you strike away the other, and remand us to the ignorance of ancient philosophers, or to the mere speculations of science. Let those who disparage faith, or condescend to speak of it, in comparison with science, in a patronising tone, as if it belonged to some less certain, less important sphere, ask themselves, how, without it, they would arrive at any correct knowledge of the origin of things. Faith makes us to know. It makes us "understand." It is a source of positive knowledge. We use these words in their plain, natural sense. It brings great light to the understanding. Its own source of light is the scriptural, supernatural revelation. Without this it would be no better than a dream, a delusion, or, at the best, the suggestion of a plausible theory; but with God to guide it, it guides the human mind to the acquisition of the highest species of knowledge. The Scriptures not only contain the revelation, which gives light to the understanding, but they seem to put, as we have already seen, the knowledge gained through faith, on much the same footing with that gained through the senses, as to the certainty of it. It certainly fills the mind with the most noble conceptions and ideas: whatever is revealed to us in the Scriptures, that we may be said to understand, through faith. All the great and glorious things contained in them, and not discoverable by the mere light of nature, constitute the knowledge we acquire through faith. Without faith, the Bible makes nothing known to us any more than light discovers to a blind man the objects and scenes among which he is moving. The light to us is in divine revelation; and faith is the instrument, the eye, by which we discern things in that light. To estimate, then, the value of faith, as a means of positive knowledge, we must estimate the value of that revelation on which it rests. Such is that sometimes despised and little understood thing, FAITH; that by which we understand some of the greatest things the men of this world do not understand. It not only "brings distant prospects near," and is thus the confident ground of things hoped for; but it "sets times past in present view," and is in that direction also the demonstration or manifestness of things unseen. It looks backward as well as forward. It places, as it were, the weak mortal, of whom God asks, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?" at his right hand, and permits him to see his work, as it rises out of nothing, and hear his voice, as he speaks to things that are not, and they are. It fills his own understanding, and makes him know, for a great moral purpose, how this world arose out of eternal nothing into being.

But we are as much indebted to faith for our knowledge of the final cause of the creation, as of its first cause. It gives us the same certainty in respect to the one as in respect to the other, as

it is founded on the same revelation. That revelation declares that the world was created not only by Him, but for Him, who is the Lord both of the dead and the living, who was in the beginning with God, a beginning before that spoken of by Moses in the first verse of the Bible, before anything was made that was made. "By him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him, and FOR HIM. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist." Col. i. 16, 17. He is the end as well as the beginning of his works, the Omega as well as the Alpha; and his work of redemption is the end of all his other works. All his works of providence, as well as creation, are subservient to it,-are designed to work out the eternal counsels of sovereign, saving grace. Here, surely, is a province in which science is as blind, if not even more so,--and must be as silent as in the former case. What can it know, or possibly discover, respecting the gracious purposes of God? Faith, in divine revelation, and this faith alone, tells us what the world, and what we were made for. It represents the whole creation, standing as with outstretched neck, waiting, and even groaning and travailing in pain for the longing it hath for some grand event of the future. And what is that event? The manifestation of the sons of God, the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. Redeemed man, in his whole nature-that body made out of the dust of the earth, no less than the soul from the breath of the Almighty-is to be made partaker of immortal life. The hour is coming in the which all that are in their graves shall come forth. It is this "deciphers man." He was not made merely for this short, vain life. That the resurrection is not too great a hope, we have the same power which created the body out of dust, as well as the promise of him who created it, to rest upon. What could be more opposed to the long-received principles of natural reason, than that the worlds were made out of nothing? The same faith that asssures of this, assures us of the resurrection, and places it among the items of our knowledge.

Abridged from the Princeton Review.

IF

ART. VIII. TOLERANCE AND INTOLERANCE.

Funtaught human nature incline strongly to intolerant rigour and attempt to compel agreement or submission, as our judgments become improved, and our minds opened, the more surely shall we begin to learn the first great lesson of liberality-to perceive that men must unavoidably differ; and that this necessity alone, if we seek no higher motive, constitutes a powerful reason for mutual toleration and forbearance; and the more we simplify our view of the plain ground of conviction, the more we shall recognise the distinction between professing and following religious views ourselves, and attempting or wishing to enforce the same on others.

We shall thus more fully appreciate those natural arguments in favour of true liberality of sentiment towards those who differ from us, which arise from the obvious consideration of human infirmity-the great deficiencies we find in our attempts to watch and regulate our own conduct; and thence our utter incompetency to assume the office of judging others. And while we recognise the influence of the natural and benevolent disposition to interest ourselves about the condition, spiritual as well as temporal, of others, which, in a great degree, springs from right feeling, and may be the foundation of charitable offices, we yet learn to guard carefully against the abuse of it, when directed to a presumptuous and censorious judgment upon the religion of others, and misapplied to the setting up ourselves as arbiters of their salvation. Nor would it be denied by any party that, if we turn to the New Testament, the general tenor of its practical precepts is that of kindness and conciliation, and a condemnation of censorious judgment of others.

But such sentiments, it is often contended, must be overruled by the more general and fundamental principles arising out of the nature of the Gospel religion, and which, in fact, make it altogether an exclusive system, and forbid the indulgence of such liberal feelings when the great questions of faith and salvation are concerned. And on such grounds has religious intolerance ever taken its stand in the Christian church. Hence those who claimed spiritual authority have been forward to exercise it in upholding the exclusive dominion of what they pronounced the orthodox creed. Thus the narrowest bigotry was made the highest point of religious duty, and the advocates of the faith abandoned themselves to a vehement zeal, little regulated by discrimination of their own position, and proceeded to condemn, as the enemies of God and his cause, all whom they thought fit to stigmatize as heretics. Nor was this unnatural;

it seemed to follow by a very easy and direct inference from the prescriptive constitution of the church, and was easily supported by an array of texts; and, seconded by the corrupt principles of human nature, soon led to the most flagrant excesses under the name of Christian zeal, and under the apparent sanction of its most imperative obligations. Do not I hate them, O Lord, who hate thee?' they said with the Psalmist; they emulated the avenging wrath of Phineas, so singularly commended because he was zealous for his God,' and fulminated anathemas on their opponents in the tone of inspired oracles.

6

And hence, as soon as power was attained by that dominant party which had begun to set itself up as 'the Church," they were not sparing in the exercise of it to the uttermost in the punishment and persecution even to death of all whom they considered as seceders from the true faith. In vindication of all this was alleged the exclusive nature of the Gospel, and the commission reposed in the heads of the Church. It was excused and recommended on the purest grounds of religious earnestness, and advocated on the plea even of the most exalted beneficence; for though severity and cruelty might be exercised towards the bodies of men, yet it was argued that this was done in the most sincere spirit of charity and for the welfare of their souls; it was only administering a somewhat painful remedy for a spiritual disorder otherwise hopeless.

To bring an erring brother within the pale of the true Church, were it even by compulsory means-to save his soul from death, even with the infliction of bodily suffering, was surely an act of the highest kindness, just as we do not hesitate to inflict the pain of amputating a limb if necessary to preserve life: so was the inquisitorial office of the Church a sort of spiritual surgery, distressing indeed to administer, but requisite for the maintenance of spiritual health and even of existence in a state of grace. For all this a sense of duty is pleaded, and the obligation of upholding the truth. A good motive, indeed, is an excuse very commonly advanced to palliate conduct for which nothing else will avail; but it is in fact no justification at all. A man who steals a loaf to supply a starving family does it from a good motive, but he is not the less a thief.