ing place, and pass in safety; but, as it was night, the greater part were unable to discover the ford, and were carried away by the current, and drowned. M. D'Algue, their pastor, favoured by the darkness, escaped on this occasion, but was taken some time after, together with his friend, the Sieur Roques, one of the elders of the church of Caderles. They had both remained firm to their religion, and had been compelled to seek concealment, by wandering about in the forests for eighteen or twenty months. They were at length arrested and brought to trial. The crimes of which they were accused were, the having kept themselves concealed for a long time, that they might not be obliged to change their religion; the having assisted at many Protestant assemblies, and performing in them the functions of ministers or readers. They pleaded guilty to all these charges; and, when they were asked if they were not aware that they had acted contrary to the orders of the king, they replied, that they had disobeyed these orders, because they were contrary to the commands of God, and they ought to obey God rather than man. They were condemned to be hung. A free pardon was offered them if they would consent to sign the abjuration; but they were not men to purchase their lives by such means.

Contrary to the usual custom, they were conducted to punishment separately, and both met their death with the firmness of devoted martyrs. In going to the place of execution, they were again solicited to unite themselves to the Church of Rome, and thus escape the fearful punishment which awaited them; but they both replied, they thanked God he had given them grace to die for his cause.

The executioner of Nismes, who performed the fatal office for so many of the followers of Jesus, was, it is said, at length conscience-struck at the enormity of his guilt, and fell into a sickness which proved mortal. During his illness, his place was supplied in a way scarcely credible. His daughter, attired as a man, took the office on herself, and, after her father's death, she assisted the new executioner. She was in attendance with him on the scaffold of M. D'Algue. Possessed, as she was, by the spirit. of bloodshed and violence, the firmness of the sufferer, instead of commanding her respect, roused her to such excess of anger, that she struck him with her clenched fist several times on the face, with inconceivable fury. The patient sufferer bore this indignity without uttering a complaint. He listened calmly at the foot of the scaffold while his condemnation was read aloud, and afterwards mounted the ladder with a cheerful air. He then prayed for a blessing on those who had caused his death, and exhorted his persecutors to repent and be converted, and no longer to war against God.

Such was the closing act of the life of M. D'Algue. Perhaps there is scarcely one among the accounts of the martyrdoms at Nismes more simply touching than this, from the peculiar meekness and holy patience of the victim. "Then was the evil day of tyranny.

HAVING expounded Mr Emerson's theory in the preceding Number, we feel at a loss how to proceed in dealing with its merits. Our first thought is, if not to dismiss it with contempt, to smother it with ridicule. It requires no little patience and self-command to look calmly on a man, throwing aside all the advantages which christianity and the progress of philosophy have brought along with them, and identifying himself with those who lived before such advantages were possessed, or in countries which lay beyond their reach. What cares Mr Emerson for apostles and prophets, or for such philosophers as Bacon, Des Cartes, and Dr Reid. Give him Zeno, or Pythagoras, or Plato; or, better still, give him some untutored savage, whom no knowledge has corrupted, and no science debased—who has listened to nothing from his birth save the roar of some neighbouring cataract, and the intuitions of his own spirit-and that man will be his Delphic Apollo and Olympic Jove!

'Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici?"

But that no one may suspect us of injustice to Mr Emerson, we deem it better, on the whole, to enter into as full an examination of his views as the limits of a magazine like ours will admit.

Mr Emerson denies a supreme personal Deity. He offers no argument in favour of his position, nor does he take any notice of the reasonings that have been advanced in support of the opposite doctrine. He simply asseverates, and, if any object, he is informed that "every man's words, who speaks from that life, must sound vain to those who do not dwell on the same thought on their own part." But what trifling is this? The point at issue is one of unspeakable moment, and we desire, therefore, that it shall be discussed in a rational and

On the suppo

intelligible manner. sition that there is no personal Deity, Christianity, as presently understood, is a delusion; and the notions entertained of guilt, responsibility, and a day of judgment, are entirely fabulous -"Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire." If, on the other hand, there does exist such a being as the God of the Bible is commonly supposed to be, then it must be criminal and dangerous in the highest degree to withhold from Him the worship and obedience that are His due.

The fact of a common nature, or that there is one mind common to all individual men, is the groundwork of our author's hypothesis respecting God. This nature, common to all, and which is in harmony with the material world, has suggested the notion of a great soul, or abyss of being underlying the whole, and constituting all minds, and indeed all things, numerically and absolutely

one.

