simple law of love towards God and our neighbour, on which two com mandments hang all the law and the prophets,' which supplied the moral basis of the new dispensation. There is one history, and that the most touching and most profound of all, for which we should search in vain through all the pages of the classics-I mean the history of the human soul in its relation with its Maker; the history of its sin, and grief, and death, and of the way of its recovery to hope, life, and enduring joy. For the exercises of strength and skill, the achievements and enchantments of wit, eloquence, art, genius, for the imperial games of politics and war, we may seek them on the shores of Greece. But if the first among the problems of life be how to establish the peace and restore the balance of our inward being; if the highest of all conditions in the existence of the creature be his aspect towards the God to whom he owes that existence, and in whose great hand he stands, then let us make our search elsewhere. All the wonders of the Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than is the single Book of Psalms. Palestine was weak and despised, always obscure, oftentimes and long trodden beneath the feet of imperious masters. Greece for a thousand

years,

'Confident from foreign purposes.'

repelled every invader from her shores, and, fostering her strength in the keen air of freedom, she defied, and at length overthrew, the mightiest of empires; and when finally she felt the resistless grasp of the masters of all the world, them too, at the very moment of her subjugation, she herself subdued to her literature, language, arts, and manners. Palestine, in a word, had no share at all in the glories of our race; they blaze on every page of the history of Greece with an overpowering splendour. Greece had valour, policy, renown, genius, wisdom, wit-she had all, in a word, that this world could give her; but the flowers of paradise, which blossom at the best but thinly, blossomed in Palestine alone. And yet, as the lower parts of our bodily organization are not less material than the higher to the safety and wellbeing of the whole, so Christianity itself was not ordained to a solitary existence in man, but to find helps meet for it in the legitimate use of every faculty. Besides the loftiest part of the work of Providence, entrusted to the Hebrew race, there was other work to do, and it was done elsewhere. It was requisite to make ready the materials, not only of a divine renewal and of a moral harmony for the world, but also for a thorough and searching culture of every power and gift of man, in all his relations to the world and to his kind, so as to lift up his universal nature to the level upon which his relation as a creature to his Creator and as a child to his father was about to be established. And the question arises whether, among the auxiliaries required to complete the training process for our race, there were not to be found some which were of a quality, I will not say to act as a corrective to Christianity, but to act as a corrective to the narrow views and the excesses which might follow upon certain modes of conceiving and applying it. The just idea of their general purpose is that they were a collection of implements and materials to assist in the cultivation of the entire nature of man, and to consecrate all his being to the glory and the designs of our Maker. Yet in part they might have a purpose more special still-the purpose of assigning due bounds to the action of impulses springing out of Christianity itself.

"A system of religion, however absolutely perfect for its purpose, however divine in its conception and expression, yet of necessity becomes human too, from the first moment of its contact with humanity; from the very time,

.

