istic even of the most private prayer.

It is only what we are vividly conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be known to Omniscience. It is on this account that private prayer, or the ministerial explanation which the conscience makes in the House of the Soul is no truer than some other ministerial explanations. All this George Eliot shows in connection with her masterly analysis of the character of Bulstrode. Speaking of the Confessional, the Rev. A. McKennal says: So long as there is a motive for concealment, so long shall we practise concealment. The priest is practised in the art of worming secrets out of his penitents. He has to learn the science of casuistry, to acquire the skill in cross-examination of a lawyer, and hence the insincerity of an act where there should be on the one side only the strictest truthfulness, and on the other, perfectly unsuspecting confidence."

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We must sometimes walk alone in utter unconsciousness of God's presence, however profoundly we feel Him near in the highest aspiration of spiritual communion, and nothing seems more obvious than this, that in the intellectual process of giving evidence, the awe-inspiring fact of God's presence cannot always be remembered through a long examination, through a severe cross-examination, and through a more or less protracted re-examination; and that if it could, it would often produce a distracting, and therefore, in all probability, a distorting influence.

The oath being thus powerless in so many cases to accomplish its assigned task, what provision shall we make for the treatment of witnesses? We cannot, under the present system, prevent perjury, but if only due skill be used, it can be discovered. According to Serjeant Ballantine, cross-examination is the only means by which perjury can be exposed." We may still use the same means to discover the falsehood of the witness; and for this purpose it may be better not to excite the terror sometimes inspired by selfimprecation. The oath may frighten into imbecility an otherwise useful witness; it may destroy good evidence: but, in relation to false evidence, it acts as a

* Christ's Healing Touch, and other Sermons, p. 52.

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danger-signal. Mind, you are on your oath," warns the witness that what he is about to say is important, and that if he contradicts himself upon this point, he will be detected and punished; and hence, if he is telling a lie, he will take care to make it a consistent one. On the other hand, if the cross-examination is carried on without any demonstration—no remark being made by counsel when critical points are raised-the witness is thrown off his guard; he exposes himself, or, if not, the falsehood mingled with the truth is easily eliminated.

A well-known and certain punishment inflicted by the law for all false evidence given in connection with the question at issue before the Court will produce a deterring effect. Sometimes, no doubt, it is the fear of legal consequences rather than of divine wrath which influences men now. It is not always easy to gauge the comparative force of motives; but doubtless there are cases in which men, like King David, fear to fall into the hands of men more than into the hands of God. One historical instance goes to prove this. "The Ministers of Honorius were heard to declare that if they had only invoked the name of the Deity, they would consult the public safety and trust their souls to the mercy of heaven; but they had sworn by the sacred head of the Emperor," and they would not expose themselves to the temporal penalties of sacrilege and rebellion. And Tertullian complains that it was the only oath which the Romans of his time affected to reverence.

In conclusion, it may be remarked that there is only one real safeguard against untruth, and religion may help us to that all important end. We get a glimpse of the right method to be pursued in the following incident :

When a child, eight years old, was brought up as a witness, it was mentioned that she was competent to give evidence because she had been twice instructed by a clergyman as to the nature of an oath. But the judge (Mr. Justice Patteson) would not admit her evidence, observing that he must be satisfied that the child felt the binding obligation of an oath from the general course of her religious instruc

* Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chap xxxi.

tion, and that the effect of the oath upon the conscience should arise from religious feelings of a PERMANENT NATURE, and not merely from instructions confined to the nature of an oath, recently communicated to her for the purposes of the trial.*

