shall receive, seek and ye shall find, is the rule in all cases of the kind. Usually it is to be held prayer precedes the communication of good things from above, as the gift of the Holy Spirit. Where there are complaints of unbelief, it is necessary to pray for faith,-of hardness of heart, for a new heart and right spirit,-of attachment to sin, for the infusion into the heart of the antagonistic principle of divine love, of disinclination to prayer, for the spirit of grace and supplication.

Pastor Vinet, in his admirable work entitled Pastoral Theology, has some excellent suggestions to ministers of the gospel as to the way in which they should deport themselves at the death-bed of even the sinner. He exhorts them to pray with and enter into the situation of the mori. bund traveller to eternity. There is something benign and hopeful about his words; and he speaks truly when he says, that even then the soul estranged from God may be reclaimed. Such a scene is deeply afflicting to religious sensibility, but it does not preclude the offers of salvation. Sickness apparently unto death is no more than an accident of the sinner's situation, so far as our calculations are concerned; and if it was appropriate to offer the Saviour to the same party before that event, it is appropriate now, rather affliction and the prospect of removal from the world renders the embassy of mercy doubly congruous. It is true that it is infatuation to delay repentance till the closing scene, and that even where there is an apparent change of heart, we must, on this side the grave, want the evidences of its genuineness, to wit, a godly, righteous, and religious life as opposed to past ungodliness and sin. But essentially regarded as respects the gospel, there is no reason why its efficacy should fail, even in a case so critical. The Saviour's mission comprehends extreme as well as ordinary instances of sin, inasmuch as he came to save to the uttermost, to the very uttermost. Nor need we sinners grudge the return of any soul to God, and its final redemption from the evils we constantly deprecate. The best of men is a debtor to divine grace as well as the worst, though their characters widely differ, and are to be differently estimated. Despair in the dying sinner is greatly to be deplored; but despair in the religious friend may communicate itself to the mind sensitive, jealous, and apprehensive about eventualities,—and with too much reason. Still there is hope; the individual, to use the expressive phraseology of our forefathers, is still on "praying ground and pleading terms with heaven," and this is much,-it may be every thing in the circumstances, perilous though we are to hold them. While health remains prayer may be lawfully encouraged, and prayer, though extorted by affliction, and the expression of terror, may be heard, may be the harbinger of better thoughts than those in which supplication had its origin. Such ideas are different from parading great, and dangerous, and heartless sinners as remarkable saints on account of certain exercises of mind on their deathbed. Biographies of this kind are not only injudicious, but a moral nuisance. And while complacency and exultation may be but physical results, mere animal excitement, or signs of bold bad forwardness and presumption, even the expressions of terror or the thrilling avowals of despair may not be always or too readily interpreted

as decisive against the final acceptance of the stricken and affrighted offender. Nor is it always wisdom or charity to tell all about these horrors in tracts and other publications. Salvation does not uniformly carry assurance along with it, else there would not have been so many saintly mourners walking in darkness and having no light, afflicted and tossed with tempests. The hour of death is fearfully trying, it is next to overwhelming to him whose peace with God is not secured; but it is not absolutely the epoch of reprobation to such a one. Amidst its darkness there may appear gleams of hope, the terrors of the soul may be really symptoms of spiritual life, and in the issues of eternity, while the first may be last, the last may be first.

INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.1

A BOOK on metaphysics by a Professor in one of our own Universities could scarcely have been left altogether unnoticed in our journal-unless the book had been of a very flimsy and common-place character indeed -because the initiatory studies of all our public teaghers and functionaries have for centuries been steeped in this kind of speculation,-and further, because the style of thinking which prevails upon such subjects has always had, and must necessarily have, a most important influence on the style of disquisition which prevails in our pulpits, and in all the offices which have it as their duty to discuss and to enforce the great practical maxims of business and of life.

