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faith; while, in the other case, it results from a clouded, sombrous imagination, apprehensive that the objects are not real, or that, if real, they are not believed, because discerned so darkly." Now, if so, the attendant inefficacy (even were it equal for the time) will be obviously of very different character and augury: the one is the inefficacy of what apparent faith there is, at its very brightest; the other, that of what real faith there is, at its very darkest; the one party may be stationary and unprofitable even amidst the best combination and brightest exhibitions of the fire-works he has kindled;" the other is certainly not more so (it may be hoped not so much so), amidst the heaviest clouds which consciously obscure and make dubious each glimmering constellation of his sky.

Or to adopt another, yet a nearly related figure, there may be seem as much difference between the view of humble faith, dim as it may be, and that of an elated fancy, as between a faint glimpse of the true sun, through or beneath a cloud, and the bright image of a mock sun or parhelion, on a cloud: between the sight of real lakes and palm trees, from a mountain top, caught now and then, and tremblingly, through opening mists and hazy distances, and that of a cloudless mirage, the bright but false apparition of those same welcome objects, gazed on in the desert.

Of this kind, we need not hesitate to conclude, has been the religion or faith of heathens the creed, if it can admit that name, of all mythologies. The pantheon of each idolatry can have been little or nothing else than a spectacle of imagination to its dreaming votaries. Accordingly, they might in turn be powerfully soothed or stimulated by its influence, but still by a splendid reverie, not a sacred reality. They might yield themselves to the illusions slightly or profoundly; but only just as far as the bias of the heart concurred: they could not therefore be checked in evil or impelled to good, even by what was best in it, except so far as some terrors responding to innate convictions of divine justice, were masked under the forms that fancy had embodied. But in those minds whose self-deception, amidst the light of heavenly truth, we have been seeking to illustrate, the gospel itself seems perverted into something like a sublime mythology, and though its holy scenes must be the very contrast of pagan fable, yet the holiest system, if it be but fervidly imagined, and not in some measure wakefully believed, will have little. or no practical and constraining power. It will excite transient feelings, but yet be very inoperative on habitual demeanour.

We know that romance or fictitious tragedy, or a ground-work of historic fact under romantic or tragic embellishment, often produces strong emotions; and

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this even when silently read, without any of the added illusions of the scene: yet its real moral influence, in producing a spirit like that which it depicts as admirable, is I suppose exceedingly small. Biography which is authentic, though comparatively unexciting, practically moves a great deal more; and actions that are believed to have been wrought for our own benefit, which move therefore to gratitude as well as imitation, have a still far greater moral power, a power of combined forces, and both effective.cond ceft tou

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Here let me introduce a thought, which, though rather digressive, should not, as it appears to me, be withholden. It was impressively stated, in a preliminary lecture, by a late eminent Scottish professor of natural philosophy, that the actual physical wonders of creation far transcend the boldest and most hyperbolical imaginings of poetic minds ; "that the reason of Newton and Galileo took a sublimer flight than the fancy of Milton and Ariosto."* That this is quite true, I need only refer you to a few astronomical facts glanced at in subsequent pages of this volume, in order to evince. But it is not less true, and it is quite analogous, that by the moral wonders of Redemption, the loftiest flights of imagi nation are still more exceeded to

Manuscript Notes of Playfair's Natural Philosophy Lecturés.

Those instances of the moral sublime, the pathetic, the heroic, which it is the very province and sphere of poetic invention (of romance and tragedy) to model or depict, are really and infinitely surpassed, by the simply narrated facts of Christ's humiliation, labours, and self-sacrifice. There is indeed, elsewhere, a tinsel of the false sublime, derived from worldly gauds and decoration, from a complexity of device and a strong infusion of earthly feeling, which make the fictions much more attractive to our pride, curiosity, and earthly affections: but in the true sublime, what can approach the facts of the gospel --what specimen of self-abdicating grandeur, of unostentatious fortitude, of romantic and disinterested tenderness, can be once named with the "unvarnished tale" of the unlearned evangelists ?

This strikes me as one strong presumptive proof, that their tale is true; that the history of redemption is authentic. And not merely because it were passing strange, if such writers as those of the four gospels should in their homely fictions have left all poets and inventors far behind, but also, because if their history were false, it would follow that human nature had in other instances exhibited or conceived acts of moral heroism, of which there is no known archetype or anticipation (so to speak) in the divine. The reputed volitions and acts of creatures, and of very imperfect and depraved creatures, such as the

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patriotism of Curtius, the friendship of Pylades or Terentius,* the conjugal devotion of Eleanora,-would have in them a generous self-sacrificing quality, not apparent in any revealed act, nor I think conceivable by us in any unrevealed act of the Creator. My argument does not found itself on the truth of these or other such histories of self-devotement. they all fictions or exaggerations, as some of them probably are, still the moral idea developed in them, and with incomparably more grandeur in the story of our redemption by Christ Jesus, would be a human idea of virtue to which nothing analogous would be known to exist, or known even to be possible, in the acts or counsels of the Perfect Being. It may, I hope, without irreverence, be added, that not even the idea of mere munificence can be realized from the ordinary gifts of God (were they ever so immensely enlarged), in the same sense as when a man bestows "all his goods to feed the poor," or to " redeem his brother;" because the amplest gifts of God's providence can in no wise straiten or impoverish the creative Giver.

If redemption by a Divine Saviour were not a truth, (if scripture were only to be taken in the sense of the "rationalists,") then although power and wisdom would be divinely exemplified in creation, and amazing forbearance in the treatment of sinful

* See this and some similar instances in Valerius Maximus. Exam. Mem. lib. iv. c. 7.