This principle is capable of a wider application. "Never," says Mr. Caird, in his famous Sermon on Religion in Common Life, "in the highest and the holiest sense, can one become a religious man until he has acquired those habits of daily self-denial, of resistance to temptation, of kindness, gentleness, humility, sympathy, active beneficence, which are to be acquired only in daily contact with mankind." Hence the only safeguard against falsehood which piety can provide is through the cultivation of a habit of veracity developed in practical life under the influence of religious motive and sentiment. By cultivating such a habit till it works with automatic precision, and not by galvanising ourselves into truthfulness by the sudden flash of divine revelation, can we hope to be really truthful. How shall we be believed?" says Gregory Nazianzen. "By our word and by a life which makes our word worthy of credit." "It is not the oath which gives credit to the man, but the man to the oath." It is not in jerks of horrorgoaded utterance, not in awe-stricken words such as might be uttered on some mountain of transfiguration, but in the calm custom of unfailing and abiding sincerity, that the truth should be spoken by the followers of him who bade his disciples to swear not at all, but to let their communication be "Yea, yea; Nay, nay"-who came into the world for this purpose, and was born to this end, that by every act and deed of an upright life, and in ever varied tones, now of loving gentleness, and anon of stern denunciation, he might bear witness to the Truth.

CHARLES CLEMENT COE.

Taylor on Evidence, Vol. ii. 1119.

Eschylus, quoted by Tyler, p. 238.

M

AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN.*

RS. DE MORGAN has given her readers a very acceptable book. The memoir of Professor De Morgan has all the charm which ought to be found in the recollections of a life marked, not by moving incident, but by strong individual character. One can weary of remarkable events, never of remarkable force or ingenuity of mind.

Augustus De Morgan was born in 1806 in India; he was brought to England as a child of seven months old, and owed little to his Indian birth, of which he was, nevertheless, in a fashion proud in after years, except the infirmity in his sight, familiar to all who knew him, and a constant element, more or less, in the shaping of his career. His first good school was that of the Rev. J. Parsons, at Redland, Bristol; here he was well taught in classics, but his love for mathematics does not seem to have been specially stimulated by the school routine. In 1823 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, subsequently came out as fourth Wrangler in the Tripos of 1826, and began to study seriously for the Bar. Already, however, two leading features of his character had shown themselves, and it soon. became clear that they were destined to have absolute control over his future career. The first was his liking, and great natural gift, for mathematics; the second was that sturdy self-assertion of intellect and conscience which, not necessarily, yet so often leads men into unorthodox, unpopular, and self-sacrificing paths. Both of these influences

Memoir of Augustus De Morgan. By his Wife, Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan. With Selections from his Letters. London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1882.

were at work when, in 1827, young De Morgan, himself a Cambridge man, and with an orthodox training, threw himself cordially into the scheme and hopes of the newly-invented London University. In the following year he was elected to the Chair of Mathematics.

It is with the University College in London, for a few years at first called the London University, that De Morgan's life and work will always be connected in the public memory; and in spite of his own protest at the close of his career, and the unspent force which to the present time makes that protest effective, the hope may be expressed that a permanent and fitting way will yet be found to perpetuate the memory of his thirty-four years of faithful service to the College. The story of Professor De Morgan's connection with and severance from the College is largely the story of his life. His love for mathematics. and natural aptitude as a teacher made the opening at University College acceptable to his wishes; but a yet stronger inducement to him to become a candidate for the Chair was his warm approval of the principle which was laid down as fundamental by the promoters of the new institution—namely, that the highest academical training should there be given without any reference in teachers or pupils to religious convictions. Mr. De Morgan had already made friendships that deepened and strengthened his own fairly reasoned-out persuasion that religion is a private affair for a man's own soul. Some too hasty expressions might escape him now and then in those early days, marking his dislike of the practice of those who wear their religion on their sleeves, and think it well to do so; but "it was easy to see that a deep religious feeling underlay the contempt for observance which his early training had caused, and that his consciousness of the care and fatherhood of the Almighty was a sacred thing belonging to himself alone, not to be profaned by contact with human forms or inventions" (page 20). We quote these words because they really give the key to the religious bearing of his whole life utter sincerity and simplicity of feeling accompanying deep convictions, and a boundless trust in a Goodness and