kinds of union with God,-dynamic and moral; and that moral union requires dynamic separation; which accordingly widens as we ascend in the scale of being, till a true Self,-a free Personality, appears, sufficiently beyond the verge of Nature to give an answering look to the very face of the Most High. At this culminating extreme we have a real trust of independence, -subjectivity perfected,-causality realised. At the other and initial extreme where the material datum lies, we have passive potentiality,-mere objectivity, causality not yet begun. Between this infranatural commencement and supernatural end, the Creative agency moves, to build and animate the mighty whole which we call Nature; at each advance receding from the bare receptivity of matter, and approaching, through the spontaneous vital energies, the actual individuality of personal existence. In this great cycle, Matter is the negative condition of Divine power; Force, its positive exercise; Life, its delegation under limits of necessity; Will, under concession of freedom. And if we may venture to speak of a yet higher stage which evades the reach of words, that saintly posture of the soul which Scripture designates by the term Spirit, may we not say, it is the conscious return, by free identification, of every delegated power into harmony with its Source? And so, the dynamic removal finds its end in moral unity.

But these questions deepen and widen under our hand; and we must close them. We have endeavoured to throw a line or two across the gulf which unhappily divides the savans from the theologians of our day. Whether any communication will pass along them we do not presume to say. But of this we are sure; that the alienation they seek to remedy can be but transitory, having no foundation in the nature of things, arising only in the crossing lights and illusory darkness of human fancy. Inasmuch as Deductive Science represents the Order of God's intellect, Inductive Science the methods of his agency, Moral Science the purpose of his Will, the blending of their voices in one glorious hymn is as certain as the Oneness of his nature and the symmetry of his Universe: and it must be a very poor Science and a very poor Religion that delay by discord the approach of that great harmony.

BOOKS OF THE QUARTER SUITABLE FOR READING

SOCIETIES.

Faithful for Ever: an Episode. By Coventry Patmore. J. W. Parker. [An episode in the poem of which The Angel in the House and The Espousals are the first and second portions. The present section is fully equal to its predecessors. It contains much true poetry, and a kind of insight into the characters delineated that is in essence dramatic. The defect consists in a frequently needless descent from the poetic level to the chit-chat appropriate only to the novelist. The atmosphere is somewhat too confined. The finest canto in the poem appears to us to be that which gives us a poetic picture from external Nature.]

The Work of Christ; or, the World reconciled to God. With a Preface on the Atonement Controversy. By the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, M.A.

Macmillan.

[A deep and noble theology is set forth with much vigour and perfect simplicity in these sermons.]

Christian Believing and Living. By J. D. Huntington, D.D. Low. The History of Italy from the Abdication of Napoleon I., with Introductory References to that of earlier times. By Isaac Butt. 2 vols. Chapman and Hall.

[A book full of valuable historical materials, ill-arranged and very unequally condensed. The transitions hither and thither in point of time are sadly confusing. But the substance is good.]

Edited

Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic. By Sir W. Hamilton. by the Rev. H. L. Mansel, B.D., and John Veitch, M.A. In 4 vols. Vols. III. and IV. Blackwood.

Parliamentary Speeches by the late Henry Drummond, Esq. Edited by Lord Lovaine. 2 vols. Bosworth.

Our Taxation, how it is Raised and how it is Expended. By Leoni Levi. J. W. Parker.

[Clear and correct, with some rather traditional adhesions to the economical commonplaces of thirty years ago.]

On the Defence of England. By Sir Howard Douglas.

Curiosities of Civilisation. By Andrew Wynter, M.D.

Murray. Hardwicke.

[Essays chiefly reprinted from The Quarterly Review; entertaining and instructive.]

Civilisation in Hungary. By an Hungarian. Trübner.

Books of the Quarter suitable for Reading-Societies.

513

Ethica: Characteristics of Men, Manners, and Books. By Arthur Lloyd Windsor. Smith and Elder.

[Rather heavy and wandering effusions.]

Glaciers of the Alps; being a Narrative of Excursions and Ascents, an Account of the Origin and Phenomena of Glaciers, and an Exposition of the Physical Principles to which they are related. By John Tyndal. With Illustrations. Murray.

The Eagle's Nest in the Valley of Sixt, together with some Excursions among the Great Glaciers. By Alfred Wills. With 12 Illustrations. Longmans.

All Round the Wrekin. By Walter White. Chapman and Hall. [As pleasant as Mr. White's unpretending books of annual travel uniformly are.]

Italy in Transition. By William Arthur, M.A. Hamilton and Adams. Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of America. By the Abbé Domenech. With Map and Illustrations. 2 vols. Long

mans.

Two Months in the Highlands, Orcadia, and Skye. By C. R. Weld. Longmans.

From Haytime to Hopping. By the Author of "Our Farm of Four Acres." Chapman and Hall.

[A little tale; pleasant, but not so well suited to the author's powers as Our Farm of Four Aeres.]

Travels in the Regions of the Amoor, and the Russian Acquisitions on the confines of India and China, with Adventures among the Mountain Kirghis, the Manjours, Manyargs, Toungouz, Touzemtz, Goldi, and Gelyaks. By W. T. Atkinson. With eighty-three Illustrations. Hurst and Blackett.

Patriots and Filibusters; or, Incidents of Political and Exploratory Travel. By Laurence Oliphant. Blackwood.

[A very pleasant book, reprinted chiefly from Blackwood's Magazine. The Asiatic patriots are more interesting than the American Filibusters.]

The Philosophy of Nature. By Henry S. Boase, M.D. Longmans.

Wild Oats and Dead Leaves. By Albert Smith. Chapman and Hall.

Herbert Chauncey. By Sir A. H. Elton, Bart. 3 vols. Smith and Elder.

The Semi-attached Couple. By the Author of the "Semi-detached House." 2 vols. Bentley.

[A really brilliant novel of the light kind.]

The Woman in White. By Wilkie Collins. 3 vols. Low. [Probably the most popular novel of the year.]

514 Books of the Quarter suitable for Reading-Societies.

High Church. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.

Footfalls on the Boundary of another World, with Narrative Illustrations. By Robert Dale Owen, formerly Member of Congress and American Minister to Russia. Printed from the tenth American Edition. Trübner.

[A volume of capital ghost and fetch stories; some of them doubtless with more or less fact in them; and many of them better authenticated than is usual in such cases; classified and embellished with a little not very impressive philosophy by a genuine and generally sensible believer.]

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