WILLIAM, one of the most acute of English thinkers, and one of the most graphic of English writers, was born at Peterborough, July 1743. His father, who was a minor canon in the cathedral there, was appointed, while Paley was yet a child, head master of Giggleswick grammar school in Yorkshire.

Here Paley received his education under his father’s eye, and early displayed the vigour of mind for which he was afterwards so eminent. He outstripped, we are told, all his school-fellows.

While making nearly equal progress in all the school studies, the special tendencies of his genius were even then distinctly marked. He took a keen delight in examining any curious pieces of mechanism that fell in his way; and on casually seeing a trial at Lancaster about a year before he left school, is said to have been so much excited by it, that he introduced mock trials as a pastime among his schoolfellows. One would have liked to see him in his juvenile attempts at sifting evidence and cross-examining witnesses.—Active in mind, he was sluggish in body, and took little part in the athletic sports of his companions; he was fond, however, of long rambles among the fields; and of angling, a sport the love of which, in after life, became a passion.

Young Paley remained under his father’s eye till his sixteenth year, when he went to Cambridge (1758), and was admitted a sizar of Christ’s College. On leaving home his father prophesied his son’s future fame,—“He’ll turn out a great man—very great; he has by far the clearest head I ever met with.” He made his first journey to the university on a pony, in company with his father, and has given us an amusing account of his equestrian misadventures. His father jogged on before, and Paley trotted behind. “I was never a good horseman,” says he; “and when I followed my father on a pony of my own, on my first journey to Cambridge, I fell off seven times. I was lighter than then I am now; and my falls were not likely to be serious. My father, on hearing a thump, would turn his head half aside, and say, ‘Take care of thy money lad.’”

During the early part of his under-graduateship Paley was more notorious for humour, social propensities, and indolence, than for diligence and application. A singular incident, which shows his force of character in a very remarkable light, revolutionized all his habits as a student. “I spent,” says he, “the first two years of my under-graduateship happily, but unprofitably. I was constantly in society, where we were, not immoral, but idle and rather expensive. At the commencement of my third year, however, after having left the usual party at rather a late hour in the evening, I was awakened at five in the morning by one of my companions, who stood at my bedside, and said, ‘Paley, I have been thinking what a fool you are. I could do nothing, probably, were I to try, and can afford the life I lead; you could do everything, and cannot afford it. I have had no sleep the whole night on account of these reflections, and am now come solemnly to inform you, that if you persist in your indolence I must renounce your society.’ I was so struck with the visit and the visitor, that I lay in bed great part of the day, and formed my plan. I ordered my bed-maker to prepare my fire every evening, in order that it might be lighted by myself. I arose at five; read during the whole of the day, except such hours as chapel and hall required; allotted to each portion of time its peculiar branch of study; and just before the closing of the college gates (9 o’clock), I went to a neighbouring coffee-house, where I constantly regaled on a mutton chop and a dose of milk-punch; and thus, on taking my bachelor’s degree, I became senior wrangler.”

Such an odd sermon from such an odd preacher, at so unusual an hour, might well startle the listener; but the instantaneous revolution it wrought shows wonderful decision of character, and might have been introduced as an illustration in Foster’s celebrated essay on that subject.

He took his bachelor’s degree January 1763, and for nearly three years afterwards was assistant in a school at Greenwich. In June 1766 his election to a fellowship of Christ’s College brought him back to the university, where he became one of the tutors of his college. Here he delivered lectures on the subjects which afterwards occupied him in his principal writings—moral philosophy and divinity. His coadjutor was Mr Law, son of Dr Edmund Law, the master of Peterhouse, who was afterwards bishop of Carlisle, and Paley’s lifelong patron.

After living about ten years as college tutor, Paley resigned his fellowship, and married. In 1775 he was presented, through his friend Bishop Law, to the rectory of Masgrove in Westmoreland; to which were soon afterwards added the vicarage of Dalston in Cumberland, and the living of Appleby in Westmoreland. In 1782 he was made archdeacon of Carlisle, and about the same time exchanged the living of Appleby for a stall in that cathedral. His income was now considerable.

In 1785 he published, in 4to, his first considerable work, the Moral and Political Philosophy. For the copyright the author received £1,000,—a very unusual sum for literary work in those days; but the popularity which the book rapidly acquired proved that the publisher had made a safe speculation.

In 1790 he published his Horae Paulinae, which, of all his works, gives us the fullest image of the characteristics of his mind, and is certainly entitled to be called the most original.

In May 1791 Paley lost his wife, who left him with eight Paley, children,—four sons and four daughters. He remained a widower four years, and then married Miss Dobinson, a lady of Carlisle long known to him, and much esteemed.

In 1791, at the height of the panic produced by the French Revolution, Paley wrote his Reasons for Contentment,—a brochure which he regarded, it is said, with all an author's complacency, and pronounced the best thing he ever wrote. It consists of some rather commonplace truths very well expressed, but is quite unworthy of his partial estimate of it. It has been said that his political zeal was stimulated by the hope of a mitre; if so, he was doomed to be disappointed. But, in justice to Paley, it must not be forgotten that he was not a man likely to pay court to the ruling powers, either in this or any other way, from the mere hope of preferment. He who said that the "Divine right of kings was on the same footing with the Divine right of constables," could hardly hope for favour from a monarch like George III.

In 1791 the dean and chapter of Carlisle presented him to the vicarage of Addingham; and two years after, he vacated the benefice of Dalston in exchange for that of Stanwix, which was nearer to Carlisle. This was the best of the three reasons which Paley is said to have given for the change. They were as follows:—"First, it saved me double housekeeping, Stanwix being within twenty minutes' walk of Carlisle; secondly, Its value was greater by L50 a year; and, thirdly, I began to find my stock of sermons coming over again too fast."

