legislative capacity:-reverence it in meekness, knowing how feeble and how mighty a thing it is !*

From this hint concerning toleration, we may pass by an easy tranfition to the, perhaps, still more interesting subject of tolerance. And here I fully coincide with Frederic H. Jacobi, that the only true fpirit of tolerance confifts in our conscientious toleration of each other's intolerance. Whatever pretends to be more than this, is either the unthinking cant of fashion, or the soul-palsying narcotic of moral and religious indifference. All of us without exception, in the fame mode though not in the fame degree, are necessarily subjected to the risk of mistaking positive opinions for certainty and clear infight. From this yoke we cannot free ourselves, but by ceafing to be men; and this too not in order to transcend, but to fink below, our human nature. For if in one point of view it be the mulct of our fall, and of the corruption of our will; it is equally true, that contemplated from another point, it is the price and consequence of our progreffiveness. To him who is compelled to pace to and fro within the high walls and in the narrow court-yard of a prison, all objects may appear clear and distinct. It is the traveller journeying onward, full of heart and hope, with an ever-varying horizon, on the boundless plain, who

The reference, probably, is to Ecclus. x. 28. My fon, glorify thy foul in meekness, and give it honour according to the dignity thereof.—Ed.

is liable to mistake clouds for mountains, and the mirage of drouth for an expanfe of refreshing wa

ters.

But notwithstanding this deep conviction of our general fallibility, and the most vivid recollection of my own, I dare avow with the German philosopher, that as far as opinions, and not motives, principles, and not men, are concerned; I neither am tolerant, nor wish to be regarded as fuch. According to my judgment, it is mere oftentation, or a poor trick that hypocrify plays with the cards of nonsense, when a man makes protestation of being perfectly tolerant in respect of all principles, opinions, and perfuafions, thofe alone excepted which render the holders intolerant. For he either means to say by this, that he is utterly indifferent towards all truth, and finds nothing so insufferable as the persuasion of there being any such mighty value or importance attached to the poffeffion of the truth as should give a marked preference to any one conviction above any other; or else he means nothing, and amuses himself with articulating the pulses of the air instead of inhaling it in the more healthful and profitable exercise of yawning. That which doth not withstand, hath itself no ftanding place. To fill a ftation is to exclude or repel others, and this is not lefs the definition of moral, than of material, folidity. We live by continued acts of defence, that involve a fort of offenfive warfare. But a man's principles, on which he grounds his hope and his faith, are the life of

his life. We live by faith, fays the philofophic Apostle; and faith without principles is but a flattering phrase for wilful pofitiveness, or fanatical bodily fenfation. Well, and of good right therefore, do we maintain with more zeal, than we should defend body or estate, a deep and inward conviction, which is as the moon to us; and like the moon with all its maffy fhadows and deceptive gleams, it yet lights us on our way, poor travellers as we are, and benighted pilgrims. With all its spots and changes and temporary eclipses, with all its vain halos and bedimming vapours, it yet reflects the light that is to rife on us, which even now is rifing, though intercepted from our immediate view by the mountains that inclose and frown over the vale of our mortal life.

This again is the mystery and the dignity of our human nature, that we cannot give up our reason, without giving up at the fame time our individual perfonality. For that must appear to each man to be his reason which produces in him the highest sense of certainty; and yet it is not reason, except fo far as it is of univerfal validity and obligatory on all mankind. There is a one heart for the whole mighty mass of humanity, and every pulse in each particular veffel ftrives to beat in concert with it. He who afferts that truth is of no importance except in the fignification of fincerity, confounds fense with madnefs, and the word of God with a dream. If the power of reasoning be the gift of the fupreme Reason, that we be fedulous, yea, and

militant in the endeavour to reason aright, is his implied command. But what is of permanent and essential interest to one man must needs be fo to all, in proportion to the means and opportunities of each. Woe to him by whom these are neglected, and double woe to him by whom they are withholden; for he robs at once himself and his neighbour. That man's foul is not dear to himself, to whom the fouls of his brethren are not dear. As far as they can be influenced by him, they are parts and properties of his own foul, their faith his faith, their errors his burthen, their righteousness and bliss his righteousness and his reward -and of their guilt and misery his own will be the echo. As much as I love my fellow-men, fo much and no more will I be intolerant of their herefies and unbelief- and I will honour and hold forth the right hand of fellowship to every individual who is equally intolerant of that which he conceives fuch in me. We will both exclaim —‘I know not what antidotes among the complex views, impulfes and circumstances, that form your moral being, God's gracious providence may have vouchsafed to you against the serpent fang of this error,—but it is a viper, and its poifon deadly, although through higher influences fome men may take the reptile to their bofom, and remain unftung.'

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In one of those poisonous journals, which deal out profaneness, hate, fury, and sedition through the land, I read the following paragraph. "The

Brahmin believes that every man will be faved in his own perfuafion, and that all religions are equally pleafing to the God of all. The Christian confines falvation to the believer in his own Vedas and Shafters. Which is the more humane and philofophic creed of the two?" Let question answer question. Self-complacent fcoffer! Whom meanest thou by God? The God of truth? and can He be pleased with falsehood, and the debasement or utter fufpenfion of the reafon which he gave to man that he might receive from him the facrifice of truth? Or the God of love and mercy?-and can He be pleased with the blood of thousands poured out under the wheels of Jaggernaut, or with the shrieks of children offered up as fire offerings to Baal or to Moloch? — Or doft thou mean the God of holiness and infinite purity?—and can He be pleased with abominations unutterable and more than brutal defilements,— and equally pleased too as with that religion, which commands us that we have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but to reprove them; —with that religion, which strikes the fear of the Most High so deeply, and the sense of the exceeding finfulness of sin so inwardly, that the believer anxiously inquires: Shall I give my first-born for my tranfgreffion, the fruit of my body for the fin of my foul?—and which makes answer to him,-He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and