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LOGIC NOT A GUIDE TO TRUTH.

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honesty yesterday, he represents, nay, actually considers, as honesty to-day, and the action in which he would have gloried in the morning, has become to him in the evening an object of disgust, or of shame. The same is the case with reference to his mode of accounting for the spirit of those facts, which urge themselves with such necessity upon him in the outward world. The change of seasons may be a symptom of perishableness, or it may be an evidence, that this world has existed from eternity, and is destined to continue in an everlasting circle of changes to eternity; the existence of the animal may have a purpose of its own, or it may be subject to some other purpose, as, for instance, the service of man ;—and many more hypotheses, of the same kind, which have actually been formed, or might be formed, in natural science-not to mention those causes in which, as in astronomy, owing to the limitation of our powers of inquiry, our knowledge of the facts themselves, rests, in a great measure, on hypothesis.

Wherever we direct our steps, aloof from the ground of physical experiment, all becomes vague and uncertain. A thing may be so, or so, or so, or in a thousand other ways; and this vagueness and uncertainty, so far from being conquered by the power of man's intellectual faculties, is, on the contrary, increasing in proportion to the degree of ingenuity, which is exerted to combat it. It is a great error to think, that the rules and formulas of logic can remedy this evil; it is the error of the vulgar, who have never learned to think otherwise than at random, and who, therefore, whenever they think, are, as the German adage goes, "trying to fix the pole in the blue mist;" but those, who are practically conversant with the laws of thinking, who, with an acute penetration, combine a habit of mind strictly logical, they-and they alone are competent judges-well know, that no rule, no system of logic, ever can do away with the uncertainty, which attaches to man's knowledge in the sphere of invisible things. They know, that the much admired technicalities of logic are

DELUSIVE TENDENCY OF ITS FORMALISM.

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no more than dead wax work imitations of our living faculties, and that by them we are no more farthered on the road to knowledge, than a man, who found his legs useless, for want of ground to walk on, would be by the acquisition of a pair of stilts. In these stilts, however, our schools and universities deal by wholesale and retail, and by the time a youth gets upon ground, on which he might walk, his legs are ruined by the drudgery which they have undergone, in adjusting and readjusting those useless appendages. If this delusion were removed, how much argument, how much vain labour in the field of speculation, as well as in practical life, could be spared! It is a sad spectacle to see men, whose opinions are at variance, endeavouring to convince and to convert each other by strains of logic, not perceiving, that, as long as the one continues to call black, what the other calls white, or, as sometimes happens, red, what the other calls square, their ergos, built upon such premises, must only increase the distance between their opinions, the more correctly they reason.

It is no improvement upon this proceeding, after having driven each other, from conclusion to conclusion, back to their premises, and discovered their contradiction in them, to begin the same game over again, by attempting to prove. those premises on the ground of others, which they now assume, but which are equally contradictory, as those laid down before; nor does it at all tend to bring them to a clearer understanding, that they agree, as sometimes happens, upon calling one and the same thing "green,” whilst perhaps the one connects with the word green, the idea of "bitter,” and the other that of "soft." The vanity and vexatiousness of their endeavours to arrive at truth, or to lead others to it, has sometimes struck my mind with such vivacity, as to make me think, that logic is a device of the devil, who, after having deceived mankind in the beginning, plays hide and seek with them, and has invented this scarecrow of truth, in order that he may lead them by the nose at his own pleasure, and, by engaging them in a vain search,

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METAPHYSICAL INQUIRIES UNPOPULAR.

