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there is another work from his pen; at least it is ascribed to him. This is an Exposition of the Gospel according to St. John, and is entitled 'Skeireins Aivaggeljons thairh Johannen.' In its present state this remarkable work is a mere fragment, which was brought to light a short time ago by H. F. Massmann, who discovered it among some manuscripts belonging to the libraries of Rome and Milan. This savant has published it with a Latin version of it, together with explanatory notes, an historical inquiry, a Gothic-Latin Dictionary, etc. What proves this work to be from the pen of Ulphilas is its language and internal character. And since it is well known that he has written various works and treatises in the Gothic language, we see little or no reason for doubting his being the author of this interesting production.

PASCAL'S 'THOUGHTS;'

THEIR HISTORICAL IMPORT, ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.a

A LECTURE, by Dr. AUG. NEANDER.

Translated from the German by the Rev. J. TULLOCH.

THERE are men who, if they bear, as they could scarcely fail to do, the peculiar stamp of their own age, and especially belong to it, yet also claim to be regarded, apart from their age, as representatives of universal and imperishable truths of humanity, ever reproducing themselves in new forms-as those who have compassed the solution of the great problems of the human mind, which belong to all ages, and to which we are ever led back from all other inquiries. Such a man is Pascal, as he is brought before us in his Pensées, the fragments of a great work which it was not reserved for him, in his brief lifetime, to complete. Several years ago a lecture was delivered in this assembly, on this great man, by the excellent Steffens; but I cannot now follow out the discourse of that distinguished teacher, as the point of view from which I feel urged to contemplate Pascal is very different from that from which he set out. Attention, moreover, is forcibly

a This is one of two Lectures delivered on different occasions before the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, and recently published in a pamphlet form by their respected author. We hope to give the other Lecture in an early Number.

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directed anew to the Thoughts' themselves, from the fact which forms so important a discovery of recent literary history, that their genuine form has only lately been ascertained. It is the great merit of M. Prospère Faugère to have published, for the first time, in the year 1844, these fragments in their original order, matter, and form, enriched by a great deal hitherto unknown, and purified from many foreign admixtures. The very boldness, and excess of genius, characteristic of their great author, had given rise, as he has pointed out, to numerous alterations in his expressions. In the various editions, up to that prepared by Condorcet, these alterations had proceeded from the most opposite schools. While some feared to offend the Jesuits or the Catholic Church generally, others took offence at what did not suit the narrowness of their own ascetic stand-point; and others, again, like Condorcet himself, at whatever sprung from the depth of the soul, and did not harmonize with their own contracted intellectualism. One of the first, indeed, who interested themselves in the publication of the "Thoughts,' Pascal's own friend, Antoine Arnauld, one of the most important representatives of the Port-Royalist school, in order to show the necessity of proposed alterations in these fragments, lays down the principle so pernicious in regard to a genius, so entirely original both in matter and form, that it is better, by some small emendations, extending merely to the softening of an opinion, to anticipate cavils, than to be under the necessity of writing apologies. And while this recent discovery of their genuine form naturally calls for a new discussion of the true meaning of the 'Thoughts,' the same seems also demanded by the unjust judgments passed anew upon their author, from which his zealous editor anxiously defends him. Cousin, whose sentiments I only know from the quotations of M. Faugère, characterizes Pascal as an enemy of all philosophy; as one who, despairing of any rational inquiry after truth, cast himself into the arms of a blind, authoritative faith, and thus combined an unlimited scepticism with a convulsive piety. We, on the other hand, must regard Pascal as the great advocate of that evidence which is superior to all reasoning, and founded on immediate consciousness-as the representative of a stand-point equally elevated above the opposition of scepticism and dogmatism-as the opponent of rationalism and scholasticism for every age-as the philosopher who first assigned to the heart and feeling their proper place in our spiritual constitution, and in the apprehension of divine things; and by whom the strife between faith and science has been adjusted in a manner that will ever prove satisfactory. In this respect we would compare him with a great genius of our own time, in other respects very different from him-Schleiermacher.

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If we contemplate, in the first instance, the historical train of circumstances in which this great man appeared, we see the seventeenth century in France moved by very important spiritual impulses. While the new spiritual creation which, in Germany, had gone forth from the Reformation, had become diverted from its original principle, and contracted into a different form of that very scholasticism, in opposition to which it had developed itself, its beneficial consequences had spread to the Catholic Church, in which there arose reformatory tendencies-some of which merely attached themselves to the system of the middle ages—while others, in direct opposition to that system, assumed a more free and inward direction, and thus in many points came in contact with the Reformation itself, though still always governed by a spirit hostile to it. From the one went forth all phenomena connected with Jesuitism, men such as Fénélon;-from the other, that great and liberal spiritual movement excited in France by Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, or, as we may say, with more justice, by his yet greater friend, the Abbot of St. Cyran. To this last movement Pascal allied himself, and the stimulus which he thus received, powerfully operated on the development of his inward life. The assertion of the power of immediate consciousness of the great truth that the facts of the higher life are incapable of being produced by any mere external or intellectual demonstration-the more precise separation between the Divine and the Human-and the recognition of the right of free inquiry, and of doubt in the province of the latter, were all kindred with this movement. In this last relation, we ought also to mention the revived opinion of the uncertainty of all human knowledge, espoused by Montaigne, and the impulse given to free investigation by Des Cartes. These influences must have already led Pascal to investigate, more intimately, the limits of the various provinces of the human mind-to secure to science, to scepticism, and to a faith emanating from the depth of the soul, and consisting in resignation to the Divine, their respective rights. For these conflicting powers were then often confounded in a confusion of these provinces.

