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generalizes, as though the “religious element” in human nature 
were not really allied with the right, the noble, and the true, 
both in thought and action. The bearing of these considerations 
on individual Responsibility, and on social and political duty, 
cannot of course be here examined, though it is not to be un- 
noticed. 
We now have omitted nothing of the nature of argument in 
this intermediate essay of Mr. Mill. It really concerns us but 
little. We only again remark, that the unexplained use and 
misuse of terms, now implying and now refusing the moral 
freedom of man, pervades this essay as much as the last, and 
would of itself mar the whole attempted reasoning. With this 
we will proceed to the Third Essay, the largest and most important 
of the three, and at least intended as the chief work of the volume. 
§ 3. — Theism . 
42. The Third Essay is entitled “ Theism.” The subject is 
so laid out in a kind of syllabus as to seem at first 
•^Theism'-’ sight to cover the ground of the usual controversies. 
This prospect is delusive ; and what has been 
already said as to the pras-phenomenal, in examining the former 
essays, supplies almost all that is needed for the reply to this. 
We must, however, go over the course, though it is unnecessary 
to tarry long on any part of it, as there is but little that is new 
in point of thinking though the tone is somewhat different. 
We detect a worthy consciousness of the responsibility of making 
The tone of a final decision on some of the issues in this Essay, 
tins Essay. While not owning; it in terms, the writer seems 
to feel that it is he himself, and not a “ reasoning machine,” 
as some had called him, who was making his conclusion. For 
this is free agency in action — the putting forth the awful inner 
power of saying “Yes” or “No” to truth and goodness. 
There is something overawing, too, in the reflection that this 
inner power at times, and perhaps not unfrcquently, exhausts 
its freshness in some one effort or act ; so that a choice really 
made for evil or for good, leaves the agent not exactly what he 
was before. 
The motions of a mind like Mr. Mill’s are worth watching for 
their own sake ; and his conclusions of avowed — even if 
reluctant — Atheism, or non-Theism, are not common utterances. 
They have a harmony, too, far more than Strauss’s, with the 
spirit of our times. If they reach Strauss’s conclusions, it is 
not by the same way. Strauss once professed Christianity ; 
Mr. Mill, we believe, had not done so. The “ unique” majesty of 
