matter in motion; the material is controlled by the immaterial; but common as it is, it is not incomprehensible. We might refer again, for a like instance of the connection we are considering and of our ignorance of the way in which it is effected, to every act of the Supreme Being. In the highest and truest sense God is MIND, a truly spiritual existence. The hands and feet and eyes, which are ascribed to Him in Scripture, are expressions, accommodated to man's limited views. He created all things. A desire, a mere volition gave birth to light and air, to earth and water, to the world and all it contains. We admit the fact, but can give no explanation; we live and move in the midst of the great result, but we know not how it was achieved. The instances, which have now been mentioned, may be thought by some to be too diverse from each other in degree, if not in kind, to illustrate the same principle; but we are not singular in bringing them together for this purpose. In point of mystery, Mr Locke seems to place the dependence of bodily action on volition on the same footing with the wonder and inconceivableness of Creation itself. His expressions are these.-"My right hand writes, while my left hand is still. What causes rest in one, and motion in the other? Nothing but my will, a thought of my mind; my thought only changing, my right hand rests, and the left hand moves. This is matter of fact, which cannot be denied. Explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step will be to understand Creation." §. 57. Further illustrations of our ignorance in respect to this connection. But this is not all. The influence we are speaking of, even in its more particular and definite exhibitions, is not all on one side. If it be true, that mind can govern matter, that the immaterial can shape that which is material to its own ways and purposes, it is not less so, that matter possesses a degree of control over the mind; the visible and tangible is capable of exerting a power on that, which can be approached neither by sight nor touch. And if the exertion of influence in the former case is mysterious, it is equally so in the latter. It is impossible for any man to tell on the one hand, why a new state of mind should in any case cause a new state of matter; or on the other, why a new state or disposition of matter should cause a new state of mind, as we find to be the fact in whatever we have to do with the material world. Two obvious instances will suffice to suggest others. I,-The rays of light are reflected from the various objects around us, and if they are only permitted to reach the retina of the eye, which is the end of their journey, how many pleasing appearances the mind becomes possessed of, and which it would not have had, were it not for the presence of a few material and very minute particles! There is at once spread out and displayed, as it were, in the soul all the diversities of the most delightful landscapes, the undulations of hill and valley, expanses and partial glimpses of water, reaches of forest of various form and hue, interspersed with cottages and cultivated places. Who could have imagined, that the soul of man would be so suddenly roused up to embrace such complicated and pleasing views at the mere presence and bidding of a few rays of light, the smallest and apparently most inefficient things in nature! Still more, who can point to the cause, or explain the method of it? Who can tell the mode of intercourse between those rays and the mind, except only the Being, who frames and knows all things? II,--When the air is put in motion by musical instruments of whatever kind, how the whole soul is affected and filled with new sensations! How it languishes also with grief, or rejoices with hope, or glows with patriotic emotion! The action of these undulations of air not only fills the soul with present sensation and feeling, but opens up new trains of thought and emotion by association, and combines the thought and feeling of the past with the pres ent. "How soft the music of those village bells, i "With easy force it opens all the cells "Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard "And with it all its pleasures and its pains. " §. 58. Of space as a boundary of intellectual efforts. Furthermore, we find the action of our mental powers, when occupied in particular in gaining a knowledge of material things, to be restricted and limited by SPACE. What space is, it is not necessary to undertake to say, because no person is without as clear a knowledge of it, as can possibly be given by any form of words. But one thing seems to be certain, little as we know of what goes under that name, that it bounds and shuts up all that part of our knowledge at least, which relates to matter. As far as our direct and positive experience is concerned, every one is prepared to admit, that his acquaintance with material objects is circumscribed in this manner. But we may go farther; we may make the appeal with confidence to the general experience, and aver on the ground of that experience, that it is impossible for men to form even a conception of the existence of matter independently of space. In some respects also, space limits our conceptions of MIND. As long as we consider mind immaterial, we do not of course regard it as occupying space in the material sense; nor in any sense, of which language, which discovers the materiality of its origin in its whole structure, can convey any adequate notion. But however this may be, when we inquire for the mere fact, it is undoubtedly out of our power to conceive of either matter or mind existing out of space. It has already been remarked, that the Supreme Being is an immaterial or spiritual existence, and it may be objected here, that this view tends to circumscribe and restrict the divine nature. But this objection is founded on a mistake. It is true our conceptions are bounded by space; the human mind in its highest flights cannot extend itself beyond its limits; but we are not prepared to say, that the actual existence of God is limited by our con ceptions. On the contrary we may suppose him to exist and act in regions far beyond the furthest excursions of all inferior intelligences, in hidden apartments and unexplored tracts of the universe, where the widest and most untiring range of thought in men and even in angels has failed to penetrate.—On this subject all language fails; all imagination comes short; in the words of Holy Writ applied to another case, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. §. 59. Of the relation of time to our mental conceptions. TIME also is another of those limits, which seems to have been imposed from the begining on men's faculties. As time is different from space, so the relations, which existences of whatever kind have to it, are different. But without at present entering into the subject either of its nature or relations, we may lay down the general proposition, that we know nothing, and can conceive of nothing, where time is not. What we express by the word Eternity is only another name for time never completed ; and consequently clearly intimates the limited compass of our understandings. It is possible, the same objection may be made here as in respect to space, that this doctrine tends in some way to limit the natural existence of the Supreme Being. But this is a misapprehension. It does not limit the Divine nature, but only asserts, when applied to the Supreme Being, the limitation of our conceptions of his nature. Mr. Locke once made the unadvised and hasty assertion, that external bodies operate upon us by impulse, and nothing else. Afterwards, he said with the candour characteristic of truly great minds, although he could conceive of no other way of their operation, yet it was too bold a presumption to limit God's power in this point by his own narrow conceptions. So in the present case, we may truly say, we cannot conceive of God's existing abstractly from time, or out of time, but it would be too bold a presumption in us to limit the Divine nature by our own narrow and bounded views. In point of fact both time and space, which exceed the comprehension of the human mind, and consequently place a limit on all its efforts, dwindle into the very smallest compass, in comparison with the unlimited expansion and ubiquity of the Supreme Being. With him there is, properly speaking, no such thing as time; it is lost and extinguished in the unfathomable recesses of an ever present eternity; expressions, which, although as good perhaps as we can select, evidently intimate our ignorance of what we attempt to convey. The Scriptures expressly and repeatedly take this view. "With the Lord, (says an Apostle,) one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day." Although it may be humiliating to our pride, to find that our minds are so bounded and shut up, to learn that the utmost compass of our own knowledge and existence forms but a mere point amid the vast, unmeasured, and unmeasurable circumference of God's knowledge and existence, still we cannot wisely and consistently reject the great truth itself. The ablest and wisest men have received it, and in some instances it has had a partial effect of a very beneficial kind, inspiring an increased degree of humility and caution, and a feeling of forbearance and candour. True, the poet Gray represents the mighty mind of Milton as having scaled the limits we have been contemplating, the flaming bounds, as he calls them. But this is only the license and fiction of a poet. If that should ever happen, which he has so sublimely imagined, and men should ever break through the walls of space and time, which God has erected between himself and inferior intelligences, we might well anticipate the result, which the same glowing fancy has indicated; "They saw, but blasted with excess of light, §. 60. Mystery of human freedom as coexistent with the Whether we look within or without, to the world of matter or of mind, instances in illustration of our subject will by no means be wanting. If there be a degree of |