no better than it was of old, and that his arrogance and folly are still the same. -There are still found some who dare to affirm that the pursuits of natural science are hostile to religion. An assertion more false in itself, or more dishonourable to the cause of true religion, has not been conceived in the mind of man.

"The Bible instructs us, that man and other living things, have been placed but a few years upon the earth; and the physical monuments of the world bear witness to the same truth. If the Astronomer tells us of myriads of worlds not spoken of in the sacred records ; the Geologist, in like manner, proves (not by arguments from analogy, but by the incontrovertible evidence of physical phenomena [presented to the plain cognizance of our senses,]) that there were former conditions of our planet, separated from each other by vast intervals of time, during which man, and the other creatures of his own date, had not been called into being. Periods such as these belong not, therefore, to the moral history of our race; and come within neither the letter nor the spirit of revelation. Between the first creation of the earth and that day in which it pleased God to place man upon it, who shall dare to define the interval? On this question, scripture is silent but that silence destroys not the meaning of those physical monuments of his power which God has put before our eyes, giving us, at the same time, faculties whereby we may interpret them and comprehend their meaning.

"In the present condition of our knowledge, a statement like this is surely enough to satisfy the reasonable scruples of a religious man. But let us, for a moment, suppose that there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions of Geology: how then are we to solve them? Not by shutting our eyes to facts, or denying the evidence of our senses; but by patient investigation carried on in the sincere love of truth, and by learning to reject every consequence not warranted by direct physical evidence. Pursued in this spirit, Geology can neither lead to any false conclusions nor offend against any religious truth. And this is the spirit in which many men have of late years followed this delightful science; devoting the best labours of their lives to its cultivation; turning over the successive leaves of nature's book, and interpreting her language, which they know to be a physical revelation of God's will; patiently working their way through investigations requiring much toil of both mind and body; accepting hypotheses only as a means of connecting disjointed phenomena, and rejecting them when they become unfitted for that office, so as, in the end, to build only upon facts and true natural causes. All this they have done, and are still doing: so that, however unfin

ished may be the fabric they have attempted to rear, its foundations are laid upon a rock.

"But there is another class of men, who pursue Geology by a nearer road and are guided by a different light. Well-intentioned they may be; but they have betrayed no small self-sufficiency, along with a shameful want of knowledge of the fundamental facts they presume to write about. Hence, they have dishonoured the literature of this country, by Mosaic Geology,' 'Scripture Geology,' and other works of cosmogony with kindred titles; wherein they have overlooked the aim and end of revelation, tortured the book of life out of its proper meaning, and wantonly contrived to bring about a collision between natural phenomena and the word of God.They have committed the folly and the SIN, of dogmatizing on matters which they have not personally examined, and, at the utmost, know only at second-hand; of pretending to teach mankind on points where they themselves are uninstructed. Authors such as these ought to have first considered, that book-learning (in whatsoever degree they may be gifted with it,) is but a pitiful excuse for writing mischievous nonsense; and that, to a divine or a man of letters, ignorance of the laws of nature and of material phenomena is then only disgraceful, when he quits his own ground and pretends to teach philosophy.A Brahmin crushed with a stone the microscope that first showed him living things among the vegetables of his daily food.

"It would indeed be a vain and idle task, to engage in controversy with this school of false philosophy; to waste our breath in the forms of exact reasoning unfitted to the comprehension of our antagonists; to draw our weapons in a combat where victory could give no honour. Their position is impregnable, while they remain within the fences of their ignorance.

Another eminent author, after largely discussing this class of subjects, Dr. Chalmers, says: "We conclude with adverting to the unanimity of Geologists in one point,—the far superior antiquity of this globe to the commonly received date of it as taken from the writings of Moses. What shall we make of this? We may feel a security as to those points in which they differ; and, confronting them with one another, may remain safe and untouched between them. But when they agree, this security fails. There

*Prof. Sedgwick's Discourse on the Studies of the Universities of Cambridge; passages from p. 148 to 152; 1834.

is no neutralization of authority among them as to the age of the world; and Cuvier, with his catastrophes and his epochs, leaves the popular opinion nearly as far behind him, as they who trace our present continents upward through an indefinite series of ancestors, and assign many millions of years to the existence of each generation."* This eloquent writer cannot have intended to signify "ancestors" and "generations" of the human kind, nor of the existing species of animals; for this would involve a groundless imputation. He probably used those words, without adverting to their proper meaning, and designing only to express animated creatures and the succession of different families and genera.†

* Edinburgh Christian Instructor, April, 1814.

