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ion between these two lines of fact and doctrine; for we anticipate the conviction, that it already exists. We deny all the miscalled facts of geology. Now, let the reader attend. It will not, I trust, be presumptuous in me to express some regret in finding an expression used by one of the most accomplished geologists of our own, or any other country, Dr. Buckland; believing, at the same time, that it was introduced by him more from oversight, than with deliberate intention. He says, If, in this respect, geology should seem to require some little concession from the literal interpreter of Scripture, it may fairly be held to afford ample compensation for this demand, by the large additions it has made to the evidences of natural religion in a department where Revelation was not designed to give information, (Bridgewater Treatise, Vol. I., p. 14,) (p. 165.) This is very unlike an oversight sentence, or expression. It could not be an oversight. The excellent Bishop of Chester has, perhaps, approached to the same inadvertence in saying, The concessions, if they may be so called, of the believers in Revelation on this point, have been amply remunerated by the sublime discoveries, as to the prospective wisdom of the Creator, which have been gradually unfolded by the progressive improvements in astronomical knowledge. We may trust with the same confidence as to any future results from geology. Dr. Bird Sumner, on the Records of Creation, 1813, or earlier, (p. 166,)-We know of no additions that astronomy requires, or can receive. After Buckland, Sinith adds, The testimony of the word of heaven does not lie at our disposal. We have not the power of conceding anything from it; and I am confident, that the distinguished Professor did not intend to intimate that mortals have such a power, or right. He was referring, indeed, to the interpretation of Scripture; but, in this view, the expression is unhappy. Interpretation, as well of the Bible as of other ancient writings, is to be conducted by a rigorous process of examination into words and phrases,-a process solely grammatical, and which must not be checked, or turned out of its straightforward course, by any foreign considerations. Isaac Taylor's Atoms of Faith will be some of them. The anti-geologists reckon it among the highest points of the Christian faith, that the first sentence in the book of Genesis is not an independent proposition, a simple, majestic, and complete enunciation of one grand truth!!-but that it is connected with the recital of the six days' work, in such a manner, as to allow of no interval of time between the facts related. To have a doubt on this matter, is represented as characteristic of a criminal state of mind, not de

serving to be refuted by kind and calm argument; but which ought to be put down by awful rebukes and threatenings, (p. 168.) We do not think the Rev. Henry Cole so wise as him who wrote on God's sovereignty. Mr. Cole had instanced Luther. Dr. Smith rather makes Luther to be against him: but we want neither Luther nor him to the fourth commandment, or first chapter of Genesis, or the flood; these are all as plain as A B C; but neither natural philosophy nor moral philosophy are so intact as Professors Wilson and J. D. Forbes, Edinburgh, can testify. Our interpretations of the Word of God must rest upon their own intrinsic evidence in grammatical construction, (When Dr. Colquhoun would not have Mr. Bain for his assistant and successor, after he had preached for years, honest Dr. Dickson of St. Cuthbert's was calling on Mrs. Haig, an honest wine-cooper's widow, and she soon put the question, Why would the Presbytery not allow them Mr. Bain? Oh! says the Doctor, he has not grammar. The Pres bytery of Glasgow had licensed a man without grammar, to preach. Was the same ever done in any other Presbytery! without grammar! The good woman replied, It was a better warld, Doctor, when there was nae grammar at a' ;) (and so it was, we say, when Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, and the twelve Marrowmen preached) suitableness to the connection, and agree ment with other parts of Scripture, (p. 177.) Our paragraphs are so long, like Hutton, we are lost-we see neither beginning nor end; but these should be marked, for the sake of Genesis, and Exodus xx. 11. Calvin and Bishop Patrick were great geologers. Dr. Jennings and Dr. Wardlaw, 1833, at Smith's Congregational Lecture, London, to which they call sucklings, English, Scotch, and Irish,—thus expressed himself, (p. 181.) When creation began, we know not. (It is strange, although very expressly told.) There were angels; (how did he know that?) and there was a place of angelic habitation before the creation of man, and of the world, destined for his residence. How long these spirits had existed, and how many orders of beings besides, it is vain for us to conjecture. But of one thing we are certain, that how far back soever we suppose the commencement of creation carried, let it be not only beyond the actual range (if a definite range it can be said to have) of the human imagination, but even beyond the greatest amount of ages that figures, in any way combined, could be made to express, still there was an eternity preceding. Dr. Redford. in 1837, concluded, that we ought to understand Moses as say ing, indefinitely far back, and concealed from us in the mystery of eternal ages, prior to the first moment of mundane time,

eated the heavens and the earth, (p. 182.) The Rev. J. Brown says, Our Bucklands, our Sedgwicks, and our eare's, are associating their efforts with those of infidels, alidate the statements of Scripture, impugning the Record, and assailing the volume of the great God. rown seems to be a higher type than Mr. Cole; but we employ the language of neither, though, like Dean Wm. arn of York, they are fundamentally right. In geoad every other part of physical science, the objects of gation are substantial realities of things presented to es, and all our other bodily organs; and the phenomena ge are, in many cases, perfectly similar, and, in others, ous to what is continually passing before our eyes. True ophy is not an intruding into things which we have not he vain inflation of a carnal mind, (Col. ii. 19.) It is the t ascertaining of actual things and actual events, of our own senses, and those of other men, are the wit; and it then seeks to find out the connection of those with each other. Such is geology. It deals in realities ntly ascertained, and faithfully reported. Can anything re false? If that were true, why has he laboured, Her-like, to deny and destroy the Scriptures? The Bible s to be connected with his geology. As we said to, Mr. Sturrock, Let it alone. Much need has Dr. P.. to say, like Cardinal Wolsey, If I had served my God half the zeal I have served geology, I would have had assurance in the prospect of eternity. Babbage and Pro· Baden Powell are on his side; but not to his pleasure. Il admits the perfectly intelligible character of the comement of Genesis and the Fourth Commandment; but, in cases, the statement was not intended for a historical tive, but the language of figure and poetry. His notion, Dr. Smith, that we have here the language of figure and y, is palpably erroneous. The whole, says the Doctor, 1 his language must not be forgot,-the whole is in the of plain narrative, evidently intended to be underas a simple, straightforward, unadorned history, (p. How then, Doctor, can the first sentence of the book enesis be an independent proposition? We, equally with admit the folly of constructing systems of philosophy out e Bible,—of attempting to force its language into accordwith philosophical results, or of supposing that the senses, plications which, by some engineering of verbal criticism, ight maintain that the words could be made to bear, were illy in the understanding and intention of Moses, or of

