prehensive principle. I allude to the instinct of domestic love. This was the best ingredient in the happiness of our first parents in paradise; and the only moral sentiment of which they were susceptible, next to the love and honour they felt for their Maker. Yet, in the domestic circle of a good and happy family, such as we may find numerous examples of in every age, this pure principle of domestic love may be found as perfect as it was, or could be, in paradise, and for the same reasons.

The man and his wife having no separate interests and views, therefore, they love each other "as themselves," thus fulfilling the great precept of Christianity and Benevolence, unconsciously perhaps, yet substantially; and receiving the reward of it in their bosoms. Again, it is beyond all question, that parents love their children "as themselves;" and on the other hand, the return of affection and of respect by the children to their parents, is a moral sentiment of the purest and the highest order. In short, it is because all things are common in a family, that love is the reigning principle of domestic society. And hence it is, that in such a family, and in every family, so far as they are animated by this principle, home has ever been compared to Heaven-" sweet home"!-and alas! for those who have no such home; the world, in all its plenitude, can afford them no compensation for the want. Now, in these respects, we ask what superiority could there be in the family of Adam, in paradise, above such a family as we have mentioned out of it? None, so far as regards the domestic principle of love, for that was common to both; and we shall immediately see, that in certain opposing principles, there was more similarity between them, than is commonly imagined.

SALTCOATS, May, 1832.

W. B.

REVIEW.

The Life of Sir Isaac Newton, by David Brewster, L. L.D., F. R. S. No. 24 of the Family Library.

IT has doubtless, reader, occurred to you to reflect, at least cursorily, on the mighty agencies the human race lives surrounded with the air, capable of being lashed into a fury of power, sufficient to level in the dust the

proudest monuments of human industry and skill-the great wide sea, affording the grandest idea of calm, yet resistless power, that comes within the range of the human mind; and in its mighty rage, smiting every opposing object with destruction, and the heart of man with overwhelming awe. If you allow your imagination to carry you into the bowels of the earth, you there find agents, partly quiescent, partly active, whose giant-strength once tossed the mountains about as a very little thing, hollowed out the ocean's bed, gave to our present earth its form and pressure, and still seem waiting only for the divine command, to rise from their repose, and carry confusion throughout the globe. If you ascend up into the heavens, you behold worlds innumerable, holding their intricate and intersecting courses round a common centre; and ready, were they not restrained by the presiding power of the universe, to bring speedy destruction on our planet and on themselves, by mutual collision.

You behold the great eye and soul of this lower system, sending forth fires, the slightest increase in whose intensity, would burn up all the elements and sources of life on this globe-would dissolve the solid masses which now constitute our security and repose, and cause the firmest mountains, even as the liquid ocean, to pass away like the baseless fabric of a vision. In fact, man is encircled and met on every side, not only without but within him, in the heavens and on the earth, at home and abroad, in himself and in his friends, in his trials and in his comforts, with powers huge, fearful-yes, except controlled by a higher agency, resistless. You have felt your soul misgive, perhaps sink within you, as through the darkness of a winter's night, you made your way unattended, uncheered by a friendly hand or heart, through the howling of a tempest and the intricacy of a forest. The din of the thunder and the spectral glare of the lightning, rolling above your head and darting across your path, as in the shades of evening you pursued an unknown way, to a desired yet a distant haven, moved your bosom, stout though it be, with alternate emotions of terror and awe. But, have you reflected, that the agents whom you then so much dreaded, exist constantly around you; that terrific as may be the scenes you witnessed, they were the mere sport of nature, as compared with the tremendous exhibitions of power, of which, as science well assures us, it is susceptible?

What is a storm, but the waves and the winds in activity? What is the thunderbolt, but the play of an agency that pervades the frame of nature, yes, and the frame of man?

And who is it that lives in the midst of these mighty powers? Man, a feeble creature, surpassed in bodily strength by many a tribe of animals-a mere speck in the immensity of the universe, carrying about in him the elements of his own dissolution; and as though he were all-powerful, defying, by his misconduct, the laws to which he has been made subject.

