MENTAL SYMMETRY.

BY EDWARD THOMSON, D. D.

FIRST PAPER.)

GREAT is the diversity among human minds; so great that it can not be fully accounted for by education, association, example-any thing, except original differences of mental constitution. These differences are owing, not to the introduction of new elements, but to new combinations; such combinations, too, are as endless as those of articulate sounds in human language. You will rarely meet with a man in whom there is not a tendency to excessive, or defective, or perverted action in some faculty or class of faculties. When an uncultivated mind is neither of great strength nor marked peculiarities, the ordinary intercourse of society and the common duties of life may be sufficient checks to its wanderings; but when a great genius is permitted to educate himself he usually becomes a moral monster. Such a one may have great learning, merit, success, but is rarely capable of just views, of safe and sober judgment. We might show the evils of ill-balanced mind, by tracing its influences either upon our usefulness, our happiness, or our salvation. That I be not tedious, I must limit myself to one of these three. Since the last is the most important, I select that. Let us trace the connection between mental and religious faith. I. The want of mental balance is most frequently seen in the following faculties; namely, faith, attention, abstraction, and imagination.

1. Belief is one of the original powers of the mind, and, like all others, may be conferred in various degrees; generally, however, it is strong in early life; so much so, that we rarely find a child not disposed to indiscriminate faith. Not till frequently deceived do men learn to doubt. As their minds mature, however, they find it necessary to examine the grounds of their opinions, and this process is then a duty; but when they commence it while the intellect is still immature, especially if under the bias of depravity, without the light of experience, and under the influence of infidel or

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sensual associates, they are very likely to form a habit of doubting, which finally ends in contempt of sacred things, if not universal skepticism. Young men should be on their guard against this habit, and especially in these republics, where a feeling of independence is considered so becoming in youth. Very few, perhaps, are aware to how great an extent the power of belief is under the control of habit; they may learn something of it from analogy. What capability is not strengthened by use, and weakened by disuse? That power which can make the conscience either as sensitive as the apple of the eye or as senseless as the cinder, can paralyze or galvanize the faculty of faith.

2. This faculty may be impaired also by an exclusive attention to the exact sciences, which accomplishes the sad results in various ways. It narrows the field of mental vision. How feeble the eye of him who spends life in a dark room, striking at minute points, compared with that of the sailor, accustomed to survey the broad ocean from the mast-head! so powerless is that mental eye which is trained only to accurate discriminations and nice definition, in comparison of one which takes comprehensive views. The great mathematician, when he takes wide surveys of life and character, much more when he approaches that subject which fills both immensity and eternity, may be a little reasoner. The immortal author of Celestial Mechanism-La Place-is an impressive illustration. Illustrious beyond comparison as a professor of mathematics, he was perfectly contemptible as a statesman. In less than six weeks, by his mistakes, as Minister of the Home Department, under the consulship, he forfeited his place. In the language of Napoleon, "His mind was occupied with subtilities, his notions were all problematic, his views were never right, and he carried the spirit of the infinitely little into the administration." No wonder that he had not sufficient breadth of view to scan the Christian evidences. Moreover, mathematical studies weaken faith by familiarizing the mind to indubitable evidence. This inclines us to be dissatisfied with every thing less. Demonstration proceeds by regular steps, inseparably connected, accurately delineated, and leading to

conclusions the contradictories of which are absurd. Moral reasoning advances through devious ways, by steps irregular, independent, and expressed only in ambiguous forms, to propositions the opposites of which imply no absurdity. Hence, he who has long and steadily looked only at abstract ideas and their relations, will be unable to appreciate moral proof, however strong; as he who should spend years gazing upon the glowing fires of Stromboli would have an eye insensible to the soft charms of earth and skies.

