his own prevailing tastes and habits of thinking-one referring them to the body, another to the soul. Lord Bacon himself, as is generally be lieved, had reference to the interests of man; not merely as an animal, but as an intellectual, a moral, a religious, and immortal being.*

At all events, whether he had regard to our higher interests or not, his philosophy has contributed great ly to their advancement. We have already considered some of the moral benfits, which men receive from the advance of physical science. But not physical science alone has been advanced by the Baconian philosophy. Intellectual philosophy is an inductive science. Theology, notwithstanding all the metaphysical jargon of those "ages of faith" (to say nothing of more recent speculations, and "bodies of divinity") is, after all, so far as it has any value, or is entitled to any respect, an inductive science, resting upon the examination of our selves, of nature, and of the word of God. And again, the examina. tion of the word of God depends on the science of interpretation;

a science purely and solely inductive. Now which of these sciences is not subservient to the interests of man? Instead, then, of considering its subserviency to the interests of man, as a reproach to the Baconian philosophy, we have reason to glory in it, as its great excellence.

It was, we trust, his motive to subserve the interests of man; and the same motive had weight with a greater than Lord Bacon, "who, for our sakes," that is, to subserve our

Lord Bacon thus defines his own views of the proper objects of science. "Postremo omnes in universum monitos volumus, ut scientiæ veros fines cogitent; nec eam aut animi causa petant, aut ad contentionem, aut ut alios despiciant, aut ad commodum, aut ad famam, aut ad potentiam, aut hujusmodi inferiora, sed ad meritum, et usus vitæ, eamque in charitate perficiant et regant."-(De Aug. Scient, near the end of the Preface.)

interests, "became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich."

Again, physical science is decried as an earth-born science. True, it is earth-born, and so is man; and science, like man, shall find its perfect development in Heaven. Science is, indeed, earth-born, inasmuch as it is discovered by man, while he dwells upon earth. But it is a part of the stores of the Divine Mind, where originated, and is still embraced, all the economy of the material, as well as of the spiritual world; and whence the streams of knowledge shall flow forth, alike unexhausted and inexhaustible, through the ages of eternity, into the minds of all who shall delight in the investigation of those works of the Lord, "which are sought out by all that fear him."

Is there nothing in such know!edge of God and his works, and of the economy of his government, to gratify a refined taste? There is something, at least, which pleased the infinite taste, when the Creator pronounced his works "very good." He who can find nothing in the works of God to please his taste, must have had his taste enervated and corrupted, rather than refined and cultivated. If a sublime conception, other than of the Deity himself, is vouchsafed to mortal man, it is of the works of God as exhibited by the sciences of geology and astronomy.

With him who admires the productions of genius and intellect, whether of ancient or of modern time, we have no controversy. It is only when he denies the good taste of those who admire the productions of the Fountain of genius, that we remonstrate. We do not complain, or think it strange, that he should admire the creations of a Homer, a Dante, a Milton, or a Shakspeare,-the wisdom of Aristotle or of Plato, or the beauty of architecture, painting, or sculpture. But we can not forget, that there is a creation mightier than Homer'sthe work of him, who said, "Let

there be light, and there was light;" a wisdom less ostentatious, but more profound than the wisdom of Aristotle and a beauty, in comparison with which, all the beauty of human productions vanishes like the light of the glow-worm in the presence of the sun at noonday.

Again, shall we be told, that some men of science have been in fidels and haters of God? True; and so have some metaphysicians, moralists, theologians, ecclesiastics, students of the Bible, bishops, cardinals, and popes :-and so have angels and archangels, amid the full blaze of the divine glories.

Will the truth of these sciences, and of the facts which they disclose, be denied? Shall we be told, that they are mere theory? Be it so. Admit that they are nothing but theory, mere speculation, moonshine, if you please, the baseless fabric of a dream. Still, have they not, moonshine though they be, given us Dartmouth College.

Bacos

wonderfully enlarged conceptions of the universe and its author? And, if such be the moonshine, the dreams of science, what shall be the broad sunlight,-the reality of the knowledge of the works of God?

But we can not admit, nor will truth allow, the supposition, that all this is uncertain and shadowy. Some things to which we have alluded, may not yet be fully determined; but others, and those not the least striking, as, for exam. ple, the fact of the transmission of light, and of the vastness of the universe evinced by that fact, are as well established as the existence of Jupiter and his satellites ;-as. the existence of the sun, or of the earth; as the existence of the ob jects of our senses;-as our own existence. If we deny them, we can see no stopping place, short of the dark, bodiless, soulless, godless vacuity of Hume. S. C.

