d their habits of thought moulded, and their perceptions of
truth cleared and deepened, by the powerful influence of his
master-mind,--powerful still, though it has probably only reached them
through three or four interposing mediums. The proud boast of one of
his descendants is amply verified: "He has given the power of vision:"
and in ages yet to come, many who may unfortunately be ignorant of the
very name of their benefactor will still be profiting daily, more and
more, by the mental telescopes he has provided. Thus it is that many
have rejoiced in having the distant brought near to them, and the
confused made clear, without knowing that Jansen was the name of him who
had conferred such benefits upon mankind. The immediate artist, the
latest moulder of an original design, is the one whose skill is extolled
and depended upon; and so it is even already in the case of Coleridge.
It is those only who are intimately acquainted with him who can plainly
see, that it is by the power of vision he has conferred that the really
philosophic writers of the present day are enabled to give views so
clear and deep on the many subjects that now interest the human mind.
All those among modern authors who combine deep learning with an
enlarged wisdom, a vivid and poetical imagination with an acute
perception of the practical and the true, have evidently educated
themselves in the school of Coleridge. He well deserves the name of the
Christian Plato, erecting as he does, upon the ancient and long-tried
foundation of that philosopher's beautiful system of intuitive truths,
the various details of minor but still valuable knowledge with which the
accumulated studies of four thousand intervening years have furnished
us, at the same time harmonizing the whole by the all-pervading spirit
of Christianity.

Coleridge is truly a Christian philosopher: at the same time, however,
though it may seem a paradox, I must warn you against taking him for
your guide and instructor in theology. A Socinian during all the years
in which vivid and never-to-be-obliterated impressions are received, he
could not entirely free himself from those rationalistic tendencies
which had insensibly incorporated themselves with all his religious
opinions. He afterwards became the powerful and successful defender of
the saving truths which he had long denied; but it was only in cases
where Arianism was openly displayed, and was to be directly opposed. He
seems to have bee