3. Faith may be impaired by the habit of disputation. This is neither uncommon nor difficult to be acquired. That energetic exercise of the mind which is provoked by an antagonist is pleasurable, the applause awarded to superior information or intellectual prowess is very agreeable, and the shout of victory is most refreshing to depraved human nature. Moreover, some men are prone to battle as the sparks fly upward. When such have weak muscles and strong minds they fight, like certain animals, head foremost, and, like the ram of prophetic vision, they often push their moral horns with equal facility in opposite points of compass. Imagine a boy of good parts and pugnacious spirit among inferior minds in the district school. He overcomes in debate, one after another, all around him, till, flushed with success and intoxicated with praise, he is carried by his comrades from school-house to school-house, as a game-cock with gaffles is conveyed to the neighboring roosts. At length he is brought to college, and placed in a society which assigns its members, without reference to their convictions, the propositions they are to establish. It is easy to predict the character of mind with which he will go forth into the world. There are facts and arguments on both sides of every moral question. Such a question can only be determined by the mental balance. To use this properly there must be patient observation, careful discrimination, and a steady suspension of the scales; but for these operations a mind under the influence of controversial training is incompetent. The only two questions which any subject admits of are, 1. What is the truth? 2. Is this proposition true? The former is that of the philosopher-it leaves the mind free from improper bias, and trains it to honest inference; the latter is the question of the disputant— it stimulates the pride of the speaker, and fits his mind to run athwart its most solemn convictions, in the eager search for middle terms. I will not say that the office of the disputant is never useful, nor that it may not be safely discharged when it succeeds a process of investigation; but I do affirm, that a controversial spirit, leading the mind, as occasion may require, to undervalue perfect evidence and overrate imperfect; to blend things of different species; to take advantage of the ambiguities of language; to overlook facts important to the issues, and bring in facts irrelevant; to confound the incidental with the essential, the important with the trivial, the accidental with the uni

form; to invert the order of sequences; or to rush rashly to general conclusions, has a tendency, not only to mingle truth and error, but to unsettle in the disputant's own mind the very foundation of the power of belief. Talk as we may about the irresistible force of evidence, we all know that feeling warps the judgment, both directly moving the will to put the intellect in a wrong relation to the subject and withhold or distort the proof which | bears upon it, and indirectly by influencing the train of association and giving tone to the mind. To have a perfect impression, we need both a perfect seal and a wax of proper consistence. If we, at once, mar the seal and harden the wax, what can we expect? The youth who leaves school a practiced debater will, in all probability, not only become a moral porcupine, the annoyance of every company into which he enters, but, by degrees, a thorough-paced infidel. He will be strongly tempted to assail the religion of his fathers, for the sake of always having an opportunity to gratify his propensity for combat and fondness for display; and, by repeatedly distorting the Christian evidences, and assuming a hostile attitude to the Gospel, he will finally become an earnest enemy of the faith.

The case of Chillingworth is an illustration. He would often walk in the college grove and dispute with any scholar he met, on purpose to facilitate and make the way of wrangling common with him. While yet a youth, he produced, by his perpetual disputation on religious subjects, such a skeptical state of mind that he conceived it impossible to arrive at just views of religion. First he is vindicator of the Reformation, the assailant of the Pope; presently he enters the Catholic Church, and becomes the defender of her faith; again he returns to Oxford, and becomes the champion of Protestantism. He dwelt on the borders of absolute skepticism, if we may believe Lord Clarendon, who says Mr. Chillingworth had spent all his younger days in disputation, and had arrived at so great a mastery, that he was inferior to no man in these skirmishes, but had, with his notable perfection in these exercises, contracted such an irresolution and habit of doubting, that by degrees he grew confident of nothing. He was a great disputing engine without an engineer. He had reason enough, as Wood said, to convert the devil, yet not enough to convert himself. This spirit may exist in the Church; foolish questions, and genealogies, and strivings about the law, and doting about questions, and strifes about words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railing, etc.-these are indications of moral cholera.

But skepticism often results from a too great facility of faith. There is a man who always holds the creed of the preacher he last heard. Such were some of old, "driven about by every wind of doctrine; by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." As you ride through the interior, perchance you see behind you

