1. Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte. Eighth edition, pp. 60. 8vo. London.

2. The Nemesis of Faith. By J. A. FROUDE, M. A., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 12mo. London: pp. 227.

3. Popular Christianity, its Transition State and Probable Development. By F. J. FOXTON, B. A.; formerly of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Perpetual Curate of Stoke Prior and Docklow, Herefordshire. 12mo. London: pp. 226.

If, therefore, we were to imitate the quaint- | ness of the old divine, on whose dictum we have been commenting, we should rather compare Reason and Faith to the two trusty spies, "faithful amongst the faithless," who confirmed each other's report of "that good land which flowed with milk and honey,' and to both of whom the promise of a rich inheritance there, was given, and, in due time, amply redeemed. Or, rather, if we might be permitted to pursue the same vein a little further, and throw over our shoulders for a moment that mantle of allegory which none but Bunyan could wear long and successfully, we should represent Reason and Faith as twin-born beings,-the one, in form and features the image of manly beauty, the other, of feminine grace and gentleness; but to each of whom, alas! was allotted a sad privation. While the bright eyes of Reason are full of piercing and restless intelligence, his ear is closed to sound; and while Faith has an ear of exquisite delicacy, on her sightless orbs, as she lifts them toward heaven, the sunbeam plays in vain. Hand in hand the brother and sister, in all mutual love, pursue their way, through a world on which, like ours, day breaks and night falls alternate; by day the eyes of Reason are the guide of Faith, and by night the ear of Faith is the guide of Reason. As is wont with those who labor under these privations respectively, Reason is apt to be eager, impetuous, impatient of that instruction which his infirmity will not permit him readily to apprehend; while Faith, gentle and docile, is ever willing to listen to the voice by which alone truth and wisdom can effectually reach

her.

It has been shown by Butler in the fourth and fifth chapters (Part I.) of his great work, that the entire constitution and condition of man, viewed in relation to the present world alone, and consequently all the analogies derived from that fact in relation to a future world, suggest the conclusion that we are here the subjects of a probationary discipline, or in a course of education for another state of existence. But it has not, perhaps, been sufficiently insisted on, that if in the actual course of that education, of which enlightened obedience to the "law of virtue," as Butler expresses it, or, which is the same thing, to the dictates of supreme wisdom and goodness, is the great end, we give an unchecked ascendency to either ReaSon or Faith, we vitiate the whole process. The chief instrument by which that process is carried on is not Reason alone, or Faith!

alone, but their well-balanced and reciprocal interaction. It is a system of alternate checks and limitations, in which Reason does not supersede Faith, nor Faith encroach on Reason. But our meaning will be more evident when we have made one or two remarks on what are conceived to be their respective provinces.

In the domain of Reason men generally include, 1st, what are called "intuitions;' 2d, "necessary deductions" from them; and 3d, deductions from their own direct "experience;" while in the domain of Faith are ranked all truths and propositions which are received, not without reasons, indeed, but for reasons underived from the intrinsic evidence (whether intuitive or deductive, or from our own experience) of the propositions themselves ;-for reasons (such as credible testimony, for example,) extrinsic to the proper meaning and significance of such propositions: although such reasons, by accumulation and convergency, may be capable of subduing the force of any difficulties or improbabilities, which cannot be demonstrated to involve absolute contradictions.*

by

intuition, we have examples in what are called Of the first kind of truths, or those perceived

"self-evident axioms," and "fundamental laws" or "conditions of thought," which no wise man has ever attempted to prove. Of the second, we have examples in the whole fabric of mathematical science, reared from its basis of axioms and definitions, as well as in every other necessary deduction from admitted premises. The third virtually includes any conclusion in science based on direct experiment, or observation; though the belief of the truth even of Newton's system of the world, when received as Locke says he received and as the generality of men receive it,--without being able to follow the steps by which the great geometer proves his conclusions, may be represented rather as an act of Faith than an act of Reason; as much so as historic and other evidences. The greater part of a belief in the truth of Christianity, founded on its men's knowledge, indeed, even of science,--even the greater part of a scientific man's knowledge of science, based as it is on testimony alone (and which so often compels him to renounce to-day what he considered as more allied to Faith than Reason. It thought certain yesterday),-may be not unjustly may be said, perhaps, that the above classification of the truths received by Reason and Faith respectively is arbitrary; that even as to some of their alleged sources, they are not always clearly distinguishable; that the evidence of experience may in some sort be reduced to testimony,--that of sense; and testimony reduced to experience, that of human veracity under given circumstances; both being founded on the observed uniformity of certain phetruth of this: and we admit it the more willingly, nomena under similar conditions. We admit the as it shows that so inextricably intertwined are the roots both of Reason and Faith in our nature, that

