when our statesmen shall devise more ready and effective remedies than the patching up of abortive colleges; and when the delusion shall be dispelled that would save Ireland by endowing the priesthood of a religion which has ever proved, either openly or secretly, the great antagonist to her welfare!

ART. IV. The Sacraments: an Inquiry into the Nature of the Symbolic Institutions of the Christian Religion, usually called Sacraments. By ROBERT HALLEY, D.D. Part I.: Baptism. London: Jackson and Walford.

THE diversities of human opinions present problems which no metaphysician has solved, and complications of causes and effects which no analysis, however patient and exact, has availed to disentangle. Opinions upon all sorts of subjects, sensible or ideal, real or imaginary, men will form, must form, and, perhaps, ought to form, according as they are obtruded by circumstances, or sought after by a restless curiosity. It is, moreover, essential to opinions that they be free, and, if free, it were Utopian to expect they should be identical. They may be nothing more than the first superficial apprehensions caught by a hasty glance of thought, or they may be the results of diligent, penetrating examination; but to the holders of such opinions, they constitute, for the time being, the ultimate truths which each has ascertained in his own way. These are his opinions. Considering that the faculties of human minds are substantially the same, and subject to the same laws-that the processes of reasoning and conception are the same in all-that the objects of their thought may be, and within given limits must be, identical, or, upon supposition, shall be taken to be such, whence arises that provoking diversity which is perpetually baffling metaphysics and morals in all attempts at explanation, and setting our conclusions at the very antipodes to one another? Contemplated purely as a fact in the philosophy of mind, it becomes deeply interesting, and worthy of far more investigation than it has ever received. Its examination might convince our materialists that there are chambers of imagery, and curious cabinets of the soul, to which they have had no access, and locks upon its secrets for which they have found no key. The principles of mechanism and organism are invoked in vain. The scalpel and the laboratory explain nothing here. Neither analysis nor synthesis can guide us through these interminable labyrinths. No two minds can be taught to work alike. No two brains, however microscopically indistinguishable, will yield the same process of reasoning, form the same conceptions, and

arrive at the same conclusions, under any necessity of laws with which we are acquainted. Yet the diversities cannot be the result of mere accident. They confessedly depend upon external and internal causes, combining in such varied proportions and delicate complexity, working with such subtlety, obscurity, and power, as to defy control, and nonplus all our philosophy. The kaleidoscope supplies their best exponent.

The human mind has been investigated with profound and patient research-its powers and laws have been elucidated-its operations watched by the most careful and sagacious observers; yet the more inexplicable has appeared the fact, that no calculations can be made of its issues, no foresight can certainly predict what conclusions it may come to upon any given subject. The clouds that shall appear to-morrow might as easily be mapped, and the winds as readily foretold. To such an extent does this contingency prevail, that history cannot produce a universal agreement in any one opinion. Of course, we speak not of subjects which rest upon strict demonstration, or exclude diversity of opinion, by not falling within its province. It is, however, of less importance to account, or attempt to account, for this diversity, than, if possible, to profit by it. No one would dream of removing it, though all men would feel flattered and gratified by the prevalence of their own opinions; and many grow angry with their fellows because they do not symbolize with them, forgetting that, in all fairness, they become subject to the same treatment. Even the attempts that are constantly being made to lessen diversity of opinion can scarcely be called hopeful, since opinion provokes counter opinion, principles flourish and decay, philosophy itself is always in a transition state, and uncertainty or change, ebb and flow, are characteristic of all that is assignable to a human origin. This diversity of human opinions has tempted many minds into petulant and absurd extremes. Some have sought refuge from the perplexity in the unmanly resignation of their understandings to an assumed infallibility, which undertakes for individual responsibility upon the surrender of an implicit faith in its decisions; others have revolted at the difficulty of selection, and, through idleness or worldliness, declared decision impossible; while some, advancing a step further, have denied all responsibility, and declared that men's opinions involve nothing of the nature of morality; as if the will exercised no power, and the affections never interfered in processes of thought and reasoning-as if attention, intention, candour, and desire, were placed beyond human control, and every man were conscious that he was made up of pure mechanism, and could convince himself by mere intuition that he possessed no free agency. When these

attempts are made under the profaned names of religion or philosophy, as mere subterfuges either for listlessness or wickedness, they merit the scorn and the execration of mankind. Religion disowns and discountenances the one; philosophy explodes the other. Revelation imposes the duty of individual and precise opinion; philosophy charges its professed pupils with an imperfect induction-a superficial analysis of mind, and a rash conclusion. Look further, she says, or look at home, and you will perceive that you do not, and cannot, practically exempt opinion from responsibility. Nature is too strong for your theories. Its laws execute themselves. Opinions are the seeds of actions, and you cannot, if you would, exempt yourself, or your fellow-men, from the consciousness of responsibility for these. Human nature is indignant at being treated as a piece of machinery. It dashes all your theories to atoms, and laughs to scorn all the superficial sophistry of your pretended science, conscious that the secrets of its heart lie deeper than organization, and are not divulged in the doctrine of developments.

