powers, that is, of the act first manifested to the senses in the conductor A, arriving at Z by the sensible chain of intermediate conductors, B, C, D, &c. ;-then every motion of my arm is super naturam. super naturam. If this be not the sense, then nature is but a wilful synonyme of experience, and then the first noticed aerolithes, Sulzer's first observation of the galvanic arch, &c. must have been miracles.

As erroneous as the author's assertions are logically, so false are they historically, in the effect, which the miracles in and by themselves did produce on those, who, rejecting the doctrine, were eye-witnesses of the miracles; and psychologically, in the effect which miracles, as miracles, are calculated to produce on the human mind. Is it possible that the author can have attentively studied the first two or three chapters of St. John's gospel?

There is but one possible tenable definition of a miracle,—namely, an immediate consequent from a heterogeneous antecedent. This is its essence. Add the words, præter experientiam adhuc, or id temporis, and you have the full and popular or practical sense of the term miracle.*

* See The Friend, Vol. III. Essay 2. Ed.

NOTE ON A SERMON

ON THE PREVALENCE OF INFIDELITY AND ENTHUSIASM, BY WALTER BIRCH, B. D.

In the description of enthusiasm, the author has plainly had in view individual characters, and those too in a light, in which they appeared to him; not clear and discriminate ideas. Hence a mixture of truth and error, of appropriate and inappropriate terms, which it is scarcely possible to disentangle. Part applies to fanaticism; part to enthusiasm ; and no small portion of this latter to enthusiasm not pure, but as it exists in particular men, modified by their imperfections—and bad because not wholly enthusiasm. I regret this, because it is evidently the discourse of a very powerful mind;-and because I am convinced that the disease of the age is want of enthusiasm, and a tending to fanaticism. You may very naturally object that the senses, in which I use the two terms, fanaticism and enthusiasm, are private interpretations equally as, if not more than, Mr. Birch's. They are so; but the difference between us is, that without reference to either term, I have attempted to ascertain the existence and diversity of two states of moral being; and then having found in our language

two words of very fluctuating and indeterminate use, indeed, but the one word more frequently bordering on the one state, the other on the other, I try to fix each to that state exclusively. And herein I follow the practice of all scientific men, whether naturalists or metaphysicians, and the dictate of common sense, that one word ought to have but one meaning. Thus by Hobbes and others of the materialists, compulsion and obligation were used indiscriminately; but the distinction of the two senses is the condition of all moral responsibility. Now the effect of Mr. Birch's use of the words is to continue the confusion. Remember we could not reason at all, if our conceptions and terms were not more single and definite than the things designated. Enthusiasm is the absorption of the individual in the object contemplated from the vividness or intensity of his conceptions and convictions: fanaticism is heat, or accumulation and direction, of feeling acquired by contagion, and relying on the sympathy of sect or confederacy; intense sensation with confused or dim conceptions. Hence the fanatic can exist only in a crowd, from inward weakness anxious for outward confirmation; and, therefore, an eager proselyter and intolerant. The enthusiast, on the contrary, is a solitary, who lives in a world of his own peopling, and for that cause is disinclined to outward action. Lastly, enthusiasm is susceptible of many degrees, (according to

the proportionateness of the objects contemplated,) from the highest grandeur of moral and intellectual being, even to madness; but fanaticism is one and the same, and appears different only from the manners and original temperament of the individual. There is a white and a red heat; a sullen glow as well as a crackling flame; cold-blooded as well as hot-blooded fanaticism. Enthusiasts, vovoiασταὶ from ἔνθεος, οἷς ὁ θεὸς ἔνεσι, or possibly from Ev Ovolais, those who, in sacrifice to, or at, the altar of truth or falsehood, are possessed by a spirit or influence mightier than their own individuality. Fanatici—-qui circum fana favorem mutuo contrahunt et afflant-those who in the same conventicle, or before the same shrine, relique or image, heat and ferment by co-acervation.

I am fully aware that the words are used by the best writers indifferently, but such must be the case in very many words in a composite language, such as the English, before they are desynonymized. Thus imagination and fancy; chronical and temporal, and many others.

FÉNÉLON ON CHARITY.*

NOTE to pages 196, 197. This chapter is plausible, shewy, insinuating, and (as indeed is the character of the whole work) 'makes the amiable.' To many,-to myself formerly,—it has appeared a mere dispute about words: but it is by no means of so harmless a character, for it tends to give a false direction to our thoughts, by diverting the conscience from the ruined and corrupted state, in which we are without Christ. Sin is the disease. What is the remedy? What is the antidote?-Charity?— Pshaw! Charity in the large apostolic sense of the term is the health, the state to be obtained by the use of the remedy, not the sovereign balm itself,-faith of grace,—faith in the God-manhood, the cross, the mediation, and perfected righteousness, of Jesus, to the utter rejection and abjuration of all righteousness of our own! Faith alone is the restorative. The Romish scheme is preposterous;—it puts the rill before the spring. Faith is the source,charity, that is, the whole christian life, is the stream from it. It is quite childish to talk of faith being imperfect without charity. As wisely might you say that a fire, however

* Communicated by Mr. Gillman. Ed.