should have compelled Mr Combe to abide the consequences of such a warfare. It is very obvious, however, that he shrinks from theology, and attempts to take refuge in philosophy. He who would successfully grapple with him must therefore meet him on his own ground, and lash him with his own scourge.

It is with one of his errors only that we are at present concerned. Whether Mr Combe, or his opponents, be right on the other points of controversy, we make no pretence at present to say. We think it bu fair, however, before proceeding to this one point at issue, to acknowledge the very great merit of his book in many important respects. For vigorous and original thought, it occupies a very high eminence, and we hesitate not to affirm that it contains disclosures of the Divine government that do very great credit to their author, both for his deep penetration and his peculiar success, in bringing the fruits of his researches within the comprehension of his numerous readers. Neither do we accuse him of any intentional wish to subvert the faith of any of his readers on any point where he himself is not sincere. While we acknowledge this, it is nevertheless our opinion that his book contains at least one error of a most pernicious kind, and which if followed out in all its legitimate results, would not only go to neutralize all the other excellencies of the work itself, but to carry the most baneful influence, both theoretical and practical, into human society. The error to which we refer is the denial of the efficacy of prayer, apart from the reflex influence it exerts upon the soul. This, as we shall presently see, goes to do more havoc both in theology and philosophy, than at first sight appears. It is an error all the more dangerous that it is joined to a great deal of able discussion and important discovery; at least discovery to a very large proportion of those who read the work. Considering, therefore, the ability of the work, and its extensive circulation among a class of readers who cannot be expected to detect, far less to expose, its fallacy, we feel ourselves the more earnestly pressed to the undertaking, and, therefore, without farther preliminary, address ourselves to the task.

Το

The error of Mr. Combe goes on the assumption that either the Deity is not a person, or that, if he is a person, he does not act as a person, which virtually, so far as we are concerned with his government, amounts to the same thing. We do our author no injustice therefore, if we at once impute to him the virtual denial of the personality of Deity. deny the personality of Deity is equivalent to the denial of Deity altogether; and thus we have Mr. Combe, though perhaps he did not foresee such consequences to follow from his assumptions, avowing a doctrine, which to all intents and purposes, is absolute Atheism.

The consideration of these positions leads us irresistibly into a consideration, of the abstract question of personality. This is rendered necessary by the very imperfect manner in which philosophers have treated the question, if indeed it can be said that they have treated it at all. The kindred question of personal identity seems to have abstracted their attention from it. It can scarcely be said that a distinct or definite opinion exists as to what personality really is. Paley, who is peculiarly happy in his mode of stating the present question at issue between Mr Combe

Locke,

and us, is, strange to say, so vague in regard to what personality is, that it is quite evident he had not a definite notion of it in his own mind, when he attempted to define it. Speaking of "nature," and principle, as terms in the mouths of some who use them philosophically, "they seem," says he, "to be intended to admit and express an efficacy, but to exclude and to deny a personal agent." Now this is the real doctrine of our opponents, and is a concise but correct account of almost all the modern Atheism of any note throughout Europe. The discoveries of natural philosophy have driven it to this. But when Paley, with a view to expose this fallacy, lays down what is personality, he is certainly peculiarly unfortunate. Now," says he, "that which can contrive, which can design, must be a person," and farther on, he says "the seat of intellect is a person," all which go to show that he regarded intelligence as personality; a position which, without any danger to his own fortress, the enemy might readily grant us. whose account of it has been so deservedly attacked, defines a person to be "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places, which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it. This definition has been deservedly rejected, as involving the most absurd and ridiculous consequences. Butler, who finds fault with it as bad, scarcely gives anything better in its stead. Leibnitz and M. Cousin have both treated of the same subject, but in a manner that appears almost equally unsatisfactory. The latter of these, M. Cousin, however, appears to have the right notion of personality, though by him it is not adequately explained or defined. Perhaps the account of it nearest the truth, is that by John Sergeant, one of the first critics on Locke. All, however, so far as we have been able to trace them, appear to err in this, that they make intelligence an essential of personality. Intelligence appears to be a constant attribute of personality, at least we are not acquainted with any instance of a person not having it. It does not however form any essential of it. Neither is consciousness an essential of personality, but it is the essential condition under which personality is revealed to us.

