formed from his Essay on Liberty , his best achievement by far. 
But he seems feeblest here, as a logician without an 
Book. ^ priori. We are not untouched by his qualified 
decisions, therefore, on the ultimate problems of being, approached 
by him, (as by some others), from only one side. The failure seems 
as if it struck Mr. Mill himself — a failure, always certain before- 
hand, of every attempt from that side, to bear down the truth of 
God. Here it really is conspicuous, and good may come of it. 
Mr. Mill, as the supposed best spokesman of his school, had to 
bring out his forces for the battle, and the result is equivalent 
to a total discomfiture of Atheism in the field it had chosen ; 
and yet nothing else in mere Nature is left for the reasoner 
to fall back on. The baffled logic of Natural Theism can do 
nothing without Revelation. Revelation stands first. 
Yes; God has revealed Himself. The a priori is God’s 
Revelation of His image in our nature. The a posteriori , 
brings His Phenomenal Revelation at length in the Incarnate. 
The deep foundations of our Religion are in the “ unseen and 
eternal."” It rises out of the Pnc-phenomenal, and is “ ever-true.” 
God first shines out of darkness, and then gives us the know- 
ledge of Himself, “ in the face of Jesus Christ.” 
58. It is with no feeling but that of forbearance or of hope 
that we take leave of this distressing, and to a logician even 
humiliating, volume. Any other spirit would be unbefitting in 
The writer contemplation of this last work of such a man as 
Mr. Mill. Had he lived longer, the possibilities 
which he began to see of God and Christ, and immortal Life, 
might have ripened for him into realities, though not arguments. 
In reading some almost relenting words of his, we are as if 
standing by the couch of the departed, while his final echo dies 
away, — incoherently indeed at last, and yet very solemnly listened 
to.' — Was he indeed then “feeling after God, if haply he might 
find Him ” P There are, none can deny it, sentences here and 
there to make us hope this. — Was he really fascinated by 
the unique form and beauty of Christ our Lord, — the only 
Personage in all man’s past history that holds now for Himself, 
after eighteen centuries, the earnest love of countless human 
hearts? — Yes, Mr. Mill spoke of Christ as, to his mind, 
“ unique ” ; and in one place he did so, as if there strangely 
stirred within him even the love of the Son of Man. — Was this 
long homeless spirit beginning to be led to “ the Father,” in 
that last closing sentence, when he dimly wrote of “Supernatural 
hopes ” as not impossible yet ? — Might it mean, “ Lord, shew 
us the Father, and it sufficeth us ” ? 
Certainly, though there is no strong reasoning in this book — 