In 1794 appeared his work on the Evidences of Christianity, which has perhaps been the most popular of them all, and was certainly best recompensed. Though the court and minister were inexorable, or insensible to his claims, preferments were showered on him by the bench. Bishop Porteous gave him a prebendal stall in St Paul's; Lincoln made him sub-dean of that see; Durham conferred on him the living of Bishop-Wearmouth; altogether, these preferments yielded considerably more than L2000 a year. If it be ever desirable to reward merits like those of Paley in this oblique way, few men have better deserved episcopal patronage, for the services he rendered to the cause of our common Christianity were unquestionably very signal.

After being made sub-dean of Lincoln, Paley took his doctor's degree, and in his concio ad clerum made an unhappy slip in quantity, pronouncing prophyus long,—an offence which was duly expiated by being made the subject of some college wit's sarcastic epigram; but he had better success when he completed his exercises for his degree. In the discourse he addressed to the clergy on that occasion (one of his best), he characterizes with much ability and force the dangers and temptations which "beset the clerical character," and here and there shows a knowledge of the philosophy of human nature not unworthy of Barrow or Butler.

In 1795 Paley took up his abode at Bishop-Wearmouth. In accordance with the principles advocated in his Moral Philosophy, and in accordance too, it may be added, with his benevolent disposition and his wish to live in peace with his parishioners, he agreed to commute the tithes for a fixed payment during his life. The rapid rise that took place in the value of farm produce during the following years made the tenants well contented with their part of the bargain, and it is much to Paley's credit that he never repented of his.

At the solicitation of the Bishop of Durham, he consented to act in the commission of the peace, for which, in many respects, he was admirably well fitted. In his Moral Phi-

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1 There was a tradition, that on the occasion of Pitt's visit to the university, soon after his becoming premier, Paley reproved the greedy court paid to the youthful minister by preaching from the text,—"There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?" The story may have originated, and probably did, in some playful pleasantry of Paley; but had he thus desecrated the pulpit, he would have deserved as grave a rebuke as the venal suitors for ministerial favour. very high order. His imagination and his wit were both tolerably active; indeed, the latter is represented as exuberant in private life, and as making him the delight of the social circle; but in his writings both these qualities are so completely ministerial, that there is probably hardly a single instance in all his works where an illustration is introduced to embellish or delight, or to minister to the sense of beauty. All are either exemplifications of the argument itself (instances), or designed to give a more graphic and precise expression to it. His style is the just reflex of his mind. It is eminently precise and luminous both as regards diction and construction: as he is never guilty of overdoing in argument, but contents himself with the proofs that most speedily establish the conclusion, and there stops, so it is in his style. The chief excellence of all strictly argumentative composition must of course be perspicuity; for what is called beauty of style (as regards the greater part of its elements) there cannot be much scope. Perspicuity of style, however, Paley possesses in such perfection, that its very lucidity becomes beauty. Probably no man besides ever expressed so much scientific matter as he has expressed in his Natural Theology without technicalities, without pedantry, in such easy colloquial diction, with such apt and homely illustrations. It is science without the forms of it.

This lucid simplicity has often led readers to undervalue Paley as a thinker; it not only produces the effect of a perfectly translucent medium, which, the more clearly it lets us see objects, the less it obtrudes itself upon us; it is like a pure stream, which refracts the light so perfectly as always to seem to the eye more shallow than it is.

There is a natural correspondence between the mental and moral characteristics of men; so it was with Paley. His intellect was neither profound nor subtle; and, accordingly, his sympathies were circumscribed. He was also without enthusiasm; and there was, in consequence, little elevation of sentiment and no vehemence of passion about him. His Sermons, accordingly (though we are not to forget that they were never designed for publication), exhibit plain good sense, expressed with characteristic perspicuity, but without any of the "thoughts that breathe and words that burn" which constitute true eloquence. It must be added that they exhibit a very defective perception of the deeper spiritual truths of the gospel, and the deeper spiritual anatomy of human nature. His benevolence, however, was active and genuine,—practical, like all his other qualities,—and none the worse for being of that undemonstrative character which best harmonized with his plain, direct, practical intellect. Benevolence with him was a habit, and no mere sentiment. Few were more at home in ministering to the wants of the poor and the sick, and in devising plans for alleviating the sorrows of his parishioners.—Another marked trait of his character was his equable cheerfulness. This, too, is often found in those who, like Paley, are chiefly distinguished by plain rectitude of understanding and incapacity of the deeper emotions; for profound thought and profound feeling almost always pay the penalty of fits of melancholy as the cost of ecstasies and exaltation. This elastic spirit is pleasantly displayed in many passages of his Natural Theology, written as it was in the intervals of severe suffering. Nothing that he saw around, or felt in himself, could damp the buoyancy of heart, which made him exclaim, amidst the rejoicing song of birds, and hum of insects, and radiant smiles of infants,—happy by immediate donation of God,—“It is a happy world after all.” All he suffered seems as little to have tinged his own spirit with sadness as the spectacle of those more comprehensive miseries of the world which would have made many a deeper but less enviably-constituted mind—John Foster’s, for example—pause before it gave expression to such a sentiment, or half retract it as soon as uttered.