a portly, well-dressed, elderly gentleman, mounted on a bay steed, riding rapidly as if to overtake you. He is soon at your side, making your acquaintance. You perceive by his portmanteau that he is a country doctor, by his countenance that he is a sincere, good-natured old man, and by his conversation that he is a vain, garrulous, bookish, selfmade, but not half-made philosopher. He measures, with his quick black eye, your nose and chin, and describes your character according to Lavater; he surveys your cranium, and pronounces you a singer according to Gall. He inquires your residence, parentage, and pursuit. But, finding it more blessed to give than to receive information, he tells you the names and history of the settlers as you ride along, and, when the village comes to view, he points out who is its richest and who its poorest inhabitant, who keeps the best carriage and who the best piano. He quotes Cicero, Aristotle, Darwin, Hume, Mohammed, and St. Paul. He would that he was worth $10,000! and anon he is glad he is not, for he fears the devil would set him at work. Presently he tells you he does not believe there is any devil, and, finally, that he devotes his leisure moments to fighting the devil and the orthodox clergy. As he turns the corner of the street, he presses you to call. Being delayed a day or two in the village, you inquire into the doctor's history, and learn that at eighteen he was a blacksmith, at twenty a parson, at thirty a millwright, at forty a doctor, at fifty a strolling lecturer on the quadruple subject of temperance and geography, mnemonics and phrenology; that he has, however, seldom had but one occupation at a time, finding almost every year some new path to wealth. In the year 1825 he could be seen, with radiant countenance, at the head of a company of merry youth, in the valley of the Cuyahoga, planting yellow tobacco; in 1835 he was seen, with face beaming with joy, laying off a city in some swamp near the banks of the Maumee; in 1838 he is on the borders of Lake Erie, with golden hopes, planting morus multicaulis and hatching silkworms; in 1840 he is manufacturing beet-sugar in the oak-openings of Michigan; in 1847 he is volunteering for the Mexican war; and in 1849 off for California. In religion he has tried all things, without, however, holding fast to any. In youth he is a Methodist exhorter, thundering, flashing, denouncing, and pounding the pulpit without mercy. Another decade of years, and he stands, with long black robe, on the green banks of some crystal Jordan, with head bathed in rich sunlight, and knees trembling with emotion, while he addresses the multitude that have gathered upon the bridge, and the boys that hang like bunches of grapes from the surrounding trees. When a few gray hairs have found their way to his temple-a Presbyterian elder, he is leading his children up the aisle to be dedicated to the Father of mercies. The next half decade finds him, with broad-brimmed hat and drab coat, sitting in silent meeting, till the proffered hand gives

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token of departure. He soon becomes a Mormon, and then a Millerite; but, ere the decade is half out, he is a boisterous and defiant infidel, madly challenging, in the streets and in the papers, all and sundry, the parsons to debate with him.

Your curiosity prompts you to call upon him, and you find him in a long room, lined with drugs, and books, and apparatus-books rare and illassorted; drugs botanical and mineral, in doses spoonful and infinitesimal; and apparatus to cure you either by wind power, steam power, or water power. On his table lies the Koran, a copy of which he has just procured, and is now reading. He talks so as to give you no opportunity to reply; and to give you a proof of his boldness and skill, he assures you that the last time he was at Church he challenged the successor of the apostles to test his commission by taking a dose of arsenic. You leave him with mingled pity and disgust, fearing that he is a hopeless case; but a year subsequentinquiring after him-you learn that he was put into a state of clairvoyance and heard unutterable words, and since that has been a devoted Christian. Here is a man of several mental vices, the chief of which is a tendency to believe on insufficient evidence. Nor is he raris avis. In classic story we read of one whose body was so light that he was obliged to put lead in his shoes to prevent the wind from blowing him over-fit emblem he of many minds; and such minds, unless very favorably situated, are pretty sure to become skeptical.

II. The want of mental balance is found, in some cases, in the faculty of attention. Our ideas come in troops, and their character depends on fixed laws beyond our control. They gain admittance without asking consent, but depend for entertainment upon the will. Our power over them is twofold. We can place the mind in a region populated with good thoughts; we can dismiss intruders by neglect, and detain desired guests by civility. Attention is an effort to detain a perception in exclusion of others which solicit notice. This faculty is possessed by different persons in various degrees of strength, and in many is so weak as to be unable to direct the mind steadily to any object. Such a one passes life as in a pleasant dream. His mind is on the sofa to receive calls the year round; as the thoughts come and go it seeks neither information nor profit from them, and, its effort being entertainment, its recollections are like images drawn on the bosom of the wave. If all subjects are viewed carelessly, it is impossible that any but the most superficial should be understood. Conviction requires not only proof, but perception. The proof, even of religion, is not so obvious as to force itself upon a mind which gives it but a momentary notice. Though inattentive men may give revelation their assent, they have no basis of conviction to sustain them in the hour of temptation. Some men of this class blaspheme; others "care for none of these things;" others say they try to think, but can not When they would meditate upon divine things,

