under other names; he bowed to the authority of internal consciousness; but he subjected consciousness to a most rigorous questioning, and rejected many an appeal to its authority because founded on a hasty and incorrect interpretation of its teaching. The following paragraph will here be read with interest: "It is an eminent advantage of correct mental science, that it forces us to notice the limits of human knowledge. Thus it teaches us to receive truths which stand to each other in such a relation as, by their seeming repugnance, to constitute mysteries. When two truths hold this correlation, if either of them is rejected the contrary becomes a falsehood; for example, God's omnipresence in all things, and his distinct objective existence independent of all things; the unity and plurality of the Godhead; the absolute dependence and the entire accountability of man. Superficial reasoning may renounce one or the other for the apparent contradiction, but a profound philosophy embraces both as essential truth. It may be worthy of remark here that every actually existing object, the mere insect, the spire of grass, the dew-drop, the microscopic animalculæ dwelling in it, involves a contradiction truly analogous to that which a haughty rationalism charges on the Trinity; for, as the French philosopher Cousin generalizes it, (and few of that Frenchman's obscure abstractions embosom as much good meaning,) 'Reality is the simultaneity of unity and plurality; and it may be added, that all the contradictoriness which proud hearts have found in other evangelical doctrines, is but the actual co-existence of properties or acts seemingly repugnant; yet seeming so only in consequence of some groundless prejudice or accidental association. It is a striking remark of Mr. Townsend, the very sensible writer on Mesmerism, as just as it is striking; All intelligence that is not limited is God; and in the force of the restrictions which confine the creature (paradoxical as it may sound) consist the independence of its action and the liberty of its will.' There is a kindred affirmation, with more beauty in it, by the evangelical Tholuck, whose piety and love of truth have shone amid the surrounding gloom of infidelity, almost as if the star of Bethlehem had risen upon Egyptian darkness; True freedom,' says Tholuck, exists only where there is necessity, as true humanity only where there is divinity.' The moment a man justly apprehends the distinction between created and uncreated power, he discovers the perfect emptiness of those 'great swelling words' which have again and again been uttered against all evangelical theology as involving an iron fatalism;' for then he sees, that, while the fatum Mahometanum is a stupid plea for sheer idleness, and the fatum Stoicum an impudent apology for want of feeling, the fatum Christianum, if any person chooses to apply such a term and epithet, (we would not,) is merely that pronouncing and decreeing of God, by which he ordains all things in infinite wisdom. From overlooking this distinction, and losing sight of the essential element of created power, men have advanced very remarkable opinions respecting what is requisite for accountable moral agency. Power of contrary choice without contrary inducement, liberty of indifference, choice before the first choice, self-determination of will, a will which is a person, but which has no nature, and can not acquire a nature nor possess one a moment without becoming a thing instead of a person,-these and other notions equally brilliant and profound have been excogitated to make the sinner (what every sinner knows God has made him) an accountable agent." Prof. F. was a Christian philosopher. He bowed implicitly to the authority of God's word. His piety was deep; and in all his investigations of mind he recognized its grandeur as it is revealed by Christianity alone. His influence in molding the minds of seven hundred men is spread throughout the globe. And in bringing this notice of him to a close, we can not but re flect how sublime the study of the human mind; how immense the influence of the teacher, the preacher, of every one, however retired from public gaze, the great labor of whose life is to mold the human mind! And if it is necessary in order to preserve persons thus employed from misdirected efforts, that they know the laws of the mind, equally is it necessary, in order to keep their interest intense and make them mighty in their efforts, that they always appreciate its grandeur. We may profitably dwell a moment on this thought. Great as are the wonders of physical science, the science of mind reveals greater; for it reveals that plastic spirit which stamps the face of material nature with its own image. When the mind of man is savage, all nature is savage around it; when the mind is cultivated, all nature blooms in cultivation. Before the mind of man touches it, the material world