All the principal works of Paley exhibit his chief characteristics of mind in singular perfection; it is mirrored in them. However they may differ in intrinsic value, they are all stamped nearly in the same degree with the impress of his genius. The most faulty, owing to his erroneous theory of morals in the first portions, is the Moral and Political Philosophy. On this the remarks of Sir James Mackintosh, in his Ethical Dissertation, make it needless to say much here. It is sufficient to remind the reader that Paley’s theory does not account (nor can any such theory) for the very origination of the ideas of right and wrong, duty and obligation, in the human mind; notions which are perfectly unique, as much so as those which are the product of any other distinctive faculty of our nature,—and in every case irreducible to the mere conceptions of the “prudent” and “imprudent,” of “profit” and “loss,” into which, if the utilitarian theory were true, they should be resolvable. Sir James Mackintosh has insisted much, and justly, on the approximate agreement among mankind in their moral judgments as an argument for man’s original moral constitution; but it may be remarked that even a wider divergence in this respect, a greater diversity in the moral codes of men, would not impair the above argument against Paley’s theory. It is no doubt true that there is such an approximation to agreement among mankind, and the logical force of their differences is fairly neutralized by the facts Sir James insists on. Though not unimportant, and proving clearly enough some abnormality in human nature on any hypothesis, these differences, which are always made one of the principal arguments against the theory of an original moral constitution of human nature, form in reality no argument at all. That distinctive moral constitution is shown in the very conception of right and wrong—moral approbation and the contrary; and there is as real, though not as pleasant, a proof of man’s original moral constitution when the conception is vitiated as when it is not. It would not invalidate the argument that the eye, the organ by which the notions of light and colour are conveyed, implies a distinct faculty of our nature, were it true that no two men saw just alike; nay, if one saw green where another saw blue. Very bad eyes they would be in that case, no doubt; still, that there was the perception of light and colour at all would be the result of a distinct organism to convey them, and due to no other sense. In like manner, it may be argued that, in the present condition of man, his moral perceptions may be often vitiated, and yet that the very existence of such notions as obligation, duty, and remorse, show a distinct moral constitution of man, whether it be the result of some single faculty called a “moral sense,” or as a distinct result of the reciprocal action of many faculties.

It is not to be denied that the want of elevation and nobility in Paley’s ethical principles has unfavourably affected some of his practical applications. It is impossible to read his lax observations on “subscription,” his tender dealing with what are called “white lies” and other peccadillos, without feeling that his theory has in some cases warped his decisions, and in others has injured the tone, even where the decisions are not erroneous.

He seems to have formed his ethical theory very early. The subject of his Latin dissertation for the senior bachelor’s prize (in 1765) was “a comparison between the Stoic and Epicurean philosophy in their influence on morals,” &c.; and he awards the superiority to the latter. It must be added, that on certain occasions in life he too subsequently followed his own theory. One of the theses he proposed (in 1762) to defend in the schools was, that eternal punishments are inconsistent with the Divine attributes; but having learned that it would give umbrage, he accepted, with grateful alacrity, the suggestion of Dr Watson, that he could insert “non” in the proposition, and take the Paley, other side; which he accordingly did, and argued for the contrary of his own convictions with great eclat and success. It cannot become any man thus to trifle with his genuine sentiments. In like manner, when asked to sign the petition for a relaxation of the terms of subscription, he gave as his reason for refusing, that (though he heartily approved of the object) "he could not afford to keep a conscience." It would be unjust to press a joke, such as this must have been, too far (for Paley did "keep a conscience"), but it is impossible to help feeling that a want of due sensitiveness—a certain moral laxity on some occasions—was the consistent fruit of a moral theory which necessarily turns the thoughts too closely on the "profit" and "loss," the advantages and disadvantages of actions, and invites to a too solicitous casuistry wherever it is not absolutely shameless to exercise it.—Apart from the vice in the principles of his ethical theory, the treatise is not unworthy of Paley; and many portions display all the acuteness, justness of thinking, and felicity of style which so eminently distinguished him. His illustrations of the institution of property and its advantages—his remarks on the best modes of exercising benevolence—his contemplative exposure of the excuses for not practising it—his chapter on anger and its "sedatives"—these and many other portions are admirable.