These we say are considerations that would have led us-notwithstanding the disrepute into which metaphysics have recently fallen in this country-to notice almost any work, not obviously quite unworthy of attention, which comes to us with the name and authority of a Professor, whose especial function it is to imbue the minds of his pupils with principles of a metaphysical kind. But the book now under consideration has claims to our attention of a very novel, and peculiar, and paramount nature. We say at once that it is the most talented and effective work of the kind that has yet proceeded from any of the metaphysical writers of this country-or perhaps of any of the countries of modern times. The simplicity of its fundamental and crowning principle-the strictness of its demonstrations-the richness of its explanatory remarks -the boldness of its style-the directness of its forms of expression--the adroitness with which the author meets and overcomes all the obstacles that beset him in his adventurous course-the perseverance with which he urges forward his great attack upon the citadel of ignorance or error -the slaughter which he makes of opponents that have hitherto kept the field unchallenged or at least unsubdued-and the final triumph with which he retreats from the important but yet simple work-simple at any rate to his powers-which he has accomplished, all justify the cha

1 Institutes of Metaphysic; the Theory of Knowing and Being. By James F. Ferrier, A.B., Oxon, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy, St Andrews. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London.

racter we have ventured to give of the work, and all candid readers must, we think, at once place it at the head of all the speculative or metaphysical treatises which have yet appeared in our own country, or more exclusively, during the cycle of speculation in which it has been our destiny to live.

The author himself is by no means unaware of the excellency or value of his work. Indeed he surpasses all the authors, whose works we have ever met with, in the openness, the piquancy, the indomitable energy, and, what some people would call the absolute disregard of modesty, and of all deference to the established maxims of literary or philosophical intercourse, with which he proclaims the utter worthlessness of the speculations of most of his predecessors, and claims for himself and for his work the merit of perfection in whatever respects the style of his disquisitions, and the value and originality of the views which he opens up. This to us as we doubt not to others-seemed at first to be a very questionable peculiarity of the work, on the score at least of propriety and common decency-whatever it might say for the love which the author entertained for his subject—and the strong sense of duty which weighed with him, in doing all that he could to draw the attention of the public to excellencies or claims which he might think there was some probability of being unknown, simply because they were overlooked by the public, or not pressed with a due urgency on their attention. But upon further consideration we have found these selflaudatory effusions to be rather amusing than offensive,—and while admiring the indisputably gigantic powers of the author as a reasoner and analyst, we are not disappointed to find that he still retains something in his mental structure which brings him down to the level of very ordinary men,—and that as he is so given to flatter himself, he cannot be supposed to be inaccessible to the same soft sawdor when administered by the hands of others.

We at once confess that, previous to the publication of this book, we had entirely misapprehended the intellectual character and official position of our author. We thought of Professor Ferrier, in our ignorance, as one of those quiet and retired teachers, who dealt chiefly in old and stereotyped notions—and who made up a course of lectures which served rather to drug the thinking powers of the pupils, and eventually to give them a distaste for all speculative research, than either to whet their curiosity or to prepare them for entering successfully on their future career, on some of the highest and most alluring tracks of thought in which it is the privilege of the human intellect to range. But instead of this, our St Andrean Professor at once blazes forth upon us, as unquestionably not only one of the most accomplished, so far as knowledge of his subject is concerned, of all the masters who have chosen metaphysics as their theme, but as a thinker and reasoner who is as remarkable for the surpassing power of his intellect as for the completeness of his mental armoury, as a thinker, moreover, who has a perfect assurance of the supremacy of his own powers, and of the importance of the work which they have enabled him to accomplish,-and, finally, as one who firmly believes and explicitly announces that his work will henceforth be

the only acknowledged "Institute of metaphysical instruction," and that he will be the Euclid of speculative science for all coming times.

Now we are not of opinion that the book will really take the place as a "Metaphysical Institute" which the author has claimed for it,—and we entertain this doubt, not only because the work will be canvassed and attacked by able metaphysicians who have been accustomed, and are professionally pledged, to a different style of disquisition and of thought, -but because we think that there are some qualities in it which really unfit it for being the initiatory text-book of metaphysical expounders. But though we doubt as to the work taking the place to which we have now alluded, we are yet confident that it will go far to accomplish another, and perhaps still more important purpose. Our opinion is, that it will infallibly give a new impulse to thought on most of the topics which it has incidentally discussed,-and that whatever opposition it may meet with for a time, it will thus be the means of eventually leading to a better, more enlightened, and more stably founded style of speculative disquisition than any that has characterised our country for a long series of years. This is a far more influential position than that of being merely an acknowledged "Institute" for speculative teaching, either in our lower class-rooms or in the more august halls where such topics are discussed,—and for this issue it is our opinion that this work -notwithstanding any unavoidable imperfections that may attach to itis, in all probability, destined.