† Sec. ed. The friend of Dr. Chalmers, mentioned in a former note, has honoured me with a remark on this passage. "Dr. C. does not mean animated creatures at all, but former continents: which may be looked upon, by a poetical eye, as the ancestors of the present ones. You are not accustomed to his imaginative modes of expression : but long attendance in his class-room, and familiarity with his works, enable me to vouch for my correctness here."

LECTURE II.

DEUT. XXXIII. 13, 15, 16. Blessed of the Lord be his land; for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth and the fulness thereof.

THIS beautiful passage, from the dying benedictions of Moses, the faithful servant of God, is not recited from any supposition that it has an immediate reference to the subjects of this lecture. Yet, such an application may be made, upon the ground of a fair and unforced analogy. The passage is a sublime thanksgiving to the Most High, acknowledging the eminent advantages which he had prepared for the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, in the approaching partition of Palestine. Their allotment had a moderate line of sea-coast, on which was Joppa, at that time and long after a good port; an ample portion of rich land for pasture and cultivation; and numerous high grounds and hills supplying streams of water, and containing excellent stone and lime for building, with iron and copper in the northern mountains. Thus the description may be properly adduced as comprehending, along with other objects, the class of providential blessings which belong to the mineral kingdom, and which are of so great importance to the wealth and prosperity of a nation. That class of blessings, God has conferred upon our country in a far superior degree: and it certainly becomes us to understand our mercies and be grateful for them. Geological knowledge, if pursued in a right state of mind, will much assist us in this duty.

All observation and every experiment prove, that the sensible world around us is in a state of incessant motion and change, upon all points of the scale, from the internal movements of the matter composing the simplest and minutest body that we can observe, to the motions of the astral orbs and nebulæ, so overwhelming to our power of conception, or even in imagination to follow them.

These changes take place not in a fortuitous and confused manner, but in a regular subjection to principles, mechanical and chemical; which, though few and simple, lead to results, very complicated indeed and recondite, yet ever harmonizing with each other and with the whole system of the universe: and thus these changes are supplying employment to the highest powers of mathematical investigation.

Throughout organized nature, the characters of species approach to each other, group themselves into genera, and those again into families and orders, associated by points of resemblance; and thus they constitute a continuous series of structural forms, functions, and operations, which exhibit, in all their variety, a principle of mutual adaptation reigning throughout; and indicate an entire dependence upon an all-comprehending, and all-arranging Intellect. The machine of the universe is thus maintained in being and action, by an intelligent Cause and Preserver. It would involve. a contradiction to say that the universe is itself that cause. The marks which it bears of dependence on a supreme reason of existence, are incontrovertible. Whether that dependence be conceived of as strictly proximate, or whether the efficiency of the divine power pass through one or ten, ten thousand or ten thousand millions, of intervening agencies, can make no difference. Let the unceasing activity of operation move subordinate causes whose number could not be put down in figures, and whose complication no created intellect could follow; it is still the same. "The excellency of the power is of God." Indeed the latter supposition exalts the more highly our view of the divine perfections; the knowledge, wisdom, and power, to which complication and simplicity, remoteness and nearness, an atomic point and all space, are the same. "GOD IS A SPIRIT.-Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith JEHOVAH-HE IS ALL and in all.-In HIM we live, and move, and have our being."

Of this dependent universe, our planet is a part so small that no arithmetician can assign a fraction low enough to express its proportion to the whole. God has appointed it for our habitation, till the great change of death: and, on every account, natural and moral, it is to us full of interest. Its constitution, the alterations of structure and arrangement which are incessantly taking place upon it and within it, its living inhabitants, and those races of creatures once possessing vegetable or animal life, but which have