their hands, and lest their craft be destroyed. They are selfish, designing, wicked men, who deserve not to live.

Min.-Pray, moderate your language. You are judging of a whole class of men from what you may have seen of one or two. I put it to you if that is candid or honourable. Doubtless there are among preachers, as among other classes of society, untrue, selfish, narrow-minded, cruel men, who care for themselves, not for the people, but if you knew them better you would find that there are among them those than whom there are none in any class more devoted to the cause of truth and of the people.

Pris. I never met with any such.

Min.-That may be simply because you have not met with many.

Pris. Certainly I have never heard any of them talk upon these subjects as you have done; they have called me a demagogue, and left me. But you are not a minister of the Gospel?

Min. When I tell you that I look upon a minister of the Gospel as an ambassador of Christ sent to plead with man to be reconciled, and to live in harmony with the moral and spiritual laws of his nature, I do not hesitate to tell you that I am. But I have no sympathy with any man or class of men who would stand between his fellow-being and the Great Creator, or who would seek to lord it over his brother's conscience.

Pris.-Well, I must confess you have astonished me with scme of your views; except the baillie there, no one has talked to me as you have done.

Min.-Don't you see how erroneous have been your views both in reference to Christianity and its teachers?

Pris.-Well, perhaps some of them have, but I am against all systems that condemn man for what he cannot be held responsible.

Min. You are still at the old point which we have discussed again and again. Have you got no more light upon it?

Pris.-Well, I think it great folly to praise or to blame man for that, over which he has no control: and it is folly prolific of a great deal of mischief to society.

Min.-You believe, then, I suppose, that man's character is formed for him, and that he is as little to blame for any injury he inflicts upon others as the wild bull that gores a human being?

Pris.-Yes, I do: as I have said, nothing but evil comes out of a belief that man is to be praised or blamed for his conduct.

Min.-Indeed! It is only a few minutes since I heard you call the rulers of the day 'a set of heartless villains;' and this, I suppose, when no more blame attaches to them than to the wild bull! You described the ministers of religion as selfish, interested, designing men; and all this without intending to blame them!

Pris. I only used the language which is common, and which it is so difficult to get rid of.

Min.-You don't think you have been injured in being imprisoned?

Pris.-Sir, I think I have been very greatly injured. It is my persecutors who should have been here.

Min.-Who injured you?

Pris.-The rulers of the day and their parasites.

Min.-But you don't think they have done anything wrong?

Pris.-Yes, they have; and if the people had power we should soon see places changed.

Min.-Then you would punish them if you could ?

Pris. Would'nt I: they richly deserve it.

Min.-You would punish them because they richly deserve it, and yet you don't blame them!

Pris.—I didn't say that. Min.-Didn't you say that it was folly to blame any man for his conduct; and if you don't blame a man for his conduct, why do you say that they richly deserve punishment, and wherefore would you punish them?

Pris. They have done me a serious wrong.

Min.-So you say, but according to your philosophy they could not help it. The government could not help framing a bill to make your offence punishable; the houses of legislature could not help passing that into law; the police could not help apprehending you; the public prosecutor could not help bringing you forward for trial; the witnesses could not help giving evidence against you; the jury impannelled to pronounce a verdict on your case could not help bringing you in guilty;' the judge could not help pronouncing sentence upon you; the officers of justice could not help taking you in the 'van' to this jail; and the jailer could not help bringing you to this cell therefore, as you are the creature of, and a believer in, necessity, you must keep your mind calm, and be resigned to your fate, nor for a moment suppose that any one of them all deserves any condemnation for what has happened.

Pris. You may talk so, but I shall condemn them while I live.

Min.-Just so; and just because you cannot help thinking that if they had liked they might have done otherwise.

Pris. Well, the government need not have persecuted me as they have done.

Min.-No; you blame them in spite of your theory; and in spite of your theory you would punish them if you had the power; and thus will it ever be when you have suffered. It is very easy for men who have done wrong to excuse themselves on the plea of necessity; it is not quite so easy to excuse men on such a ground when they have done you wrong. You have a wife and family, I suppose?

Pris.-I have, sir.

Min.-And if a man, during your absence from them in this place of confine ment, should abuse your wife and murder your children, I suppose you would comfort yourself with the reflection that he could not help it?

Pris.--I would never forgive him; I would hate him till my dying day. He

should die.

Min.-Well, needing forgiveness as we do for our own sins, and having a Redeemer who delights to bestow it on the ground of his own sacrifice, it would be wrong to be unwilling to forgive him, but it would be reasonable that you should condemn his conduct and demand that the sanctity of the law should be upheld in his punishment. This, however, you cannot do without abandoning your impracticable theory that no man is responsible for what he does, and is, therefore, never to be blamed for doing wrong. You have, perhaps, heard of the robber who said to the traveller, I cannot help taking your watch,' and the traveller said, 'I cannot help knocking you down.' That, I suppose, must be taken as a representation of your case?