any other inspired writer; or of imagining, that the delivery of the Judaical law was really intended to embrace the doctrines of geology; or, in a word, of saying something plausible to satisfy prejudice, and avoid giving offence to popular belief. I fear, he says, that Mr. Powell's expressions are in danger of involving some inconsistency with his own sacred professions and obligations, and that, if followed out, they would lead to consequences deeply injurious to the cause of Christianity, (P. 198.) There seems, occasionally, to be in the Doctor's mind some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel, (1 Kings xiv. 13.) We rejoice to see it; and we are vexed to see false geology lead him so wofully astray. We hope Divine grace and mercy will soon cause him to fling it to the moles and the bats. Babbage thinks the sense of the Hebrew language cannot be ascertained. This opinion the Doctor spurns, and justly contends, that the Hebrew language, in its construction, is simple and luminous; and that the text is settled to a degree of purity, more satisfactory than we dare affirm of many of the Greek and Latin classics. He says, I trust it will appear, that we neither torture the Bible, to make it speak the language of philosophy, nor suppress or mutilate the facts of nature, in order to bring about an agreement with the Bible, (p. 200.) But it is not necessary to go into the opposite extreme, and affirm, that the language of Revelation, when stripped of the conventional forms of description, which were necessary in that state of mind and habits which charac terized the people and the age, is irreconcilally and insuperably contradictory to the truth of facts in nature. You will see, Doctor, at the judgment-seat, that they are irreconcilably and insuperably contradictory to what you call the truth of facts in nature. If ever Dr. Brown of Broughton tortured it, to evade the Annuity-Tax, you murder it. He blames Parkinson, Cuvier, and Professor Jameson of Edinburgh, and Professor Silliman, America, and others, for thinking, that the six days of creation may be understood of periods of time indefinite, though of a very great length. He thinks Moses may have compiled the chief parts of the book of Genesis, by arranging and connecting ancient memorials under the Divine direction, and, probably, during the middle part of his life, which he spent in the retirements of Arabia. The family archives of Amram and his ancestors, comprising the history of Joseph, written in great part by himself, documents from the hands of Jacob, Abraham, Shem, Noah, and authentic memorials from Enoch, Seth, and Adam; Gen. i. to ii. 3; ii. 4, to iii. 24; iii. 4; iv., v. 1, to 6, 8; v.,-vi. 9, to ix. 29:

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vi. 10; vii. 11, 1-9; viii. 11, 10 to 26; ix. 11, 27, and`onwards, as records of the house of Abraham. The evidence, he says, is not equally clear in every case. We affirm, there is no evidence for it in any case; but like Mr. Miller in his analogy, we deal with generals. He thinks it probable, that we have in this most ancient writing in the world, the family archives of Amram and his ancestors; documents from the hands of Joseph, Jacob, Abraham, Shem, Noah, Enoch, Seth, and Adam, (p. 203.) He next considers the hypothesis which the Mosaic record has, indubitably affirming the creation of the universe within the period of six thousand years back; then it regards the interval from the creation to the deluge, as affording a sufficient lapse of time for the deposition of the chief part of the stratified formations; and, finally, it considers the remainder as sufficiently accounted for by the action of the diluvial waters. With this, and every absurd hypothesis, he has nothing to do who simply believes the Divine record, that the Omnipotent, at the flood, did it all. Mr. Grauvill, Penn, and Fairholme, and the Rev. William Kirby, next fall under his animadversion; and the Rev. Thomas Gisborne, Prebendary of Durham. As to Mr. Gisborne, Professor Sedgwick says, He makes a world after a pattern of his own. Who is the world-maker, it is not difficult to judge; but it is not pious Mr. Gisborne and his school. Some clergymen of the Church have uttered this cutting suggestion, when criticising the good Prebendary Gisborne's pamphlet. This is surely not an age in which dignatories of the Church should be found arraying themselves in hostility to science. We differ from these clergymen toto coelo. They must not be touched, nor their darling, so called, science; but use the old Bible asyou please, (p. 216.) Cockburn, Dean of York, whose head, Sedgwick said, was addled, is noticed; and Mr. Sharon Turner, who is not a complete antigeologist, but who has collected an immense number of facts, and some not bad reasonings. Dr. George Young of Whitby, although not a complete antigeologist, nor Mr. Rhind of Edinburgh, do not go in with all their nostrums. Dr. Wiseman, Principal of the English Roman Catholic College at Rome, is accused of special pleading. Behold, God is great, and we know Him not! is very like Mohammed's language. If you resolve (he cautions) to take up the figurative language of Scripture, as if it were literally true, look well to yourself. Think what consequences you are plunging into; what conceptions of the Infinite Majesty you are cherishing in your own mind, and propagating around you; what effects they are likely to have upon other persons;

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