to their pressure, and is fashioned to higher power and a sweeter life. More than any other merely philosophical writer, it seems to us that Mr. Spencer assists the important work of the religionist. He demands _faith_ sufficient to follow out a principle with unflinching perseverance. He creates an absorbing interest in human welfare, showing how all real personal advantage is united with the advantage of all. There have been various attempts to give Mr. Spencer's writings a doubtful fame with the American people. Some of these have been very ingenious; others have had the first merit of sincerity, and nothing else. No grand doctrine can be so expressed as to render impossible an _ad captandum_ contradiction from some point or side. A sturdy catechizing in the interest of some popular dogma will generally give the casuist an apparent advantage over the seeker of knowledge for itself alone. It is likewise in the power of a tolerable metaphysician to set traps and dig pitfalls all over the ultimate grounds of any man's belief. There are apparently crushing arguments against the assertor of any conceivable religious creed, as well as against him who would base his faith where the shifting currents of theological opinion cannot prevail against it. The being of God Mr. Spencer holds to be a truth forever vindicated in the consciousness of man: His nature is to finite beings inscrutable. The latter clause of this statement may be sustained by a very curious syllogistic scaffolding, and it may be assailed by reasoning which is to us wholly satisfactory. _Cui bono?_ Let the philosopher dream out his logical ladder to the Infinite, and never fear but the heart of humanity will supply the angels ascending and descending thereupon. We certainly do not accept Mr. Spencer as an exhaustive expounder of the physics or metaphysics of creation. But the great body of his doctrines are not affected by our private fancies about _a priori_ truths or the conditions of thought. He shows the transcendent reality of the moral claim upon man. He emphasizes the great truth, not always apparent in the prescriptions of soul-saving orthodoxy, that disinterestedness is the primary condition of human virtue. It is not pretended that a fervid religious organization can find satisfaction in Mr. Spencer. It must work by other methods. It must conquer problems which science is unable to solve. But, in these doubting, inquiring days upon which we have fallen, no truly good man can afford to contemn a scientist who shows how securely the foundations of religion are laid, and reverently stops at secondary causes without attempting to deify them. And at this present day such a work is clearly demanded. It is, indeed, possible that the old Giants Pope and Pagan may not have rallied since the Bedford tinker bore witness to their depressed estate. Their successor, Giant Transcendentalist, whom Hawthorne encountered in his railroad ride to the Celestial City, may