prove. Every principle must be either resolvable by the understanding, or must rest on faith; and as every conceivable question may be thus carried down to faith, all knowledge runs into mystery. An adjustment of the fact of this realm of mystery, from which no effort can disconnect us, has ever been the profound difficulty with men of contemplative minds, and one which the labours of thinking men of all ages have advanced only a very few steps towards a solution. Its mal-adjustment in the philosophical system has already wrought havoc with the highest and most solemn interests of men. Along the borders of this shaded land, have arisen the miasmata of the schools of Elis and Alexandria, of Spinoza and the new German philosophy, and of eastern mysticism. Hitherto, Scottish thinkers, with a very few exceptions, have tried practically to substitute an analysis of mental phenomena, in place of the real difficulties of metaphysical speculation. But abstract reflection, if legitimately pursued, must in the end place us in contact with these difficulties. If in some minds the floodgates of universal doubt are thus opened, this is a discipline we cannot avoid. Mysteries are needed as means to the attainment of knowledge. They are, moreover, suggested to the soul by all its most prominent objects of thought—by the starry heavens—by the infinite space in which we and they are included—by the awful eternity through which we are passing—by the consciousness of our own existence—by the revelation of Him "in whom we live and move and have our being"—by the sublime realities of a moral law, and a responsible be-
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