others, it was the basis of his own conversion to Christianity.

fantastic, and with them his conclusions. But the appeal to the individual in the matter of the primary truths of natural religion gains one of these results, without incurring the other. It gains the strength of the enthusiast's ground, because the enthusiast's strength lies not in his being eccentric, but in his being internal: if he is internal, an ordinary believer is as strong in his belief as an enthusiast. And it avoids its weakness, because the individual is in concurrence and agreement with a whole world of other individuals who think with him. In the fundamental ideas of natural religion there is something approaching to a consensus, and his own personal conviction finds an echo in the voice of human nature. His principles, then, have all the strength of the enthusiast's, while they are the premisses, at the same time, of the great body of mankind. The individual's strong sense of them justifies their influence, while such general concurrence in them is a guarantee against their fanaticism.

These moral and religious starting-points present themselves indeed to us in the first instance as belonging rather to the department of the affections, than of knowledge; and we are asked-What have the affections to do with deciding a question of reason, such as that of the evidence of revelation? We are not concerned with the affections here, it is said, but with the understanding only. It is the understanding alone which judges about truth; and to introduce the affections into the inquiry is to mislead the judgment, and carry it away from evidence to enlist it unlawfully on the side of mere wishes, fears, and hopes. But the truth is that in moral subjects we cannot separate the understanding from the affections. The affections are themselves a kind of understanding; we cannot understand without them. Affection is a part of insight, it is wanted for a due acquaintance with the facts of the case. The moral affections, e. g., are the very instruments by which we intellectually apprehend good and high human character. All admiration is affection-the admiration of virtue; the admiration of outward nature. Affection itself, then, is a kind of intelligence, and we cannot separate the feeling in our nature from the reason. Feeling is necessary for comprehension, and we cannot know what a particular instance of goodness is, we cannot embrace the true conception of goodness in general, without it. These primary convictions of which we are here speaking, then, are not prevented by being affections from being knowledge-knowledge in the sense of a certain kind of insight, which those who have it are justified in acting upon as knowledge, in regarding as authoritative and qualified to command their acts. Dr. Newman's appeal to the personal and individual character of true reasoning thus combines the strength of an enthusiastic ground, on the side of revelation, without its weakness. It is a common remark that the enthusiast is logical upon his premisses. Grant him the intensity of his own primary convictions- the truth of his own starting points and you cannot confute his conclusions from them; but his position has the great defect, that his primary convictionshis starting points-are his own and nobody else's; they are singular and eccentric: he cannot appeal to any witness in human nature, to any either whole or partial consensus; he is an isolated man, and there is no body of sentiment and belief in the world which he can claim as concurring with him. His premisses, therefore, are

The logical posture, then, of the Christian and Infidel toward each other, is, according to Dr. Newman, this: One of the parties taking certain fundamental perceptions-or what appear to him to be suchwhich form the substance of natural religion, as his starting points, and judging from them as a reasoning base, accepts from that base of judgment the evidences of Christianity. Can the other refute his inference? He cannot, for he does not know his base. He knows the truths of natural religion in the form of propositions; he cannot possibly know them as they exist in the individual's mind. He cannot know then how much legitimate force they exert in the estimate of the evidences of Revelation. Can he then disprove the principles themselves? He cannot, for they are not in opposition to any known truth; while the immense concurrence in them, and the homage of the great mass of mankind to them, protects them from the charge of fanaticism. The inward premisses, then, and the conclusion, are alike out of reach of refutation, and safe from the disputant's assault.

เ

In this state of the case the Grammar of Assent' may be usefully studied by those who direct the sceptical press in this country. They will not be converted to the belief of Christianity by it, but they will perhaps be able to understand that Christianity has something more to say for itself than they suppose. They assume a tone of very comfortable certainty, that the evidences of Christianity have been tried and found wanting. These gentlemen recommend a philosophical suspense of judgment,

and declaim against positive conviction; but their own minds are entirely made up. The age of Pyrrhonism is past; men could be Pyrrhonists in the groves of Academia; but in the roar and conflict of the hodiernal arena of opinion they find that the voice of doubt is not heard, and that decision is in request. They bow, and apparently without any great reluctance, to the public need. They assume the falsehood of Christianity, that reason rejects its doctrines, and experience its evidences. The dogmatic infidel suggests suspense of judgment to the Christian believer, but as for himself he is far in advance of the beggarly elements of doubt and enquiry, and with downright assertion as his own weapon, he gags his antagonist with Pyrrhonism. This is the philosophy of the sceptical press. We do not know whether it is intended to be looked upon as literary pleasantry; but the conductors of it must have a very low idea of the intellect of their opponents if they think that it can be contemplated as serious controversy. For how stands the matter? There is a certain set of fundamental ideas which, when embraced with a depth and reality of conviction, practically leads to the acceptance of Christianity and its evidences. They have done so with an almost unbroken uniformity; they do now; and consequently we have every reason to expect that they always will do. The connexion, then, of these ideas with the acceptance of Christianity cannot be set aside as the result of fancy or chance; the foundation supposed, the edifice stands legitimately upon it. But these writers look upon the evidence of Christianity as it presents itself to themselves without this preliminary foundation, and by it judge the evidence as it presents itself to others with it. They apply their estimate of a structure of belief, which has not a basis of introductory truths, to a structure of belief which has one. They forget that they are not in the same position, and do not stand on the same ground, as judges of evidence, with their opponents. But if they ever do remember that there is such a thing as a ground of natural religion, if they ever do bring themselves to recognize the existence of a certain class of primary ideas and instinctive impressions which exist in the human mind, the mode in which they treat the fact when they take cognizance of it, is worse than their blindness when they forget it. They treat these rooted convictions as if they were only plastered upon the surface of man, and could be taken off. These ideas must be simply erased, effaced, and expunged from the tablet of the human mind. But what process has been invented