It is the fashion with infidelity now-a-days to speak of Paley's "Evidences" as passé; as having little or no relation to present controversies, and as utterly inadequate to meet those more subtle and more efficient methods of refuting the truth of Christianity, which modern astuteness has discovered. This is a stock fallacy with many infidel writers; and by mere repetition it has, among the young and ignorant, often passed current. We maintain, on the contrary, that the supposed new methods differ from the old more in form than substance; and that when they differ in form they do not affect the substance of the argument. Almost everything in the new methods that has any real bearing on the controversy has been long since propounded to the world. Nor, if we reflect, could it well be otherwise. An asserted historic fact is not, like a Chinese puzzle, capable of being put together in a thousand ways. Christianity professes to be historically true; and the only way it can be shown not to be so, is to show that its alleged facts are no facts at all. Now, the mode of doing this admits of no great choice; changes of form or detail there may be, but there can be little more. For example, it may be contended by one that Christianity originated in imposture; by another, that it was simple honesty mistaking its facts (very simple, indeed, it must have been, if it could mistake such facts); by a third, that it was a slow growth of popular credulity out of a slender nucleus of truth; by a fourth, that it was a result of all these. And all these hypotheses, in various ways and in different degrees, were given long ago to the world: the elder infidels depending more on the coarse imputation of fraud practising on credulity, though not to a wasteful exclusion of other less offensive suppositions on particular occasions,—the modern opponents, with improved politeness, rather dwelling on innocent self-deception and honest credulity in the founders of Christianity; though here again we find no absolute lack of infidels who prefer the curt effrontery of the elder gainsayers. But the supposition of these illegitimate motives rather than those in the authors or propagators of Christianity can constitute no variation in the arguments for confuting its claims as history. The mode in which the assailant acts may vary on that supposition; it may make him more cautious on this point or bold on that; or induce him to reject, if he adopt one hypothesis, some arguments which he would use if he adopted another; but it cannot affect the only point of any real importance,—namely, the value of the arguments which are to prove that Christianity is not historic. As to this, it does Paley, not matter a rush what are the sentiments of the assailant as to Christ's character or that of the apostles; it is a mere question of his insolence or urbanity, his charity or malignity, about which it is hardly worth while to carry on controversy. What he has to do is to show either that the facts of Christianity are à priori incredible, or incredible from their intrinsical inconsistency and contradictoriness, viewed as history. Now, when that is attempted, we invariably come to essentially the same methods as were employed long ago. A few arguments may be withdrawn, disabled to the rear, and a few new recruits brought to the front; and more or less strategical skill may be found in marshalling the forces; but the staple of the method is, and must be, the same. If it be said—"But are you not doing injustice?" Though many of the modern objections to the current Christianity are, it is true, old objections,—especially the alleged discrepancies, and à priori objections to miracles,—and are attended with the same result, even the elimination of all the miraculous facts and all the peculiar doctrines, yet do not the objectors say they are Christians still? Christianity is accepted by them in a certain rationalist or mythical sense. You have not a miraculous fact left, it is true, or a doctrine of Christianity which distinguishes it from the philosophy of Seneca or Epictetus; but that is all: if you have not Paul, you have Paulus; or Christ is simply "turned into an Hegelian." We answer, that to get rid of the facts, these writers are first obliged to resort to the old methods under new disguises; and, as just said, it matters not in the interest of what particular faction of their own they thus attempt to get rid of them; only it may well be asserted that those who pretend to retain Christianity after having critically juggled it out of all its asserted facts and doctrines, and its founders out of all their brains in having believed them, are by far the worst infidels of all. They come with the rest of the rabble, "with swords and staves for to take Christ;" but they come by night, they come among the chief priests and scribes, and they betray him with a kiss.

When, therefore, opponents affirm: "The modern apologists rely on the obsolete and exploded methods, the new and more subtle attacks are evaded," it is wise to deny it, and challenge explicit proof. On the contrary, it may be shown, if we can but get them to details, that the arguments by which modern infidelity assails Christianity are, in substance, what were propounded long ago. The infidel hypotheses as to its origin are indeed various, and, unhappily for its opponents, very contradictory; but the arguments by which it is attempted to prove its unhistoric character are necessarily the same.

Thus, it is not easy to see that the à priori argument for the incredibility of all external revelation, based on the modern "spiritual deism," differs essentially from Lord Herbert's old-fashioned argument founded on his natural deism; nor does it matter, though the one calls the responses of the internal oracle "spiritual intuitions," and the other "innate ideas." There is plenty of scope for a "revelation," as human nature is now constituted, in confirmation or rectification of either; for never, judging by results, was any oracle less oracular.

Similarly, the assertion of the à priori incredibility of miracles, so often and so perseveringly insisted on in our day, as utterly inconsistent with the uniformities of antecedence and sequence in the phenomena of nature, in no way differs from the old-fashioned talk of their being "contrary to experience, and contrary to reason," which Bolingbroke and Hume, and multitudes more, expatiated upon in the course of last century; the fallacy in either case being the same, and more worthy of children than philosophers,—namely, that what we have not seen never was, and that the same uniformities of experience which we have been familiar with, have ever existed and ever will. Old or new, the argument may well be called a fallacy, for it can never be consistently held by any class of minds, not even by the atheist; for, to him who denies that there is any presiding Intelligence which has ordained that things should be thus or thus, there is no reason why he should not believe in the possibility of any jumble of antecedents and consequents; that is, in the possibility of any number of miracles; rather he should congratulate his good fortune that he does not meet with them every day,—that he does not see men born with two heads instead of one, and going on four legs instead of two. But, at any rate, no theist,—no one who believes that man is not "an eternal series" (no matter whether he believes that he sprang out of the dust or was slowly developed out of a tadpole,—a monkey being one of the intermediate links), ought to insist on the a priori incredibility of miracles; for whether the phenomena he is compelled to admit require moments or centuries to bring them about, makes no difference as to their character; they as much transcend all our present experience, and as much contradict it, as any miracles that can possibly be found, whether in the New Testament or elsewhere. Doubtless we should all stare as much at seeing a tadpole transmuted into a man, as at seeing a man compacted out of the dust. It is difficult, therefore, not to doubt the logical honesty of any theist, old or new, who urges this objection, unless he believes that his "experience is the measure of all things," and that what is has ever been, and will ever be.

Again; as to the discrepancies that have been so much paraded in our day, the principal of these have been insisted upon from the very earliest times, and have been in all time among the stock arguments of infidelity. With what success we may see; they never have prevented, and never will prevent, the great bulk of investigators from feeling that, be they solved or be they not, they are of no avail against the prodigious accumulation of positive historic proof in favour of Christianity.

We have said that Paley's work is still a sufficient answer to the generality of modern arguments against Christianity. Even Paulus and Strauss, so far as Christianity is really assailed by any argument which attempts to prove its unhistoric character, only use the old methods; as for their own hypotheses,—utterly contradictory, by the way,—for accounting for its origin in defiance of history, Paley of course never dreamt of them; nor is it a matter of much consequence, for they are just becoming (one of them has become) a by-word and laughing-stock in Germany itself. Not only are they so incoherent with each other, but they imply such a dreadful compression and torture of the understanding of any reasonable creature who attempts to believe that either does really give the rationale of the Christianity of the New Testament,—both so aggravate all the difficulties of its origin, supposing it to be what they make it,—that there is not one man out of a thousand who would not sooner receive the entire New Testament, or reject it entire, than submit to the humiliation and bondage of such exegesis. It is often perfectly ludicrous, even as applied to single passages; but to go through the whole New Testament, reading plain narratives backwards or crosswise, or any way except the plain way,—dissolving facts into mistakes and myths,—is beyond all human patience. Take, for example, a single case. Let us hear how a rationalist, by no means the wildest of them, proposes to account for the history of the conversion of St Paul.