Pris. Well, I must confess I see the matter in rather a different light, and will think over it.

Mag. Yes, do; and when I next see you, I hope to find you not only admitting that you have done wrong, but believing in that Saviour who has died to save you from the consequences and from the power of sin.

CARLYLE AND HOLYOAKE.

The following part criticism of secularism appeared in the 'Kilmarnock Chronicle' of the 11th November, 1854. It appears that some warm admirer of the secular apostle' stated that Mr. G. J. H. had the 'friendship and ac

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quaintance of Thomas Carlyle. Mr. H., on seeing this in the public prints, had the honesty to contradict it, as-although, no doubt, he coveted that distinction he was one of those paltry mortals who could not get it. He wrote an explanatory letter to the editor, who follows it up with these remarks:

'We willingly insert Mr. Holyoake's explanatory letter, which will be found in another column. We knew that Carlyle's circle of acquaintance was large, and that neither an orthodox nor yet a sceptical shibboleth was necessary to gain admission into it. Earnestness and intellect are what he would shake hands with anywhere; and nothing is easier, even for a young and compara tively obscure literary man, accredited for sincere thinking and labour, to find access to, and acceptance with, this potentate in the world of letters. It must not be supposed, however, that to be on terms of familiar intercourse with him proves either his sanction of an individual's creed, or even a very high opinion of that individual's ability. Revolutions have sent many foreigners to his door, the kindly opening of which is a general recognition of their intellectual character, but is no endorsement of their peculiar political and religious views and pretensions. The swiftness, subtlety, and fire of Mazzini's mind, and the ardour of his patriotism, have justly made him a favourite with Carlyle; but what party agreement subsists between the pair? Agitations at home may have introduced the leaders to Carlyle's personal notice; but from such a fact who would infer that he was an admirer either of their principles or their talents? But secularism was one of the few systems with which it was utterly impossible for such a man to have any sympathy. Ever oscillating--in craft-between a denial of and an indifference to man's noblest and most essential relationships; openly bidding man to regard himself as an orphan-so-far as spiritual parentage, adoption, and destiny are concerned-and to be without God and Infinity, and also without a soul that yearns for or corresponds with either; how was it likely to be aught but insufferable to one who will not look upon the briefest mortal in existence unless as supremely related to God and eternity? Carlyle has trained and cultured all his perceptions, aspirations, and faith, for the very objects contemptuously ignored by secularism. The element in which he lives, moves, and has his being, is entirely repudiated by secularism. All his materials and labour as a thinker, and what is at once the whole basis and superstructure of his intellectual character, are declared by secularism to be mere "moonshine." He could not speak of the most trivial event unless in language which secularism would pronounce superstitious and irrational. And, above all, he could not define man without finding that all that was distinctive was disowned by secularism. Secularism could not be less offensive to Thomas Carlyle than to John Calvin. He associate with its apostles and supporters! We do not judge the heart; but the system stamps the head: and a secularist, worthy of the system, must have an intellect almost lost in the grossness of the body, with faculties that are only double to his senses, both prone and fitted to turn away from the sky and enter the stall to make the most of his provender. There would have been no end to our wondering, had the pretension that Mr. Holyoake was Thomas Carlyle's friend been properly certified. A disciple of the former stated it confidently; but Mr. Holyoake is frank enough to correct the mistake. We were sure that there was an impassable intellectual gulf between them. We shall not presume to say what mental development Mr. Holyoake might have reached, had he not moulded himself in fatal secularism. That system has materialised his intellect. He, who denies the whole spiritual economy, what can he find for the growth, or even the life, of his "reason?" (taking the word "reason" in the grand sense defined by Coleridge.) glance of "speculation" in his eye would soon change to the stupid downward stare of an ox. Mr. Holyoake professes that his sphere is social literature ;

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but banish whatever is spiritual from that literature, and from the mind that produces it, how is it possible for the latter to be great and noble? Carlyle, if a secularist, would be a Samson shorn, blind, weak, and a slave.

'We are inclined to believe that Mr. Holyoake, under the generous nutriment, and with the ample and healthful exercise afforded by a system of less coarse, materialistic, and limited thought, would be in literature a very different and greatly-improved man. Certainly he is not to be put beside his "friend" Southwell, who is, at best, a flippant fool, and whose attempts to teach an audience anything but. how to dress and cultivate a moustache, are outrageously impertinent. We wish that Mr. Holyoake had witnessed his friend's appearance in Kilmarnock. Southwell affected to be a fine Grecian, and spoke of Aristides-making the second last syllable of the name short! He vigorously defended the false quantity. He declared that to speak of atheism was utter nonsense-it was a word that never had any meaning. He offered a sovereign to any body who would point out one "religious fact." The correspondence between the human soul and the external world was mentioned to him, and it was shown that every class of emotions or sentiments in the former had in the latter some special object to excite and gratify them. Something very distinct, strong, and indestructible in the soul, it was explained, existed, and could only be satisfied by a Supreme Being. This feeling of worship, he was told, was both a fact, and a religious fact, though the conclusion that therefore there must be a God might or might not be warranted. Southwell ought at once to have handed over his sovereign. But he declined, and gave a reply worthy of his metaphysics. He said it had been alleged that there was a feeling of reverence in the mind; but the remark showed that the person who ventured it was altogether ignorant of what the mind was, for there was nothing in the mind—[this may be quite true of Southwell's mind, which is perhaps the same as his waistcoat pocket]-the mind was just the process of thinking, and how ridiculous it was to talk of anything being in the mind! We do Mr. Holyoake the justice to suppose that he would have laughed heartily at his friend's metaphysics, or "intellection," as the worthy phrased it.

