reach it by touching the prison-house that binds me, and finding in the touch that it is a prison-house. In those bars that resist me I learn that I am bound; in my effort to overcome their resistance I learn that I have a right to be free. It is the knowledge of nature that is the basis for my faith in the supernatural ; it is through the study of the known that I learn the presence of the unknown. Mysticism is no longer, as with the Gnostic, the beginning of knowledge, but it is still the end of it. We seek not any more to fly from physical nature in order to bury ourselves in the life of the Infinite; we come to physical nature as the very necessity of our being. Yet, sitting at the feet of this prosaic monitor, we shall get back our poetry, our reverence, our faith, and the marvel which men sought in the flight from visible things shall at last be found again in their service and in their science.

ART. VI. THE FUTURE OF THE HIGHLANDS.

We have in Highlands, and endeavoured partially to account

E have in a previous paper considered the present condition

for it, and we now desire to point out how the normal progress of the country towards a more satisfactory condition of prosperity is to be facilitated, without any unnecessary subversive measures.

When money was scarce and distance serious no doubt the most natural and easiest mode of utilising the vast tracts of the north-as of Australia-was the introduction of sheep and sheep capitalists; while when money became plentiful and sport fashionable, it was equally natural for sporting or impoverished landlords to foster deer preserves. But the rail is a distance-devourer, so that it is no longer a 'far cry to Loch Awe,' but only a Sabbath day's journey; while public opinion is equally rapid in its progress, and the thousands of clear-headed, energetic visitors from the south have commenced by asking why these wilds are untenanted by their natural inhabitants; and are now proceeding to declare, in

they. His knowledge of the limits of nature has forced him into faith in the supernatural.

We arrive then at this conclusion: If it should be found that there is in the human soul no transcendental faculty such as the Gnostic claims-if it should be found that, as the Agnostic holds, we are hemmed in on every side by the limits of our experienceit would not by any means follow that we have no ground for religious belief, for it is just in the sense of these limits that our evidence of the supernatural is seen. It is just by arriving at a knowledge of those chains that bind us that we learn the irrepressible desire to break through the chains, and read in that desire the proof that we are higher than our environment. It is from experience, and not outside experience, that man has derived his knowledge of an invisible world; the powers that have taught him to look beyond himself are the normal powers of his own soul. And we cannot but remark how much more satisfactory is this revelation than the transcendental revelation of the Gnostics. What was it that the men of the second century professed to have reached by their transcendental faculty? A life outside of time? What kind of life was this? It was blank negation! It was the absence of form-the absence of colour-the absence of personality-the absence of thought itself! The faculty which transcended experience had no right to reveal the things of experience; it was bound to seek the Infinite, and to seek the Infinite was to seek the void. To transcend my experience is to transcend myself, and to transcend myself is to be annihilated. Such was the goal of Gnosticism. Had it been reached, it would have been to him who attained it the death of worship as of life itself. The Infinite as such cannot be the object of our religious reverence. The Infinite is the boundless, and the boundless cannot be figured by any soul; to think it would be to destroy it.

But, when I turn from these barren abstractions to that life of nature in which we live and move, I find a basis for religion at once more certain and more clear. I am no longer called to go out of myself in order to discover a presence which men name the Infinite. I reach something less than the Infinite, but more commensurate with my own nature-the supernatural. And I reach

reach it by touching the prison-house that binds me, and finding in the touch that it is a prison-house. In those bars that resist me I learn that I am bound; in my effort to overcome their resistance I learn that I have a right to be free. It is the knowledge of nature that is the basis for my faith in the supernatural; it is through the study of the known that I learn the presence of the unknown. Mysticism is no longer, as with the Gnostic, the beginning of knowledge, but it is still the end of it. We seek not any more to fly from physical nature in order to bury ourselves in the life of the Infinite; we come to physical nature as the very necessity of our being. Yet, sitting at the feet of this prosaic monitor, we shall get back our poetry, our reverence, our faith, and the marvel which men sought in the flight from visible things shall at last be found again in their service and in their science.

ART. VI. THE FUTURE OF THE HIGHLANDS.

