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which morality and religion rest are established and defined in the realm of metaphysics, and to deny us this branch of knowledge, or to treat it slightly, is to put us, in the conflict with unbelief, at such disadvantage that we can never maintain our ground. We may, indeed, shut our eyes, and stand fast; we may stop our ears, and run from the questionings and claims of scepticism; but we cannot maintain our position in quiet and serene conviction, without searching for those foundations of truth found in the discarded field of philosophy.

The nature of right and its obligations, of liberty and its responsibilities, of the infinite in its application to God, as well as the positive and negative knowledge we have of his existence and attributes, are to be established by an inquiry into the phenomena of mind, the truths present to it, their source and authority. To hope, therefore, for morality and religion, and yet to sink out of sight those abutments on which they are to rest, is infatuation. Those do not so hope who wittingly do this work of denial and overthrow quite the contrary. Very many of them well understand that their mines run beneath the sacred edifices of religion, the spiritual labors and history of the race, and that, if they can be fully and successfully fired, these will sink, a mass of ruins, into a black, sulphureous chasm. We see, therefore, that the intellectual battle between belief and unbelief, religion and irreligion, must be fought, in large part, in the fields of philosophy. The truths of revelation must be vindicated or overthrown by their relation to man's constitution, his powers of knowledge and obedience, and the rational stretch of his hopes.

Simple, then, are the reasons for philosophy, if philosophy be possible. We must abandon ourselves later than all things else, consent to darkness everywhere, if we can only, strike a cheerful light at this fireside of our home. Unfortunate,