may be in accordance with their principles.*

Such a system would be free alike from political and ecclesiastical domination. It would do justice to all, and would show favour to none-it would give no undue power to governors of schools, and would exert no servile or debasing influence either on teachers or scholars-it would secure a competent provision for the industrious teacher, while it would not exempt him from proper superintendence and responsibility-above all, it would do violence to the conscientious convictions of no one, and could therefore be supported by all without any sacrifice of principle. Whatever we resolve to do should be done without delay. Our present position is most critical. If the Government be allowed to carry out its present scheme for a very few years, we shall have in every parish of Scotland a parochial school under the exclusive control of the Establishment, and a Free Church school under the exclusive control of the Free Church; and Dissenters will be shut up to the painful and perilous

alternative, of either submitting to have their children educated by their ecclesiastical rivals on their own terms, or to erect educational institutions of their own, under circumstances so disadvantageous as to preclude all hope of successful competition. It is only by the instant adoption of vigorous measures that we can expect to avert this imminent danger. Let public meetings be held as speedily as possible in all the principal towns, with the view of exciting attention to the subject, and procuring a general expression of opinion in accordance with our views. Let petitions be poured in upon the legislature from every quarter of the country, till the government are constrained to withdraw their present obnoxious scheme, and to replace it by a measure more in accordance with the dictates of justice and of sound policy. If we are true to our principles, success is certain. The struggle may be sharp, but it will be short, and the victory will be decisive.

LITTLE did Prince Charles foresee what was coming when, in 1614, delighted with the glowing account given him by Captain Smith, of the bays and coast of the country which the latter had just returned from exploring, he declared that it should be called New England. Six years after, a hundred and ten persons left the shores of Britain, in a single ship, in quest of religious liberty, and, being diverted from Hudson's River, where they intended to settle, made Cape Cod, and landing, took up their abode at a spot to which they gave the name of New Plymouth. In a short time, these were joined from the

Memorial of the Committee of the United Presbyterian Synod on Common School Education.

J. T.

fatherland by other refugees from oppression; and Salem, Boston, Dorchester, and other towns sprang into existence. Such was the commencement of a movement, the most important, perhaps, that had taken place since the dispersion, which, from the central plains of Shinar, diffused the benefits of civilisation throughout Chaldea and Egypt, and even carried them beyond the confines of China and Hindostan.

With all their defects, the New England Puritans were a noble race. Higginson, Mather, Hooker, and John Winthorp, were magnanimous spirits, and gave reason to hope that the colony they established, or rather the empire they founded, would prove a benefactress to the world. Who

could tell, but in this way these men might pay back the unkindness they met with in their native land, by teaching it how to reanimate or reconstruct its effete or defective institutions? Fresh thoughts will be borne across the Atlantic wave, and a noble rivalry in literature, science, and religion, will give birth to unprecedented effort, and fill the earth with knowledge, liberty, and love.

To aid

enter the church of Rome. in this work, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in France, has appropriated, during the last year, 54,500 francs to the Archbishop of Oregon, and 55,900 francs to the Society of the Jesuits in the Rocky Mountains. Such is but a specimen of the movements of Popery in America, which are being conducted, as all agree in testifying, on a stupendous scale.

There is, however, another element of mischief at work, and that, too, chiefly among the older States of the Union. This element assumed form about half a century ago, when Harvard University became Unitarian :

There are two things at the present moment in the condition of the States of America, calculated to excite painful and even alarming apprehensions.

POPERY is aiming at their conquest. While strengthening prodigiously her position in New York, she is striving to take possession of the entire valley of the Mississippi, as well as of the recently annexed territory of Texas. Her emissaries, too, have crossed the Rocky Mountains, and planted their churches and institutions in Oregon. There are now about thirty missionaries in this quarter, under the direction of ten fathers of the Jesuits; and others are soon to join them. Already have they begun their literary institutions. One College and two Academies are completed. Fourteen churches have been finished and dedicated according to the imposing forms of the Roman ritual. About 6000 neglected Indians have been baptized, and there are now in the hands of the priests about 15,000 men, who are passing through their preparatory course, and who, within a few months, will also

grim fathers only eighteen years after Plymouth was first colonized, and when remains of the forest still encumbered the streets of their settlements. Its glory, however, is departed. Situated between Boston and Mount Auburn, it presents externally just such a picture as the eye of the student loves to contemplate. Embosomed among trees, with its massive library rising in the midst of them, it at once supplies the materials of study, and furnishes the oppor tunity of prosecuting it without interruption or molestation. But the spirit and the faith of the Puritans have fled; and not all the eloquence of Everett, with all the learning of his colleagues, can compensate for the loss.

At this University, Ralph Waldo Emerson was educated, and, having completed his course of study, became pastor of a Unitarian congregation in Boston, his native place. A difference, ere long, arising between him and his people, he resigned his charge, and fixed his residence at Concord, Massachusets, where he has since spent his time in private study, editing a review called "The Dial," and delivering in one or other of the neighbouring towns an occasional address at the

celebration of some literary festival. And, had Mr Emerson remained at Concord, we might not have felt ourselves called upon to take any notice of him. But, when leaving the Merrimac, he appears on the Mersey, and threatens to cross the Tweed for the purpose of disseminating his pernicious opinions, we feel, not only that courtesy does not forbid, but that duty demands, that we shall do what in us lies to refute and expose them.