According to his account, Saul, the persecutor, must be supposed to have left Jerusalem with all the bigotry, and in the savage mood, imputed to him in the history and acknowledged by himself; with the conscientious self-approval of that pious work in which he was engaged, and which he accounted an honour,—a zeal, no doubt, as in all like cases, inflamed by recent excesses, and chafed by opposition. As he is journeying along, he is led, quite as a natural thing, and in the way of self-dialogue, into a train of reflection on the enormity of his conduct,—that conduct which he deemed but the moment before so honourable;—on the innocence of the Christians, whom he deemed but yesterday traitors, apostates, and rebels, to the ancient theocracy; and finally on the excellence of Christ, whose image to Saul must have been that of a man who had suffered on the gallows,—for such was the cross to the imagination then, however hallowed now,—the just reward of his blasphemous presumption! Now, before proceeding further, one thing is clear; that if this gratuitous theory of the persecutor's change of mood, utterly unsupported by a single syllable of history, and utterly inconsistent with the conditions of a human mind in the state of the zeal-blinded and conscientiously-bigoted apostle, be received, it must be received as an express revelation from the rationalist school; and whether Paul ever received any revelation from Christ or not, it is certain that Paulus or his friends must have received some from St Paul.

But this is not all, or rather, it is a small part of what must be admitted, if we resolve on getting rid of the supernatural, and yet leaving St Paul a man in his senses; or, perhaps, it would be more proper to say, he must be supposed a much greater fool still, in order to leave him an honest man.

Just then, at this fortunate nick of time, and while the mind of the apostle is spontaneously softening towards Christianity, a thunder-storm occurs,—one of those signal blessings, without which a rational interpreter of the New Testament cannot get on for more than a few pages together; and the apostle strangely imagines that it lightens revelations, and thunders in Syriac or Hebrew; and though very much frightened indeed, answers the Syriac or Hebrew thunder in Syriac or Hebrew as grammatical as its own; and is again replied to in another well articulated clap of three or four sentences, directing him where to go and what to do, in the coolest and most comprehensible way. Surely if the lightning left Paul blind, it must have made his hearing uncommonly acute!

Such is the natural way in which rationalists propose to account for the apostle's conversion, and yet leave him a sincere and honest man; but it surely leaves him not only bereft of the light of his eyes, but of the light of his understanding also,—as very an approach to downright idiocy as any fanatic that ever lived. Can this be he who has led the world astray, and turned it upside down? Can this subject of weak hallucinations be the man on whose words so many intelligent, wise, and learned men of different ages and countries have hung as the accents of genuine inspiration? Can this be he whose writings and conduct everywhere proclaim zeal indeed, but a very masculine understanding also,—great prudence, self-control, and discretion? Can this be he who is one of the closest reasoners, and who, in the treatment of all practical questions, exhibits a sobriety and justness of thinking which have been the admiration of the world?

Is it possible for a man to go on interpreting thus? No wonder that the rationalist hypotheses have become a thing to point at. Nor is the Straussian theory, invented to supplant them, any better.

Who can believe, for example, that the intensely vivid and natural scenes of the Gospels and the Acts are myths unconsciously growing out of incidents and associations connected with the Old Testament history? Who can believe that the myths thus formed (if any could have been formed in such an historic age) would have been of so intensely un-Jewish, or rather anti-Jewish, a character; that they would have been characterized by such unity; but above all, that they would have been swallowed by the world at large as veritable history, and continue to be so received, Paley, though containing, if myths at all, marvels and wonders more astounding than poet ever feigned!

It may be safely predicted, that Paley's work will be still read and admired long after these and other equally extravagant theories have passed into oblivion. The work is not, as too often represented, confined to the "External Evidences" alone,—much of it is given to the "Internal" also; and the chapters on the Morality of the Gospel, on the Identity and Originality of Christ's Character, and on Undesigned Coincidences, are equally full of force and beauty.

The Horae Paulinae is the work of Paley which displays most originality. As to the works on Natural Theology and the Evidences, it is in the general construction, the masterly manner in which materials, for the most part already collected by others, are built into a fabric, that the author's inventiveness is chiefly seen. But the Horae Paulinae is a felicitous thought, felicitously wrought out. There is indeed a pregnant passage of Doddridge, in which he speaks of the reciprocal support which the undersigned coincidences between the Acts and the Epistles give to the historic credibility of both; and another, still more general, in the Pensées of Pascal, hinting a similar thought in relation to the Gospels; but there is no proof that Paley saw either; while the extraordinary sagacity with which he has dragged latent coincidences from their lurking places, and shown correspondence where none had before suspected it, is all his own. If he had seen such hints, it would as little have abated his claims to originality, as the striking passage from Origen, prefixed to the Analogy, detracts from Butler's. But it was honest, as Sir J. Mackintosh says, in Butler to place it there; and if Paley had really had his work suggested by the passage in Doddridge, one would hope that he would have done the like.

The greatest work of Paley, taking it altogether, is undoubtedly his Natural Theology. It is true that Derham, Ray, and others, had done much before him, just as Lardner had been his pioneer in relation to the Evidences; but Paley, in either case previous writers were to Paley only what Hiram, King of Tyre, was to Solomon; they prepared the materials, of which Paley reared the temple.

