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The Reviewer.

True Strength: a Sermon to Young Men. Second Thousand. By the Rev. JAMES DODDS, Dunbar, N.B. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co.

SERMONS to young men have somewhat fallen out of vogue, without, as we think, good reason. This sermon was preached in Boston Free Church, Dunse, at the request of the Young Men's Christian Association of that Berwickshire town. It is published (price threepence) at their request, and, we believe, for their benefit, pecuniarily as well as spiritually. The text is peculiarly appro priate, 1 John ii. 13, and the handling of it, for its purpose, is admi rable. It is more hortatory than expository, and abounds in good, plain, strong, well-stated matter, of which the following is a sum mary:

"Be strong, not in your own strength, but in the strength of God; be strong through faith in Christ your Saviour; be intelligent readers and prayerful students of the word of God; seek to have that word abiding in your hearts as an element of life and power, as a weapon of war, as a means of victory. Then, in the strength of faith and by the sword of the Spirit, resist temptation, overcome the wicked one, crucify the flesh, rise above the world, and be more than conquerors through Him that loved you."

The Analogy of Thought and Nature Investigated. By EDWARD VANSITTART NEALE, M.A. London: Williams and Norgate.

THIS is an important book, full of careful thought, and the result of extensive and well-mastered reading. It consists of three parts, of which the first contains speculations on "the law of thought;" the second supplies a concise "history of thought;" and the third treats of "the divination of thought," in the sense of the rising of thought to a conception of the Divine Being, not in the sense of intuitive sagacity and foreseeing guesswork or prophecy. In the introductory chapter the author maintains that "there is a law of thought, a law brought to light by Hegel." "The characteristics of thought," we learn in Chap. II., "are twofold: the first constructtive, by which we present to ourselves objects of thought composed of different parts; the second analytical, by which we dissect these objects or their parts, and contemplate the results of our dissection in their mutual relations, for the purpose of tracing out the bond or principle of union existing among them." "The conditions of thought" are given, in Chap. III., as space and time. "Time and space are, in truth, the two forms of the separating action of thought, the thought of space arising when the parts separated are conceived to be simultaneously co-existent; the thought of time,

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Hence each is

when they are conceived to exist successively. involved in the other." In Chap. IV., the development of thought" is given as threefold, viz., Relations of-1, Co-existence; 2, Succession; 3, The union of both, resulting in ideas of reality, causality, and individuality. "The process of judgment" is explained, in Chap. V., as consisting of sensation and perception, and as forming a fourfold series,-i. Qualitative; ii. Quantitative; iii. Inductive; iv. Necessary. Chap. VI., on "Inductive thought," shows how "syllogisms form three groups,-i. The syllogisms of perception; ii. The syllogisms of induction; iii. The syllogisms of necessity, corresponding to the last three groups of judgments, and constituting together the process of inductive thought." The character of deductive thought" is traced, in Chap. VII., through the ideas of design, change, and will, till at last the law of thought is evolved as follows, viz.:-“: The action of thought consists in producing a unity of subject and object through a perpetual process, wherein the subject continually distinguishes itself from itself to form its own object, setting itself over against itself as the other of itself, in order to use this other as the means of its own realization. This is the Law of Thought."

Part Second goes on to explain the successions in which "thought leaped out to wed with thought." It is impossible to supply the essence of that which is an essence in its utmost condensation.

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Chap. VIII. reviews " Greek Philosophy," from Thales to Proclus -a space of a thousand years-in ten pages, as one revolution of thought, one great year of philosophic speculation." Chap. IX., "Modern Philosophy," proceeds from Boethius to Hegel and Schoppenhauer, giving great prominence to the German hierarch of logical deduction, Hegel (whose disciple the author is), and his successors. In Chap. X. "the Baconian Philosophy" is estimated more fully and apart; and the influence of his system is traced to the present day through the chief thinkers of Britain and France. In Part Third the author says, in Chap. XI., on "The Interpretation of Nature,"

"Our investigation has brought us to the conclusion that the faculty of thought, of which we are conscious, has a law of action, whence it may be possible to compare the 'me' of our consciousness with the 'not me' of Nature.

"We establish the existence of this law on three grounds:

"I. Because, by means of it we can assign an intelligible meaning and logical connection to certain thoughts, which have left their impress on all cultivated languages, and which have this peculiar character,-that while we are conscious of their presence every where, we can nowhere catch hold of them; that they cannot be got rid of, and yet, when questioned, seem to melt into nothing—a character suitable to thoughts expressing the action of thoughts, and to no other kind of thoughts.

"II. Because we find these same thoughts, in the same order, forming the characteristics of a double series of systems of thought, extending over a period of two thousand five hundred years, through which men have attempted to account for the universe upon two opposite assumptions-1st. That the true reality is a physical being; 2nd. That the true reality is a spiritual being.