How to treat this diversity of men's opinions, whether to represent it as a good or an evil, a blessing or a curse, or as wholly neither the one nor the other, or, like most other things in this mysterious state of being, a compound of both-whether it is exclusively the result of man's apostasy from God, and loss of the pure truth-or whether, within certain limits, it may be the condition of superior intelligences, and might have obtained among men, if the human intellect had suffered no obscuration—whether the fact of this diversity, mortifying as it often proves to our selflove and love of truth, shall be mourned over or extenuated, condemned or eulogized, may now be left to the humour or the judgment of our readers, provided only we ourselves be allowed to allude to some of those happy and advantageous results, which, if they do not counterbalance the evils, at least greatly mitigate them. We doubt whether, in the end, any considerate reader would wish, at least in this present state, to have this diversity superseded by a perfect agreement.

To conceive of identity and uniformity in any region of nature, appears to us, at least, appalling. In that of mind, it would be an instantaneous stagnation-a universal paralysis of thought, next to an extinction of the intellect. The good but superficial people who would stereotype opinion, can never have contemplated the object of their own desire, in its reflex influence upon the human race. What a catastrophe do they desiderate! What a desert would they produce! Let them allege what they will against the bad passions, wicked prejudices, culpable negligence, and wilful obstinacy, which prevent their own opinions from

prevailing, and give currency to a thousand others, yet, culpable as these qualities are in human nature, they are overruled for incalculable advantages to the race; and were they restrained from their foul play, by some special illumination which might expose their mischiefs, and assert the rights of truth, it does not follow that those who have been foremost in charging them upon their fellow-creatures, would in that day be free from reproach, or find all their conclusions correct. But whoever might gain or lose by such an infallible decision as might set all right, yet, so far as we can at present see, a greater mental disaster could scarcely befall us. The end of our controversies would be the end of our activities. Suppose the identity extended through the universal range of our opinions, and the world of minds sinks at once into a dead level. A perfect plain is neither agreeable to the eye, nor pleasant for travelling, nor healthful for mankind. The rugged mountains and gloomy valleys, the forests and oceans, the deserts and the fruitful fields, though the result of fiery cataclysms and tremendous convulsions of nature, form a much more beautiful, useful, and stimulating arrangement of the earth's surface. The same might be affirmed of every other department of nature. Variety could not be dispensed with. Let any one imagine uniformity. One shape of trees! one pattern for flowers! one model for animals! The thing is revolting. The eye would turn with disgust from such a world, or rest upon it only with an idiot-stare. The very perfection of nature is the combination of unity with variety, in such a way as none but an infinite mind could have conceived, and none but a Divine Artist executed. Here is one view of the mystery of God. His science must have preceded the creation of all those objects which supply ours, and supply it only as we become capable of discovering it in different degrees for ourselves; and then it is not our science, but His, from whose works we learn it, and but for which we never could have learnt it at all. And here is the mystery of interminable variety-the type of His own infinity, settling into unity. It is the harmony of more sounds than music knows, and the attuning of more voices than art ever combined. Variety, then, in nature is the object of original design. Who shall impeach it, or wish it otherwise?

But is this variety in the region of mind, and by consequence in the operations of mind, less useful, less necessary, less compatible with harmony and unity? Let the reader imagine uniformity of judgment actually attained by some process of education, that should have laid the youthful mind on a sort of Procrustes' bed, and made opinions upon any given subject, or upon all, as identical as coins that have passed under the same

die, and dissent as impossible as that adverse forms should proceed from the same mould, and what would become of the spontaneity and the spring of thought? What charm would remain in knowledge, what attraction in science? Life itself would dwindle into mere animalism. There would neither be matter for thought, nor motive to produce it. Genius could furnish no novelty, learning could make no appropriations, and industry could reap no reward. Even if the process that should issue in this uniformity should be long and difficult, requiring the exercise of every power we could command, through tedious years of training, yet if it issued in a uniformity of opinions upon all the subjects to which the training had extended, what would become of the charm of human society, the delights of intellectual intercourse, and the improvement of human nature by the collision of mind with mind? We might as well be petrified into statues, or frozen into icicles. Every man would read in every other man another edition of himself. But who wishes to peruse more than one copy of the same book? Who would care to look upon his fellow-men, if their faces were copies of his own; and still more if their minds and opinions were fac-similes? To meet a companion who could tell us nothing we did not know as well as himself, and to whom we could tell nothing of which he was ignorant-who should see no reason to dissent from any opinion of ours, nor we any to question in him, would produce a stagnation of intellects, a mental deliquium that would make life itself a burden. The shades of a universal night would fall upon us, and all might draw the curtains and retire to rest. What a state of

mind must that be, in which oblivion of ourselves and of all our fellow-beings would prove a relief! It is well ordered that it is not so. A wisdom more profound and anticipative than that which hankers after uniformity, has not only admitted, but ordained, those diversified powers and conditions, which, without necessitating bad passions, have yet overruled them, and made them subservient to the great scheme of human activity and advancement. It is, no doubt, possible to conceive that improvement might go on with less contrariety of opinion, and even that it might be accelerated, if debate could be maintained in a more fraternal and charitable spirit; but it is next to impossible to conceive how mind is to be kept awake without the excitement of opposition, or how it is to rise to maturity and advance towards perfection, without the struggles of controversy and conflicts of opinion. Divest these of their bitterness and their personality, and the struggle for truth would become honourable to all parties. The victor and the vanquished would strive together in amity, would alike deserve the laurel, and would wear it.