WITHIN a few years past, there has arisen a loud demand for the universal abolition of capital punishment. It is demanded that the gradual mitigation of our criminal laws, which has been going on for nearly two hundred years, shall be carried one step farther; and that the murderer shall no longer die by the sentence of justice. In one point of view this is a purely political question. The question whether the punishment of death shall be inflicted in any case, and if so in what cases, is a legitimate question for the consideration of jurists and legislators, and as such might be discussed on grounds exclusively political. But the question has been made, on the part of those who have discussed it heretofore-it has been made from the first setting up of the

demand-a question of morals and of religion. Principles not necessarily involved in the question, have been involved in the discussion of it; and the demand for the abolition of capital punishment has been set up and urged on grounds, which, if universally accepted and acted upon, would demoralize the universe.

It is not unimportant or uninstructive, to observe the extent to which this demand has spread itself in society, and from how many various quarters it now proceeds. Nearly all the political newspapers of one party, and a large portion of the newspapers of the other party, concur in lending themselves to this demand, while very few on either side can be considered as opposing it. Thus all those whose impulses and habits put them in opposition to

law, and who not unnaturally feel somewhat as if it were for their interest that the punishments of crime should be abolished, are agitated with the movement. The haunters of dramshops-the frequenters of brothels-those whose oaths shock you as you pass along the street are generally in favor of the abolition of capital punishment. Those who profess to believe that there is no retribution for wickedness in the world to come, and that the murderer dying with all a murderer's malice in his heart, dies only to enter into perfect bliss,-cry out against the dreadfulness of the death penalty, and demand that the murderer shall have a kinder and less vindictive treatment. Philanthropic projectors of a reconstructed moral universe, who hold that society is all wrong, and that every thing existing must be overturned to prepare the way for a new era of social equality,-utter the same outery. Those whose religion is mere sentimentalism,-whose Christianity, as they call it, is little else than a low conception of the poetry of nature, and who conceive of God chiefly as a great artist that has made the world for its beauty, -give in their adhesion. With these various classes are joined "devout men out of every nation under heaven"-religious, Christian men of almost every evangelical name, whose sensibilities naturally shudder at so dreadful a form of justice; who have become so much interested in what are called "peace principles," that they doubt, at least, whether the magistrate ought to bear the sword at all; or who think that inasmuch as the bloody laws of former ages have been so greatly mitigated, and inasmuch as imprisonment and hard labor are found to answer the purposes of punishment in so many cases in which death was once the penalty, the progress of reformation may be fairly and safely consummated by abolishing capital

punishment altogether. There must be some influences, widely propaga ted through society, by which so strange a combination has been ef fected. There must be some principles and habits of thought, common in various degrees to all these classes; or classes so various would not have been brought to think and speak so much alike on such a question.

If it be asked in what respect all these classes think and speak alike, we may answer by saying, they all use substantially the same argu ments, and to a great extent they speak in essentially the same spirit. Not to refer at present to the arguments they use, it will be enough to indicate one mode of speaking, common to them all, which answers instead of argument, and which shows that they all regard the subject, in some respects at least, from the same point of view. How often do we hear from these men-from the best of them and the most can. did, as well as from the worst of them-the phrase "judicial mur der," or some similar nuage, as the appropriate description of capital punishment inflicted on a mur derer. That there is no argument in such a use of language, need not be said. Every man knows that such language is simply taking the whole thing for granted. Murder is an unlawful putting to death. Murder is a putting to death with malicious intention. That the putting a convicted murderer to death, in the execution of the law, is ma licious or unlawful, is the point to be proved. If all putting to death is murder, why not say that God's putting men to death is murder? If this use of language is argument, then God himself when he smote Ananias and Sapphira was a murderer. If all putting men to death is murder, then God, when he pour ed down fire on the cities of the plain, much more when he swept the earth with a flood, was a whole

sale murderer. Nay, "death hath passed upon all men for that all have sinned,"-why not say then, wherever you see death taking place, in the providence of God, that there is one of God's murders? This use of language, so palpably and atrociously wrong, into which all men fall so readily who join in the demand for the abolition of capital punishment, shows that it may be worth our while to inquire whether there are not some moral principles widely diffused, and unthinkingly, perhaps unconsciously, received, out of which the demand-or at least the peculiar animus of the demand -has arisen. The intrinsic dreadfulness of the punishment, is not enough to explain the phenomenon; for all punishment is dreadful, and if there is to be any justice in it, it must needs be dreadful in some proportion to the dreadfulness of the crime for which it is inflicted. A little attention will suffice to show that other causes have operated to stimulate and propagate the demand. Foremost among these causes, is an excessive sympathy with the criminal. We say an excessive sympathy, for there is a natural and reasonable sympathy even towards those who suffer the just penalty of their crimes. Who can look in through the grated door upon the felon in his cell who can see him laboring day by day with reluctant hands, under the rigid discipline of the penitentiary and not be sorry for him? We ought to be sorry for him -sorry for the hard necessity by which he suffers. But if, in our sympathy, we forget the crime for which that suffering is inflicted-if, in our sympathy, we cry out against the wickedness of society in putting the poor fellow into prison and treating him so badly-our sympathy has grown excessive, unreasonable, morbid. Such sympathy masters the sense of justice. It would open the prison doors, and let the felons loose upon society.

