waters they are called affluents; if out of other waters, effluents. The points at which rivers unite are called confluents and bifurcations. Rivers are of three kinds; viz.-i., fluviatile, falling into another river; ii., lacustrine, debouching into a lake; iii., maritime, discharging their waters into the sea. The length of a river is its course. A delta is the place at which a river, before falling into the sea, divides and ramifies its waters through the land.

In writing on geography in a magazine in which distinctness and precision are so highly and so justly prized, as well as, let us remark, so carefully and critically attended to, we surely shall not have done wrong if we have regarded correct definitions as essential, and have spent some time and labour in aiming at presenting to the reader some clear notions of words too com. monly used with little care. Correct information is more valuable than much information; and if words must be the garment of our thoughts, it is right that they be well fitted to their purpose, and capable of exhibiting clearly the very form and fashion it is of. We have laboured with this intent. How we have succeeded, judge ye.

SECRETS OF COMFORT.-Though sometimes small evils, like invisible insects, inflict pain, and a single hair may stop a vast machine, yet the chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex one, and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones, alas! are let on long leases.-Sharp's Essays.

MATHEMATICS. If a man's wits be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.-Bacon.

BODY AND MIND.-As that body is most strong and healthful which can best support extreme cold and excessive heat in the change of seasons, and that mind the strongest and firmest which can best bear prosperity and adversity, and the change from one to the other, so the virtue of Emilius was eminently seen in that his countenance and carriage were the same, upon the loss of two beloved sons, as when he had achieved his greatest victories and triumphs.—Plutarch.

MENTAL INDOLENCE.-Men reflect little, read negligently, judge with precipitation, and receive opinions exactly as they do money, because they are current.-Rev. R. Fennell.

GENIUS. The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is, that the former anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon. But even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents to him. It is the lapidary that gives value to the diamond, which the peasant has dug up, without knowing its worth.-Abbé Raynal.

Religion.

HAVE WE SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE, APART FROM SCRIPTURE, TO BELIEVE IN THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL?

NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-II.

IN support of the position that reason does not afford sufficient evidence of the immortality of the soul, I offer the following considerations.

By common consent "soul" is now almost universally used to signify mind, spirit, while in scripture it is not; such distinction does not there appear; on the contrary, "soul" there stands for life generally, if not exclusively. Thus we read, "God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and [so] man became a living soul;" i. e., God breathed into Adam, and Adam breathed and lived the breathing completed God's work. See also Isa. xxix. 8, where we read of the empty and the faint "soul.” We know so little of mind or spirit apart from ourselves, that it is most difficult to affirm much concerning it, unless in connection with our material part, the life entire, as it now is. If we ask, Did the soul of Adam exist before he breathed, but, lacking thought, merely awaiting in unconsciousness a signal from, or the will of God to catch the first idea, and begin a ceaseless career? reason cannot tell. That soul or mind which we call our own can give less account of itself than it can of its tangible partner. We do not think the "breath of God" was mind, spirit, or that other or more is meant than that the man lived-that the entire being became active and conscious-the lungs heaved, the blood ran its ample serpentine course, the eyes opened, the ears vibrated, every sense and faculty was awake, memory opened her treasure house, and recorded her first impressions, and the soul or mind, gazing on the material universe, caught the thought I live-that I, however, embracing every physical particle of the man. breathing, the marvellous creation-fearfully and wonderfully made-commenced with the body a joint, and, for a season, an indissoluble career. How, we ask, can that spirit, which is far more minutely acquainted with physical things than with itself, give to itself certain or sufficient evidence of its own immortality? It is said the soul is immaterial, and, therefore, immortal. It is said that man's vast desires tell of the same destiny. But has Addison been able to certify that man's vast desires are all in harmony with God's nature? Did not that moralist find some

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thing in man's soul which neither he nor any man could extirpate? Can reason tell how the hateful portion of the vast desires are to be disentangled from the rest, so as to guarantee the extinction of the one and the continuance of the other? Or, as one is in diametric opposition to God, how the better part can escape annihilation with the other? Are all immaterial things immortal? Is thought material? But who desires an endless retention of ALL thought? May not myriads of thoughts die out when their work is done? Is instinct material ?-but do we concede immortality to the elephant, the horse, the dog, or the inferior creatures having animal life, but scarcely enough to distinguish them from the kingdom of nature next adjoining? Yet God breathed into these! The far famed moralists must go deeper into the mysteries of nature, and bring forth stronger reasons than those drawn from the immateriality of the soul, to give sufficient evidence of any future life. Or say, how, if the first act of mind in man depended on breathing, the last might not also? or that, if the building wherein the soul dwells must be shaken or broken down, the tenant may not be lost in the ruins?

If immateriality proves future continuous being, why does it not prove also a past duration before it joined the body? Is it not rather true that God alone hath (such) immortality? Is it not evidently true that any creature, however formed, material or immaterial, is only a tenant at will? Can reason predict, because of materiality, the necessary decay of suns and stars? She cannot. Her presumption is rather evidence of something we start back from contemplating. She is not so far in the confidence of Deity, and should rather hasten to admit that the duration of all things hangs not on properties or modes of being, but on the will of Him who hangeth the earth upon nothing, and who can make the adamant and the clay, the mole and the dog, as immortal as the man whom he formed of the dust to which the body must soon return.