Notwithstanding our weakness, and the might of the powers amid which we live, the general course of existence is easy and safe. There is a power mightier than they all combined, who watches for our preservation, balancing, restraining, harmonising the movements of the complicated whole, and making all contribute to man's safety and comfort. Of his own spirit, he has placed a portion in the human breast, by which, though weak in body, we become strong by mind, and are enabled, not only to master the fiercest animals that range the desert, but what is more, to convert the gigantic force of the elements into ministers of our will. Still, to the reflecting mind the surprise is great, that order and safety prevail in their actual extent throughout the globe. Could an intelligent being be introduced from another sphere into this world, and see, in order to form some notion of their power, the workings of the elements in their mutual strife, he would unhesitatingly predict sudden destruction to any race of living things that should be subject to their influence. Yet experience fills the breast of all of us with a sense of security. We have gone to and fro on the earth and the water, and returned, not only in safety, but with invigorated health and spirits. We have slept securely in that air which might crush the race, as is the worm trodden under the careless foot of boyhood. And so we feel secure. It is well we should. An insecure world would be no school for the education of the heart and mind. In precautions and expedients for the preservation of the body, the time and energy would be expended, which may now be improved in perfecting the intellect, and training the immortal spirit.

The effect of this tranquillity amid the mighty powers of nature, is seen in every triumph of the human mind in subjecting them to its control, and pre-eminently in

the history of the wondrous discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton. The mind of a creature so fragile as man, placed as in the case of Newton, in a frame which at first seemed too weak to hold long together, and surrounded on all sides by agencies of power tremendous to think on, availing itself of the prevailing regularity and repose of the universe, detected secrets that seemed to have been most studiously and most successfully hidden, by demonstrating, to use the language of the epitaph inscribed on his monument, "the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of the comets, and the tides of the ocean, by making known the different refrangibilities of the rays of light, and the properties of the colours to which they give rise;" and all, or the greater part of this, without the aid of his fellowmortals, or leaving the precincts of a college. On beholding such a triumph, who is not ready to exclaim, "tell me not that the mind of man is mortal, that its origin, nature, and destiny, are the same as the beings he compels to pay him homage. No, man is the eye and soul of this goodly frame, seeing all things, himself unseen by them, and rising superior to the mightiest of their agencies. They are his schoolmasters, his servants, doing his will, and building up the temple of immortality in his bosom." It surely is not easy to believe that the mind of Newton perished with the dissolution of his frame. The heart and the head at once cry out against the supposition; and if one man, then the race, is destined to immortality. It is good to look on such men as Newton. It makes one feel the dignity of one's nature, and cherishes one's hopes, and upholds one's expectations of a never-ending existence. Poor humanity has been sadly abused by system-mongers, but the sight of one such man as Newton, is a refutation of all their depraving calumnies. Let those who have read the divinity of the schools, till they are almost wearied of religion, and ashamed of their alliance with their kind, turn to the great lights and ornaments of our race-Socrates, Milton, Newton, Locke; there they will find refreshment, relief to the tedium of their hearts, the dissipation of their doubts, the extinction of their scepticism. In learning what these excellent of the earth thought, felt, and did, they will learn to thank God with an ancient philosopher-who was in this at least nearer the truth than many professed Christians-to thank God that he has made them men, made them but a little lower than the

angels, crowned them with glory and honour, and put all things in subjection under them; they will glory in their race, feel the sublimity of their vocation in feeling their lofty capabilities, and become great through the consciousness of their ability to be great.

The history of Newton's life seems to have suffered, at the hands of his countrymen, the same fate as did his philosophy at its first promulgation. Through our neglect, the business of describing the one, and expounding and perfecting the other, devolved almost exclusively on foreigners. To whatever cause the neglect of his history may be ascribed, we doubtless owe the neglect (at first) of his philosophy to a Church, that had in its hands the business of education, and which has always seemed desirous of showing its right to be established by remaining fixed, while all the world was in progress around it. While, however, it was reserved for La Place to give its full development to Newton's doctrines; an Englishman, in Dr. Brewster, has vindicated for himself and his country the honour of doing justice to his history. One and an injurious effect of the story of Newton's life having been mostly in the hands of continental philosophers, has been, that a shade has been thrown on not the least illustrious feature of his character. Wondering, as did men of the same nature and spirit at a later period, in reference to Priestley, how a man like Newton could be a religionist, they ventured on slender grounds to assert, that his theolo gical studies were occasioned by an imbecility of mind that unfitted him for severer pursuits. But Dr. Brewster has successfully shown, that the alleged insanity of Newton rests on no solid foundation, and that his mental disaffection never was such as to incapacitate him for profound and vigorous thought. But whatever may have been the nature of his affliction, we think with Dr. Brewster, that "it is fortunate for his reputation, as well as for the interests of Christianity, that we have been able to exhibit the most irrefragable evidence that all the theological writings of Newton were composed in the vigour of his life, and before the crisis of that bodily disorder which is supposed to have affected his reason."

Obliged as we are to Dr. Brewster for the light he has thrown on this important point, and fitted, as we grant he is, to expound the physical discoveries of Newton, we cannot but regret his inability to do justice to his subject in