We must not, however, omit to mention one fact, which especially contributed to suggest to Pascal the plan of such a work as that of whose fragments we treat. Some time before the German Reformation the discrepancy between intellectual inquiry and religious tradition had been strongly excited in the South, by the unsatisfactoriness of the old scholasticism, and the newlyawakened classical culture. Secular education, repressed in an earlier period, arrayed itself in violent opposition to everything divine, which the heavenward-aspiring soul feels urged by an inherent necessity to pursue. This inimical worldly spirit,

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aiming to rule alone, had indeed been restrained by the force of the religious principle which went forth from the German Reformation, and re-operated upon the Catholic Church; though the deep historical glance of a Melancthon, who, in his right comprehension of the Past and the Present, was enabled to foretell the Future, recognised what great revolution of mind would have broken out, had not the religious excitement kindled by Luther turned it into a different channel. He speaks, for example, in a letter to his friend Cameron, in the year 1529, of the longi graviores tumultus' which would have arisen, nisi Lutherus exortus esset ac studio humanorum alio traxisset.' And had the Reformation remained true to its principle, its effects, in this respect, would have been permanent. But this spirit of materialism and atheism, thus temporarily repressed by the new impulse given by the Reformation, continued to plant itself in the South, especially in France, where it was greatly promoted by the excesses of Jesuitism. Whoever therefore came much in contact, as Pascal did, in the earlier period of his life, with the educated, could not fail to be affected by these phenomena. The manner in which it was attempted, whether by the old, or by a new form of scholasticism, derived from the Cartesian Philosophy, to demonstrate to the unbelieving the truth of a so-called natural religion, could not satisfy his penetrating mind. He recognised the deficiency of the previous system of apologetics and philosophy of religion, and felt called to investigate more deeply the constitution of man's religious nature-the true original foundation of those convictions which involve his higher interests; and his striking union of the power of keen and perspicuous thinking, with the depth and fervour of the religious life, peculiarly qualified him for this duty. And thus, as in former times, when a one-sided, sophistical intellectualism threatened to destroy faith in that truth, without which the mind of man can find no repose amid the vicissitudes of his changeful life, God raised up men who clearly pointed out the seat of this faith, in an immediate consciousness, elevated above all scepticism—as a Socrates in conflict with the Sophists-so now Pascal appeared, one of the same prophetic race who are called to testify of the holiest in humanity.

We must, however, carefully distinguish betwixt the accidental form in which he expressed his views, which has nothing to do with our present purpose, and the eternal, invariable truth which revealed itself in his great mind; we refer to the Catholic submission to an arbitrary Church authority, and the special Jansenistic element which characterized him. For, although this Jansenistic principle contains a truth, to which the spiritual development of Pascal was much indebted, it also involves

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involves a one-sidedness from which his mind did not remain free, and which exercised a hindering influence on the development of his views. We mark, on the one hand, as true, that subjective tendency that reference to the immediate facts of the higher life in the soul, which has been noticed as his characteristic principle; and, on the other hand, as erroneous, the manner in which he has apprehended this, in connection with the Augustinian doctrine of grace and predestination-his notion of the divine as something deposited by a sudden operation on the soul, and his confusion of the due relation between the divine and the human, whereby the school to which he belonged was prevented from rightly understanding the religious life (which was yet so operative in Pascal's own case) as the great element of the moral improvement of the human race. But the fundamental principles of the 'Thoughts are not at all essentially connected with these erroneous and distorting views, and, when freed from the accidental combination in which they have been thus placed by Pascal, only present themselves more pure, clear, and fruitful.

Pascal's genius was one which could speak in the form of culture of all times-and as the contrarieties of which we have spoken are the same which still agitate our own time, it is evident that his genius is fitted to speak, in our form of culture, important words for our instruction.

Those are especially distinguished in history, who have stood forth in opposition to all mutilation, and injury of human nature in its pure form, who, having realized in themselves the due development of its various fundamental powers, would secure to each its special right-who have been deeply penetrated with the conviction that that can only be truth which gives satisfaction to the whole man, which requires the negation of no part of his spiritual nature. To such men of the full truth and mental healthiness-the genuine aw@gooúvn of the spiritual life-Pascal belongs. As, in himself, he united a mathematically cultured, keen understanding, and free critical faculty, with the deep inward life of the soul, so he would have faith, demonstration, and scepticism equally enjoy their respective rights-a view which he has expressed in a striking manner in the following words, whose original form has been communicated to us for the first time by Faugère: We must,' he says, possess three qualities, those of the Pyrrhonist, of the Geometrician, and of the Christian humbling himself in faith. These unite with and attemper one another, so that we doubt where we should, we maintain where we should, and we submit where we should.' It is the last step of the reason,' he adds, to recognise that there is an endless multitude of things which transcend its powers; it is only weak when

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