from the thraldom of a foreign causality-a causality which, ever since the Fall of Man, must be admitted to unfold itself in each individual's case, in a dark tissue of unqualified evil we have but to admit that the working out of this freedom is the great end of man, and constitutes his true self; and we have also but to admit, that whatever conduces to the accomplishment of this end is right; and the question just broached easily resolves itself. For, supposing man not to be originally free, let us ask how is the end of human liberty to be attained? Is it to be attained by passively imbibing the various impressions forced upon us from without? Is it to be at tained by yielding ourselves up in pliant obedience to the manifold modifications which stamp their moulds upon us from within? Unquestionably not. All these impressions and modifications constitute the very badges of our slavery. They are the very trophies of the causal conquests of nature, planted by her on the ground where the true man ought to have stood, but where he fell. Now, since human freedom, the great end of man, is thus contravened by these passive conditions and susceptibilities of his nature, therefore it is that they are wrong. And, by the same rule, an act of resistance put forth against them is right, inasmuch as an act of this kind contributes, every time it is exerted, to the accomplishment of that great end,

Now, looking to our hatred of our enemies, we see that this is a natural passion which is most strongly forced upon us by the tyranny of the cau sal law; therefore it tends to obliterate and counteract our freedom. But our freedom constitutes our true and moral selves-it is the very essence of our proper personality: therefore, to entertain, to yield to this passion, is wrong, is moral death, is the extinction of our freedom, of our moral being, however much it may give life to the natural man. And, by the same consequence, to resist this passion, to act against it, to sacrifice it, is right, is free and moral life, however much this act may give the death-stroke to our natural feelings and desires.

But how shall we, or how do we, or how can we, act against our hatred of our enemies? We answer, simply

VOL. XLV, NO, CCLXXX,

by becoming conscious of it. By turning upon it a reflective eye (a process by no means agreeable to our natural heart), we force it to faint and fade away before our glance. In this act we turn the tables (so to speak) upon the passion, whatever it may be, that is possessing us. Instead of its possessing us, we now possess it. Instead of our being in its hands, it is now in our hands. Instead of its being our master, we have now become its; and thus is the first step of our moral advancement taken; thus is enacted the first act of that great drama in which demons are transformed into men. In this act of consciousness, founded, as we have elsewhere seen, upon will, and by which man becomes transmuted from a natural into a moral being, we perceive the prelude or dawning of that still higher regeneration which Christianity imparts, and which advances man onwards from the precincts of morality into the purer and loftier regions of religion. We will venture to affirm that this conciousness, or act of antagonism, is the ground or condition, in virtue of which that still higher dispensation is enabled to take effect upon us, and this we shall endeavour to make out in its proper place. In the mean-time to return to our point:

In the absence of consciousness, the passion-(of hatred, for instance)— reigns and rages unalloyed, and goes forth to the fulfilment of its natural issues, unbridled and supreme. But the moment consciousness comes into play against it, the colours of the passion become less vivid, and its sway less despotic. It is to a certain extent dethroned and sacrificed even upon the first appearance of consciousness; and if this antagonist act manfully maintain its place, the sceptre of passion is at length completely wrested from her hands: and thus consciousness is a moral act-is the foundationstone of our moral character and existence.

If the reader should be doubtful of the truth and soundness of this doctrine-namely, that consciousness, (whether viewed in its own unsystematic form, or in the systematic shape which it assumes when it becomes philosophy,) is an act which of itself tends to put down the passions-these great, if not sole, sources of human wickedness; perhaps he will be willing

to embrace it when he finds it enforced by the powerful authority of Dr Chalmers.