even on the day of rest in the holy place, or at the hour of stillness, in the retreat of secret prayer, other thoughts rush on them, and they find their minds like the fool's eyes. Many of these persons, being possessed of some good mental powers, when they can be brought to fix their attention, form correct judgments; and, since common topics and temporal interests press upon them constantly, they may be wise in little matters and judicious in worldly concerns, while they are fools in all that is sublime, and neglectful of eternal realities.

This class is numerous. Go into the streets and stores, and you find multitudes who pay attention to things only as they are forced upon them. Because politics, fashion, and trade press themselves on the senses, and mix themselves with the passions, they are politicians, or dandies, or tradesmen; and because religion does not obtrude itself on them they know but little about it; they go to meeting because custom or weariness leads them; they hear of redemption, and grace, and regeneration, and they suppose, because they have heard these terms so often, that they understand them; but when asked to define, they find themselves in the situation of St. Austin defining time, who said, "I understood all about it before I was asked, but now I know nothing of it." They, perhaps, have no objection to religion, and can hear the preacher without offense, or, may be, as one who has a pleasant voice, and plays well on an instrument; but since they are unmindful of his words they are unmoved by them. They are infidels, as the modern Aristophanes was. Mr. Boswell asked Dr. Johnson if Foote was an infidel. "He is," said the Doctor," as a dog is; he never thinks on the subject." This species of infidel may be found at all elevations of society, but particularly at the higher, and especially in that portion of it which has been raised suddenly. Of such it may often be said, "Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them; they send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance; they take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. Therefore they say depart from us: for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him; or what profit should we have if we pray unto him!" Well may the Psalmist reason with such: "Understand, ye brutish and ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see? he that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he correct? he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?" We could forgive the beast were he to receive his food with gratitude, and regard his master without attention; but "the ox knoweth his master, and the ass his master's crib." We might pardon the brute should he murmur in the midst of abundance; but, while "the wild ass brays not in the midst of his grass, and the ox lows not over his fodder," the thoughtless sinner, forgetful of his almighty Benefactor, often utters blasphe

mies over his table. We can forgive the bird that sinks to roost at evening shade, and rises up at morning light, regardless of every thing but present pleasure and present pain-that gives no attention to its origin, interest, or destiny; but, alas! the stork knoweth his appointed time, and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow the time of their coming," while men, endued with reason, and moral sense, and an apprehension of God, and a revelation of his will, can spend a long life absorbed in the petty interests of life, and give no attention to any thing which does not gratify sense, or appetite, or animal passion.

BIRD of the silken wing,
Sing, airy spirit, sing

Thy joyous lay;

While o'er the mountain rim Comes the night, faint and dim, Sing thy delightful hymn

To dying day!

Dear spirit-bird, thy art
Melteth the saddened heart

Sweetly away,

When in the solitude

Of the gray twilight wood,
Of the star-circled wood,

Echoes thy lay!

O, I could dwell in some
Wood, where the city's hum
Never is heard,

Might I there hear the note
Of thy sweet-swelling throat,
And on its music dote

Ever, blithe bird!

In thy air-haunted grove,
Gay-hearted bird of love,

Pleased would I lie;
Under thy waving nest,
There would I take my rest-
There, 'neath thy hanging nest,

Breathe my last sigh!

And in the night of death-
That sad night when the breath
Leaveth its clay-
Musical spirit, then
From its clay prison-den
Would my soul soar, and blend
With thy pure lay!

RECOLLECTIONS OF BISHOP HEDDING.

