upon the end in view; and develops so much good sense that you would at once commit the most intricate business to his care, to be unravelled and explained.

Now, observe, the difference between these two characters does not arise from their being any superior depth of intellect in the latter; perhaps the former may, after all, be the more suggestive mind of the two, and may stir the grounds of human faith and conviction even more deeply than the other; but the real difference lies in the different play of the logical faculty. In the one case the knowledge possessed is held loosely together, and the connection between one idea and another is hardly perceived; in the other case, the ideas which are possessed, whether few or many, are systematised and thoroughly connected; so that within the limits of his acquired knowledge, the judgment is firm and clear, never losing sight of the end, and never straying into irrelevant regions of thought.

No doubt there is a good deal of original diversity between one mind and anothor in reference to their

logical power, but still very much may be accomplished towards its perfection, by a systematic education during the period of youth. The best preparation I believe to be a thorough well-grounded knowledge of grammar; for all language is really based upon a kind of natural or intuitive logic, and to understand the structure of language aright enables us to follow the workings of the understanding as it has embodied itself in this outward and symbolic form.

Next to grammar and closely connected with it is the study of some foreign language, and particularly the ancient languages. The mere act of construing a regularly formed and systematic language, like the Latin, is a constant exercise in logical analysis. In every sentence, you must single out the subject and predicate of the assertion; and see how all other

portions of it cluster around and stand related to them. It is on this account that the study of the languages of the old world civilization so naturally keep their place in a liberal and scientific education; -keep it, that is, till some other languages be found which will answer the same purpose in training and developing the understanding.

Another important auxiliary for the education of the logical power is mathematics, and practical geometry. Of all branches of applied logic this is undoubtedly the most perfect in its whole procedure; and although it affords I believe very little aid in training the mind to judge of moral evidence, yet it would be difficult to point out any subject of human study in which the understanding is so thoroughly disciplined in the processes of accurate demonstration.

Lastly there is the study of logic itself, which ought never to be left out in any plan of mental discipline which is intended to give firmness, distinctness, and accuracy, to the ordinary processes of thought, and the vigorous exercise of the understanding.

With regard to the spirit of teaching, of course it must be less dogmatic, in proportion as the power of thought becomes more independent, and more sustained. The logical faculty, however, is by no means calculated to give us the power of penetrating into the grounds of human conviction. These have still to be assumed, and inculcated too on the grounds of human authority; only the self-consistency of truth must now be made apparent ;-and especial care be taken that nothing is inculcated which militates against the moral intuitions. Until the reason becomes active and mature, authority will still have some part to play in the process of mental development; but there is perhaps nothing which is more deleterious to the young mind just rising up into vigour and maturity-nothing which sows the seeds

ut doubt so effectually-nothing which paves the way so readily for a despair of or a contempt for all truth, as to inculcate that upon authority which cannot be borne out by, or made self-consistent with, the highest dictates of moral conviction.

We have now traced the process of the mind's development up to the point when we enter upon its last stage, and see at length the goal to which it all tends. Why is it that all this wondrous process is gone through;-why is the soul roused to intuitive perceptions by nature and human life? Why are the pictures thus painted upon the consciousness retained with such wondrous perfection and tenacity? Why are we led to combine these images into new forms-to embody them in words-to reconstruct them into new groups by the powers of abstraction and generalisation to connect them together in logical order, and develop them into a system of truth? All this is but the process of nature's education by which the reason, that highest and noblest of our intellectual faculties, is gradually nurtured into a state of independence and full maturity. And what is the reason? what is this crown and summit of our intellectual life? I answer in simple wordsit is the fixed truth-organ of the man;-it is that power which is concerned in the formation of our last and deepest convictions; it is that image of the divine thought which descends to the very basis of human knowledge and human faith;-which calls all earthly authority before its bar; which judges the right and the true, subject to no power and amenable to no laws save those of the infinite and eternal reason itself, of which it is but an emanation. Reason, in other words, is the scientific faculty; that which traces our knowledge upwards from individual facts to general conclusions, and then sees the general in the particular; which scrutinises and lays bare the laws by which the world is governed, whether the world of nature, or the world of mind; which seeks amongst

the immense and bewildering multiplicity of phe nomena around us a hidden unity, that connects the whole together as the work of one great Author, and aims finally at one great end-viz: the restoration of man intellectually, by the whole process of providence and history and education, to the image of the Divine. In the reason, accordingly, we have all the other previous mental processes concentrated; so that the knowledge we derive from it, contains the results of them all summed up, and harmonised into one systematic whole. Thus to take a simple instance, by mere perception we see the starry firmament over our heads, and gaze at it with an intuitive wonder and admiration, like the Chaldæan Shepherd on the plains of Asia; by the power of representation again we marshal all the phenomena of the heavens into a series of facts-clothe them with an ideal meaning -and give them a name and a place within the world of human ideas; but observe it is by the reason alone that we penetrate into their causes, and by reason that we frame them into a connected and perfect science; a science which can look backwards into the past, and forwards into the future; can tell at once what have been and what will be the movements of those heavenly hosts; appreciate their harmony and order, and feel uplifted from the world as Newton did when he burst into the infinite and exclaimed O God! I think Thy thoughts after Thee! The laws of the universe and the mind are really the thoughts of God expanded, actualised, and drawn forth into a real creation; and it is by the development of the reason up to its legitimate elevation, that we make those thoughts our own-so that the divine ideas themselves are reflected in and made a portion of our own inward life. Reason accordingly terminates in religion as its crown and goal;—the religion I mean not of mere instinct and feeling;—the religion not of mere tradition and authority;— the religion not of the imagination or of the logical un

derstanding;-all these forms of religion indeed may have their place in the process of the mind's development as they have in the world; the child will feel this infinite around him before he can utter his feelings; —the ardour of immature youth will seize the ideas presented traditionally to the imagination, and luxuriate in them; the man of mere logic will content himself, generally speaking, with any connected system of propositions which have self-consistency amongst themselves, however devoid of any real foundation ;—but the religion in which the reason terminates is the full-bloom of our whole mental development,-involving the highest perfection of our whole triple nature-viz, thought reaching up to the infinite-the will attaining complete moral control over the lower impulses-and the emotions elevated into a pure and ardent love to beauty, goodness, and truth.

To enter into the processes by which this state may be attained stretches beyond the ordinary problem of education into the higher and progressive culture of humanity at large. No one, I think, who looks impartially over the course of human history, can doubt that the two great educating principles in human life—the two levers by which humanity has been raised step by step to its present elevation, have been science on the one hand, and Christianity on the other. It is science which has gradually nurtured the intellectual powers into vigour; which has disabused the mind of false and low conceptions of the universe, and consequently of contracted ideas of its Author; which by unveiling the immensity of being, and the perfections at once of nature's grandest and minutest works, has wedded knowledge to wonder and reverence; which has laid bare the laws of existence, the hitherto unknown powers of human reason, and the unity of all together in one perfect whole.

While science has thus freed the reason from its trammels, and brightened the eye of the intellect,