prevent them, for ever, from finding out their deceiver, or discovering the truth, from which he has caused them to stray. That something like this has been felt by others, is evident from the tendency, which is manifested, both in the religious, and in the not-religious world, to prohibit or condemn every inquiry into the things which are invisible, so that the latter would confine man to a knowledge of the facts of outward nature, misnamed natural philosophy, to which the former argue, that a knowledge of the letter of revelation, falsely termed religion, should be added. An appeal to the spirit, of which the sacred record testifies, isas unacceptable to the religious, as is, to the natural philosopher, any allusion to the living spirit of creation, of whom his facts testify; and, although the one speaks of inspiration, and the other of the eternal laws of nature, yet it is evident, that these are mere dead words, with which they have traditionally learned to interweave their sentences, and of the meaning of which they are entirely ignorant, and must remain so, as long as they persist in making the evidence of the senses, with reference to visible facts, or to the written word, the groundwork of their imaginary knowledge. I know that this proceeding has for its object, to avoid the snares into which both are conscious, that they are liable to fall, when pursuing those inquiries from which they abstain; for although they denominate them differently, and attribute them to different causes, they are both equally aware and equally afraid of them. So far, however, from the enemy's purpose being defeated by their precaution, it is his greatest triumph to bring man thus to worship a brazen serpent; and never is his cunning more gratified, than if he be able to substitute, in the eyes of the blindfolded creature, the facts of nature, and the words of scripture, to that living God, to whom both nature and scripture are intended to lead us.

Hard as these remarks may hit in many quarters, the truth of them will, I am convinced, be admitted by those, who are able to discern spiritual things. But though I

THEIR VAGUENESS ACCOUNTED FOR.

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were entirely unsupported in them by the assent of others, yet I should feel it my duty to make them, because the mistakes, against which they are directed, cut at the very root of all improvement, by leading to systematic selfdeception. For although we may, in matters of speculation, by great contrivance, arrive at a very consistent exclusion of all that is not visible fact, or written letter, it is not possible for us to carry the same system through, in life and practice. Even if there was not, as there actually is, in us, an ever-working power, which, as it is life itself, will not suffer us to stop at the dead fact, or the dead letter, but stimulates us, although, perhaps, unknown to us, to penetrate deeper-even, I say, if there was no such power operating in us, the very circumstances of daily life absolutely demand that we should act—and as certain as it is, that we are compelled to act, so certain is it, that we cannot act upon mere facts, or by the mere letter, but that we must act in some spirit or other, which, wherever the true spirit is not anxiously sought for, will always be a false spirit. Hence it is, that whenever man is betrayed by his weakness, into the worship of some dead idol, be it one of science, or one of creed, his active services are sure to be engaged in the cause of Satan; for with reference to the true and living God alone, worship and service are inseparably united.

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This being the case, it is of the last importance, that we should ascertain the cause of that dangerous freedom, which attaches to the exercise of our moral and intellectual faculties, in the sphere of invisible things, and of the vagueness and uncertainty, in which our knowledge of that sphere is involved. As long as we labour under the mistake, adverted to on a former occasion, the mistake, I mean, of attributing to our faculties an innate power, and an independent action, the facts mentioned will remain enveloped in unfathomable mystery; but if we acknowledge the distinction above made, between the faculties themselves, and the agents, by which they are impelled, the

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DUALISM IN OUR FEELINGS AND IDEAS.

problem is easily solved. It is evident, that, when our faculties are swayed by that evil spirit, which constitutes the corruption of our nature, the image, which our own being presents to us, as well as the reflection, which it gives of other beings, and of the whole world, must be very different from what they are, when our faculties are under the direction of the divine power of life and love; it is evident, that our faculties, when attempting to distinguish mental and moral objects in the darkness of our alienation from God, must receive a very different impression, than when they contemplate those objects in the light of the divine presence, and when they are themselves filled with the rays of that light. Now, as no man, though regenerated by the reception of this light as the life and ruling principle of his soul, is at once made so perfect, that the evil power does not, now and then, bias the exercise of his faculties, so is there none to be found, so absolutely obdurate, that the good power does not, from time to time, produce a re-action against the habitual mode of feeling and of thinking. This accounts for that strange inconsistency, which attaches to the conduct of all men, and which, in by far the greatest number, produces, within the short space of a day, as many changes of the moral state, as there are changes in the weather, during the course of a whole year. It throws light also on the uncertainty of men's opinions on almost every subject. The pertinacity with which they stick to them, and the intolerance with which they defend them, So far from being the consequence of internal conviction, are, on the contrary, marks of that uncertainty, which, the greater it is, the more we are anxious to disguise from ourselves and others, and which arises from the conflict of opposite powers in our soul. Every result of the exercise of our faculties, whilst under the influence of the evil power within us, must, in the nature of things, be vague and uncertain: inasmuch as that power, being false in itself, cannot lead to truth; as upon a foun

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