82 Monthly Review of Literature. 



the field of discussion, and made it co-extensive with material and moral 

 nature. The doctrines of consciousness, causation, and probability were succes- 

 sively handled by him, and with such masterly dexterity in a bad cause, as to 

 shake the belief of many of the weaker and more shallow adherents to the 

 Christian faith. The appearance of his Essays was the tocsin for a literary 

 crusade ; and the country was inundated with books and pamphlets, of most 

 of which even the names have perished. .Douglas, Paley, Campbell, and 

 Brown, have won an abiding reputation, as the illustrious champions of the 

 faith ; but in later years we have had no original thinker engaged advanta- 

 geously in this cause, unless we except Dr. Chalmers, of whose excellent work 

 we propose to give a very brief analysis. 



Paley's work on the Evidences has received in this country a sanction, which 

 its intrinsic merits do not deserve, and for which we can only account from 

 the author's academic and ecclesiastical connexions. That the work is 

 characterized by that sagacity of thought, that clearness and transparency of 

 style so characteristic of Dr. Paley, we will not deny ; but it is equally true, 

 that in originality of plan and in profound reflexion on the faculties them- 

 selves, it is entirely deficient. In fact, Paley's book is efficient only as a 

 weapon to attack the outworks of the unbelievers. By his puny arms their 

 strong-holds still remain impregnable. Well then may the writer of such a 

 work be called by the sober-minded and deep-thinking examiner of Christian 

 evidences, the unsatisfactory Paley! To this failing, indeed, of his mind and 

 to the influence of his weak writings on academic taste, we may fairly ascribe 

 a general debility in the argumentative productions of the English church 

 writers on the Evidences since his day. We cannot do better than illustrate 

 our opinion by the contrast drawn by Dr. Chalmers between the English and 

 Scottish writers on the Evidences. 



" The treatment which Mr. Hume's argument has met with in the two 

 countries of England and Scotland, is strikingly in unison with the genius of 

 the respective people. The savans of our nation have certainly a greater taste^ 

 and inclination for the reflex process, while it is more the property of our 

 southern neighbours to enter, vigorously and immediately, and with all that 

 instinctive confidence wherewith nature has endowed us, on the business of 

 the direct one. Our general tendency is to date our argument from a higher 

 point than the English do, to reason for example about reasoning, before we 

 proceed to reason about the matter on hand. Nay, we are apt to be so far 

 misled, as to think that we should thoroughly comprehend the nature and pro- 

 perties of the instrument of ratiocination, before we proceed to the use of it. 

 We must do this, it is thought, else we do not begin at the beginning, though 

 in fact this were just such a beginning as that of the labourer, who should 

 imagine that ere he enters with the spade in his hand on the work of digging, 

 he must first have computed the powers of its wedge, or ascertained the specific 

 weight and cohesion of its materials. There is upon an infinity of subjects, 

 much intellectual labour that may be most prosperously gone through, without 

 any anterior examination on our part of the intellectual faculty. Our dispo- 

 sition in many a question, is to move a previous question which must be first 

 settled, ere we hold ourselves in a condition for starting fair with the one 

 immediately before us. The English again, to borrow another phrase from 

 their own parliamentary language, are for proceeding to the order of the day ; 

 and they are not deceived in the result just because nature has not deceived 

 them, nor has she given original principles to her children for the purpose of 

 leading them astray. They are like men set forth on the survey of a land- 

 scape, and who proceed immediately to the business of seeing ; whereas the 

 others, ere they shall have any dealing with the objects of vision, must have 

 settled their account with the, instrument of vision, so that while the former 

 are looking broadly and confidently outwards on the scene of observation, the 

 latter are speculating on the organ and its retina, or have their thoughts in- 

 tently fastened on that point whence the optic nerve issues from its primitive 