"III. Because the results of this double series of systematic efforts is totally unintelligible if it be not referrible to the secret operation of a law of thought pervading them."

Chap. XII. treats of "Inorganic Being;" XIII., of "Organized Being" XIV., of XIV., of "Intelligent Being" XV., of "The Divine Being," all ably and interestingly. In the last noted chapter the following antinomies are considered, viz. :

"PRO.

"Ist. That man has an innate idea of an all-perfect Being, the source of all existence.

"2nd. That Nature is so full of marks of design; and that this implies a Designer, whose wisdom and goodness may be gathered from His works.

"3rd. That man aspires after perfect beauty, harmony, truth, justice, goodness; and that this aspiration implies a Being of perfect moral beauty, harmony, wisdom, justice, and goodness, from whom it proceeds and to whom it is directed, and who must be distinct from Nature, because Nature is imperfect."

"CON.

"1st. If men had an innate idea of an all-perfect Source of all, they could not have formed such very different conceptions of the character and nature of this Divine Being as they notoriously

have done.

"2nd. The conception of conscious design is alleged to apply only to cases where an intelligent being deals with materials which he does not produce, and to be wholly inapplicable to one from whose will both means and ends arise.

"3rd. Admitting that there would be great force in the argument, from our mental tendencies to the nature of the Source whence those tendencies arise, if the argument were equally applied to every such tendency, it is objected that we are conscious in ourselves of many desires unjust, unloving, untruthful, inharmonious. Are we to ascribe these feelings also to God? Our reason revolts from the conclusion. Yet it lies within the scope of our argument. And to escape from the cogency of our own logic we turn, for the proof of the Divine perfections, to that very Nature whose incompetence to supply conceptions of its author satisfactory to our minds, is the foundation of the argument for the existence of supernatural power, from whom our being is derived."

These matters he replies to by saying that, according to the law of thought, the universe "must, as we have seen, be a struggle of mights." "We are justified by reason in attributing to God a consciousness distinct from our own consciousness, and involved in His action in creation." "Thus we rescue the thoughts of personality and freedom for our religious faith, without giving up the possibility of science." Thereafter he proceeds to show "that the power displayed in the production of organized beings has a personal character;" and how "we obtain, as the scientific expression for the power manifested in Nature, the conception of a Trinity in Unity," as well as "(1) That the Divine Being always acts by law;

(2) That this law is the utterance of love." "The principle of development" is discussed in Chap. XVI., and is given as that which" binds into a consistent unity of conception the three assumptions of Kant's 'Practical Reason'-God, Freedom, and Immortality." On "The Humility of Science" the author makes a few remarks in Chap. XVII., and he therein maintains "that the more deeply men are penetrated by the conviction of Nature being truly the expression of thought, the work of an intelligence analogous to human intelligence, and a will analogous to the governing will in man, the deeper will be their humility, the more ready will they be to turn to that which is not themselves as their teacher." The conclusion, Chap. XVIII., of the whole matter is, "that the universe is produced by a Being whose essence is Loving Will, and whose manifestion is Realized Thought.'

To these interesting and deeply thoughtful chapters there are subjoined four appendices. 1. On "The Relation of Mathematics to Metaphysics; 2. On "The Order of Connection among Judg. ments and Syllogisms, and the Distinction of Inductive and Deductive Reasoning;" 3. On "The Logic of the Schools;" 4. On "The Principles of Beauty," which are full of excellent matter, and which hold in themselves the elements of a fresh and useful system of logic.

The pains we have taken to supply an analysis-inadequate though it be of this work from a vigorous thinker will, we hope, in some measure suggest the importance we attach to it, and the value we put upon it. We have cared less to talk about it than to show what it actually is and advocates; and we believe that that is enough for our readers to know to make them desire a farther acquaintance with its contents.

At the same time it is fair to remark, that though the thinking in the book is decidedly of an Hegelian cast, it is free from most of the faults of that special school, and keeps remarkably clear of most of the objections noted as applicable to the peculiar logic of that great thinker, by the author of the article on the Life and Opinions of that notable founder of a new school of thinkers, in the British Controver sialist for May, 1862, p. 333. To attempt to matur eand Christianize the thought of an epoch and a school is daring. Yet in this daring the author is not presumptuous, for he has the power within himo working out great results in philosophy. It is, undoubtedly, matter worthy of note that, in this book, the ideas on which Strauss, Feuerbach, and Renan ground their criticism against the gospel story, are here used to form the foundation of a system which may bulwark Christianity, at the same time that it claims for man the utmost freedom of thought, and does not depart "from that method of research, founded upon the examination of ascertainable facts, to which Bacon gave celebrity as a theory, and which the history of modern science has proved to be the only sure road to truth."

The Topic.

ARE COURTS-MARTIAL IN HARMONY WITH THE AGE?