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By Miss Corner. Square. 1s. 6d. Village Stories. By Miss Corner. Square. 1s. 6d. THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. JANUARY, 1837. No. CXXX. ART. I.-1. A Discourse on Natural Theology, schowing the Nature of the Evidence, and the advantages of the Study. By HENRY LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S., Member of the Institute of France. 8vo. London : 1835. 2. Paley's Natural Theology, with Illustrative Notes. By HENRY LORD BROUGHAM, and Sir CHARLES BELL, K.G.H., F.R.S., Professor of Surgery in the University of Edinburgh. To which are added Supplementary Dissertations. By Sir CHARLES BELL. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1836. OME apology is due to our readers for not having sooner made them acquainted with Lord Brougham's Discourse--a work which, whether viewed with reference to its own intrinsic merits, or the character and position of its author, certainly deserved an earlier notice. To whatever cause the delay may be owing, we have not been prevented from examining it, nor shall we be deterred from now writing a faithful review of it by any dread of encountering the charge of partiality for commending the production of an individual who is well known to have been one of the founders of this Journal, and in early life a frequent contributor to its pages. In political controversy, or in the discussion of questions of national policy, we necessarily view with a favourable eye the writings of those whose opinions we have cherished or espoused, or with whom we may have struggled in the common cause of our liberties. But in the less exciting questions of literature and science, where substantial truth is more within our grasp, and more without the circle of our in VOL. LXIV. NO. CXXX. S terests and prejudices, we can be under no temptation to stain our pages either with unseemly praise or dishonest partiality. Yet we should not be at all surprised to see ourselves charged with both, even by the supporters of that rival Journal, which the late Mr. Canning helped to establish,--to which he was an occasional contributor, and in which there appeared, in an early Number, an elaborate review of one of his Pamphlets, containing a vindication of his political conduct and character. It has often been made a reproach to Christianity, and often has it proved a snare to the young enquirer, that men of genius have not readily yielded to the weight of its testimony. Impotent as this argument is, it has been wielded with considerable effect; and although such examples of infidelity are not difficult of explanation, yet it is the best and the fairest reply to point to that cloud of witnesses which is resplendent with the names of Milton and Locke,-of Bacon, Newton, and Boyle. To this honoured list, the friends of truth will no doubt rejoice in the accession of another name, and hail the appearance of a work written by one of the most remarkable men of his age-an orator unrivalled for the force of his eloquence-a reasoner whose dialectical powers it would be difficult to match-a philosopher of great and varied acquirements—a statesman pre-eminent in acuteness and perspicacity. Is it not an event to be welcomed by the Church, and to be hailed by Christians of every creed, that in the meridian of his power-amid the strife of contending factions, and under the burden and distraction of the highest functions-such a man has come forward as the advocate of Natural and Revealed Religion? There is no public man in England whose intellectual influence is so widely extended as that of Lord Brougham. It bears sway over the minds of thousands whom he has been the means of instructing in useful knowledge;-it reigns in the hearts of our youth, for whom he has so long struggled to procure a more effective system of education;-it sustains the hopes and fosters the honourable ambition of literary and scientific men; and it is not powerless over any section of that vast proportion of our fellowcitizens who have resolved that our civil and ecclesiastical institutions shall be impressed with the knowledge and spirit of the age. Is it not an event then to be welcomed by every friend of his country, that within such an extended sphere, truths the most interesting to man-the most auxiliary to peace and order-and the most conducive to the stability of our institutions, have been enforced by so renowned an advocate? But though views like these must have presented themselves to pious and unprejudiced minds, yet it is a fact which will hardly be credited in another age, that neither the nominal friends of the Church, nor the professed supporters of the Throne, liave re→ garded the work of Lord Brougham either with favour or any sort of approbation. They seem to have considered it as a production which gave fresh lustre to the name of a political adversary; and we feel assured that they would rather have seen the Lord High Chancellor become the expounder of the Rights of Man,' than