is an enmity or repugnancy at all between them."+

Our authors have quoted (p. 335) Bacon's critique on final causes to which this passage belongs: but have stopped short of the qualification which restricts his meaning and cancels their authority. This mode of citation, we are sorry to observe, is on other occasions not disdained by them. Thus, in order to support the doctrine of mesmeric prophecy by the sanction of Bacon, they produce, from the Advancement of Learning, the celebrated passage

* Advancement of Learning. Nat. Religion. Vol. II. p. 128. Monta gue's Ed. † Ibid. p. 142.

on "divination," in which, according to the plan of his whole work, he expounds and distributes what has been hitherto thought and done upon this subject, as upon every other which had engaged the human faculties. With "divination" he classes "fascination," and is appealed to by our authors as a believer in both: yet, at the close of his review, he dismisses them with these words: "Deficiences in these knowledges I will report none, other than the general deficience, that it is not known how much of them is verity, and how much vanity"!* Again, Bacon is repeatedly cited as an authority in favour of an unconditional materialism, and against such alleged absurdities as "incorporeal substances."+ Yet the following passage, which perhaps throws most light on his opinion, is withheld:

"The magnetic or attractive energy allows of interposed media without distinction, and, be the medium what it may, the energy is not impeded. But if that energy or action has nothing to do with the interposed body it follows that there is, at an actual time and in an actual place, an energy or natural action subsisting without body; since it subsists neither in the terminal nor in the intermediate bodies. Wherefore magnetic action may serve as an Instance of Divorce in relation to corporeal nature and natural action. To this may be added, by way of corollary, the following important result: that a proof may thus be had, even by the mere philosopher of sense, of the existence of separate and incorporeal entities and substances. For if natural energy and action emanating from a body can exist, at a time and in a place, entirely without body, it is pretty clear that it may originally emanate from an incorporeal substance. For a corporeal nature seems just as much required for supporting and conveying as for exciting or generating natural action."

And the same doctrine presents itself in a form equally irreconcileable with the philosophy of these Letters, when he says: "the body of man, of all other things is of the most compounded mass: the soul on the other side is the simplest of substances, as is well expressed,

'Purumque reliquit

Ethereum sensum atque auraï simplicis ignem.' "§

Notwithstanding their copious parade of Baconian sen

* Advancement of Learning. Nat. Religion. Vol. II. p. 173.

+ Letters, pp. 6. 167 seqq.

Į Novum Organum. Lib. II. Aph. 37.

Advancement of Learning, p. 159. CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 52.

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timents, we venture to affirm, that there is not a characteristic doctrine, moral, religious, scientific, in these Letters, which is not emphatically condemned in the writings of Bacon. Failing to understand what Feuerbach calls the "Dualism of his spiritual nature," in virtue of which his philosophy and his religion co-existed with little admixture, our authors have construed into a vulgar impostor the intellectual Reformer who inaugurated his work with a solemn prayer, that God "would protect and govern this work, both when ascending towards his glory, and descending to the improvement of man." They have degraded into a mere trick of deceit the fine thought by which he elevates religion above science: "To seek heaven and earth in the word of God (whereof it is said, 'heaven and earth shall pass, but my word shall not pass') is to seek temporary things amongst eternal: and as to seek divinity in philosophy is to seek the living amongst the dead; so to seek philosophy in divinity, is to seek the dead amongst the living." Indeed the grand pyramid of Inductive philosophy is not, when raised by these modern hands, the august and solemn it appeared to the first builder's eye: and the warning reproach which fell from him as he sketched its plan, seems to have a melancholy application to this book:

Knowledges are as pyramids, whereof history is the basis. So of Natural Philosophy, the basis is Natural History: the stage next the basis is Physique: the stage next the vertical point is Metaphysique. As for the vertical point, Opus quod operatur Deus a principio usque ad finem,' the summary law of nature, we know not whether man's enquiry can attain unto it. But these three be the true stages of knowledge, and are to them that are depraved no better than the giants' hills :—

'Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam,

Scilicet, atque Ossæ frondosum involvere Olympum :'

But to those which refer all things to the glory of God, they are as the three acclamations, Sancte, sancte, sancte;' holy in the description or dilatation of his works; holy in the connection or concatenation of them; and holy in the union of them in a perpetual and uniform law." 't

* Advancement of Learning, p. 310.

+ Ibid. p. 138.

THE

PROSPECTIVE REVIEW.

No. XXVII.

ART. I.-MORAL LIMITS TO ECONOMIC THEORY AND SOCIALIST COUNTER-THEORY.

1. Lectures on Political Economy.

By Francis William

Newman. London: Chapman. 1851.

2. Lectures on Social Science and the Organization of Labour. By James Hole. London: Chapman. 1851. Art. I.-English

3. Edinburgh Review. January 1851.

Socialism and Communistic Associations.

4. Christian Socialism and its Opponents. A Lecture. By J. M. Ludlow, Esq. London: John W. Parker, West Strand. 1851.

THERE has never been a time in the history of Europe, when men have been at once so painfully conscious as at present, of wide-spread religious, political, and social disorganization, and so fruitlessly eager for renovated organic life. On the continent, alike in religion and politics there is "distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth"- and even in England, though our political institutions stand firm, the Church is shaken to its foundation; and while on one side numbers have streamed forth attracted by the vast and wonderfully tenacious organization of Rome, it is remarkable that others, who could not accept her spirtual terms, are CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 53.

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now casting an eager eye on the capabilities of those great theories of social co-operation, to which the industrial population of Europe looks in the passionate hope that they will prove to be to man a new gospel of salvation. This new division of the English church hopes to glean from these theories, with requisite modifications, the germ of a new ecclesiastical life; to obtain the means by which the long alienated working-class of England may be re-united to the national church, and her too feeble and courtly life renewed from the fresh strength and vast numbers of the labouring orders.

We are far from meaning that this is a mere move on the part of the Christian Socialists to win over the lower classes. This would be impossible in itself; besides, the movement is certainly not a purely clerical one, though it seems to have originated with Mr. Maurice and Mr. Kingsley; and we have much too high a respect for these earnest and able men to imply that they would hold out a mere bait for the working classes, even if they could hope that it would take. Their movement has evidently been a spontaneous and moral necessity of their own minds. But it seems likely enough that the new organic life, the new vital germ apparently offered by the co-operative theories with which Europe is so full, has perhaps unconsciously attracted them by suggesting the means of grafting once more national life into the national church. We think that they have been deceived, and have judged by false analogies in inferring that there is any necessary connection between systematic Socialism and Christian faith. Nor do we think that there is anything of systematic Socialism in the practical measures which they have hitherto brought forward,-measures which meet our warmest sympathy. It is the vague and mistaken principles by which they recommend their measures, and the vast organization which they propose to build up from these small beginnings, that we shall find it necessary to discuss and combat.

We have said that we believe these gentlemen quite mistaken in considering Socialism, as a system, to be vitally connected with Christian faith, or in anticipating any fruitful alliance between the communistic* ideas that now per

*We know that the term Communism is repudiated by the new Socialist party, and fully admit the distinction so ably drawn out by Mr. Ludlow be