Much has been done of late, in various ways, to promote sympathy with criminals. No small part of the popular fictitious literature of the present century, and especially of the last five and twenty years, has had that tendency. To the mind whose imagination has been stimulated and whose habits of thought and feeling have been formed by familiarity with this Newgate literature-to the sensibilities that have been trained by studying these fictitious representations of the morbid anatomy of human nature-lo the moral sense that has been bewildered by these attempts to throw the charms of poetry and the colors of romance over robbery and murder and piracy-any man who has committed a particularly atrocious crime, becomes immediately an object of special sympathy. So many of the heroes of modern fiction are criminals of this precise grade, that to a mind imbued with the spirit of that literature every criminal seems like a hero, or is at least a most picturesque and interesting character. Seen through such a medium, the criminal is perhaps a man of genius, whose genius has unfortunately taken a wrong direction; or perhaps a man of high and strong impulses, whose virtues not being happily balanced and harmonized, bring him into trouble and conflict. What a pity that this genius, this man of impulse, this man made for adventure, whose originality and strength of character have led him to break over the restraints of law

this man to whom liberty is so necessary and confinement so irksome-must be shut up in a cell, and fed with the coarse fare of the prison. And the thought of his being put to death, simply for killing his friend, can not be endured.

We may not excuse ourselves from the duty of saying, in this con. nection, that of the much that has been said and done, of late years, with the best of motives, about kind

ness to criminals, not a little seems to have had some tendency towards a morbid sympathy with criminals. Far be it from us to depreciate in the least the labors of such persons as Elizabeth Fry in England, or of those who have labored in any thing of the same spirit on this side of the Atlantic. The work of showing kindness to the wicked, and of attempting to infuse the quickening and healing influences of truth into their minds while they are suffering the penalties of crime, is a truly heroic work of the true Christian spirit. And in all respects, the criminal-whatever his crime or his pun ishment should be treated with kindness by all concerned, not excepting those who represent the law and administer its justice. The prosecutor, the judge, the jury, the sherif and the jailer-all, from first to last -should treat the criminal with personal kindness. Cruelty, the Cruelty, the spirit which rejoices in suffering because it is suffering-cruelty, even in the less fiend-like form of recklessness in regard to suffering inflicted-has nothing to do with justice. The majesty of justice is the more resplendent, and awes the soul to a profounder reverence, when justice is seen in its legitimate alliance with kindness to the criminal. The more the criminal sees of the sentiment of kindness towards himself in those by whom justice is pronounced and administered, the more likely will he be to feel the dread ful necessity of justice. But if we mistake not, there is many a Quixotic philanthropist of these days, whose plans and preachments are the manifestation, and operate for the diffusion-not of that kindness toward the guilty, which when associated with punishment imparts to justice a more venerable majesty --but rather of that morbid sympathy which thinks more of the criminal than of his crime, which cares more for the felon than for the protection of the commonwealth, and

which feels more for the murderer's remorseful terrors and his looking for of judgement, than for the blood that crieth from the ground against him.

Another source of the demand, so widely uttered, for the abolition of capital punishment, and one which stands in a close connection with that morbid sympathy which we have just described,―is the wide spread habit of referring sin and crime, not to the immediate actor of the sin and the perpetrator of the crime, but to temptation, as an efficient cause. An illustration of this habit, and of the extent to which it has acquired an ascendency over the opinions and reasonings of our countrymen-an illustration which is perhaps more obvious than any other-may be found in the history, tendencies, and present position, of what is called the temperance reformation. The time was, when drunkenness was deemed a dreadful sin, a base and beastly crime on the part of the drunkard, against his own nature and against all his duties to his family, to society, and to his Maker; and some of us are of the same opinion still. In those days we had laws to punish a man for being drunk-laws which are not yet entirely effaced from our statute books. In those days a man was held responsible not only for the fact of having made himself drunk, but for all the natural conse quences of his having done so; and if an intoxicated man committed theft, arson or murder, the intoxica. tion did not excuse him, but was deemed to be an aggravation rather than a mitigation of his guilt. But for these few years past, a great ef fort has been in progress, to advance the welfare of society by suppressing all commerce in the means of intoxication. We do not here deny or question the legitimacy of the movement. But we ask whether, in connection with this movement, there has not arisen in all quarters a habit