nded. The greatest astronomers of the Alexandnan ool equally discredited it.*

Did these just notions carry the mind of Philolaus him

to the other truths that were connected close y with m? Not at all. He thought and reasoned as wady bend the few realities he had imbibed, as if his whole mand been one labyrinth of mistake. A Numa, mdeed, opted the opinion, and regulated the temple and rites of Vesta, his goddess of sacred fire, according to :: Bet en this patronage did not make the truth popular, either to vulgar or to the learned. The error was preferred to reality, until centuries of more knowledge disposed the an mind to accredit it.

ence it is our wisdom and our duty to be always selfrusting; never to make our individual opinions the standof what is true or false; never to avert our eves from is better, because we dislike it; and reverentially to n from disregarding the sacred light that has been profor us, because it is at first inconvenient or disturbing , or may bring with it some images or prospects that do harmonize with our expectations or existing preposses Aristarchus, the Samian, is mentioned by Archimedes as stating the nd the stars, not planetary, to be immoveable, and the earth to be round the sun in the circumference of a circle-Psam. p. 440. also ascribes the opinion to him; de Fac. Lun. But neither rhus, nor Eratosthenes, nor Posidonius, nor the later Ptolemy, it. It remained a discountenanced truth till Cardinal Cos it on the notice of his contraries in the fifteenth century; Which Copernicus happily e You will And Cun's work in my Modern Hist. Eng Bolaus thought that our antipodes to the other. Vesta, or focal hearth of the antipodes. The third This he said was opposite which was the cause why we o

cious above all things to them, however absurd were the means by which they supposed it was communicated.* This was the impulse of nature, not opposed by their reason. They were right and wise in their principle of seeking to make their actions conformable to the will of heaven, and of not going contrary to it; but, from ignorance and perverting superstitions, they took the wrong paths, selected wrong objects, and made what was nonsense and accident their channels and instructers. That we should recoil from their silly means, and seek more certain sources of the divine knowledge which the human heart so pants for, and apply it more judiciously, would be quite natural now, indeed is inevitable, under our soul-expanding sciences. But that we should let our improvements set our minds in battlearray against what is superior to them all, and throw away from us all the sacred materials for knowing what is so invaluable to every one, is a fractious mystery of the human spirit, which it is difficult to understand.

One reason perhaps for this conduct is, that while we cultivate our national philosophy so intensely, we leave in total neglect its most illuminating companion, divine philosophy.

We look at visible nature, and study that, as if there were nothing else in existence.

We know nothing therefore of the one, while we are multiplying unceasingly every other acquisition. Hence it becomes insulated from all our other knowledge and power, and withers away from a considerable part of our social mind, because we will not cultivate it.

Thus our ideas and views on this remain unallied with all our other attainments, and do not grow up with them in frathey were expelled, nothing in public affairs, or in private households, or in war, was done without it."-Cic. Div. 1. i. c. i. Plutarch makes his advocates for the superiority of land animals say, "A great and very ancient part of divination is by augury from birds; for they are so swift, and so intelligent, and so pliable in their moveability to every imagination or thought, that they seem like instruments fit to be used by God, and to be turned as he pleases. Therefore now by their motions, and at other times by their voices and warblings and other gestures, he actuates them as he thinks proper, and uses them to promote some purposes of mankind, and to repress others."-Plut. Uter. Anim. v. iii. p. 1794.

*Hence Cicero calls divination "a magnificent and salutary science, if any thing be such. It is that by which mortal nature may come nearest to the divine power. I know of no nation, however civilized and learned, or fierce and barbarous, which does not think that future things may be signified and predicted to us."-Cic. Divin. 1. i. c. 1.

temal unity, and mutually befriending and supporting attachment; and yet this result is evidence, that the more our science increases, the more a farther knowledge of our God, and a more enlarged study of the principles and purposes in ha ways and works, become indispensable, if they are to possess their due portion of human notice and belief.

It is the present tendency of the mind to search into the principles and causes of every thing; to inquire into the reasons, to examine the utilities, and to watch and estimate the propriety of the means employed, their working and their resuits. What it does in all other things, it also is doing with the creations of its God, with his providence, and with his revelations, and will continue to do so. This we may be sure of. The more our scientific researches enlarge, and the greater number of individual minds become active, the more tras inquisitorial industry will spread and become influential, both on our thoughts and conduct. This certainty makes it unadvisable to rest in ignorance or indifference about any pont on which beneficial ideas or information may yet be elated We must, if we wish to keep unimpaired, or on its due footing, what we most value, work out the farther knowledge which we need. We must think, and explore, and reason, and study, until we can enlarge our perceptions of the philosophy of the divine creation and divine providence, into some nearer proportion to our other certainties and investigations. The more we can show that the principles and laws on which he conducts and governs human affairs are in harmony with those which substantial nature indicates in all its movements and operations, the more we shall dignify the general intellect, and multiply individual happiness; for this will ever be the central point of both,-the sun around which all human existence must ever revolve, and from which it will always derive its truest light and joy. We have the outline of these principles and laws suggested to us, in his own explanations of his conduct towards other nations, which his recorded communications display. On these we must think and reason, until we can put our thoughts and views into that lucid order, that enlightening arrangement, which will lead us to the truth we sigh for. He desires us to know him truly. The whole history of anturity, and of all modern pagan nations, shows that any other than the correct knowledge of him only fills the mind VOL II-C

with the absurdest phantasms, and the most degrading depravities. Any other ideas of him than what are just, nullify or falsify him to us. They depose the real God, and place before us and within us a fantastic idol, or a moral deformity, instead. This experienced evil makes the sacred writings so important a portion of our intellectual library; in these he is portrayed as he exists and acts, and for this reason they have a value which nothing else possesses. It is a pity that so many able men, clever and informed in other respects, should throw these aside as unworthy their regard, bacause they find some things at variance with their preconceived ideas. But just so, the strongest minded men of antiquity would have thrown aside our systems of chymistry, geology, and astronomy, because their knowledge and believed opinions would have been irreconcileable with them.

For it is not because an opinion is true, that others will therefore adopt it. It must at the same time be congruous with our other impressions, and admit of being dovetailed into them, or it will be rejected; for it is judged of by its conformity to the previous acquisitions, and is disliked and condemned if incompatible with them. We see this fact remarkably illustrated in the opinions of Philolaus on the system of the world. He believed, what Copernicus has led our latter ages to establish as a certainty, that the sun is in the centre of the planets, and that they, with the earth, revolve round this luminary; a fragment of primeval tradition which had descended somehow into the Pythagorean school.* But because this was the natural truth, did Aristotle therefore adopt it, and the rest of the philosophers of Greece, or any of its subsequent mathematicians? Scarcely any. totle only cites it, in order to attack it. It opposed his other prepossessions, and therefore he condemned it as un

Aris

* Aristotle, in his discussion on the true place of the earth, which he thought was at rest in the centre of the universe, remarks,-" But those who live in Italy, called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary; for they place the solar fire in the middle, and call the earth one of the planets, and say that it is carried in a circle round this centre, and makes its own day and night."-Arist. de Cœlo, 1. ii. c. 13. Plutarch mentions Philolaus as the Pythagorean who taught this.-Plut. Phil. 1. iii. c. 11. Diogenes Laert. intimates that he was the first who asserted it; 1. viii. s. 85; though he also notices Nicetas, a Syracusian, as of the same opinion; to whom Theophrastus also assigned it.-Cicero, Lucullus, p. 95.