revolutionary madness and infidelity. "Science had never attained a more commanding station, than in France at the close of the eighteenth century." It was the educated and the learned who condemned religion, and denied and put down Christianity in that country. It was reason triumphing.* Speaking of Collins, Bolingbroke, Bayle, Fontenelle, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Kett says of them, they adopted "the words of reason, toleration, humanity, as their signal and call to arms."+

Philosophy is now, and ever, what it is described by M. Guizot, "that which admits not under any name or form, a faith obligatory to human thought; and in religious as well as other matters leaves it free to believe or not to believe, and to direct itself by its own labour." It is the same which has exhibited the Unitarians and "the doctors of Zurich, with scissors

The seemingly abandoned doctrine of "sufficient reason" is still the same which governs us. We see no reason why riches should demoralize us; why luxury should injure the poor; why knowledge should make the mind irreligious. We do not see how national virtue should make us strong; how sabbath-keeping should make us rich; how religious rulers should make us prosperous.

Kett on Proph. ii. 155. "The Bishop of Meaux, and the learned Grotius, supposed the second beast in Revelations to denote philosophy 'falsely so called.' Dr. Hartley, in the conclusion of his Observations on Man, considers infidelity as the beast. Sir I. Newton and Dr. Clarke interpreted 'the reign of the beast' to be the open avowal of infidelity. They further conjectured that the state of religion in France, and the manners of the age, combined with the divine oracles to announce the approaching reign of the beast. And they considered it as probable, that the ecclesiastical constitution of France would soon be subverted, and that the standard of infidelity would first be set up there."-Ibid. i. 389, 390.

Quoted, Bickersteth's Dangers of the Church of Christ, p. 8.

in hand, cutting out the spurious passages from the Apostle's writings;"*-and which warranted the Rationalist Puritans of the Commonwealth in objecting to the Lord's Prayer, that Our Lord Jesus Christ "made it in his minority, before he was arrived at his full perfection."+ Philosophy is ever proud, conceited, selfish, cruel, tyrannical, independent, blind, devoid of wisdom: regarding neither God nor man: sacrificing the happiness and blood of men to an opinion and an abstraction, and thousands to a thesis.

This reasoning, conceited, self-satisfied, independent spirit has been growing upon us for years, and is still growing, under the passion for education which is hurrying us away and possessing us; and unless counteracted, or at least mastered, and regulated by a higher principle, must prematurely hurry us into foolishness and decrepitude.‡

* Theopneustia, by M. Gaussen.

+ Fuller's Triple Reconciler, p. 130, edit. 1654.

That education does not tend to make people better subjects, and to deter them from crime, but the reverse, has been shown by Mr. Alison; who has collected several examples and authorities to that effect, at least as strong as any which have been brought to prove the opposite proposition. The following are some extracts from his work on Population.

"If it is expected that the enjoyments of knowledge are to counteract, in the majority of the lower orders, the desire for gratifications of a baser kind, or to check the growth of vicious desires, in the active as well as the speculative portion of mankind, effects are anticipated from its diffusion contrary alike to reason and to experience. If any one were to propose, by a system of education, to counteract the passions, or give a new direction to the desires of the higher orders

I look upon the raging thirst after knowledge and science as being the crowning heresy and apostasy of

generally, he would be immediately regarded as a visionary enthusiast." -vol. ii. p. 91.

"Scotland (so frequently referred to), demonstrates the inefficiency of education to arrest the progress of evil in a complicated state of society.

"In the contest with whisky in their crowded population, education has been utterly overthrown."—ii. 96.

"In England, it has been completely established, by the evidence laid before several parliamentary committees, that the education of the lower orders has had no effect whatever in checking the progress of crime. Report on Crime, 1828; Evidence before Combination Committee, 1838, p. 97, 169."

"The number of individuals charged with serious offences is in England five times greater than it was thirty years ago; in Ireland sir times; but in Scotland twenty-nine times.-Moreau, p. 98, 317.”

"M. Guerry has pointed out, that the great majority of the licentious females of Paris come from the northern and most highly educated provinces of France.