for erasing and expunging what is de facto part of human nature? And what ground is there for the assumption which is constantly made that the progress of science and civilisation will destroy these fundamental sentiments and convictions? Let us take first practical civilisation. By this we mean the multiplication of the resources of society, facilities for doing things, means of communication, comforts, accommodations, conveniences. They assume a hostile logic in these facts to that original creed of the human heart. Yet it is difficult to see why a man's expectation of a future judgment should be altered, because he can get to Australia in two months, whereas some years ago he could only reach it in eight. A belief in heaven and hell cannot at all depend on the success or backwardness of steam navigation. It is as little easy to see why the same belief should be affected by postal communication, the submarine telegraph, the tubular bridge, the discovery of a new propulsive power, the purification of gas, draining, the steam-plough, and sanitary improvements. If there is any argument against that primary creed in these facts, the human mind is so incorrigibly illogical that one man was an Atheist under the reign of packhorses, and another man is a believer in the era of goods trains. It is as difficult to see what is the logic in physical science which is in antagonism to natural religion, or to revealed either. The truths of these. respective departments are the truths of two different spheres, which cannot come into contact with each other. If men feel a conscience within them, if they acknowledge its presages, and respect its voice as judicial; they must do so all the same under the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories of the Solar System. If they derive from conscience the sense of sin, they must derive it whether light is explained upon the theory of emission, or the theory of undulation. There are difficulties in a Personal Deity, and there are difficulties in a personal immortality; there are difficulties attaching to prayer, and there are difficulties attaching to special providences; but those difficulties are exactly the same, whether the cellular theory is true or false, and whether the sun is fed by the mechanical collision of asteroids, or by the continuous condensation of its own matter. Freewill is not contradicted by the Uniformitarian in geology, and Predestination is not contradicted by the Revolutionist in geology. Scientific analysis cannot possibly discover any fresh objection to the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Atonement, the doctrine of Grace or the doctrine of the

Sacraments. If the Zwinglian doctrine of the Sacraments is our conclusion, it is our conclusion whether there is a spacefilling ether, or whether there is a total vacuum in space; if the Anglican theory is our decision, it is our decision whether we accept or not the convertibility of heat into motion, and motion into heat; and if Transubstantiation is true, it is true whatever hypothesis we maintain as to the ultimate indivisibility and weight of atoms.

Sometimes, indeed, science appears to threaten the very foundation of a spiritual existence, and some theory pushes forward into the first ranks which seems to convert our very personality into a development and form of matter. Men tremble at the approach of the giant who comes, with uplifted arm, to aim his blow; but if they only stand their ground the spell is broken, the descending stroke falls harmless upon us, and the spectre vanishes. We shake our selves, and feel whole and untouched. All that is required for successful resistance in these encounters is distinctly to see that A is not B. The theory of the correlation of vital, physical, and chemical forces, while it reduces some life to the same head with material properties, does not touch the spiritual being or self; consciousness witnesses to that ego as distinct from the mere living bodily organism. The theory, again, that a living organism can develope itself from inorganic matter deals with the origination of one fact, while that which we are conscious of is another fact. Thus material science, even granting its pretensions, only advances as far as some facts which come under the head of life; it then stops upon the outer brink, and can only look from thence upon an unsolved personal being.

No reason, then, can be given why the progress of civilisation or science should expunge from the human mind the ideas of conscience, sin, repentance, judgment, which, as a matter of fact, lead to the Christian belief and feed the Christian Church. But when reasoning ceases, prophecy begins. There are no more persistent and determined prophesiers in the world than infidels; they make sure of the future. Mankind do not at present think with them, but they will do. The day is coming; the edifice of superstition will fall; principles long rooted in man will disappear; it will be seen that their lurid and misty light is a deception the human mind will be rescued from the thraldom of them. This will be the issue of civilisation; this will be the history of mankind. Thus when logic fails, they foresee; and when science refuses to contradict religion, they discern the rupture in a vision.

We have two great prophets among us who prophesy resolutely and prophesy perpetually, the Infidels and Millenarians.