Here there is perceptible that admixture of truth with error for which Mr Emerson's writings are distinguished. We admit a great soul or abyss of being underlying, embracing, pervading the entire universe, its Author and Preserver, and who imparts unity to it; so that, as Paley remarks, 66 we never get, amongst such originally or totally different modes of existence, as to indicate that we are come into the province of a different Creator, or under the direction of a different will." But it does not follow from this, that the soul and the universe are identical and one. There are two fallacies here. The first lies in supposing that sameness of nature, in a variety of individuals, involves the existence of a common reservoir or abyss, at once connecting and pervading the series of individuals, as the subjacent ocean connects and constitutes the multitudinous billows that diversify its surface. This nexus is to be proved

and not asserted merely. But it cannot be proved. The very opposite of it, as we shall afterwards see, may be demonstrated. The other fallacy is this. Admitting that sameness of nature implies oneness-that all the minds of individual men constitute but one mind, as all the surges of the Atlantic constitute but one seait does not therefore follow that this one mind is the Supreme mind, or God. There may still be a superior and presiding mind, and there must be, unless we exclude the idea, by the consciousness that we ourselves are the self-existent, First Cause. If my mind is not God, no abyss of mind, such as mine is, can be God. If the mind which is common to individual men be God, the mind of each, which is just a condition or undetached part of the common mind, must be God also; and this, Mr E. consistently enough affirms to be the case.

He holds that the soul of man is a part or particle of God.-Many of the ancient philosophers, while they held that the human soul was a ray from the divinity, and would ultimately revert to its source, regarded it in the mean time as detached from the parent orb. Hence they termed it ἀποσπασμα ἀιθέρος, a fragment of, or something abstracted from (delibatum, as Cicero renders it), the celestial ether; but Mr E. repudiates the idea of detachment or separation, and thus lays open his theory to an easy refutation. There is but one mind according to him, and no dualism either in will or in consciousness.

If this be the case, it is plain that the soul must possess all divine attributes, and must know that it does so. Mr Emerson contends that the soul does possess these attributes, and here we at once join issue with him. We deny that the soul is a part or particle of God. To be so, and yet to be ignorant of the fact, is an absurdity. If I am God, and there is but one mind and one consciousness, then, if I know it not, it

must remain a secret for ever. Besides my own soul, there is no other to instruct me. Nor is it mere instruction I want, it is consciousness. The whole of Mr Emerson's mission assumes that men are divine, but don't know it; and thus we have one incarnation of Deity teaching all other incarnations what they must know at least as well as he does. How does Mr Emerson know that my soul is a part, and an undivided part of God, when I myself not only do not believe it, but repudiate the notion as arrogant and blasphemous? This is utterly inconsistent with his dogma, that there is but one mind having but one will and consciousness. Were his theory true, what we now state could not possibly happen. One thought, one feeling, one consciousness, would pervade the universe; and all soul, in whatever forms it incarnated itself, would still necessarily retain its divinity, and as necessarily retain a sense or knowledge of it. In fact, in such a case, diversity of knowledge and variance of sentiment would be entirely unknown, and indeed absolutely impossible. Thus the soul of man cannot be a part or particle of God let us see whether it possesses the attributes which Mr Emerson ascribes to it.

As

He tells us that it is infinite. there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul, where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away, and we lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to all the attributes of God." Now, if this be true, the soul must embrace the universe, and, being conscious and intelligent, must know the entire universe. Of course, says Mr Emerson, it must and it does; and he exclaims,

"I am owner of the sphere,

Of the seven stars and the solar year; Of Cæsar's hand and Plato's brain; Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's strain."

The answer to all this is, just that it is pure, unadulterated nonsense. If the soul be infinite, there can be nothing hid from it. It must be acquainted with all mind and all matter, with every thought that has ever passed, or is now passing through the one mind; and every sentiment that has glowed, or still glows in the one heart; as well as with the composition of every nebula, and the creation, position, and distance of every star. We make no pretensions to such knowledge-it is too high for us; but Mr Emerson does, and we therefore ask him as seriously as such raving admits of, if he really knows all things. Not to push him too hard, we would simply inquire of him as to the 'seven stars,' of which he is the 'owner.' Will he give us the number of the stars that compose the neck of Taurus, or describe the size or structure of the Lucida Pleiadum? Mr E. has no answer to give to such questions as these, and therefore he adroitly directs our attention to other objects with which we are all acquainted, and tells us that he knows these from within!

