to fulfil the grand designs of his life. But Smith, with the capacity of a legislator, was quartered on the customs, and the world lost a theory of jurisprudence, that George III. might have an inland revenue officer, and perhaps (?) the Duke of Buccleugh be free from a pensioner. Shortly after he had issued the third edition of "The Wealth of Nations," Dr. Smith's mother died, in 1784. This was a bereavement he felt sorely. In 1787, he was chosen Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, a token of fame than which no other, he says, "could have given me so much real satisfaction." It is traditionally related that he failed in being able to address his students on the installation day.

In 1788, his niece and housekeeper, Miss Douglass, died, and "all that he ever knew of the endearments of a family" life were thus taken away from him. He was now alone, helpless, and sixty five years of age; his friends fading around him, and his own health failing. His only enjoyments were his library-the books in which were few, select, and handsomely bound-and in the conversations of his friends, who were in the habit of dining with him every Sunday, and oftener when convenient. His lonely and sedentary life affected his health, and he became subject to a chronic obstruction of the intestinal canal, which pained him sorely. He bore his ailment with patience, fortitude, and equanimity, sympathized with by friends, and resigned in his own mind. It cannot be doubted that he looked with regret upon the time spent in performing duties which almost any one of a thousand common men might have performed with all but equal skill and accuracy. He regretted “he had done so little. I meant to have done more," he said; "and there are materials in my papers of which I could have made a great deal. But that is now out of the question." Jealous of his literary reputation, and solicitous to free any of his friends and pupils from the charge of plagiarism, he destroyed all his lectures and papers, with the exception of six essays, a few days before his death. He had spent the previous winter in preparing for the press the sixth edition of "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," and the fourth of "The Wealth of Nations," both published in 1789, and had even expressed, in an advertisement prefixed to the former, a last faint hope of being able to accomplish his work on "Jurisprudence." On the sabbath before his death a pretty numerous gathering of his friends had met to sup with him; but finding himself too weak to enjoy their society he left them, and, when retiring, remarked, "I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." In a few days afterwards he died, on 17th July, 1790, exactly three months after Benjamin Franklin, than whom, however, he was seventeen years younger, but whom in many ways he resembled. He bequeathed his library and property to his nephew, D. Douglas, Esq., Advocate, whom he had educated under his own old pupil professor, Millar; and appointed Drs. Hutton and Black his literary executors. They published his six essays,-1st, "The History of Astronomy;" 2nd, "The History of Ancient Physics;" 3rd, "The

History of Ancient Logic and Metaphysics;" 4th, "On the Nature of Imitation ;" 5th, "On English and Italian Verses;" 6th, "The External Senses." The first three were fragments of a great work he had once contemplated,-but subsequently abandoned from its unmanageable width and scope,-upon the principles which direct philosophical inquiries as illustrated in the "History of the Various Sciences," a work since in part accomplished in Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences."

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Dr. Smith lies buried in the Canongate churchyard, in the Scottish metropolis-"Edinborough town"-and Stewart, his biographer, occupies a place not far distant. The pilgrim may easily find the tomb of the father of political economy. All that was earthly of him lies there; but who shall tell where the influences of his intellect are unfelt? Trace but one chronological line of his disciples, and you will gain a faint idea of the power-the epochforming actuality-of his intellect. Millar, Stewart, Say, Horner, Brougham, Malthus, Macintosh, Ricardo, Cobbett, Torrens, Thompson, McCulloch, Mill, Whately, Doubleday, &c. Run over, in thought, only a few of the topics upon which he discourses, e.g., labour, capital, wages, profit, rent, credit, interest, money, price, property, population, production, consumption, metals, merchandises, agriculture, taxation, banking, &c., and you will be able, in some measure and degree, to estimate the variety and extent of knowledge and thought which must have been brought to bear upon these matters to make a useful, popular, and original work upon them. Items of thought-disjunct and one-sided-had, it is true, appeared upon many of these points; special tractates on some of them abounded; but Adam Smith, for the first time, attempted to invade this extensive and difficult field of inquiry with the powers of reason, and made a whole mass of prejudices, errors, mistakes, and impolitic enactments fly from it in vanquished dismay. inaugurated reasonable legislation, based upon a full and proper investigation of the facts, regarding the objects on which the faw was to exert its influence or power. Trace, if you can, the mark he has made on the statute-books of all the countries of Europe; the measures founded on his views; the changes originating in his suggestions; the taxes remitted; the obnoxious laws repealed; the very form and method of thought altered by the active permeation of the public mind with his ideas,-and you may form some notion of the might that lies within a studious mind when it girds itself up to the height of its capacity, and gives its force and power to the elucidation of those questions which affect the happiness of mankind. Triumph upon triumph has proven the validity of Smith's theoretic views. Iniquitous laws have fallen from power; prejudices have crumbled into dusty nothing; customs have been altered, policies changed, and systems inaugurated, and doctrines of potency become dictates of policy, since Smith thought, and because he wrote. He was an epoch man.

