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produced a winter's storm at the call of neglected Samuel; and when a raging wind and sea cowered at the Saviour's more than magic word. Gravitation itself floated the iron hatchet at Elisha's wish to serve his people's need; and it had no power when Christ walked over the roaring waves. The nervous, muscular, and membranous systems of the human frame obeyed the Redeemer's voice, in preference to the laws of nature's disease, when he attested his divine character by the might of his works: the flow of blood ceased at his reproof, and circulated afresh after death at his bidding. The vegetable world felt the power of his word when he cursed the barren fig-tree, and it instantly withered away. The finny tribes came voluntarily into the net of his disciples, when he wished to supply their wants; and a fish picked up a piece of money from the bottom of the deep, and brought it to Peter's hook, when a miracle was necessary to procure the tribute-money for him and his Divine Master. Finally, an unwonted eclipse of all the heavenly bodies, and a disruption of earth and hades, occurred at the ever-memorable crucifixion, when Jesus died to atone for the sins of a ruined world.

These are some examples out of sacred history, where the known laws of nature were directly traversed at the will of Deity; and every Christian must allow the inferences, that these laws are not necessarily uniform, according to the phraseology adopted by most of our geological writers; and, therefore, we accuse them of impugning the truths of holy writ.

WHILST Geology keeps within her own province in describing the present crust of the earth, and the orders of its strata; in pointing out and classifying its minerals and organic remains; in furnishing the naturalist with information upon geognostic appearances and changes, and in supplying the miner and agriculturist with knowledge available to their arts; so long we will hail her as a worthy daughter of science, and offer to her delineators the tribute of our admiration and respect. But when she leaves the walks of experience, to enter upon the unknown regions of speculation; when she attempts to decipher creation, and scan the purposes of Infinite Wisdom; when she presumes to fathom the depths of a past eternity, in shadowing forth the fancied revolutions that took place long before man's birth, or previous to any authentic records of science; when she

strives to scale the heavens without a ladder, in asserting the universality of those laws of which she understands neither the origin nor the extent; when she would limit the Infinite by binding him with his own ordinances, and would refuse him the privilege of modifying his own constitutions, and ruling as he pleases over his own creatures; and when she would explain the high and holy proclamations of the Bible in a way to suit her own puerile fantasies, and alter the records of Heaven's chancery to meet her limited knowledge and ever-varying chimeras; then does she exclude herself from the pale of our deference; and whilst reason laughs at her folly, and religion frowns upon her madness, we must treat her as the shapeless offspring of an airy fancy, or the untoward child of unholy presumption.

THE END.

LONDON: FRINTED BY JAMES NICHOLS, HOXTON-SQUARE.

WORKS LATELY PUBLISHED

BY THE

REV. ROBERT MAXWELL MACBRAIR, M. A.

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THE GOSPELS OF ST. MARK, LUKE, AND JOHN.

TRANSLATED INTO MANDINGO.

A MANUSCRIPT in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

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