WE pur account

E have in a previous paper considered the present condition

of the Highlands, and endeavoured partially to account for it, and we now desire to point out how the normal progress of the country towards a more satisfactory condition of prosperity is to be facilitated, without any unnecessary subversive measures. When money was scarce and distance serious no doubt the most natural and easiest mode of utilising the vast tracts of the north-as of Australia-was the introduction of sheep and sheep capitalists; while when money became plentiful and sport fashionable, it was equally natural for sporting or impoverished landlords to foster deer preserves. But the rail is a distance-devourer, so that it is no longer a 'far cry to Loch Awe,' but only a Sabbath day's journey; while public opinion is equally rapid in its progress, and the thousands of clear-headed, energetic visitors from the south have commenced by asking why these wilds are untenanted by their natural inhabitants; and are now proceeding to declare, in

they. His knowledge of the limits of nature has forced him into faith in the supernatural.

We arrive then at this conclusion: If it should be found that there is in the human soul no transcendental faculty such as the Gnostic claims-if it should be found that, as the Agnostic holds, we are hemmed in on every side by the limits of our experience— it would not by any means follow that we have no ground for religious belief, for it is just in the sense of these limits that our evidence of the supernatural is seen. It is just by arriving at a knowledge of those chains that bind us that we learn the irrepressible desire to break through the chains, and read in that desire the proof that we are higher than our environment. It is from experience, and not outside experience, that man has derived his knowledge of an invisible world; the powers that have taught him to look beyond himself are the normal powers of his own soul. And we cannot but remark how much more satisfactory is this revelation than the transcendental revelation of the Gnostics. What was it that the men of the second century professed to have reached by their transcendental faculty? A life outside of time? What kind of life was this? It was blank negation! It was the absence of form-the absence of colour-the absence of personality the absence of thought itself! The faculty which transcended experience had no right to reveal the things of experience; it was bound to seek the Infinite, and to seek the Infinite was to seek the void. To transcend my experience is to transcend myself, and to transcend myself is to be annihilated. Such was the goal of Gnosticism. Had it been reached, it would have been to him who attained it the death of worship as of life itself. The Infinite as such cannot be the object of our religious reverence. The Infinite is the boundless, and the boundless cannot be figured by any soul; to think it would be to destroy it.

But, when I turn from these barren abstractions to that life of nature in which we live and move, I find a basis for religion at once more certain and more clear. I am no longer called to go out of myself in order to discover a presence which men name the Infinite. I reach something less than the Infinite, but more commensurate with my own nature-the supernatural. And I reach

reach it by touching the prison-house that binds me, and finding in the touch that it is a prison-house. In those bars that resist me I learn that I am bound; in my effort to overcome their resistance I learn that I have a right to be free. It is the knowledge of nature that is the basis for my faith in the supernatural; it is through the study of the known that I learn the presence of the unknown. Mysticism is no longer, as with the Gnostic, the beginning of knowledge, but it is still the end of it. We seek not any more to fly from physical nature in order to bury ourselves. in the life of the Infinite; we come to physical nature as the very necessity of our being. Yet, sitting at the feet of this prosaic monitor, we shall get back our poetry, our reverence, our faith, and the marvel which men sought in the flight from visible things shall at last be found again in their service and in their science.

ART. VI. THE FUTURE OF THE HIGHLANDS.

E have in a previous paper considered the present condition of the Highlands, and endeavoured partially to account for it, and we now desire to point out how the normal progress of the country towards a more satisfactory condition of prosperity is to be facilitated, without any unnecessary subversive measures.

When money was scarce and distance serious no doubt the most natural and easiest mode of utilising the vast tracts of the north-as of Australia-was the introduction of sheep and sheep capitalists; while when money became plentiful and sport fashionable, it was equally natural for sporting or impoverished landlords to foster deer preserves. But the rail is a distance-devourer, so that it is no longer a 'far cry to Loch Awe,' but only a Sabbath day's journey; while public opinion is equally rapid in its progress, and the thousands of clear-headed, energetic visitors from the south have commenced by asking why these wilds are untenanted by their natural inhabitants; and are now proceeding to declare, in