Such is the skill with which the Natural Theology is planned and executed—such the felicitous selection and disposition of the materials—so apt are the examples and illustrations—so luminous the expression—that, to a youth of intelligence, few novels are more interesting. Paley's survey of the ground, too, and the limits within which he resolved to construct the argument, show great logical sagacity. Clearly seeing that if the immensely varied and complicated "adaptations" of the universe can be shown to have originated in conscious intelligence, it will be difficult not to grant all the concessions which theism asks for; he avoids all the darker, especially the so-called a priori methods, though freely leaving any such methods open to those who choose to employ them, or who can profit by them. He therefore bends his chief energies to exhibit the indications of design in the universe, and for this purpose nothing can be more judicious than his choice of examples. Sagaciously perceiving that the phenomena of astronomy, though best calculated to give comprehensive views of the power and wisdom of God, supporting His existence admitted, are, from their vastness, apt rather to confound than aid conception, and, from their comparative simplicity, less obviously the fruit of design, he takes his chief examples from animal mechanism and physiology. His illustrations are drawn from ordinary objects, from every-day life, from the road-side, and are expressed in the most colloquial language. His descriptions of the eye, of the joints, of the process of digestion, of the circulation, of the eye of the mole ("a pin-point in a cushion"), of the contrivances for the lobster's changing his shell ("by which he takes off his boots"), of the specific lightness of the bones of birds (which he recommends the reader to verify "the next time he is engaged in picking the wing

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1 A vehement charge of comprehensive plagiarism was some years ago preferred against Paley. It was alleged, that for the method, materials, and illustrations of his Natural Theology, he was mainly indebted to a work by Dr Bernard Nieuwentyt (a Dutch philosopher), which, under the title of the Religieus Philosophe, was translated into English in 3 vols. Svo, 1718. The only instance of plagiarism, however, given by the accuser, is the "watch" illustration with which Paley's work commences. Hence it is argued, that Paley was indebted for his ideas to Nieuwentyt. If indebted for anything, it is, of course, for the illustration, and not the argument, which was independent of the particular exemplification chosen, and might have been illustrated by half a dozen instruments of art just as well. It is a wonderful, however, that the "watch" (at once so familiar and so well adapted to the purpose) should have been employed; and if there is any special merit in first employing it, Nieuwentyt nor Paley can lay claim to that merit; it was employed, for example, by John Howe in his Living Temple (part i., ch. iii.) for the same purpose of illustrating the argument from design.

But certain coincidences of expression are also insisted on as tending to show that Paley had read the passage in Nieuwentyt. It is very possible; for Paley refers to his work in one place, and thus shows that he did not wish to conceal that he had been hunting for materials there as well as in the works of Derham, Ray, and other writers, to whom, in general terms, he acknowledges his obligations. But whoever reads the parallel passages in the two writers, and compares the tedious diffuseness of the one with the point and vigor of the other, will feel, that if the particular illustration was suggested to Paley by the Dutchman, everything in the passage which one would care to claim for Paley is still his.

In fact it is absurd to charge Paley with plagiarism for having selected matter from other writers; his whole work proceeds on that supposition; it is the manner in which he has employed his materials (in themselves common-place enough) that stamps his work as original. The facts of science he deals with, he did not discover; he knew perfectly well that he must be indebted for every one of them to others. But the same charge of plagiarism might be brought against any formal treatise either of science or history, for nine-tenths of the substance of it must exist in previous writers.

Such charge, if it had any force at all, might much more reasonably be brought against Paley for the use he has made of Derham and Ray; for he is more indebted to these than to the Dutchman. But he who is at the trouble of comparing them with Paley will soon find, that though the materials must of necessity be much the same, the interval is wide enough to leave Paley's originality, in all that is really claimed for him, unquestionable.

If anybody suspects that Paley has been indebted to Nieuwentyt for more than to Derham and Ray, we fancy a very slight inspection of the Religious Philosopher will undeceive him. It is a work of considerable scientific attainment, considering the times; but there is neither just method nor co-ordination of parts in it; it ramifies over the whole field of human knowledge; it exhibits none of Paley's exquisite tact in selecting and rejecting materials in relation to their aptness for the purpose; it contains a great many crudities and not a few errors, both as regards fact and inference (the author, for example, questions the truth of the Copernican theory, and doubts whether the comet can ever be destroyed); while the style is for the most part diffuse to tediousness. We have no hesitation in saying, that if, out of these three unconnected volumes, Paley had evoked such a work as his Natural Theology, by selections, by rejections, by condensation, by re-arrangement, and by diffusing over the whole the vivid lights of his vigorous mind and style, his claims to originality would have suffered as little abatement as that of Shakespeare (on whom a similar charge was once fastened), because in a few of his plays he has condescended to make use of materials of inferior dramatists, and turned by his magic touch their lead into gold.

The truth is, as just said, that the merit of Paley's work is that of having wrought materials, open to everybody, into a beautiful fabric; and to blame him that his materials were got from other quarters is much as if it were charged upon a great architect that his stone was not of his own quarrying, nor his bricks of his own burning.

The impress of Paley's very peculiar mind is on this work as on all the rest, and would alone show that it was no plagiarism, unless of a chicken"); these, and many similar felicitous passages, will immediately occur to every reader. Painting by words has rarely been carried further than by Paley in many of the graphic passages of this masterly treatise.