that is to say, when it begins to do its proper work, by laying hold upon the hearts and minds of men, mingling with all that they contain, and unfolding and applying itself in the life and conduct of the individual, and in the laws, institutions, and usages of society. In the building up of the human temple the several portions of the work, while sustaining and strengthening each other, confine each other also, like the stones of a wall, to their proper place and office in the fabric. It is manifest, indeed, that there was in Christianity that which man might easily and innocently carry into such an excess as, though it would have ceased to be Christian, would not have ceased to seem so, and would, under a sacred title, have tended to impair the complete development of his being. Rousseau objects to the Christian system that it is opposed to social good order and prosperity, because it teaches a man to regard himself as a citizen of another world, and thus diverts him from the performance of his duties as a member of civil society. Far from attaching the hearts of the citizens to the State, it detaches them from it, as from all other earthly things. I know nothing more opposed to the social spirit. A society of true Christians would no longer be a society of men. What matters it to be free or slave in this vale of misery? The one thing needful is to go to paradise, and submission to calamity is an additional means of getting there.' In an age and in a country such as this it is not required, it is scarcely allowable, to seem to depreciate those various forms of self-restraint and self-conquest which the spirit of man, vexed in its sore conflict with the flesh and with the world, has in other times employed to establish the supremacy of the soul, by trampling upon sense and appetite and all corporal existence. Even in the time of the apostles it seems to have been manifest that a tendency to excess in this direction had begun to operate in the Christian church. As time passed on, and as the spirit of the unrenewed world became more rampant within the sacred precinct, the reaction against it likewise became more vehement and eager. The deserts of Egypt were peopled with thousands upon thousands of anchorites, who forswore every human relation, extinguished every appetite, and absorbed every motive, every idea, every movement of our complex nature in the great but single function of the relation to the unseen world. True and earnest in their Christian warfare, they notwithstanding represent a spirit of exaggeration, which it was requisite to check, uprooting what they ought rather to have pruned, and destroying what they ought to have chastised and mastered and turned to purposes of good. That internecine war with sin, which is of the very essence of Christianity, seems to have been understood by them as a war against the whole visible and sensible world, against the intellectual life, against a great portion of their own normal nature; and though, as regarded themselves, even this exaggeration was pardonable, and in many raspects a noble error, yet its unrestricted sway and extension would have left man a maimed, a stunted, a distorted creature. And it would have done more than this. By severing the gospel from all else that is beautiful and glorious in creation it would have exposed the spiritual teacher to a resistance not only vehement but just, and would have placed the kingdom of grace in permanent and hopeless discord with the kingdoms of nature, reason, truth, and beauty,-kingdoms established by the very same Almighty hand. Those principles of repression, which were indispensable as the medicine of man, were unfit for his food. What was requisite, however, was not to expel them, and thereby to revert to the mental riot and the moral uncleanness of heathenism, but to check their usurpations and to keep them within their bounds; and this was to be effected, not by prohibition or disparagement, but by vindicating for every

part and power and work of human nature, and every office of life, its proper place in the divine order and constitution of the world. The seed of this comprehensive philosophy was supplied by the words of the apostle: 'Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.' And so the solid and fruitful materials of the Greek civilization came in aid, by a wise Providence, of the humanizing principles and precepts of the gospel, to assist in securing a well-balanced development of the powers of the Christian system, and to prevent the instruments designed for eradicating the seeds of disease from subverting the yet higher agencies appointed for the fostering and development of life in every region of our being and our activity.

"Volumes might be written on the application of the principles touched upon in this address to the whole history of the church and of the Christian civilization. I glance at some of its results. First, it places on high and safe grounds that genial primacy of the Greeks in letters and in human culture, to the acknowledgment of which Christian Europe has been guided, not so much by a logical process or a definite forethought as by a sure instinct, with the after confirmation of a long experience. Nor can this primacy be justly disturbed by the multiplication and the energetic and growing pursuit of those branches of knowledge, for which this age has been so remarkable. For Aristotle it was excusable to regard the heavenly bodies as objects nobler than man. But Christianity has sealed and stamped the title of our race as the crown and flower of the visible creation; and with this irreversible sentence in their favour the studies, well called studies of humanity, should not resent nor fear but should favour and encourage all other noble research having for its object the globe on which we live, the tribes with which it is peopled in land, air, and sea, the powers drawn forth from nature or yet latent in her unexplored recesses, or the spaces of that vast system—

"Ultra flammantia mænia mundi,"

to which our earth belongs. But more than this-we live in times when the whole nature of our relation to the unseen world is widely, eagerly, and assiduously questioned. Sometimes we are told of general laws, so conceived as to be practically independent either of a lawgiver or a judge. Sometimes of a necessity working all things to uniform results, but seeming to crush and to bury under them the ruins of our will, our freedom, our personal responsibility. Sometimes of a private judgment, which we are to hold upon the hard condition of taking nothing upon trust, of passing by, at the outset of our mental life, the whole preceding education of the world, of owning no debt to those who have gone before without a regular process of proof-in a word, of beginning anew each man for himself; a privilege which I had thought was restricted to the lower orders of creation, where the parent infuses no prejudices into its litter or its fry. Such are the fancies which go abroad. Such are the clouds which career in heaven, and pass between us and the sun, and make men idly think that what they see not is not, and blot the prospects of what is in so many and such true respects a happy and a hopeful age. It is, I think, an observation of Saint Augustine, that those periods are critical and formidable, when the power of putting questions runs greatly in advance of the pains to answer them. Such appears to be the period in which we live. And all among us, who are called in any manner to move in the world of thought, may well ask who is sufficient for