S. N.

He

Religion.

IS THE CATHOLIC RULE OF FAITH TRUE?

AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-III.

"There was no time when a visible and speaking authority did not exist, to which submission was due. Before Jesus Christ, that authority, among the Jews, was in the synagogue; when the synagogue was on the point of failing, Jesus Christ himself appeared; when this Divine personage withdrew, He left a Church, and with it His Holy Spirit. Tell me that Jesus Christ once more appears upon earth, teaching, preaching, and working miracles, I want this Church no longer. But if you take her from me, again I must have Jesus Christ in person, speaking, instructing, deciding by miracles, and with an unerring authority. But has He not left, you say, His written Word? He has; a Word holy and adorable; but it is a Word that may be handled and expounded as fancy shall direct; a Word that remains silent under every interpretation. When difficulties and doubts arise, then I must have some external guide that shall solve those difficulties and satisfy my doubts, and that guide must be unerring.”—Bossuet, “Conférence avec M. Claude," p. 129.

THE nature of the Catholic Rule of Faith has been fully entered into by "Ignatius ;" and "Gregory" has pointed out the testimony of the written Word of God to the existence of such an authority in pp. 86 and 87. If due consideration be given, it will be found that many of the passages which he has extracted from Holy Writ cannot possibly apply to any other institution than the Holy Roman Church. But, in doing this, he has by no means exhausted this rich treasury of evidence, for it would seem but meet that the prophets of God, as well as our Lord himself, should dwell much upon the future greatness of that glorious kingdom which He has established upon earth.

Although this article is intended chiefly to draw the attention of the reader to those times which immediately succeeded the apostolic age, yet, in order to render the testimony of the early ages of the Church complete, it will be necessary for me to revert to the period when Christianity was in its infancy.

First, then, I assert that, during the lifetime of the apostle Paul, the Church located in Rome was in possession of the true faith. This is a simple truth, which will be readily admitted. But although simple, it is, at the same time, highly important; because, although simple, it is a truth from which many others necessarily flow. First, I give thanks to my God, through Jesus Christ, for you all, because your faith is spoken of in the whole world," Rom. i. 8. The same apostle writes to the Ephesians of one Lord, one faith, one baptism," Ephes. iv. 5; and to the Corinthians thus, "For in one

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Spirit were we all baptized into one body," 1 Cor. xii. 13. These passages prove that the Christians in Rome, Ephesus, and Corinth were in possession of one common faith. If an individual in one of these cities had taught a single doctrine contrary to, or had denied a single tenet of this one faith which S. Paul preached, he would have been marked out as a heretic, and, in all probability, the advice of this same apostle would have been followed: "A man that is a heretic, after the first admonition avoid." Now, if this be true of an individual, how much more noticeable would have been the departure of an entire local Church from this one true faith. If I, in common with all other Catholics, am in error, the Roman Church must have fallen into heresy. I ask, When? My opponents cannot declare that she fell into her supposed errors all at once. Must there not, then, have been a beginning to her heresy? What heretical tenet was first broached therein ? or, what is still more important, which Bishop of Rome confirmed it? and how was it that the Church, in all other parts of the world, did not protest against it? I believe Protestants do not consider any early writers entitled to be called Fathers of the Church besides those which the Roman Church has ever recognized as such. If they do, can they tell which of them wrote against the Roman Church? If these questions cannot be fairly answered, we see clearly that the Roman Church in the early ages had no accusers, neither churches nor even individuals, save those whose tenets are acknowledged by Protestants themselves to have been of the most horrible description.

