ever penetrate. Let
it be true, as it doubtless is, that, when the understanding by process
of logic seeks to demonstrate the Cause of All, it finds a barren
abstraction destitute of personality. It is no less true that God
reveals Himself to the human feeling without intermediate agency. For
the religious _sentiment_ Mr. Spencer finds an indestructible
foundation. While maintaining that man can grasp and know only the
finite, he yet holds that science does not fill the whole region of
mental activity. Man may realize in consciousness what he may not grasp
in thought.

Of the other doctrines of Mr. Spencer we attempt no exposition. His
attitude towards theology is to us more satisfactory than that of any
recent thinker of the first class. But whatever his conclusions, every
true man will respect and encourage that rectitude of mind which follows
the issues of its reasoning at any cost. It was not the philosopher in
his brain, but the fool _in his heart_, who said, "There is no God." It
is of little matter what inappropriate name narrow people may have
chosen for Mr. Spencer. Here is a conscientious investigator who finds
duty everywhere, who labors to give men truths which shall elevate and
reform their lives; but he believes that the hope of humanity was
potentially shut in an egg, and never in an ark. And there is the
"reader upon the sofa,"--church-member he may be,--who tosses aside
"Vanity Fair" with the reflection that a gossiping of London snobs is
human life, and that the best thing to be done is to pay pew-rates and
lie still and gird at it. Which of these two, think you, is the modern
representative of King David's "fool"?

We would not be charged with the superfluity of commending to scholars
the writings of Mr. Spencer. They have long ago found them out. It is to
the mass of working men and women who make time for a solid book or two
in the course of the year that we submit their claims. While those who
have the leisure and training to realize Mr. Spencer's system as a
developed unity must necessarily be few, no reader of tolerable
intelligence can fail to find much of interest and suggestion in its
several parts. With a common allowance for the abstruse nature of the
subjects of which he treats, Mr. Spencer may be called a _popular_
writer. His philosophical terminology will not be found troublesome in
those of his writings which will first attract the reader. The "Social
Statics," the "Essays," and the