ct of
over-reaching, is liable to become puerile, fanciful, and unreliable.
The philosopher, the _litterateur_, and the exegete need to be less
observant of the surrounding world than of the purity of their own inner
life and the teachings of the Holy Spirit.

Philosophical Rationalism in England commenced with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. A comprehensive view of that metaphysician produces a painful
impression. Though gifted with capacity for any sphere of thought, he
did not excel in either so far as to enable us to assign him a fixed
place in literature. He is known as poet, theologian, and philosopher.
But his own desire was that posterity might regard him as a theologian.
In addition to this indeterminateness of position, which always
seriously detracts from a great name, Coleridge presents the unfortunate
example of a man who, instead of laboring with settled convictions, and
achieving success by virtue of their operation, seems to have only
striven after them. His indefinite status was the result of that
theological difficulty which proved his greatest misfortune. His
sentiments never partook of an evangelical character until the latter
part of his life. His habits of thought had become confirmed, and it was
quite too late to counteract the influence of many views previously
expressed.

So far as we are able to collect the opinions of Coleridge by fragments
from his writings, we discover two elements, which, coming from totally
different sources, and originating in different ages, harmonized in his
mind and constituted the mass of his speculations. One was Grecian,
taking its rise in Plato and afterward becoming assimilated to
Christianity at Alexandria. The other was German, derived directly from
Kant, and undergoing no improvement by its processes of transformation
at the hands of that philosopher's successors. "From the Greek," says
Dr. Shedd, "he derived the doctrine of Ideas, and fully sympathized with
his warmly-glowing and poetic utterance of philosophic truths. From the
German he derived the more strictly scientific part of his system--the
fundamental distinctions between the Understanding and the Reason (with
the sub-distinction of the latter into Speculative and Practical), and
between Nature and Spirit. With him also he sympathized in that deep
conviction of the absolute nature and validity of the great ideas of
God, Freedom, and Immortality--of the binding obligation of
conscience--and generally of the