with its immeasurable energies is against him; the rivers forbid his passage; the ocean roars defiance; the trees wag their heads in scorn of his toolless hands; the mines hold fast their treasures; and a territory large enough for a state starves a handful of naked wretches on its bosom. But when the mind of an exerts its power, nature yields her energies to his service; the earth brings forth abundantly; stinted grains and crabbed fruits become rich and luscious; the forests melt away; the rivers do his work; the lightning obeys his bidding; and old ocean bows his hoary locks and bears his burdens. "When the mind of man takes a step all the universe advances with it." And this is often true, not only of the advance of a nation, but of a single mind. A single mind studying the laws of nature or the revelation of God, takes a step, and the world shakes beneath its tread; a single mind advances, and, behold, the world is not what it was. control the material world by thoughts and volitions, is a characteristic power of man's spirit which shows its affinity with God. And though the human spirit can not speak and it is done; yet the plastic power by which, in whatever wilderness placed, it does, in proportion to its own improvement, improve all nature around it, is a prerogative raising it in grandeur immeasurably above the material universe and allying it with God. And if this be the plastic power of the soul, we see that there must be more than rhetorical figures in the scriptural predictions that the earth shall be renovated in beauty, as the human soul advances towards perfection. There will be all that is necessary to realize their fulfillment, when "nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom" shall mirror in her beauty the mind of man now endowed with the fullness of knowledge and the beauties of holiness; when, in her renewed fruitfulness, developed resources, and subjugated agencies, she shall show forth, not only as did Eden fresh from the Creator's hand the glory of God, but also the grandeur of him to whom as To the image of himself, God in the beginning delegated "dominion over all the earth," and who, raised from his fall by the power of the gospel and renovating material nature by the action of his own soul, reappears at last, successful over all obstacles and crowned with his primeval glory as the dresser and keeper of the earth. It is the soul, we declare again, which determines the impression which the material universe makes on it; and this is a proof of the soul's superior grandeur. If nature is clothed in beauty and sublimity, it is the soul that weaves within itself her shining apparel and covers her nakedness with royal vestments. "Mind, mind alone-bear witness earth and heaven- Of beauteous and sublime." It is the soul's own feelings which determine also whether nature shall be cheerful or sad. The convert, beaming with newborn love, invests all nature with his own joys; the mountains and hills break forth before him into singing and all the trees of the field do clap their hands. But when the soul looks abroad sad and desponding, it robes all nature in mourning; the winds sigh, the trees moan, the mountains frown, and every impression from without is tinged with melancholy. And when he whose soul is full of fear goes abroad, the dim objects about him swell into forms of terror, and nature's sounds are heard as sepulchral words and tones of menace. The murderer-for such is the actual confession of one-hears the chippering birds reproaching him with his deed of blood. And because his own soul is full of specters, the universe is full of the same; the shadows of his own crimes flit terribly about, mingling like giant forms among the objects of nature; "The fiends in his own bosom, people air With kindred fiends that haunt him to despair." Such is the power of the soul to clothe all nature in its own garments, and to give it voice and expression like its own. "Would you aught behold of higher worth What a view of the grandeur of the soul! Grand as the ex terior universe is, the soul stamps it in a moment with its own expression. We smile on it and it smiles on us. it mourns to us. Never infant answered more We mourn and quickly with its own the smiles or tears of its mother's face. The outward universe is but a babe in the arms to the grander soul. We see the superior grandeur of the soul, also, in the fact that it knows the outward universe, but can not be known by it. Greatest is he who had all the laws and plan of the universe in his mind when as yet it was not, and by the energy of his will realized those laws in creating the worlds from nothing. Next greatest is he who, with the universe in operation before him, can decipher from its intricate movements the plan which guided its Creator, penetrate its inmost secrets, measure its overwhelming distances, and record its mathematical laws. Least of all is the