great movements; but it is at least of equal importance that the whole nature of man be had respect to in all that you attempt to accomplish; his convictions as well as his respect for authority, and even his selflove as well as his moral instincts. Hence the propriety of employing as agents men who both can and will do something more than merely explain a dogmatic creed-who will show to uncultivated or feeble understandings the reasonableness of positive precepts, the direct and even immediate advantages resulting from their observance, and, in fact, who will strive, by the introduction of all the useful arts of life, to train men to the use of their rational faculties, and not to remain the mere creatures of impulse or prejudice, to become capable, in fine, of looking both before and after.

If we examine even very cursorily the volumes of the Society for the Promotion of Social Science, the address of Lord Shaftesbury, the paper of Dr. Alison, and the contributions of various other eminent names, both professional and extra-professional, we cannot help being struck in the first place by the vast importance of sanitary arrangements in regard to moral development, and consequently the fitness and power of medical men to forward them. The dependence of the moral feelings and of intellectual development on physical well-being is made more and more clear every day The imperative necessity for the free access of light, and a plentiful supply of fresh air and pure water, for the preservation of physical health, and for the prevention both of acute epidemics and of the tendency to chronic disease, needs merely be adverted to; but the deteriorating effect of the want of these accessories on the healthy energy of the brain, the great organ of the mind, is brought out in various papers of these Transactions so strongly, that they might well form the text of a whole article. At all events they establish unquestionably the position that, in our own country and under our own eye, there is ample scope for what may well be called missionary exertions, and no more promising agency for these purposes than that of medical men. How that agency is to amalgamate with existing organizations, or how it may be regarded by them, following the example of the author of The Healing Art,' we do not inquire; but one thing we are quite sure of, that now-a-days, and in the present spirit that animates the public mind, all ecclesiastical organizations must submit to be tested not by appeals to antiquity, not even by a strained interpretation of a few Scripture texts, but by their evident tendency to conform to the dictates of common sense, and to promote the well-being of mankind. No ecclesiastical organization whatever is religion, but only a means of propagating it, or of forwarding some of its objects, and they must all depend on their ability to show that they are capable of fulfilling the purposes for which they in reality exist.

If we turn for a moment to heathen countries, while we wish to do credit and justice to the excellence of the motives that have led men to engage in missionary labours, we have some fear that a dispassionate observer would be compelled to admit that the success attending them has not been quite commensurate to the vast means expended, and

has certainly fallen very far short of the sanguine anticipations of their founders. In China, for example, where the Roman Catholics claim converts to the number of two hundred thousand, and where an extremely well-informed friend of ours admits that they cannot be less than half that number, the same competent authority does not believe the Protestant missionaries can claim above four or five hundred. The reasons of this prodigious difference of success, for which the different duration of the missions is quite inadequate to account, are probably various, and lie out of our way to discuss; but one we have no doubt of is the skill with which the Jesuits adapted the scientific attainments of their agents to the situations they were meant to fill, and on the other hand, the unscientific character of Protestant missionaries, arising from the unfortunate enmity that, till recent times, existed in the religious community to learning and scientific attainments of any kind. Now, the establishment of a Medical Missionary Society is at all events a step in the right direction in this respect. It is an acknowledgment of the co-operative power of science in the work of civilizing and Christianizing mankind, and a proof that the experience of such men as Livingstone, and the statements of candid travellers and investigators, such as Earth, have produced some good effect, in compelling the religious world to the conviction, that a mere exhibition of Christianity as a dogmatic system is not all that is necessary to secure its reception either among barbarous tribes, or among Orientals where civilization is at the best stationary. But another advantage of this association of medicine with benevolent enterprise is that it introduces an element of impartial attention to evidence, and of enlightened and dispassionate investigation into a region where such habits of thought are much wanted. We do not believe that there is any body of men more zealous and independent in their search after truth than our own profession. The utter want of anything like a corporate or collective interest, secures the utmost latitude and freedom of opinion; things greatly to be desiderated in the religious world, where the views held are compressed into dogmatic formula, and even identified with a stereotyped mode of expression, and where nobody can help being struck with the facility with which what have been aptly called the romantic fictions of the prophetic press are received; and, on the other hand, the tenacity with which forms of expression and ancient views are clung to and maintained. Among a body of this kind, we hold that the opinions and searching inquiries of the medical profession are of inestimable value to guide and to discipline the ardent zeal and precipitation, which, however much we may admire the purity of motive from which they spring, may be dangerous in the conduct of practical affairs.