Personality consists in the Causality of Volition.-This is what constitutes the man. The man is only another name for the will. The man or the will is the person. Wherever there is volition there is a person. There is volition throughout nature, in as much as there is power in constant exercise, a power beyond and above the power of man. This exercise of power is the volition of a person, and that person is God. This volition is his law. And it is here that we conceive Mr. Combe has gone wrong, and he has done so because all other philosophers who have preceded him have gone wrong on the same point. It appears that with all his depth of thought he has not had the penetration to see this very important distinction. There is a wide difference between the fact of an exercise of a power, and the manner of an exercise of power. The ipso de facto and the ipso de modo. If we can ascertain that there is volition at all, no matter how short the volition flows towards this or that specific thing, it is still law so long as it flows. Uniformity in the

mode of its flow neither establishes nor invalidates it as a fact, and consequently uniformity in the laws of nature, which is only another phrase for the volition of Deity, in no way affects the fact of law. The law may be promulgated one way to-day, and another to-morrow, still so long as the Deity wills or acts there is law. Whether there be ten thousand subordinate agents, or whether the Deity acts immediately, is the same so far as our argument goes, for if these subordinate agents act for Deity, they do so only by a power delegated in them, and this power is of God. The hypothesis of Des Cartes as to occasional causes, and that of Leibnitz as to a pre-established harmony, are on this ground not only of no use, but are really unnecessary to be postulated.

It will now appear what use we make of these accounts of law and personality, into the abstract of which we have been so reluctantly compelled to enter. Mr. Combe and his school would have us to believe, that when a miracle is wrought there is according to the notion of some old divines, a suspension of the laws of nature. Now, we say there is no warrant, and no proof for any such assertion. The event, by Mr. Combe called a miracle, but which we are more disposed to call a sign or wonder, by no means necessarily supposes the suspension of any law. Those events that we see every day occurring, are only instances in which the Deity wills in the ordinary mode of his procedure. But there is no intimation made to us that he shall not will differently at any particular time. Nor is it intimated to us that he shall not interpolate among those volitions so flowing from him, certain new volitions either for a shorter or longer period.

What then is the meaning of Mr Combe and his friends, when they speak of laws apart from a lawgiver whose volitions they are, or of supernatural power being wielded by mere men in Old Testament times, which has not descended to those of the New? If the language have the appearance of meaning, for in reality it has none, it amounts to this, that there is a set of blind causeless principles, according to which events must by fatal necessity take place. Away with such insult; away with such blasphemy! If Mr. Combe can point to a single spot in the universe, where there is law apart from a lawgiver, of whom it is the volition, we would seriously advise him to an expedition in search of such a spot, and there to set up an empire in name of his Atheistic majesty, for there he may be assured that he will find no PERSON to molest his reign, and consequently if there is no PERSON, law will be an empty sound, a shadow without a substance, a talk without a reality. If a piece of cool unblushing impudence deserve the name of authorship, he may take to his favoured kingdom along with him, the author of "The Vestiges of Creation." To talk of law without a law-giver and law-upholder, is to talk of a nonentity. Possibly Mr. Combe has been seduced into his false position by the notions prevalent in the legal profession, that the laws are on the statute-book. If so, we would beg to inform him that the statute-book has no laws upon it. It has on it the exponents of the laws. The laws themselves are the volitions of the legislature, and are embodied in the officer who carries them out.

From these observations and principles laid down, it will be obvious

that Mr. Combe has formed a very incorrect idea of law, as indeed is general at the present day. Before proceeding to establish our position in opposition to Mr. Combe, that we are taught to expect an efficacy in prayer, apart from and beyond the reflex influence on our own souls, it may be right to advert briefly to some of the absurd consequences and monstrous conclusions to which his position, if granted, would finally lead.

In the first place, on our author's own principle, all the natural laws are beyond the power of man to control or alter by prayer. The laws of the human soul are natural laws, and, therefore, can no more than any other natural laws be altered by prayer, and, therefore, the reflex action on the soul is as great a failure as a change on the laws of the external world, and hence Mr Combe's principle is suicidal. It is felo de se.

In the second place, allowing that it could have the influence on the soul, but that no other being is moved by it, then it follows that man has a control over certain natural laws, though God has not, and, consequently, that man is the only being that can affect or control the natural laws. But if he is thus able to control natural laws, and no other being can do so, then he is the only being who can control law; he is, therefore, above all law; he requires not to obey any law; for he can control and alter them when he will, to suit his purpose.