Men often speak, indeed, as if the exercise of faith was excluded from their condition as inhabitants of the present world. But it requires but a very slight consideration to show that the boasted prerogative of reason is here also that of a limited monarch; and that its attempts to make itself absolute can only end in its own dethronement, and, after successive revolutions, in all the anarchy of absolute pyrrhonism.

In receiving important doctrines on the series of analogies as striking as any of those strength of such evidence, and in holding to which Butler has pointed out (and on which them against the perplexities they involve, we heartily wish his comprehensive genius or, what is harder still, against the prejudices had expended a chapter or two), Christianthey oppose, every exercise of an intelligentity, in the demands it makes on both princifaith will, on analysis, be found to consist; ples conjointly, is evidently adapted. its only necessary limit will be proven contradictions in the propositions submitted to it; for, then, no evidence can justify belief, or even render it possible. But no other difficulties, however great, will justify unbelief, where man has all that he can justly demand, -evidence such in its nature as he can deal with, and on which he is accustomed to act in his most important affairs in this world (thus admitting its validity), and such in amount as to render it more likely that the doctrines it substantiates are true, than, from mere ignorance of the mode in which these difficulties can be solved, he can infer them Probabilities," says Bishop Butler, " are to us the very guide of life;" and when the probabilities arise out of evi@dence on which we are competent to pronounce, and the improbabilities merely from our surmises, where we have no evidence to deal with, and perhaps, from the limitation of our capacities, could not deal with it, if we had it, it is not difficult to see what course practical wisdom tells man he ought to pursue; and which he always does pursue, whatever difficulties beset him,-in all cases except one!

to be false. 66

Such is that strict union-that mutual dependence of Reason and Faith-which would seem to be the great law under which the moral school in which we are being educated is conducted. This law is equally, or almost equally, its characteristic, whether we regard man simply in his present condition, or in his present in relation to his future condition, as an inhabitant only of this world, or a candidate for another; and to this law, by a

no definitions that can be framed will completely separate them; none that will not involve many phenomena which may be said to fall under the do

ininion of one as much as of the other. We have been content, for our practical purpose, without any too subtle refinement, to take the line of demarcation which is, perhaps, as obvious as any, and as generally recognized. Few would say that a generalized inference from direct experiment was not matter of reason rather than of faith; though an act of faith is involved in the process; and few would not call confidence in testimony where probabilities were nearly balanced, by the name of faith rather than reason, though an act of reason is involved in that process. We are much more anxious to show their general involution with one another than the points of discrimination between them.

For in the intellectual and moral education of man, considered merely as a citizen of the present world, we see the constant and inseparable union of the two principles, and provision made for their perpetual exercise. He cannot advance a step, indeed, without both. We see faith demanded not only amidst the dependence and ignorance in which childhood and youth are passed; not only in the whole process by which we acquire the imperfect knowledge which is to fit us for being men; but to the very last we may be truly said to believe far more than we know. "Indeed," says Butler, "the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence with which we are obliged to take up in the daily course of life, is scarce to be expressed." Nay, in an intelligible sense, even the "primary truths," or "first principles," or fundamental "laws of thought," or "self-evident maxims," or "intuitions,' or by whatever other names philosophers have been pleased to designate them, which, in a special sense, are the very province of reason, as contradistinguished from "reasoning" or logical deduction, may be said almost as truly to depend on faith as on reason for their reception.* For the only ground for believing them true is that man cannot help so believing them! The same may be said of that great fact, without which the whole world would be at a stand-still-a belief in the uniformity of the phenomena of external nature; that the same sun, for example, which rose yesterday and to-day, will rise again tomorrow. That this cannot be demonstrated,