Along with the exertions of medical men in the field of benevolent enterprise it may not be amiss before we close to advert to the employment of female agency, a subject which comes prominently out in the sociological volumes, where papers of real merit are contributed by several ladies. Here again the acuteness of the Romish Church, and the skill with which she adapts some parts of her system to every

The

phase of human nature, has anticipated Protestant benevolence, and ought, if we do not allow our prejudices to stand in the way of our judgment, to afford suggestions both to guide and to warn us. great struggle in the Crimea, and the deep excitement caused by the "horrible and heartrending" misfortunes that befel the sick of our army, first brought prominently before the public the beneficent and soothing influence of woman, under circumstances where her agency had been little thought of before. The passionate feelings of that agitating time were not favourable for a calm consideration of the mode in which female agency on such occasions should be organized and conducted; still the disinterested zeal and devotion of the English ladies are above all praise, and the hearts of their countrymen responded with ardent gratitude to their noble exertions. But the efficiency of the Sisters of Charity is admitted by every medical man with whom we have conversed to have been fully equal to theirs, and their zeal and patience not to be exceeded, while, from their peculiar discipline, their ministrations were unattended by certain disadvantages which not unnaturally accompanied the interference of those occupying the position and cherishing the habits and ideas of Englishwomen of rank. We cannot allow ourselves to believe that a system like that of Rome, which proscribes the efforts of the human intellect, and lays a blighting hand on the best affections of the human heart, should succeed better than our own in developing means of usefulness and benevolence; but it is not by ignoring any real success that the Romish Church may achieve, still less by any invidious attempt to detract from the merits of females who for many a long year have practised the patient zeal and real philanthropy which so justly make Englishmen proud of the lady nurses of the Crimea, that we must seek to uphold the credit of our own views.

How far it may be possible to engraft on the system of Protestantism the benefits without the defects of Romish institutions, is a subject well worth inquiry, but upon which we cannot enter here; but we think it right in making the preceding remarks on one of the most beneficial innovations on the ordinary and accepted forms of benevolent administration-to suggest its analogy to other movements that are going on among and around us, and while we consider them, to remind our readers that we should not refuse to take advantage of any information that may be gained by the experience even of hostile religionists. Nor can we shut our eyes to the fact that on the other side of the Atlantic, in the land of eager rush, and haste, and tumult, experiments have begun to be made which must at least compel attention to the question, how far a complete scientific training for the practice of medicine may or ought to be given to women. All this will open the wider question, how much of our views about the education of women has a foundation in nature, or is necessary to preserve the delicacy and purity of feeling, on which the beneficial influence of women rests, and for the absence of which no amount of intellectual culture, and no apparent material advantages, however great, could compensate, or how far they are founded on notions

purely conventional. To sum up and conclude this part of our subject, we consider the establishment of a Medical Missionary Society valuable in itself-certainly of much greater value as indicating an advance of thought, and as likely to force an advance of liberal views on the part of religious people regarding science and its place as a power co-extensive with religion in the progress of society. In dealing with barbarous tribes, individuals, or bodies of men, have been constrained by the nature of the case to seek influence by teaching and by learning themselves the useful arts, but in this case there is a distinct recognition of the necessity for a full and complete scientific training; there is an admission of the co-ordinate value of knowledge as a means of introducing and establishing religion, which is equally applicable to the outcasts of our own civilization as to the rudest savages in the world. And there is the further admission that religion addresses itself to the life which now is as well as to the life which is to come, that she takes cognizance of the whole man, moral, intellectual, and physical, and does not limit the range of her ideas, nor restrict her exertions to a future life alone, which from the very nature of a being like man, composed of a nervous system and sentient organs, can only be duly appreciated when these are sound and healthymens sana in corpore sano. In these indications we see ground for hope that a more perfect amalgamation of science with religion may take place than has before existed, that the lofty scorn of the one may be abated, and the bitter jealousy of the other appeased, and that working together as fellow-labourers, men of science and ministers of religion may jointly labour to mitigate the sorrow and the suffering that abound, to inaugurate a healthier and better state of society, and to prepare our race for a higher and nobler existence beyond the grave.