But let us look at this matter in a common-sense point of view, and judge which is most probable, that Satan should instigate certain individuals, at different times, to affirm that the Church which Jesus Christ had founded, and the apostles and their successors propagated, was in error; or, that this Church, against which He had declared the gates of hell should not prevail, should really fall into heresy, and even idolatry. The Holy Scriptures declare that in the latter days many shall depart from the faith; and we know, indeed, that this has come to pass; but it gives the lie to the oft-repeated assertion that, for many centuries prior to the Reformation, the whole or nearly the whole of the world lay buried in spiritual darkness, and even damnable idolatry."

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Again, how unreasonable is it for Protestants to refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome in the early ages of the Church, and yet, at the same time, declare that so many errors were palmed upon, to say at least, the majority of Christians in all other places. I have thus shown some of the reasons which induce us to believe that the Roman Church, which possessed the one true faith at the beginning, has not fallen into error, and has, therefore, the true Rule of Faith; but in order to show more clearly the impossibility of its erring without incurring the denunciations of the remainder of the Christian world, we subjoin an illustration.

The reader will imagine all Christians, no matter where located, to act in the following manner :-They are in the habit of meeting

together, at least once a week, to partake of bread and wine, in memory of the sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ. Before partaking, however, he whom they recognize as their minister makes use of certain words, which are indeed the words of the Saviour, when He instituted this memorial. This is simplicity itself; all believe they receive bread and wine, and in substance_nothing more. But an individual residing in England, France, or Italy, no matter which, rises up and makes the astounding declaration that when the minister makes use of the words before mentioned, the bread and wine remain no longer, but that Jesus Christ, by His own power, changes them into His own body and blood, and that He even did the same thing when He instituted the memorial which they are in the habit of commemorating. The most probable notion is, that such a person would be looked upon in the light of a madman, and treated accordingly. If he did obtain any followers, a formal protest, at least, would be everywhere made against such a seeming absurdity. If the Bishop of Rome is supposed to be looked upon as superior in any degree, there can be no question about his decision, it would decidedly be against any doctrine which was novel. If Catholicity be not true, then this supposition becomes a fact; and the Protestant is left to wonder, not only at the absence of a protest, but also to wonder for what motive the whole Christian world, with the exception of a solitary few, should renounce a simple practice for belief in the greatest of mysteries. But while we find no stir made in the Christian world against this and other supposed Romish errors, we find enough about the errors of Valentinus, Marcion, Arius, Nestorius, and a host of others. How is this?

I leave the Protestant reader to answer this satisfactorily, even to his own mind, if he can. The only answer I can give is this:Because all the rejected tenets of those heretics were novel. Hitherto I have merely dwelt upon the absence of any kind of reproof given to the Roman Church by the immediate and subsequent successors of the apostles. Bearing in mind that the undermentioned writers were strenuous opposers of various heresies, I proceed to set before the reader their testimony to the truth and infallibility of the Roman Church.

S. Irenæus was the disciple of S. Polycarp, the angel of the Church of Smyrna, and disciple of S. John the Evangelist. After distinctly proving the descent of doctrine from the apostles, he (S. Irenæus) writes thus :

:

"However, as it would be tedious to enumerate the whole list of successions, I shall confine myself to that of Rome,-the greatest, and most ancient, and most illustrious Church, founded by the glorious apostles Peter and Paul,-receiving from them her doctrine, which was announced to all men, and which, through the succession of her bishops, has come down to us. Thus we confound all those who, through evil designs, or vain glory, or perverseness, teach what they ought not. For to this Church, on account of its superior headship (propter potiorem principalitatem), every other must have recourse,—that is, the faithful of all countries; in which