Mr Emerson is a Unitarian, and something more. He does not belong to the school of Channing. He is a Pantheist, which Channing was not; and all the more dangerous, that he expresses himself after the fashion of a mystic. His essays partake of the ambiguity of oracles. "We cannot disguise the fact, that on a first perusal Emerson offers many difficulties. Sometimes we fail to seize his meaning from a looseness of language; sometimes, from his omitting a link in the idea, in his haste to give it utterance in the completed form; and often, because he is within the threshold of some of those higher speculations to which we recur again and again, but to feel, as we retire, baffled from the inquiry, that in the human soul there are more mysteries that can be fathomed by its philosophy." Such is the language of the British editor of his Essays, than whom he has not a more devoted admirer. We, too, are admirers of Mr Emerson in some respects, and however intensely we dislike his creed, and however unsparingly we may denounce it, we seize the opportunity of stating, that had he come before us simply as a literary character, we would have been among the foremost to acknowledge his merits.

He is a man of genius. One cannot read a page of his works without being convinced of this. His style is not always pure, but it is nervous and original; his illustrations are

learned and exhaustless; and the whole is lighted up with the gleams and corruscations of a fancy that is quite charming. And had Mr Emerson confined himself to fine writing we should have allowed him, undisturbed by us, to hold on his way amid the homage of his admirers; but it is far otherwise. He sets up for a reformer. The great clock of the world has run down, and that long ago, and he has come to wind it up and set it agoing. All things are to be resolved into first principles, and

start anew.

Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo: Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.

The grand end which Mr Emerson proposes to himself, in his studies, writings, and lectures, is the knowledge of man, and the development of what within him is most noble and enduring. And, so far, we have no fault to find with him; although what he says is, in our opinion, surpassed by much that others have propounded before him. Even Sir William Jones' ode, beginning with "What constitutes a state?" would not exchange for all that he has written, or is likely to indite, on the subject.

we

But, as we proceed in our examination of Mr Emerson's views of the soul, we find that they differ materially from those commonly entertained. He lays it down as a first principle that the soul is—that it alone is; that is, possesses absolute existence, and that every thing else-the body and the material universe-are merely phenomenal. Now, we do not object to such language as this, on the understanding that it is intended simply to assert the priority of mind to matter, and the superiority of the former over the latter,—“ the things that are seen being temporal, but the things that are not seen eternal." But Mr Emerson, we soon discover, goes far beyond this. The soul is most dignified, and alone possesses absolute existence; for the

soul is a portion of God, and every man an incarnation of deity. So says Mr E.; and in this sentence we have the germ and essence of his theory. The basis of it is, that each soul is a portion of the divinity, and that God, in the full and proper sense of the term, comprehends the great abyss of Being, which underlies and manifests itself throughout the whole. Hence arises the surpassing dignity of man, and hence the propriety and importance of a man's relying on himself; and, in preference to all history, and all books, and all teachers whatsoever, consulting the intuitions of his own spirit, which is just listening to and obeying the voice of God. Thus, the great fact or truth which Mr Emerson feels himself commissioned to announce is, that our souls are divine, and that it becomes each of us to act an independent, a manly, a godlike part.

The justness of this outline of his views will appear from the following

"The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the original abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation, or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative; excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, and times within itself."-P. 65.*

"In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life-no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which Nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blythe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the universal Being circulate, through .me.

I am part or particle of God."P. 196.

،، The doctrine of the Divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs the constitution. And because the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the Divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury.

"Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone, in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what was in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and, evermore, goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine. Through me God acts; through me speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the next and the following ages? There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes."

6

But

From these extracts, which might easily have been multiplied, it is plain that Mr Emerson denies a personal deity, or that there exists a being who, though intimately present with all his works, is yet entirely distinct from them; who is infinitely nigh to us,

By Ralph Waldo Emerson." London: W. S. Orr & Co. 1848.

while we remain infinitely distant from his all-perfect and incommunicable essence. According to Mr Emerson, the totality of the universe is God. He is thus a disciple of the old emanative, pantheistic philosophy; not that which arose out of the belief that matter and mind are both selfexisting, but that which went a step farther, and, simplifying the theory of existence, admitted but one original principle-mind; the bright centre and fount of all things. In perfect unison with this system, Emerson replies, in answer to the question, Whence is matter? "It is spirit that creates. The world proceeds from the same spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God,-a projection of God in the unconscious, p. 227. "It must be, that when God speaketh, he should communicate not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new-date and new-create the whole."-P. 35.

It follows from all this, that there exists no object of religious homage, and that the only rational worship is self-respect. And here we begin to discover the deplorable results to which Emerson's views would conduct us.

As there is no personal God, and every man has all-sufficiency in himself, there is no room for PRAYER.

"As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer, kneeling in his field to weed it; the prayer of the rower, kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers, heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends." -P. 42.

As there is no personal God, and every man has all-sufficiency in himself, the sole rule of duty is to be sought for from within, and not from without, whether from the Bible or elsewhere.

6

"Iremember an answer which, when quite young, I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrine of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? My friend suggested,But these impulses may be from below, not from above.' I replied, 6 They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil.' No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is, what is after my constitution; the only wrong, what is against it."

Thus, according to Mr Emerson, man is every thing; all, and in all, at once the object of worship and the worshipper.

"I, the imperfect, adore my own perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be but the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become public and human in my regards and actions. So come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies that are immortal." -P. 156.

We have said enough to convey a pretty accurate idea of the origin and character of the system which Mr Emerson propounds. It is a revival, to some extent, of the old emanative, pantheistic philosophy,-whose first principle was, that as nothing can come out of nothing, ex nihilo nihil fit-so, whatever has a real, possesses a necessary existence. According to it, to apply to it Mr Emerson's terminology, mind alone is. This is the meaning Mr E. attaches to his words when he says-the soul is; that is, it has not an ephemeral or phenomenal, but a real, and therefore necessary existence. He explains himself where he says-" that