"Let there be an attempt," says he, "on the part of the mind to study the phenomena of anger, and its attention is thereby transferred from the cause of the affection to the affection itself; and, so soon as its thoughts are with drawn from the cause, the affection, as if deprived of its needful aliment, dies away from the field of observation. There might be heat and indignancy enough in the spirit, so long as it broods over the affront by which they they have originated. But whenever it proposes, instead of looking outwardly at the injustice, to look in wardly at the consequent irritation, it instantly becomes cool."*

We have marked certain of these words in italics, because in them Dr Chalmers appears to account for the disappearance of anger before the eye of consciousness in a way somewhat different from ours. He seems to say that it dies away because "deprived of its needful aliment," whereas we hold that it dies away in consequence of the antagonist act of consciousness which comes against it, displacing and sacrificing it. But, whatever our respective theories may be, and whichever of us may be in the right, we agree in the main point, namely, as to the fact that anger does vanish away in the presence of consciousness; and, therefore, this act acquires (whatever theory we may hold respecting it), a moral character and significance, and the exercise of it becomes an imperative duty; for what passion presides over a wider field of human evil, and of human wickedness, than the passion of human wrath? and, therefore, what act can be of greater importance than the act which overthrows, and puts an end to its domineering tyranny?

The process by which man becomes metamorphosed from a natural into a moral being, is precisely the same in every other case: it is invariably founded on a sacrifice or mortification of some one or other of his natural desires, a sacrifice which is involved in his very consciousness of them whenever that consciousness is real and clear. We have seen that moral love is based on the sacrifice of natu

ral hatred. In the same way, gene. rosity, if it would embody any morality at all, must be founded on the mortification of avarice or some other selfish passion. Frugality, likewise, to deserve the name of a virtue, must be founded on the sacrifice of our natural passion of extravagance or ostentatious profusion. Temperance, too, if it would claim for itself a moral title, must found on the restraint imposed upon our gross and gluttonous sensualities. In short, before any condition of humanity can be admitted to rank as a moral state, it must be based on the suppression, in whole or in part, of its opposite. And, finally, courage, if it would come before us invested with a moral grandeur, must have its origin in the unremitting and watchful suppression of fear. Let us speak more particularly of Courage and Fear.

What is natural courage? It is a passion or endowment possessed in common by men and by animals. It is a mere quality of temperament. It urges men and animals into the teeth of danger. But the bravest animals, and the bravest men (we mean such as are emboldened by mere natural courage), are still liable to panic. The game-cock, when he has once turned tail, cannot be induced to renew the fight and the hearts of men, inspired by mere animal courage, have at times quailed and sunk within them, and, in the hour of need, this kind of courage has been found to be a treacherous passion.

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But what is moral courage? What is it but the consciousness of Fear? Here it is that the struggle and the triumph of humanity are to be found. Natural courage faces danger, and perhaps carries itself triumphantly through it—perhaps not. But moral courage faces fear-and in the very act of facing it puts it down: and this is the kind of courage in which we would have men put their trust; for if fear be vanquished, what becomes of danger? It dwindles into the very shadow of a shade. It is a historical fact (to mention which will not be out of place here), that nothing but the intense consciousness of his own natural cowardice made the great Duke of Marlborough the irresistible hero

that he was. This morally brave man was always greatly agitated upon going into action, and used to say, "This little body trembles at what this great soul is about to perform." About this great soul we know nothing; and, therefore, pass it over as a mere figure of speech. But the trembling of this little body," that is, the cowardice of the natural man, or, in other words, his want of courage, in so far as courage is a mere affair of nerves, was a fact conspicuous to all. Equally conspicuous and undeniable was the antagonism put forth against this nervous bodily trepidation. And what was this antagonism? What but the struggle between consciousness and cowardice?-a struggle by and through which the latter was dragged into light and vanquished-and then the hero went forth into the thickest ranks of danger, strong in the consciousness of his own weakness, and as if out of very spite of the natural coward that wished to hold him back, and who rode shaking in his saddle as he drove into the hottest of the fight. Natural courage, depending upon temperament, will quail at times, and prove faithless to its trust; the strongest nerves will often shake, in the hour of danger, like an aspen in the gale; but what conceivable terrors can daunt that fortitude (though merely of a negative character), that indomitable discipline, wherewith a man, by a stern and deliberate consciousness of his own heart's frailty, meets, crushes, and subjugates, at every turn, and in its remotest hold, the entire passion of fear?