these things? Who can with just and firm hand sever the transitory from
the durable, and the accidental from the essential, in old opinions? Who
can combine, in the measures which reason would prescribe, reverence and
gratitude to the past with a sense of the new claims, new means, new duties
of the present? Who can be stout and earnest to do battle for the truth, and
yet hold sacred as he ought the freedom of inquiry, and cherish as he ought,
a chivalry of controversy like the ancient chivalry of arms ?
One persua
sion at least let us embrace; one error let us avoid. Let us be persuaded
that Christianity will by her inherent resources find for herself a philosophy
equal to all the shifting and all the growing wants of the time. Let us
avoid the error of seeking to cherish a Christianity of isolation. The Christ-
ianity which is now and hereafter to flourish, and, through its power, in the
inner circles of human thought, to influence ultimately, in some manner
more adequate than now, the masses of mankind, must be such as of old the
Wisdom of God was described:- For in her is an understanding spirit,
holy, one only, manifold, subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to
hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to
do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, over
seeing all things.
For she is the brightness of everlasting light,
the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of His goodness.'
It must be filled full with human and genial warmth, in close sympathy
with every true instinct and need of man, regardful of the just titles of every
faculty of his nature, apt to associate with and make its own all, under
whatever name, which goes to enrich and enlage the patrimony of the race.
And therefore it is well that we should look out over the field of history, and
see if haply its records, the more they are unfolded, do or do not yield us
new materials for the support of faith. Some at least among us experience
has convinced that, just as fresh wonder and confirmed conviction flow from
examining the structure of the universe and its countless inhabitants, and
their respective adaptations to the purposes of their being and to the use of
man, the very same results will flow in yet larger measure from tracing the
footmarks of the Most High in the seemingly bewildered paths of human
history. Everywhere, before us, behind us, and around us, and above us,
and beneath, we shall find the Power which-

'Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.'

And together with the power, we shall find the goodness and the wisdom, of which that sublime power is but a minister. Nor can that wisdom and that goodness anywhere shine forth with purer splendour, than when the Divine forethought, working from afar, in many places, and through many generations, so adjusts beforehand the acts and the affairs of men, as to let them all converge upon a single point, upon that redemption of the world, by God made man, in which all the rays of His glory are concentrated, and from which they pour forth a flood of healing light even over the darkest and saddest places of creation."

2

the

effec

The Essayist.

SIR JOHN SINCLAIR.

THE public and private conduct of a man is the only source from which we are able to determine whether he deserves approbation or not. If he has, according to the talents with which Providence has endowed him, rendered good to his fellows, by leading a virtuous and active life, and in increasing the prosperity of society, we judge him favourably. An individual may be gifted with great powers of body and of mind, and may employ them to no useful purpose whatever; while another, possessed of these only in a limited degree, may, by his own perseverance and determination, reach a far greater height of perfection and extent of usefulness than the other. The person to be admired is he who, by his own application and assiduity, attains greatness. It is not, however, our policy to look down on any one who may be termed a genius ; but this we truly say, that the ordinary man, acquiring fame by the continuous but gradual development of his mental powers, deserves a greater degree of esteem and respect. If the process be slow, the ultimate end is certain. Patience, honesty, and activity in the course of a virtuous life, are the principal elements of success, and can procure renown for any one in any sphere of life. Foster said that "genius" was lighting one's own fire; and Buffon, that it was "patience." If, therefore, these definitions constitute a man of genius, the subject of this essay may have a claim to be admitted into this privileged order. But whether this be the case or not, it is true that he attained to fame and greatness by the most indefatigable industry. He received the grateful thanks of the public when living, and now, when dead, his name will, as a great benefactor of his country, descend in its social annals on the stream of time to succeeding generations.

Mr. Sinclair was born on the 10th day of May, 1754, in Thurso East Castle, Caithness. He was the son of George Sinclair, of Ulbster, and Lady Janet Sutherland, a daughter of William, Lord Strathnaver. His father died while the son was scarcely sixteen years of age, and his mother discharged her own duties, as well as those which devolved upon her in consequence of her husband's death, with the greatest tenderness, sagacity, and prudence.

Mr. Sinclair, after having studied at a private seminary, and at the High School of Edinburgh, returned to his native county, with the celebrated John Logan (1748–1788), the gifted divine and poet, author of "Runnymede," Lectures on History," "Sermons," &c.

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