astronomy, she is held to be incapable alike of religious inquiry and of divine instruction! There is, indeed, a striking contrast between the high pretensions of Reason in matters of philosophy, and the bastard humility which it sometimes assumes in matters of faith. But there is another, and a still more subtle, form of Partial or Religious Skepticism. It does not absolutely deny the possibility of religious knowledge, nor does it dogmatically affirm that man, with his present faculties, can have no religious convictions; it contents itself with saying, and attempting to prove, that the certitude of religious truth cannot be evinced by any legitimate process of reasoning. It examines the proof, and detects flaws in it. It discusses, with a severe and critical logic, the arguments that have been employed to establish the first and most fundamental article of Theology, the existence of God; and discarding them one by one, it reaches the conclusion that, whether true or not, it cannot be proved. Strange as it may appear, these sentiments have been embraced and avowed by men who still continue to profess their belief in God and Religion. Some have held that proof by reasoning is impossible, but only because it is superfluous. They distinguish between _reason_ and _reasoning_; and hold that while the latter is incompetent to the task of proving the existence of God, the former spontaneously suggests the idea of a Supreme Cause, and imparts to it all the certainty which belongs to a direct intellectual intuition. Others distinguish between the _Speculative_ and the _Practical_ Reason; and hold that while the former cannot prove by an unexceptionable argument the existence of God, the latter affords a sufficient groundwork for religious belief and worship. Others, again, speak not so much of reason or reasoning, as of _sentiment and instinct_, as the source of our religious beliefs; and instead of addressing arguments to the understanding, they would make their appeal to the feelings and affections of the heart. There is still another class of writers who resolve all human knowledge, whether relating to things secular or spiritual, into what they call the principle of faith (_foi_), and to this class belong two distinct parties who are widely different from each other in almost everything else. It is important, therefore, to mark the radical difference between their respective systems, since it is apt to be concealed or disguised by the ambiguous use of the same phraseology by both. The one party may be described as the disciples of a _Faith-Philosophy of Reason_, the other of a _Faith-Philosophy of Revelation_: the former resolving all our knowledge into the intuitive perceptions or first principles of the human intellect, considered as a kind of divine and infallible, though natural inspiration; the latter contending that in regard at least to the knowledge of theological truth, human reason is utterly powerless, and