that Providence makes use of them to bring about the events of the world."

"To this," replied St. Lawrence, "I will willingly address myself, though I believe a man of your class of mind needs not such a preliminary. Are you really disposed to so profound, and therefore jejune a discussion?"

Campbell, who had in fact been all his life long keen on the subject, replied, "I would listen to nothing more willingly. But," added he, "the air bites shrewdly, notwithstanding the sun; and the place, the top of a house, is not over convenient. Sawney, too, over the way, might not be pleased at such a subject being discussed, as it were in his very sight; I therefore propose a more commodious scene of debate."

To this St. Lawrence agreed; and followed his friend to his private room in the lower part of the Castle.

SECTION II.

SECOND CAUSES.

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough hew them as we will."

HAMLET

"I SUPPOSE," said St. Lawrence, after a pause, and they had shut the door," that the Almighty, whom we worship as such, is the Framer and First Cause of all things.'

وو

Campbell nodded assent.-"I only made the observation," added St. Lawrence, " to rid the question of any rubbish of Spinozism or Epicureanism that might stand at the threshold of the subject."

66

"Make yourself perfectly easy," said Campbell, as to that."

"If he caused all things, then," continued St. Lawrence, "it will be equally clear that he knew the properties of all the things he caused; their relations between, their effects upon, one another; and the train of consequences eternally flowing through all time, that would follow from those effects, from their first creation to the present moment, and all moments beyond it."

"Granting omniscience and foreknowledge,” said

Campbell," which I am not disposed to deny, I may readily subscribe to this."

"As a fair consequence to it, then," continued St. Lawrence," you will, perhaps, admit that the Framer, whom I will now call Providence, had some design in such a concatenation, not less, in fact, than the production and direction of the events that arose from them, constituting in reality, the history of the world."

"Go on," said Campbell.

"If this be so, these effects and relations, thus generating one another, and influencing the actions of men, without any visible interference of the original and First Cause, may be justly styled, as we do style them, Second Causes. Pray pardon my methodical formality in obtruding these truisms upon you."

"Method," said Campbell," is the life and soul of an argument, even where the preliminaries are known; you have still, however, to show how the relations and properties of matter can influence the characters and actions of men.'

وو

"That is surely, not difficult," said St. Lawrence," since the whole scene of our actions, the foundation of all our conduct, the motives which exercise our energies, and upon which our intellect, thoughts, and all that prompts feeling, passion, and ambition, depend, arise entirely from created

matter; matter for spirit to work upon, but without which we should have nothing to employ that spirit. When we love, covet, or will a thing, which are acts of the mind, and may therefore be called spiritual, the thing itself must be material, and strike through the senses, or the mind would have no notion of it. Some fanciful metaphysicians indeed have doubted of this, and supported innate, or what they call connate ideas,* but"

"You need not trouble yourself," interrupted Campbell; "we will grant all that."

66 Why indeed," observed St. Lawrence," the notion is merely curious, and we may leave it untouched. To proceed then. Created matter, in all its millions of forms, changes, properties, and relations, being that alone which sets the mind and passions to work, and this exercise of the mind and passions forming the characters, and prompting the actions of men, they at once become the Second Causes of which we are treating; nor are there any created things, however minute, trifling, or apparently useless, that may not by their incessant action upon one another, grow into palpable consequence, in exciting to those motions which influence men's desires, and impel to particular conduct."

*Sherlock, &c.

"I should be glad to see this exemplified," said Campbell.

"Why, take the field which is now lying under a winter fallow on the side of that hill," said St. Lawrence. "You see its ridges laid up to sweeten by the air, and be made crisp by frost, in order the better to be pulverized and cleansed previous to being sown. Take the seed now in the granary, properly aired, regularly turned, and protected from damp, in order to insure its efficacy to produce a crop when sown; but which, if not thus aired and turned, would be spoilt. Take the present state of the elements, (even the storms of last night,) influencing in some measure, though remotely, the future state of them during the growing season, so as to produce a plentiful, or cause a scanty harvest in autumn."

"Well! and then?"

"Why, then, we have the most universal and powerful source of interest to mankind, the supply of food, influencing, as I need not tell you, in a degree, I might almost say, the whole globe. Commerce, politics, war, perhaps revolution; the happiness, virtue, misery, or wickedness of man, are all in a measure affected by the almost imperceptible process of what is now going on in the air, and in the soil; that process depending upon the process of preceding years, one before another, till you arrive at