the antagonist of Hume and the annotator of Paley. That this is no unfair conjecture may be inferred from the reception which Lord Brougham's book has experienced from the organs of that powerful party which lays claim to exclusive piety and patriotism. His design was made the subject of attack even before his work was published. His religious principles were denounced as heretical, and his knowledge as limited and superficial. No sooner did the work appear than his arguments were represented as borrowed from common sources, and the whole as a complete failure. It was even surmised that the pious sentiments which adorn it were assumed as a suitable ornament for the woolsack; aud men who are themselves the offspring of a political religion, and the very type of its basest form, had the audacity to connect with the recent elevation of Lord Brougham, the adoption of opinions which we could, if necessary, triumphantly show he had long, before entertained and published. Every period of our history presents to us examples of a political piety whose maxims and whose fruits stand in direct opposition to the spirit of genuine religion. The timid aristocrat-the reckless partisan-the venal courtier-and the exhausted profligate assume its saintly mask as a cover for their ambition and their crimes. Staunch members of our Established Church, too,these modern Pharisees,-class all other men under the heads of enthusiasts and infidels, and push them aside as less holy than themselves. These are the men who pay the great tithes of mint, and anise, and cummin, but start at the small ones of the Decalogue. These are they who swear by the gold of the temple, and forget that which sanctifieth the gold;-who strain at the gnats of ecclesiastical abuse, and yet swallow the whole carcase of the bloated camel. Such men have been found in every age and in all countries. Every where they wear the same mask, pursue the same prey, and share the same fate; but at no time have they shot up with such rank luxuriance as at the present moment; and while England was about to gather in a rich harvest of improvements,-of Christian tolerance, of useful knowledge and extended education,-the tares were found to have overshot the wheat, and to have blighted the fairest hopes of the husbandman. Compared with such characters, how noble a being is the enthusiast ;-how amiable and worthy of compassion is the sincere infidel. Time and experience may bring down zeal that has risen above knowledge, and subdue aspirations too lofty to be enduring. Study and application, too, may brighten the sceptic's latest hours; but what can be augured of those men, whose long prayers are the most daring blasphemies, and whose real creed is the rankest infidelity? We do not venture to predict their destiny, but a high authority has proclaimed that The hope of the hypocrite shall perish.' Such, we fear, is the character and principles of many of those who have rejected Lord Brougham as an auxiliary, and who have derided his support of Natural and Revealed Religion— Branding his thoughts as things to shun and fear.' True to themselves, the same class of men have often laboured, with similar motives, to disparage his intellectual powers to represent him as a mere pretender in science-as a shalow intruder into the haunts of philosophy and learning. The ignorance which such assertions betray is equalled only by their audacity and falsehood. The Optical Papers, which Lord Brougham communicated to the Philosophical Transactions, at an age when others are only acquiring knowledge, are characterised by profound and original research, in one of the most difficult departments of Physics; and they were published at a time when Wollaston and Young swayed the sceptre of the Royal Society. His mathematical papers exhibit the same powerful intellect; and, had not the duties of his profession, and the study of political science, which his views in public life rendered necessary, withdrawn him from his earlier pursuits, he would doubtless have been one of the most distinguished natural philosophers of the present day. In politico-economical science, where fact and speculation enter into a peculiar affinity, his prodigious powers of application early enabled him to make the most rapid progress; so that when only a youth he published his Enquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European powers,' -a work not free, we readily admit, from errors and defects, but displaying an extent of information, a reach of thought, and a vigour of understanding but rarely paralleled even among the veterans of political science. And is there any one so limited in his reading, or so prejudiced, as not to know and admire his more recent treatise On the Objects and Pleasures of Science,' composed as an introduction to the Library of Useful Knowledge? It is, beyond all question, one of the most precious and agreeable presents that genius and knowledge ever conferred on those placed below their higher spheres, and requiring familiar and |