We could wish, however, that Dr. Newman had treated the exceptional case of those who, while they would profess a code of natural religion approaching to his own, still do not proceed thence to the acceptance of the Christian evidences. There are those who believe in morals and in religious morals, but shrink from miracles or doctrines. There are those even who accept Roman morals, who admire the ascetic type, who embrace counsels of perfection, who still decline to believe either in the Gospels or the Epistles. The Gospels deter them by their outward miracles, and the Epistles by their inward-by forgiveness, justification, and salvation, through the blood of an Atoning Sacrifice. The acceptance, indeed, of an ascetic standard of morals by persons is quite compatible with cowardice and weakness in the acceptance also of the yoke of physical impression and a dogmatic imagination binding their sense of possibility to the routine of material laws, and disabling them from believing miracles in Nature or myste ries in truth. The more we know of practical human nature, the more we become alive to its piecemeal composition, and to the mistake of taking men as consistent wholes. They are often collections of frag ments, reflecting a past succession of dif ferent and discordant influences, like geological compounds, which represent the action of past disturbing forces.

We could wish, again, that Dr. Newman had treated the case of some who even admire the distinctive mysteries of Christianity, but who have not come to an understanding with themselves whether those mysteries are sublime truths or sublime fictions. They are captivated by devotion, and by devotion founded on certain ideas and upon the existence of a certain supernatural world; but whether the truths exist or the world exists anywhere else than in the worshipper's own mind they are not prepared to say. They will follow, with even the enthusiasm of par tisans, the devotional assertions of a high religious rite, while they do not, at the same time, think it particularly signifies whether these assertions are true or not; their intellect inclines to the latter alternative. The doctrine of the Atonement is true to them in a ritual, and false as a statement in Scripture or in a Creed. The appeal to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world' is quite correct in a litany; but when they meet with the same truth in a theological book, they turn away from an assertion with which their intellect is not in

In many matters regarding material comforts and even public health, Rome was in advance of modern Europe. We do not allude to mere self-indulging luxury, in which the Romans probably far exceeded us; but in some of the most important improvements of the present day-in the supply of good drinking water and in the construction of public baths -we are now only going over the same ground as ancient Rome. That city and indeed all the Roman colonies were well supplied with water, often brought from a distance at a vast expense; and the remains of the public baths in Rome and in large provincial cities, of those attached to private villas in Rome and even in its more remote settlements, are on a scale quite beyond anything attempted in modern times.

But that the Romans also thought like the moderns on other points connected with questions of health is very clearly shown by the following passage from the Epistles of Horace

'Of Velia and Salernum tell me pray

The climate, and the natives, and the way;
For Baiæ now is lost on me, and I
Once its staunch friend am now its enemy
Through Musa's fault, who makes me under-
go

His cold bath treatment spite of frost and

They brave cold water in the depth of cold, And finding down at Clusium what they want Or Gabbi, say, make that their winter haunt.

Epist., i 15, Conington's Transl.

Here we find our modern fashion portrayed which makes a place popular for a few seasons and then neglected. Here we find in

Horace's account of a cold bath in win

ter, which he evidently did not like, an allusion to the cold-water cure which came into fashion under Musa, the physician of Augustus, as a revulsion from the excessive luxury of hot baths. Pliny tells us how he had seen aged gentlemen of consular dignity making an ostentation of shivering in their cold baths, and we read how the advocates of the system agreed with the ancient Germans in immersing newly-born children in cold water-a practice alluded to by Virgil. We learn also from Horace + Æneid, ix. 603.

* xxix. c. 5.

resorts, whether in the mountains or along the coast. Martial and many other writers give whole lists of such places; but the limpid Baie was the great favourite for many centuries. No Montpellier, or Nice, or Pau, has enjoyed nearly as long-lived a reputation, or has offered such attractions to visitors.

Horace, too, mentions the vapour and the sulphur baths of Baiæ, but no drinking-wells. It was, in truth, hot bathing in its various forms of heated air, hot vapour and hot water, that the Romans were so fond of. They had borrowed its use from the Greeks, while they improved on their simpler arrangements, the Greeks themselves having probably only followed the usage of Asia Minor and more Eastern nations, among whom bathing has always been regarded as a matter of primary importance.

From the earliest ages, indeed, all peculiarities of smell, of taste, or of temperature in the wells attracted the attention of mankind; and, like all things that were unusual and incapable of ready explanation, they were referred to the immediate influence of the gods. The idea of a local deity dwelling in the spring is well illustrated, by the fact of the word lympha 'water' being only a variety of nympha, or water goddess.

close to sacred springs or to natural escapes Most oracles of importance were situated of gas. The temple of Jupiter Ammon, in its Libyan oasis, had an intermitting fountain.* Delphi had not only its fountain of Cassotis, but the Pythoness, when delivering her responses, seems to have been placed on a tripod over a cleft in the rock, whence issued a gas that inspired her, and, in case of accident, three priestesses were always present. There was something similar at the oracle of Trophonius, in Baotia, where Pausanias § says, from personal experience, that a gas was extricated which caused peo

ness.

ple to become insensible at first, and then to laugh as they gradually recovered consciousHard by were the fabled waters of Mnemosyne and of Lethe. In various parts of India escapes of inflammable gas (such as may be seen now at La Porretta, near Pistoia) have been used for preserving undying fires in the temples of the gods.

Similar instances might easily be multiplied; but this subject we cannot pursue any further, as our main object at present is to give a few sketches of bath life in different ages, making the actors speak as much as possible for themselves.