"Over education is the common source of the passions to which they owe their ruin; it is the desire for immediate enjoyment,—-a thirst for the pleasures and luxuries of the affluent,-the love of dress, ornament, and gaiety, which are the prevailing motives that lead almost all young women astray. How much must the sway of such impulses be increased, by the superficial and exciting reading which the usual trash to be found in circulating libraries affords in so overwhelming a proportion." (ii. 314.) And he adds the details of ten circulating libraries in London; from which it appears, that there are only 27 volumes on morality and religion in them, and above 1500 fashionable, indifferent and libertine novels.

"If any person would wish to know to what, in a highly civilized and opulent community, the general extension of simply intellectual cultivation will lead, he has only to look at the books found at Pompeii ; ninety-nine-hundredths of which relate exclusively to subjects of gastronomy or obscenity; or to the present novels and dramatic literature in France, in which all the efforts of genius, and all the powers of fancy,

the present generation. Among other signs, it is its boast to "bring down fire from heaven on the earth in

are employed only to heighten the desires, prolong the excitement, and throw a romantic cover over the gratification of the senses.”—ii. 302. Parliamentary return of crimes tried in Scotland, 1837, and 1838.

Uneducated. . 1836... 693..... 1837 ... 551.

Educated ... 1836... 2360..... 1837 ... 2793.

Therefore, the uneducated were not one-fifth of the educated; and the former are decreasing, and the latter increasing."-ii. 318.

"By the criminal returns in France, in the whole eighty-six departments, it has been found, that with hardly one exception, the amount of crime is just in proportion to the degree of instruction which prevails."

"We do not think that you can attribute the diminution of crime in the north to instruction, because, in Connecticut, where there is far more instruction than in New York, crime increases with a terrible rapidity; and if you cannot accuse knowledge as the cause of this, one is obliged to acknowledge, that it is not a preventive. Beaumont and Tocqueville on the Penitentary System of the U. S. 147.”—ii. 320.

"In Sweden, in 1837, 1 in 460 were punished for criminal offences. Of those living in towns, 1 in 78. These numbers are considerably higher than the worst parts of Great Britain.

"In Norway, in 1835, 1 in 457 were committed for criminal offences. "Yet both Norway and Sweden are in a very high degree educated countries; instruction is universal."-ii. 327.

"Without taking into consideration the prodigious influence of this new element (the extension of knowledge), which has now for the first time been let loose in human affairs, it is impossible to account for the extraordinary demoralization of the lower orders, during the last twenty years; and the extent to which the licentiousness and profligacy in that class now press, not only against the barriers of government, but the restraints of religion, the precepts of virtue, and even the ordinary decorum of society.”—ii. 341.

The whole chapter on education occupies from p. 292 to 346 of his second volume.

The Chaplain of the Lewes House of Correction reports (1842),

the sight of men."* 'Eripuit cælo fulmen," is placed, for inscription, over Dr. Franklin's monumental bust.

We are children in wisdom and good sense, with the pride and obstinacy of old men. The prevailing independence of mind and reason is well illustrated, and its value and consequences shown, by the state of discipline and conduct of our troops during the Peninsular war. They were bold and irresistible in fight; but they could bear neither victory nor defeat; both equally disorganized them:-so that after a victory the success could not be followed up, and on a retreat they strayed in disobedience of orders, and were cut off by hundreds. "No officer or man," says the Duke of Wellington in his despatches, "ever reads an order or regulation for the purpose of obeying it :-at most it is a subject of curiosity and a habit."+ Each man thought that the war depended upon himself; and that with his few men he could drive the French out of Spain, and finish the war; and by his rashness and disobedience to command deranged the general operations, of which he understood nothing. The man of true and consummate wisdom. thus writes respecting one of them: "I am sorry to be obliged to express my disapprobation of the conduct of an officer of whom I have always entertained a good

that the worst crimes have been committed by the most educated prisoners.

Every faithful inquiry will bring us nearer and nearer to this truth, that knowledge tends more to the increase of crime than the diminution of it.

* Rev. xiii. 13.

+ Despatches of Duke of Wellington, Lesaca, 18th July, 1813.