But say, my opponents, Is a physical organization necessary to our possession of any spiritual existence? I reply, I do not attempt to limit the Creator's power. I believe that God is a spirit, angels are spirits, and that I shall be, in my spiritual power, ere long, detached from my body; but I do not go to reason for my hopes. When we speak of ourselves we include the fingers, the brain, the evanescent thoughts which give a character and bias to spirit; we include the emotional nature which trembles, if I may so speak, from the reception of a telegraphic notice through its physical agents, the ear or the eye:-body and soul are now one being; we know not what we shall be.' The soul, although valueless without thought, is not more a creation with many thoughts than few. Is an idea a thought? soul-mind? To-day I have a new thought. Are thoughts and souls identical, interchangeable terms? When I

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am to be detached from the body, I do in perfect ignorance commit myself unto a faithful Creator. I cannot, in the body, tell aught of the soul apart from it, and I do not attempt to speak of the difference between a created and the uncreated spirit, for that is inexpressible. I only maintain the impotency of reason to fathom the abyss of the future.

In all our inquiries about soul we find our subjection to physical things; but if reason has learned her immortality, let her disclose the source of her knowledge; for if she knows it from herself, the truth cannot be confined to any age or nation. Let her repeat her ground of faith. To my own mind it is clearly based on an instinctive love of life, and a desire to be, if happy.

If we investigate the grounds of reason's hopes, we learn this truth incidentally, that reason and fancy are in many minds rather matted in inextricable confusion than mated; that the imagination, instead of merely ministering to reason, has borne it away to dwell in castles of the air, subjecting facts and knowledge to theories and dreams. Hence our ghost stories, our transmigration of souls, and our gods and lords outnumbering men. We note this coalition as furnishing the clue to discover the source of reason's aspirations, as suggested before, maintaining that our lovely dreams have not any certain basis of hope.

We are pleased to know that a broad line can and must be drawn between the sterner facts of our existence and the chambers of imagery-the realms of fancy; between knowledge-the plain truths which are like lead in the rock-and the ever fitful visions which so much allure, and which have often commingled all things.

. Before we consider those evidences of reason which sustain our faith in immortality, let us see what imagination has also been doing in this faith; for

"Who, to dull forgetfulness a prey,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day-
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,

Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?"

or failed to colour the future; for fancy, although not favoured with a visit from some returning traveller from Hades, has bid the living follow, or listen to her voice, and take her picture for realities; and long before a line of inspired truth was written, she had made men more familiar with her paintings than with the world around them; and hence hades, the river, the ferryman, and those horrors which Moses never endorsed or taught. Are these to be received? are they taught in the Bible? are they patent and true? and yet is it not undeniable that in our most hallowed faith they are the pattern of our future, and most difficult to unlearn?

Let us "prove all things, and hold fast that which is good." If

reason taught the heathens truth in myth, let her re-open her school and teach in plainer form, and we shall be glad to hear; but if fancies are to be our guide, let us travel at night, fall over some unknown marsh, with Will-o'-the-wisp for company and added light. We think that, as the desire to be is pretty plainly the source of all imaginings as to the future, were every vestige of old mythology swept away, a new and potent creed would, phoenix-like, spring from its ashes. But let us hear what reason has to say. She has directed her eye to the heavens which encircle the earth, and found out wonders, to the ancients almost or quite unknown. She has found for herself a glass and a tube to peer into limitless space-to learn that her winged ally, imagination, cannot hope to fly to the verge of created things. Laying aside the telescope, she has taken the microscope, and learned that God is as great and wondrous in the minute as in the boundless. She has become a practical chemist, has melted the rocks, converted them into their most simple elements; she has mimicked nature, and harnessed her to her car; she has forced her into handmaidenship to the arts, and still sounds her echoing watchword, "Farther on!" she has learned that, when nature trembles in convulsion, riots in change, or seems in the article of death, 'tis but to re-appear in a new attire of augmented grandeur or beauty; she is, indeed, great, and bespeaks an Almighty Maker.

With all this power and glowing hope, she infers that as all meaner things survive the greatest known changes, soul-spirit is no exception to the rule, and deems it not unfair to conclude that if things controlled by mind are changed but not destroyed, the master-piece of creation, the demi-god of the universe, shall in death also merely change a mode of being, and re-appear in other guise. Reason marks how the acorn becomes an oak, an egg change to an eagle, the drifting spawn become a sportive fish, the animal kingdom, guided by a principle only second to mind, roam, full of vigour, where past generations gambolled in youth, or battled in strength; and the re-appearance of these helps to buoy her hopes; she dreams she hears the voice of the Almighty, and tries to smile at death, and hush all fear. Gathering confidence in her search for evidence, she sees how the sleeper awakes from repose, animated with renewed vigour; she notes how the fainting form, the sister of death, is recalled to life; sees or hears of the trance broken to give place to the dance of life; she sees torpid animals resume their activities at the call of nature, or nature's God; she sees all nature new-robed in spring; that the scattered grain, which fell into the prepared furrow, though once dying, re-appears in fertile, living ranks; and with these fast multiplying witnesses she argues her own future; deems those voices the voice of God, or echoing the voice of the departed dead among men.