* Common language seems to indicate this: Since we call that disposition of mind which leads some men to deny the above fundamental truths (or affect to deny them), not by a word which indicates the opposite of reason, but the opposite of faith-Scepticism, Unbelief, Incredulity.

is admitted on all hands; and that it is not | absolutely proved from experience is evident, both from the fact that experience cannot prove any thing future, and from the fact that the uniformity supposed is only accepted as partially and transiently true; the great bulk of mankind, even while they so confidently act upon that uniformity, rejecting the idea of its being an eternal uniformity. Every theist believes that the order of the universe once began to be; and every Christian, and most other men, believe that it will also one day cease to be.

sleep? Is not my essence thought?" "You ought to know your own essence best," all creation will reply. "I am confident," says one, "that I never do cease to think-not even in the soundest sleep." "You do, for a long time, every night of your life," exclaims another, equally confident and equally ignorant. "Where do I exist?" it goes on. "Am I in the brain? Am I in the whole body? Am I anywhere? Am I nowhere ?" "I cannot have any local existence, for I know I am immaterial," says one. "I have a local existence, because I am material," says another. "I have a local existence, though I am not material," says a third. "Are my habitual actions voluntary," it exclaims, "however rapid they become; though I am unconscious of these volitions when they have attained a certain rapidity; or do I become a mere automaton as respects such actions? and therefore an automaton nine times out of ten, when I act at all?" To this query two opposite answers are given by different minds; and by others, perhaps wiser, none at all; while, often, opposite answers are given by the same mind at different times. In like manner has every action, every operation, every emotion of the mind been made the subject of endless doubt and disputation. Surely if, as Soame Jenyns imagined, the infirmities of man, and even graver evils, were permitted in order to afford amusement to superior intelligences, and make the angels laugh, few things could afford them better sport than the perplexities of this child of clay engaged in the study of himself. 66 Alas!" exclaims at last the baffled spirit of this babe in intellect, as he surveys his shattered toys-his broken theories of metaphysics, "I know that I am ; but what I am-where I am-even how I act-not only what is my essence, but what even my mode of operation,-of all this I know nothing; and, boast of reason as I may, all that I think on these points is matter of opinion— or is matter of faith!" He resembles, in fact, nothing so much as a kitten first introduced to its own image in a mirror: she runs to the back of it, she leaps over it, she may be matter modified," says one. "Rath-turns and twists, and jumps and frisks, in all er," says another of the same perplexed spe- directions, in the vain attempt to reach the cies, "matter is thought modified; for what fair illusion; and, at length, turns away in you call matter is but a phenomenon.' weariness from that incomprehensible enigma "Both are independent and totally distinct-the image of herself! substances, mysteriously, inexplicably con- One would imagine-perhaps not untruly joined," says a third. "How they are con--that the Divine Creator had subjected us joined we know no more than the dead. Not so much, perhaps." "Do I ever cease to think," says the mind to itself, even in

But perhaps the most striking example of the helplessness to which man is soon reduced if he relies upon his reason alone, is the spectacle of the issue of his investigations into that which one would imagine he must know most intimately, if he knows anything; and that is, his own nature-his own mind. There is something, to one who reflects long enough upon it, inexpressibly whimsical in the questions which the mind is for ever putting to itself respecting itself; and to which the said mind returns from its dark caverns only an echo. We are apt, when we speculate about the mind, to forget for the moment, that it is at once the querist and the oracle; and to regard it as something out of itself, like a mineral in the hands of the analytic chemist. We cannot fully enter into the absurdities of its condition, except by remembering that it is our own wise selves who so grotesquely bewilder us. The mind, on such occasions, takes itself (if we may so speak) into its own hands, turns itself about as a savage would a watch, or a monkey a letter; interrogates itself, listens to the echo of its own voice, and is obliged, after all, to lay itself down again with a very puzzled expression-and acknowledge that of its very self, itself knows little or nothing! "I am material," exclaims one of these whimsical beings, to whom the heaven-descended "Know thyself" would seem to have been ironically addressed. "No!—immaterial," says another. "I am both material and immaterial," exclaims, perhaps, the very same mind at different times. "" Thought itself

to these difficulties and especially that incomprehensible trilemma,-that there is an union and interaction of two totally distinct