The two books that appear last on our list are not directly connected with the subject we have been discussing, but when it is considered that the character of English faith is likely to be stamped on the opinions of the world, and that it is utterly impossible to prevent the religious opinions of the civilized part of mankind from being powerfully influenced by the views they entertain of a great many subjects not actually religious, but of kin and cognate to natural theology more especially; there is no impropriety in taking a glance at the views advocated in these books, as specimens of the tone of philosophical thought in our country at the present day. All attempts to repress speculative philosophy by treating Christianity as a foregone conclusion, have signally and most fortunately failed; nor is there the slightest reason why a single department of nature, or a single object of inquiry, if it legitimately fall within the limits which our Creator has imposed upon the human faculties, should be prohibited. Every scientific inquiry that comes in contact either with the deductions of natural theology, or the intimations of Christianity, is at least a means quoad tantum of testing their accuracy, and we unhesitatingly affirm that from every such ordeal both have emerged stronger and more

secure.

The work of Mr. Cromwell-the 'Soul and the Future'-is an

avowed pleading for views purely materialistic. He regards matter as exhibiting two forms of existence-inorganic and organized; in the latter, from the lowest form at least of vegetable or animal structure life is found, which gradually increases in the energy of its manifestations, till it reaches, what he calls, the evolution of "mentality," which again enlarges the sphere of its operations in exact proportion to the complexity rather than the size of the brain, of which alone it is the product, and finally culminates in man. Mr. Cromwell is a believer in

a future life after a period of decay and sleep, the thinking power being at the resurrection restored by the same high fiat which originally conferred it on the brain, though what the Deity is, if, as he comes very near saying, there be nothing in the universe but matter, he nowhere explains, and we confess to a little difficulty in conceiving. We certainly do not find very much that is absolutely new in Mr. Cromwell's statements; they are chiefly a reproduction, explicit, honest, and straightforward, of older writers, especially of the views of Dr. Priestly and Mr. Lawrence, respecting the progressive growth and gradual decay of the human faculties, along with the development and decay of the physical frame; nor do we consider him at all successful in his attempts to derive support to the cause he adopts from recent anatomy. The author certainly overstates his case when he affirms that all vital phenomena may be explained by the ordinary forces that operate on inorganic matter, and that the notion of a principle of life controlling, modifying, and even occasionally reversing ordinary chemical actions, is altogether obsolete. Nor does microscopic anatomy help us, in the slightest degree, to explain or to conceive how the brain elaborates thought. The brain, we are willing to admit, may and probably does consist of a congeries of diverse organs adapted to exhibit or produce different states of the mind; further, so far as we know, its intimate structure consists of granules, cells, and tubules, analogous to the constitution of other organs; but having admitted this, we do not see how Mr. Cromwell's views are in the least helped by the admission. The brain may be just as well the instrument of an immaterial entity as the actual thinking principle itself; and the latter hypothesis is encumbered and opposed by all those difficulties which have caused it to be held untenable by certainly a vast majority of the greatest and most acute thinkers that we recollect. If matter be all that we are capable of conceiving, or all that we actually know, and thought be a product of the brain (and no mode of expression does anything more than attempt to disguise what the materialists must admit, that thought is a product of brain), which after all is nothing but matter, how is it possible to escape the conclusion that thought itself is material; and let Mr. Cromwell, or any one else, try to apply material laws to the wondrous evolution and endless complexities of thought to the brilliant imaginings of the poet-to the profound speculations of the sage to the visions of hope, or to the gloom of despairto the restlessness of ambition-to the placidity of content-in a word, to the endless complications of feelings, and passions, and hopes, and desires, and fears, that agitate the life of man, and never cease till we