Human strength, then, has no positive character of its own; it is nothing but the clear consciousness of human weakness. Neither has human morality any positive character of its own; it is nothing but the clear consciousness of human wickedness. The whole rudiments of morality are laid before us, if we will but admit the fact (for which we have Scripture warrant), that all the given modifications of humanity are dark and evil; and that consciousness (which is not a given phenomenon but a free act) is itself, in every instance, an acting against these states. Out of this strife morality is breathed up like a rainbow between the sun and storm. Moreover, by adopting these views, we get rid of the necessity of postulating a moral sense, and of all the other hypothetical subsidies to which an erroneous philosophy has recourse in explaining the phenomena of man. Our limits at present prevent us from illustrating this subject more fully; but in our next Number we shall show how closely our views are connected with the approved doctrine of man's natural depravity. In order to penetrate still deeper into the secrets of consciousness, we shall discuss the history of the Fall of Man, and shall show what mighty and essential parts are respectively played by the elements of good and evil in the realisation of human liberty; and we shall conclude our whole discussion by showing how consonant our speculations are with the great scheme of Christian Revelation.

HISTORY affords us no example of rebellion conducted to a successful issue on the principles which are now in action in Ireland. Hence, perhaps, it is that so many of our "practical' politicians have been influenced to regard the troubles and outrages, by which that country is afflicted, as local and accidental in their origin, and, in their tendency and character," desultory and driftless." Hence, too, in the prevailing indisposition to receive with favour, or even with ordinary attention, speculations or statements on matters connected with Irish politics. If there were "precedents on the file," by which the object of such politics could be easily inferred, and their issue historically prognosticated, every reflecting man in the British Empire would become sensible of their paramount importance; but, seen as they are without the aid of lights derived from "old experience," they appear "formless and void," having no coherent plan or adequate purpose-the processes of crime, by which their petty and seemingly conflicting ends are wrought out, not affording indica. tions of design and government plainer or more certain than may be discerned in "skirmishes of kites and crows," and repulsing curiosity by those spectacles of violence and barbarism and cruelty, which seem to assign to them their most distinguishing characteristics.

Of the aversion to Irish politics, thus induced, we have good reason to be aware. It creates an opposition between the duties, for which the conductors of a periodical like ours have made themselves answerable, and the projects in which they might be tempt ed to engage, in order to the attainment of literary or commercial success, or the maintenance of a laboriously earned reputation. Many a time we have occupied pages with statements and strictures, which, faithful and well-designed as they were, the subject had rendered distasteful, which we knew well might have been devoted to mat ter more generally acceptable, and which some of our readers would have received with greater favour if we had left them a blank." Still we per

severe in these unpopular labours, fully confident that a day will come, when the most fastidious will acknowledge their propriety and importance; and encouraged in the mean-time by occasional and most welcome assurances that they are not, even now, altogether fruitless.

It is to one of these cheering testimonies the reader is indebted, with whatever feelings he may regard it, for the article which now solicits his attention. The truth is, we had not designed to encumber ourselves with "Irish" in our present adventure. The Canadas, we felt, would be likely to engross the whole political market. Principles, we have been long aware, have far less power to excite interest than personalities. And while Lord Brougham could, in all probability, be seen, in the joy of an armed and offensive neutrality, launching well-merited and most impartial sarcasms alternately at the fugitive governor of the Canadas, and at the friends who sent him to do their business, and who, to use an idiom which has more force than elegance, strove to do his business in return; and, while Lord Durham could be heard, with that stridulous voice, which, even were it musical, would be of "sweet and threatening harmony, rousing the ready though short-breathed vehemence of the Premier, torturing Lord Glenelg into the moody and mystic eloquence of a rare somnambulism, we felt that the commonplace, though tragic, interest of the affairs of Ireland must have even less than their ordinary attraction. Accordingly, we had made up our minds to let them rest for a more convenient season. A communication, altogether unexpected, and of the value of which the reader shall be enabled to judge, has induced us to change our purpose.

Some years since, we knew, by reputation well-slightly by acquainance -a gentleman connected with Ireland by birth and fortune, withdrawn by his tastes and the habits of his life from Irish party contention; but, so far as fashion can tolerate political enthusiasm, an enthusiast in the sect of that movement party who were then