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 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 that coucheth beneath,

heaven, for the dew, and for the deep 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 mountains 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.

Those 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

server.

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 PreIt 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 HIм 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 ceased to live,-set before us subjects inexhaustible for examination and delight.

The object of this lecture is not to lay down a digest of geological facts. Such a pretension would be absurd, unless we could work upon a larger scale. But I may well feel assured that my friends will not do themselves so much injustice, as would be the neglect of studying diligently some of the best works, and which may easily be obtained.* I have only to present, as concisely as I can make intelligible by merely verbal description, an enumeration of those truths which are necessary to be known for the purpose of our present investigation. I call them Truths, because they appear so to myself, after having taken, I shall be pardoned for

• If, for the sake of my younger friends, I mention the works which I can with most satisfaction recommend, omissions must not be understood as intimating any disparagement. Lyell's Elements, and his earlier and larger work, the Principles of Geology, in four volumes, of which the sixth edition is now published, containing important additional matter. Phillips's Guide to Geology, his Treatises in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia and the Cabinet Cyclopædia, two volumes, both works published separately, and that in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana; his Yorkshire Geology, two quarto volumes; his Geological Map of the British Isles; Conybeare and William Phillips's Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales; a work, to our great regret, not yet finished, and of which a revised edition and the completion are earnestly looked for; Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, two volumes, with the Supplementary Notes published separately; De la Beche's Researches, his Manual, and his Report of the Geology of Cornwall, Devon, and West Somerset ;