mighty universe of matter with its senseless forces, its lifeless maguitudes, its unknowing greatness. Says Pascal, "Man is but a reed, and the weakest in nature; but then he is a reed that thinks. It does not need the universe to crush him; a breath of air, a drop of water will kill him. But even if the material universe should crush him, man will be more noble than that which destroys him; because he knows that he dies, while the universe knows nothing of the advantage it gains over him." We can only refer the reader, without at all enlarging, to the additional considerations, that the soul determines by its own inward state the effect of all outward motives, causing what in one state of mind would be an irresistible temptation, to be, in another, repulsive; that the soul determines the effect of outward influences on its own happiness, miserable, it may be, in a palace, singing, it may be, like Paul and Silas, in a prison, looking on the ghastly face of death and compelling it to answer with a smile; and that (as Christ has said "the kingdom of heaven is within you") from out of the soul must shine, if it shines at all, the glory of heaven. Verily here is a glimpse of something grander than the material universe; mightier than the powers of nature; independent of all but God. Well might the Savior declare it worth more than the world. "Oh, there is moral might in this, To crush, create, dissolve, combine: All mine; the confidence is just, On God I ground my high-born trust To stand, when pole is rent from pole, Calm in my majesty of soul, Watching the throes of this wrecked world, When from their thrones the Alps are hurled, When fire consumes earth, sea and air, To stand unharmed, undaunted there, And grateful still to boast in this, 'My mind to me a kingdom is."" How sublime then, above all the sublimity of physical science, the work of him who is called, to unfold the laws and attributes of the mind! How sublime and responsible the office of him And when the soul, made to who is called to instruct the mind! illuminate the world by its own light, is fallen to depend on the world for happiness, to go round and beg of pleasure a sip of her cup, and of fortune a little of her gold, and of fame a tinkling of her applause to get an hour's poor enjoyment; when it has thus fallen, as if the sun had sunk down in the heavens and needed to be lighted with tapers; how sublime beyond conception the office of reluming it as a light of the world, and lifting it to go on its majestic course, filled within and radiant without with "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." But we shall do better to give the words of Fiske: "The minister's charge is high above what ancient poetry and mythology assigned to the gods. The guardian care of mountains and groves, the sea, the air, of a planet or a sun, a city, a nation, a world, dwindles to the microscopic speck of dust in the comparison. *** How awful, too, his responsibility! The problem and experiment assigned to him, is to bring back to holy, happy communion with the infinite mind that wandering human mind, which, while it strays off from him, the central source of life and love and joy, does but plunge itself and drag down other minds in deeper guilt and woe. Had some vast globe been loosed from its proper sphere, and hurled by some mighty, evergrowing impulse along a wild erratic course-to be sent out to check that wandering mass, and guide its mad momentum, and bring it round with no disturbance of other orbs to take again its proper sphere and place, were no trifling errand even for an angel; a fearful errand, too, it would be, if, by one mischance, by a single faulty or inadvertent touch, he might augment its fatal impulse to dash with greater fury upon planets, suns and stars, and carry confusion on from system to system, through illimitable space. To an errand higher and more fearful far are they appointed, who are commissioned as ambassadors of Christ; sent out to call back, not some wandering mass of clay or globe of light, but an erring soul that shall live in ecstasies or in agonies, when existing suns and systems may be all extinct.”—pp. 360, 361. ART. V. THE HAND OF GOD IN THE GOLD Constitution of the State of California. Sights in the Gold Region and Scenes by the Way. By THEODORE T. JOHNSON. New York: Baker & Scribner. 1849. A FEW months ago our ears were startled by tales of golden discoveries on the distant shores of the Pacific. They seemed at first too marvellous for credence; but testimony was added to testimony until the conviction began to prevail that there had indeed been found a "land full of gold, and that of its treasures there was no end." The immediate result was what might have been anticipated. From the crowded marts of business, from the quiet villages that dot New England's valleys, and from the fastnesses of her hills, from the prairies of the West, and the moun |