'No, no; we do not class Mr. Holyoake with Mr. Southwell. No creed, however earnestly held, could have brought out in the latter more than the most ordinary development of talent, and certainly it would have inspired a modesty which would have kept him from setting up as a teacher-far less as an oracle. But Mr. Holyoake has been ruined intellectually by secularism. In his speeches and writings there is no harvest of thoughts; yet we can fancy that a fine harvest has got an untimely arrest and been left to rot. Let secularism, indeed, be believed, and what is the use of mind or thought at all? If this earthly life be a man's all, and if it be under no motive from a relation to God, then the only object of the soul is to be a handmaid to the body, and thinking must be subordinated to eating and drinking.

'With becoming seriousness we urge upon Mr. Holyoake a reconsideration of secularism both for his own sake and for that of the working men of this country, whom he wishes to influence. And we take no higher than merely intellectual grounds. Whatever the endowments, aspirations, and yearnings of his nature may have been, is not secularism perverting and destroying them? Their health and growth need the light of the sky and the open and unconfined air of the Infinite. They need the exercise of speculation, and of those thoughts "which wander through eternity." If cribbed within "to-day" and "tomorrow," and all free outlet upwards and high as heaven debarred from that little span, they will soon be in a condition to be confined within the body. Yet this is the mental ruin to which Mr. Holyoake has doomed himself, and to which he is seeking to doom all working men. Many half-mournful, halfindignant reflections suggest themselves as we contemplate his designs regard

ing the latter. Are working men not too much already from morning to night with this world? Yet here is a professed friend who would persuade them to I give this world every possible thought and feeling, and who would interdict them from looking above and beyond its confines-though in these there may be many an opening through which solemn whisperings have come of a God related to them, and of an immortality destined for them, and though there be strong promptings in their own hearts to launch out into spiritual speculation and communion. Surely a tyrant or a slave-driver speaks in the friend. The education of working men is now under much discussion; yet what would education be worth if not only theology but all spiritual ideas were banished from churches on Sabbath, from books and conversation every day, and from the mind itself each moment, as well as from the schools for reading, writing, and arithmetic? In such a case, it might be said that all the lawful knowledgeall the knowledge that remained--was not worth the trouble of acquiring. In short, let secularism prevail among working men, and their mind and their lot would be alike brutalised.'

Liverpool, May, 1855.

OBSERVER.

IS GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE OF A HUMAN ACTION

CONSISTENT WITH ITS FREEDOM?

This has been a vexed question in philosophic theology in all times, and even now is far from being satisfactorily settled in many minds. It is a very difficult question, and has driven to fatalism many good thinkers who have desired to work out for themselves a consistent system of truth. This need not be the case, for even on the supposition that the two facts-man's freedom and God's foreknowledge cannot be made to harmonise, it is not on this account right to deny either of them. The first duty of the thinker is to get at the facts, and then, if possible, harmonise them, but it is by no means to be permitted that he should alter already established facts in order to work out for himself a consistent scheme of thought.

In our question the facts are established. God does foreknow everything that comes to pass-and man is a free agent. To deny the first of these facts is to deny the existence of an all-wise and omniscient Being-to deny the second is to deny the existence of man as a moral and accountable being, the universal testimony of consciousness, and the existence of that which constitutes the real personality of man.

Since, then, the facts are real, we may first analyse them in order that we may be able to judge concerning their harmony or otherwise.

Concerning God's foreknowledge there are two theories that have come under our notice. 1st. That God does not foreknow what actually will come to pass, but that he has exhausted the possibilities of human action, and, in knowing these, he foreknows what will come to pass only because it is one of the things possible. 2nd. That God knows not what may possibly take place, but what will actually take place. This latter theory is the more generally adopted, and, as we think, the true one; for, if God live in an eternal now, and in his omniscience perceives all that is in it, he must know everything as present, though to us it is yet in the future. From this it also appears that that which we call foreknowledge in God is really knowledge, for if there be no past or future, there can be neither foreknowledge nor memory. But, without entering into anything like a theory of knowing, knowledge is evidently dependent for its existence and character on the thing known-and is only a true knowledge in so far as it correctly represents its object. God's knowledge, it will not be