A third result, nearly equally humbling to our adversary, would be the utility of idol worship. If a mere reflex influence be all that is sought, then the idolater obtains this when bowing before the wood and stone. A most important action takes place in his soul, and if he can but invest his idol with the proper attributes, all will be equally well with the hopes of prayer entertained by Mr Combe.

Another consequence from such a doctrine would be the ceasing of prayer altogether. If an action on the soul by its own exercise is all, then men may meditate themselves into such a frame of mind. No person, moreover, would ever think of asking the thing in prayer which at the same time he really believed could not in the nature of things ever be given. It implies a contradiction to make any such attempt.

These are some of the evils that would result to men by the adoption of our author's creed, and if he is himself a believer in it, we should not hesitate to predicate, the natural laws being our authority, that of some of them he is a partaker.

In his reply to Mr Kennedy, says Mr Combe, "If he (Mr K.) will adduce a sufficient number of well-authenticated instances of men in our day bringing rain, or sunshine, or removing the potato blight, or staying fever, or accomplishing any similar physical result, by means of prayer, without bringing into operation by natural means the natural causes of these results, we shall abandon all belief in the natural laws, and renounce at once all the prevalent errors' of Mr Combe's Constitution of Man."

In reply to this, we say we are not bound to adduce any such thing as Mr Combe requires. It is one thing for such changes to have been effected in the way mentioned, and quite another thing for us to be in

possession of a record to this effect. But can Mr Combe say that such results have not taken place in the mode specified? If he can, let him produce his proof. To say the least of it, we have as good reason to say they have, as he has to say they have not, for we have shown that any refuge that he might fancy himself to have in the natural laws, is only a "refuge of lies." There is nothing to prevent the Deity willing at any given time that a certain special and specific thing shall take place, more than to will the certain course of things to take place as they now exist in nature.

His next sentence is to the effect of admitting miracles in the Old and New Testament times, but denying them at the present. This notion is far from being peculiar to Mr Combe. The greater portion of Christians hold the same thing, and hence he turns their own doctrine most dexterously on themselves. But we ask, who told him that there are no miracles now? What proof has he, or what proof has any Christian that the age of miracles has ceased? They have none. It does not fol

low that because God has ceased to give us a written record of miracles, that he has also ceased to work them. The two things are indeed widely different. Mr Combe has borrowed his notion of this probably from the old wives, and the generality of ministers, who, in this respect, are no better; and hence the cry that the age of miracles has ceased.

The whole pleading of our opponent, therefore, both against miracles in the present day, in contrast with the Old and New Testament times, and also of their impossibility, as being violations of the natural laws, or inconsistent with them, is false, and amounts to nothing more than silly quibbling and ingenious sophistry.

We hold, however, so far with Mr Combe, that much, very much of the answer to prayer consists in the reflex action which takes place in the soul, only with this difference, however, that the laws according to which these results follow, are the revelations of Deity in the human soul no less than in the external world. It would indeed be well that men would but reflect seriously on this important truth. We are not to go to God in prayer vainly supposing that we are to obtain from him as a special gift what we can obtain by the use of our own faculties. While there is a limit to the doctrine of the natural laws as pled for by Mr Combe, it is no less a truth that there is a limit to the opposite extreme of trying to get everything we wish by special application. In this latter respect there is a double limit. The one is admirably noticed in the Memorabilia of Socrates by Xenophon, and we shall give it in his own words. It is as follows:— Τούς δὲ μηδὲν τῶν τοιούτων οἰομένους εἶναι δαιμόνιον, ἀλλὰ πάντα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης γνώμης δαιμονῶν ἔφη· δαιμονᾶν δὲ καὶ τοὺς μαντευομένους ἃ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοὶ μαθοῦσι διακρίνειν, οἷον εἴ τις επερωτη· "Those who supposed that none of such results depended upon Heaven, but all on human intellect, he said, were mad; and mad also were they who consulted oracles regarding subjects which God had granted men to know by human faculties." This is a most momentous truth expatiated on by the Heathen sage with great beauty, but it is no more than is implied in that passage of sacred writ: "Because that which may be known of God, is manifest in them."