The argument, as he says, and as we all know, is cumulative; and every new instance of adaptation augments our conceptions of the Divine power and wisdom; but the principle of the argument is as well established by fifty examples as by five thousand, and to an ordinary understanding is more likely to appear conclusive; for multiplicity and complexity of "adaptations" will add nothing to the clearness of the reasoning, while they may easily bewilder and confound. Particular examples must always be taken; and it may be doubted whether advancing science will ever find any, for ordinary readers, at once so comprehensible and so much to the purpose as those Paley has selected.

Equally just and cautious are the observations of Paley on the mode in which the argument bears on the "Divine benevolence," the transition to which, from the indications of power and wisdom, is confessedly of some difficulty in the theistic argument. Contending that the indications of the former attributes are unlimited (whether illimitable or not) in extent and variety, he contents himself with showing that the immensely preponderant evidence, the direct and obvious purpose of almost all the "adaptations" in nature, indicates the Divine benevolence also. But he does not deny or evade the difficulties of the subject. The widely-extended phenomena of evil, for the permission of which we must believe, but cannot see, that there are sufficient reasons, will always limit the argument in this direction, till we come to higher illumination than Reason alone affords us.

Various objections have been taken in these latter days against Paley's book, to which we must make a reference, though it must be brief.

Some theists complain that he does not take other methods—that he does not do this, that he does not do that; that he does not appeal to man's moral instincts, to his intuitive convictions of a Deity, sense of the infinite, and so on; that he is busy rather about the "means and machinery" by which the Deity works, than the "ends for which He works;" that he is more busy about the "reasons of belief," than the "object of faith;"—with much more to the same purpose, or rather to no purpose; for surely the question ought to be, not what a theist can accept as a sufficient dissertation on the Divine Existence and Perfections, but what an atheist will find it most difficult to evade; nor, again, whether a theist may not prefer another line of argument for himself, but whether he can suggest any which an atheist will find it less difficult to understand and embrace;—in other words, whether Paley does what he intends to do, and whether what he intends to do, be, with reference to those whom he addresses, the best adapted to produce a conviction of the existence of a personal Intelligence that has constructed and presides over the universe. If man can be brought to admit his argument, that one admission will pave the way for every other involved in the ordinary theory of theism. Nor, probably, was there ever a man who, admitting that of all the stupendous and complicated phenomena of the universe there has been an adequate personal intelligent Cause, hesitated long to admit all the corollaries to which his moral instincts, and the intimations of the Infinite within him would train him on; which then and then alone, cease to be whispers, and become articulate. He would feel little difficulty in inferring that this supreme Power and Intelligence were not only unlimited, but illimitable; and though he could not prove it (else he would be infinite himself), he would never doubt it. And even if any one, conceding a self-subsistent intelligent Cause of all things, possessed of power and wisdom adequate to account for their existence and conservation, were silly enough to deny His infinitude (of which, since his whole faculties would be lost long before he could embrace the dimensions of the attributes he did acknowledge, he could never judge), there would still be a God to him—a being known as such by the only proofs by which we can ever practically know that there is a God at all; known as the Creator, the Governor, the Disposer of all things. To us that is infinite which is without limit; to demonstrate the illimitable is beyond us; and if to demonstrate that God is infinite be necessary to a knowledge of Him, only God can know that God exists at all.

Some will say there is no better way in this controversy than that of appealing at once to a direct intuitive consciousness of an infinite God? But what if atheists deny that they have any such? What if they affirm that if there be any such voice within, it is, by itself, a whisper, or inarticulate? What if the majority even of theists say that such whispers are confirmations when made distinct, but are not first-hand grounds of conviction? What if they say that their convictions are so far dependent, at the very outset, on this question of the "Order" of the universe, that supposing confusion reigned in the natural world while the mind retained all its present powers (were that possible), they doubt whether any "intuitions" they have, would have satisfied them of the existence of a Deity, or even induced the faintest suspicion of one?

However, if any think some other way, a priori or otherwise, more effectual, Paley leaves people to take it. For ourselves, we do not believe there is any mode of argument so likely to meet the case of those who profess to be atheists, nor one which gives them so much trouble to reply to or evade. If any one choose to make the experiment with other methods, he will find, we suspect, that considerations which will well serve to enlarge, exalt, or intensify our belief, when once Paley's conclusions are admitted, are easily evaded if insisted on alone. The argument from design is the one which, in all ages and nations, has been the most efficient for conviction,—the argument which, as the philosopher and the vulgar, the heathen and Christian feel, leaves man "without excuse"—which gives point to the question, equally understood by science and ignorance, "He that formed the eye, shall He not see? He that planted the ear, shall He not hear?" "The invisible things of God from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and godhead."

The argument from the moral constitution of man is indeed equally strong, and more direct. But all one can do is, to appeal to the atheist's conscience; and if he denies that it is like ours, argument is at an end. And certainly he is as able here as anywhere else to take refuge in chance as accounting for moral as well as other phenomena; and it must be added, that it is too often the part of his nature with which man is most inclined to sophisticate.

Another objection recently taken up with much logical formality by some theists, is, that not "marks of design," as Paley urges, but "order" in the universe, is the great point to be insisted on; that it is this which renders the argument valid. We cannot say we see much in the distinction. That which gives force to the consideration of "order" in the world is that also which gives force to... "Paley. "marks of design;" it is because what we call order indicates "design" that we so call it. A system which discloses "order" must disclose adaptations of part to part, and of subordinate parts to the whole, and therefore "design."

Another and more subtle objection is, that whether we call that which justifies Paley's conclusion the evidences of "order" or "marks of design," Paley does not sufficiently investigate the metaphysical principles of belief which impel the human mind to infer intelligence from such indications. It may perhaps be said that he considered this both beyond his province, and not at all necessary. But it may be affirmed, that man, in so inferring, acts upon the strictest principles of induction, and, unless the very constitution of his mind be altered, must, whether his conclusion be right or wrong, so infer.