BY REV. ROBERT M'GONEGAL

In early youth I saw Bishop Hedding. He was passing along the street of Syracuse, N. Y., on a warm Sabbath day, after the close of morning service. His person was robed in a loosely flowing toga, on account of the heat of the day. His rate of movement was rather slow and measured; form quite full and rotund; appearance healthful, majestic, and venerable. His hair was quite gray. The Bishop paid a visit, if memory serves me, to the society in Syracuse, then under the pastorship of Rev. A. D. Peck, who is now deceased-a man of blessed memory, indeed. It was the season after the erection of their stately, new brick church, which was dedicated by the Rev. George Peck, then Principal at Cazenovia, N. Y. It was a great treat to me to see the Bishop of that Church which I had just joined on probation. The impression made by this visit on the Church and congregation in attendance was truly pleasing, and for some time afterward "the Bishop's visit" was the subject of many a pleasant conversation among the brethren. The next time I was favored with seeing the Bishop, he came to the village of Gouverneur, St. Lawrence county, N. Y. None of us knew of the intended visit of the senior Bishop till late in the afternoon of Saturday, some time after it had occurred. At evening prayers the information became general among the students. The Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary was then in successful operation, under the superintendency of Rev. Loren L. Knox, A. M., formerly both graduate and tutor of the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. The Bishop was entertained at the house of Rev. Anson W. Cummings. He was on his way to the next annual session of the Black River conference, where it was his turn to preside.

As soon as the information spread from one to another that this eminent man was in our midst, and that he was to spend the Sabbath, the solicitous inquiry, “Will he preach ?" pervaded the community as generally as the knowledge of his presence. Most of our number had never heard him preach, and but few had ever seen him. As might be expected in such a case, all of us desired exceedingly to hear the Bishop discourse. Before the close of that day we were told, from a reliable source, that we might expect a sermon from the Bishop the next morning service. Our expectations rose to the very highest. We had heard many of our eminent men preach, and, from his relation officially to the Church, expected that he would stand at least head and shoulders above his brethren. "Bishop Hedding preaches the first sermon to-morrow," was soon spread through the whole Seminary.

Sabbath morning came. It was as fine a summer day as we could have desired. The brethren and friends from the country around were present in as

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full numbers as if they had divined who was to preach that morning. The members of the Faculty were all there. Every student was in his place in the house of God. Even the sons and daughters of the members of other Churches, whom we rarely saw among us, were present. The Seminary chapel was filled to its utmost capacity. We all meant to be religious, but I have since had my own doubts whether we had not more of man in our thoughts that Sabbath morning than of God. Sacrilegious reverence of man was not even suspected of a place in our hearts; but we were intently bent on hearing a great man in Israel; and I will conceal nothing of the expectation of hearing something great as well as good. The appearance of a great and good man in our part of the hemisphere was to mark an epoch in our history of some significancy.

Finally the chapel bell ceased to toll. A man, whom we all knew to be the Bishop, arose, and, in a calm, slow, and reverential manner, named and read a hymn, as was evident, from memory, as he did not use his glasses, nor did he look on the page more than twice or thrice from which he seemed to read. The hymn was one of the plainest and most devotional cast. Then the Bishop kneeled down to pray. He immediately seemed to take up a thread of communion with God, which had been interrupted but for a few moments, and carried it on in a mode of address which it is exceedingly difficult to describe. His voice was distinct, but not loud; his sentiment was evangelical and deeply devotional; his verbiage was plain and simple, composed mostly of short and forcible Anglo-Saxon terms; his topics of prayer were few and general; but he bore the hearer into an ocean of feeling. To many that prayer was full of pathos, but to me there was what I have denominated devotional power. It had feeling itself, and it made you feel; but it was further distinguished by authority which, to me, exerted a controlling influence. It was pleading before God, but it was authority and weight to me.

Next came the second hymn, which was to introduce his sermon, and I sought with no little eagerness to catch the first line. This hymn would be an index to his sermon. After the lessons of Scripture, which he read exceedingly well, the good man took up the Hymn-Book, and, without keeping his eye on the page, read, while a tear stood in the deep furrow beneath his eye, in a truly apostolical and touching manner,

"Salvation! O the joyful sound!
What pleasure to our ears!
A sovereign balm for every wound,

A cordial for our fears."

I learned that hymn when quite young, and had often read it, but I saw in it more than I had ever seen before. All my notions of oratorical display and flourish were blotted out in the dash of a moment. I admired the elegant simplicity of all I heard, and was prepared to hear what the Bishop might select for his sermon without forestalling him. I sat at his feet submissive and teachable.