Mr Ferrier commences his work with the explicit avowal that metaphysical philosophy, as it at present exists, and has existed for many ages, is a mere mass of confusion and of positive error-a RUDIS INDIGESTAQUE MOLES. It is not merely wanting in arrangement, but posi tively erroneous-it needs not merely to be supplemented, but to be put into the right direction. By this avowal on the part of our author, it is not to be understood, as if he denied that most of the important principles of metaphysical science have revealed themselves in occasional glimpses to the minds of the cultivators of this study, and may be found in incidental passages of their writings, but that these principles never have been firmly and perseveringly laid hold of-never have been reduced to a well ordered and stringently "reasoned" system-never traced to the fundamental principles from which they flowed, nor followed out to the conclusions which, under proper investigation, they necessarily implied. That we are not misstating or exaggerating the opinion of our author on this subject, will be evident from the following quotation :

"It is a matter of general complaint that, although we have plenty of disputations and dissertations on philosophy, we have no philosophy itself. This is perfectly true. People write about it, and about it; but no one has grasped with an unflinching hand the very thing itself. The whole philosophical literature of the world is more like an unwieldly commentary on some text which has perished, or rather has never existed, than like what a philosophy itself should be. Our philosophical treatises are no more philosophy than Eustathius is Homer, or than Malone is Shakespeare. They are mere partial and desultory annotations on some text, on which, unfortunately, no man can lay his hands, because it nowhere exists. Hence the embroilment of speculation; hence the dissatisfaction, even the despair, of

every inquiring mind which turns its attention to metaphysics. There is not now in existence even the shadow of a tribunal to which any point in litigation can be referred. There is not now in existence a single book which lays down with precision and impartiality the Institutes of all metaphysical opinion, and shows the seeds of all speculative controversies. Hence philosophy is not only a war, but it is a war in which none of the combatants understands the grounds either of his own opinion or of that of his adversary; or sees the roots of the side of the question which he is either attacking or defending. The springs by which these disputatious puppets are worked, lie deep out of their own sight. Every doctrine which is either embraced or rejected, is embraced or rejected blindly, and without any insight into its merits; and every blow which is struck, whether for truth or error, is struck ignorantly, and at hap-hazard.

"This description is no exaggeration; it falls short of the truth. It will readily be believed, not perhaps by philosophers themselves, but by all who, without being philosophers, have endeavoured to obtain some acquaintance with the views of those coy custodiers of the truth.”

Again, with respect to Dr Reid's philosophy, which was formerly so much in vogue, and which is again being brought forward under very powerful auspices, our author, in his own free and easy, yet powerful

and telling way, thus expresses himself:

"But Dr Reid, honest man, must not be dealt with too severely. With vastly good intentions, and very excellent abilities for everything except philosophy, he had no speculative genius whatever-positively an anti-speculative turn of mind, which, with a mixture of shrewdness and naïveté altogether incomparable, he was pleased to term 'common sense; thereby proposing as arbiter in the controversies in which he was engaged, an authority which the learned could not well decline, and which the vulgar would very readily defer to. There was good policy in this appeal. The standard of the exact reason did not quite suit him, neither was he willing to be immortalised as the advocate of mere vulgar prejudices; so that he caught adroitly at this middle term, whereby he was enabled, when reason failed him, to take shelter under popular opinion; and when popular opinion went against him, to appeal to the higher evidence of reason. Without renouncing scientific precision when it could be attained, he made friends of the mammon of unphilosophy. What chance had a writer like David Hume, with only one string to his bow, against a man who thus avowed his determination to avail himself, as occasion might require, of the plausibilities of uncritical thinking, and of the refinements of logical reflection? This amphibious method, however, had its disadvantages. At home in the submarine abysses of popular opinion, Dr Reid, in the higher regions of philosophy, was as helpless as a whale in a field of clover. He was out of his proper element. He blamed the atmosphere: the fault lay in his own lungs. Through the gills of ordinary thinking be expected to transpire the pure ether of speculation, and it nearly choked him. His fate ought to be a warning to all men, that in philosophy we cannot serve two mistresses. Our ordinary moods, our habitual opinions, our natural prejudices are not compatible with the verdicts of our speculative reason.

"The truth is, that Dr Reid mistook, or rather reversed, the vocation of philosophy. He supposed that the business of this discipline was, not to correct, but to confirm the contradictory inadvertencies of natural thinking. Accordingly, the main tendency of his labours was to organise the irrational, and to make error systematic. But even in this attempt he has only partially succeeded. His opinions are even more confused than they are fallaci