Man sees that in all the products of intelligence he can examine, these marks of design are found; where intelligence, he is sure, does not act, he sees the marks of design wanting. It is inevitable with him, therefore, to think it infinitely probable, when he meets with "marks of design" in any object, that they are due to intelligence, and not unconscious chance or necessity, or unconscious anything else. If, to-morrow, men met with any works as evidently designed for a purpose, as a watch or a steam-engine, but so completely beyond any present development of human power as to cause doubts of their human origin, and so unlike those of nature as to cause doubt whether they had the same origin with these, there is not one in a million who would not at once infer that intelligence produced them, though what sort of being it was in whom that intelligence resided,—whether he had two heads or one, seven senses or ten, six pairs of eyes or twenty,—we could not tell from the "marks of design" alone. Familiar with multitudinous products, possessing certain similar characteristics, which are the fruit of intelligence; and failing to see, where we know that intelligence does not act, any such products; men would at once infer, as the infinitely greater probability (and this, on subjects where demonstration is impossible, is to them certainty), that such newly-found specimens of "adaptations" as we have above imagined, were due to intelligence; just as confidently as Robinson Crusoe inferred, when he saw the solitary imprint of a footprint on the sand (though he had seen no traces of anybody having been on his island till that moment but himself), that it was a print of a foot; and did not begin to speculate as to whether it was not possible, though infinitely improbable, that some chance motions of the winds and waves might have produced the ominous impression. It is much the same with the phenomena of nature. From what we know of analogous phenomena, we cannot but ascribe them to intelligence, if we act on the principles of the inductive philosophy at all. Hence, as before said,—whether the inference be right or wrong,—thus men have always inferred, and thus they always will; and so the atheistical hypothesis, even if true, is certain of rejection. The evidence, though not demonstrative, is just as sure as that which leads us to believe that if a man throws sixes fifty times running, the dice are loaded. This, too, suggests the answer to another objection, to which a passing allusion may be made. It is that urged by Hume, and, with all his customary plausible subtlety, before Paley wrote. He admits the validity of the ordinary mode of reasoning as applied to our fellow-men, and to any works of theirs, but pretends that we cannot reason similarly in relation to a work (if it be a work) so unique as the universe; to effects so immeasurably beyond our adequate comprehension. "We have never seen," he says, "the great Artificer at work." The answer is (as Chalmers and many more have justly said), that it is not necessary that we should see "the Artificer at work;" or even comprehend his work as a whole. Men, in general, reason just in the same way of that which exhibits indications of purpose and design, whether they have ever "seen the artificer at work or not;" and would do so even if, in a millionth case, such indications did not originate in design. It will not be denied that they thus reason when they see a machine or an instrument evidently so constructed as to subserve a given purpose, though they may never have seen one like it before, and though they may never have seen any artist at work on any part of it. The atheist may say they have seen analogous things done; the answer is—Just so; and men reason in the same way to the intelligent origin of the works of creation. He will perhaps rejoin, "But they have seen very similar things done." We answer, It may be, and sometimes is, the case, that there is less similarity between certain instruments of art and certain other instruments of art,—for example, an air-pump and a microscope,—than between certain instruments of art and certain instruments of nature, say an eye and a telescope; but the indications of design in the former case would be quite sufficient to settle the question of an originating Intelligence; why not in the latter?

Another favourite argument of many modern atheists is, that if any thing at all be inferred as to the attributes of an unknown Cause of all things, from any analogies in ourselves, we must infer that God not only has power and wisdom, but an organization also like ours; that he acts as we do; and that his power and wisdom must be manifested in similar ways; so that between Hume's argument and this, it is impossible atheism should fail. "You can infer nothing," says Hume, "respecting the author of a work so unique." "If you infer anything analogous to man in Him," say these astute opponents, "you must infer everything analogous." To this ridiculous argument it might be sufficient to ask whether, if a man saw an exact imitation of a bird's nest, without positively knowing it to be an imitation, and so did not know whether it was the work of a man or a bird, he must infer that, because whoever made it must have had some properties analogous to those of the bird (otherwise there would not have been the same work), he must necessarily have wings and feathers also!

The editions of Paley's works, separately and collectively, are numerous. The edition of the Natural Theology by Lord Brougham and Sir Charles Bell is too well known to require commendation. The fullest account of his life is that by Meadley; but it is not worthy of its subject.

Paliano, a town of the Papal States, in the province of Frosinone, 7 miles N.W. of Anagni, and 32 E.S.E. of Rome. It is surrounded with walls of considerable strength; and contains a large baronial castle, which was for a long time occupied as a residence by the powerful Colonna family. This family was descended from Pierre Colonna, a vassal of the pope in the eleventh century, and counted among its members Pope Martin V., as well as numerous prelates and generals. Pop. about 4000.

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1 Indeed, it is a favourite misrepresentation of theirs, that the language of writers on natural theology, in consistency with some supposed logical necessity, degrades the Deity into a laborious mechanic. The answer, of course, is, that it is a mere misinterpretation of the obvious meaning of these writers. All they mean to assert is, that there must be power and intelligence in the supreme Cause of all, proportioned to the production of the phenomena ascribed to him; just as there must be power and intelligence in the phenomena of man's nature, they plainly do not intend to imply that the modes in which wisdom and intelligence on the part of God and man are respectively exerted or manifested are the same; or that what is long-winded, laborious, and successive in man's mind is at all so in God's. And as this is the meaning of these writers, and their sole meaning, so it may be doubted whether there ever was an atheist who really misunderstood it.