rstructure, no longer fitted for
the apprehension of one single unamiable race, but offering shelter and
repose to the whole family of man. These things are most remarkable
about this memorable trans-migration of one faith into another, of an
imperfect into a perfect religion, viz., that the early stage had but a
slight resemblance to the latter, nor could have prefigured it to a
human sagacity more than a larva could prefigure a chrysalis; and,
secondly, that whereas the product, viz., Christianity, never has been
nor will be in any danger of ruin, the germ, viz., the Judaic idea of
God, the great radiation through which the Deity kept open His
communication with man, apparently must more than once have approached
an awful struggle for life. This solitary taper of truth, struggling
across a howling wilderness of darkness, had it been ever totally
extinguished, could probably never have been reillumined. It may seem an
easy thing for a mere human philosophy to recover, and steadily to
maintain a pure Hebrew conception of God; but so far is this from being
true, that we believe it possible to expose in the closest Pagan
approximation to this Hebrew type some adulterous elements such as would
have ensured its relapse into idolatrous impurity.'

5.--PHILOSOPHY DEFEATED.

We have come upon a passage which is omitted from the 'Confessions,' and
as it is, in every way, characteristic, we shall give it:

My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with
any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud
sometimes for the pleasure of others--because reading is an
accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word
'accomplishment' as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the
only one I possess--and, formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected
with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this; for I had
observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst
readers of all; ---- reads vilely, and Mrs. ----, who is so celebrated,
can read nothing well but dramatic compositions--Milton she cannot read
sufferably. People in general read poetry without any passion at all, or
else overstep the modesty of nature and read not like scholars. Of late,
if I have felt moved by anything in books, it has been by the grand
lamentations of 'Samson Agonistes,' or the great harmonies of the
Satanic speaker in 'Paradise Regained,' when read aloud by myself. A
young