"This life of ours," he says, "is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, war, colonization, church, court, and commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments, grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I believe in I believe in eternity. I can find Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, and the Islandsthe genius and creative principle of each and of all eras, in my own mind."

But if the soul is infinite and one, it must be acquainted, not only with places and things that are near, but with all places and things whatsoever; and therefore with all history, including such as has never been written, and all countries, including such as have never been explored, and all suns and systems, including such as no telescope has as yet revealed. Is Mr E.'s information of this kind; or, is all his historical

knowledge actually and exclusively drawn, not from the tablets of the mind, but from the pages of such writers as Herodotus and Gibbon; and all his geographical knowledge gleaned, not from the pre-existing, internal chart, but from ocular observation, and such travellers as Burckhardt and Park; and all his astronomical lore from Newton and Herschel? He gravely assures us, that "all facts pre-exist in his mind, and, pre-existing there, his mind predicts them;" if so, let him predict some one of the many facts which Lord Rosse's telescope, or the progress of science, is sure to disclose. Will Mr Emerson do so? He will not; he cannot. As to facts that are known, he has learned them from without; while as to those which remain to be discovered, his mind, notwithstanding all the surging' into it of the everlasting nature,' is as dark as midnight. Did he attempt to predict (to use his own language in reference to the present race of christian teachers), he would "babble." Therefore "let him husb.”

Mr Emerson would have us believe, that the soul is not only infinite, or without limits, but also eternal; that it never began to be. This must be the case if the soul has a necessary existence. But who in these days, except our author, is prepared to adopt the reasoning of the old philosophers of Persia, Greece, and Rome, on this subject? They held that creation was an absolute impossibility, consequently whatever is, exists necessarily. But is it so, that creation is absolutely impossible? The man who says so errs, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. Mr Emerson, however, wants the logical acuteness of the men of the olden time. They felt that their axiom was universal, and applied to all existence; and hence they maintained that matter was eternal as well as mind. The difference that obtained among them on this point,

regarded the disposition or arrangement of matter; some affirming, that it existed always in its present form, and others, that the Deity found matter a chaos, and fashioned the 'rudis indigestaque moles' into shape and beauty.

As Mr Emerson argues, that because the soul is, it has a necessary existence, he is bound for the same reason to hold, that because matter is, it is therefore eternal. There is no escape for him, unless he fall back on the Berkleian hypothesis, and deny that there is such a thing as an external universe. Every thinker must see the dilemma in which Mr Emerson has involved himself. He must either deny or admit the existence of matter. If he admit its existence, and yet deny its eternity, he overthrows his own theory in regard to the soul; if he deny the existence of matter, and yet hold that man is an incarnation of deity, he asserts a self-evident contradiction. If matter, or an external world, be illusory, and not real, Mr E.'s doctrine of incarnations must be as unsubstantial as a midsummer night's dream.

What, then, does Mr Emerson asseverate on the subject? At page 227 we find him off his guard, and incidentally asserting what is subversive of his system. He there admits the doctrine of a creation, and the actual existence of 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." According to this statement, the world is, and yet, on Emerson's principles, it is impossible it can have been created, for whatever is has a necessary existence. Again, on turning to his Essay on Nature, we find him entering somewhat formally and fully into the question we are now considering, and leaning to the notion, that external nature is only ideal.

"A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether nature outwardly exists. It is a sufficient account of that appearance we call the world, that God will teach a human mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain number of congruent sensations, which we call sun and moon, man and woman, house and trade. In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some God paints the image in the firmament of the soul? Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me. Be it what it may, it is ideal to me so long as I cannot try the accuracy of my senses."

On this quotation we remark, that it is contradicted by the one which precedes it; that it displays an ignorance or dubiety in regard to the world as actually existing, or existing only in idea, which, if the soul or spirit is one, and created, the world as well as the body' is truly superhuman; and in fine, that, if it prove any thing, it is that the fact of Deity incarnating himself in man is not a fact, but an illusion-yet an illusion which the Deity has so dexterously practised on himself, that He is not quite sure but after all it may be a sober reality!

We add only one observation here. Suppose we allow that the soul alone is eternal, and never began to be, where, we ask, was it before God incarnated himself in us? Where the billow was, surely, before it rose from the bosom of the sea,-in the great abyss of existence. But we have no recollection of this, and, however much we may wish and strive to believe it, we cannot. Now, mark the way in which Mr E. disposes of this difficulty.