of the Deity, should he thus impose upon himself a voluntary ignorance of what would appear most essential for him to know? Besides, as all the perceptions of God are eternal and unalterable, and all "after-knowledge" is prohibited to him, let his ignorance be either necessary or voluntary, still it must be perpetual; for the perfection of omniscience is, that it can admit of no accession of knowledge. If, therefore, the omniscience of God be originally defective, it must remain so for ever; for it will be in vain for him to apply to any of his creatures for the acquisition of knowledge which he does not already possess. Again; I ask, if God has voluntarily concealed from himself the knowledge of any future event, how can any man become acquainted with this fact? which must be among the impenetrable arcana of the divine counsels. Can any thing short of a special revelation from heaven put any man in possession of it? particularly when the grand accredited revelation of God to man, contains not the slightest hint of any such privation? Surely to assert it is then attempting to be "wise above that which is written."

One necessary consequence of the doctrine which would fix a contingent event as the boundary of the divine prescience, is, that nothing can be foreseen as absolutely certain, nor consequently predicted with absolute certainty, but what is the subject of divine and absolute predestination. But this position involves insuperable difficulties in its results. For, in the first place, if this were the fact, then every predestinated event must have been foreordained as unconnected with the major part of its concomitant circumstances, which, bearing the character of contingent, could not be the subjects of God's foreknowledge. But this is both an inconceivable and an impossible state of things,-particularly when it will be readily admitted, even by the advocates of that doctrine themselves, that innumerable contingent, and consequently, uncertain and unforeknown actions and events, must concur in a revolution of ages, in the production of one predestinated event. Thus, for instance, admitting the crucifixion of the Son of God to be a predestinated event, (and such it was, if any recorded in the Bible were so,) is it credible, that the existence and

treachery of Judas, the malice of the Jews, and the criminal temporizing conduct of Pontius Pilate, which will all be called contingent events, and which were all essentially connected with, if not indispensably necessary to, that crucifixion, were all unforeseen; or foreseen only as mere "possibilities, which might, or might not, take place?" Surely no man can believe this, who reads and believes the very particular and positive predictions contained in the Psalms, relative to these very circumstances. Those predictions prove them to have been as clearly and as certainly foreseen as the crucifixion itself.

Another consequence of that doctrine (and a monstrous one it is) is, that every event that has been predicted in scripture as absolutely certain, must have been predestinated by the Almighty, and could not have otherwise happened than as it did. To shew the absurdity and fallacy of the doctrine in question, in this point of view, I shall merely select two instances, one from the Old, and the other from the New Testament. In neither of these cases will any man, who believes the free agency of man, attempt to say they were accomplished by the decree of God; for the crimes foreseen in them, were of the most atrocious nature. Yet they were foreseen as absolute certainties, and with unerring accuracy and precision. The first is related in Genesis, chap. ix. verse 25. where it is recorded that Noah, by the spirit of prophecy, pronounces an awful curse upon the posterity of Ham and Canaan, ages before that posterity were born. The same excellent and learned commentator, of whose superior talents I have already availed myself, bears me out by his authority in this case also. Dr. Adam Clarke, with great judgment and truth, observes on this passage: "The curse pronounced on Canaan neither fell immediately on himself nor on his worthless father, but upon the Canaanites; and from the history we have of this people, Levit. xviii. xx., Deut. ix. 4., xii. 31., we may ask, could the curse of God fall more deservedly on any people than on these? Their profligacy was great, but it was no effect of the curse; but, being foreseen by the Lord, the curse was the effect of their conduct." This, however, was a con*Vide Dr. Clarke's Commentary in loco.

tingent event, if any one recorded in scripture be of that description; yet the Dr., in perfect accordance with his doctrine, before laid down, of the eternal existence of all future, as well as past and present, transactions with God, here admits the actual presence of the wickedness of the unborn Canaanites with God, and his consequent sanction of Noah's curse pronounced upon them, by the foresight of their erimes, so that the effect was so just and so certain as to be permitted to anticipate its cause in the divine estimation by some ages of time; which shews that the cause, though remote and contingent to man, was yet also present with, and certain to, God. Indeed, it is too self-evident to require any farther proof or demonstration, that without moral certainty, it would be impossible for God himself to either foresee or predict, with truth, any future event wearing a contingent aspect to the view of a finite intelligence.

The second case I propose referring to, is that of the apostle Peter, whose awful denial of his blessed Master was both clearly foreseen, and expressly foretold, with a warning voice from him, and a solemn promise and full determination from the apostle himself against it; which one would have thought quite sufficient (if it had been possible) to have falsified the divine prediction. Our blessed Lord, however, was in possession of at least a moral, and may I not say, also, an absolute certainty of the event; seeing he foretold it both with absolute certainty, and as an absolutely certain event? Now that moral (or absolute) certainty, wherever it originated, whatever grounds it rested upon, whether it was in the event itself, or only in God's knowledge of it, rendered it at least a moral impossibility that the prediction should have been frustrated. But may I not safely add, that the truth of the prophet rendered its frustration an absolute impossibility? For "God cannot lie!"-Yet this atrocious crime, against the temptations to the commission of which, all the resolutions, determinations, and protestations of poor Peter, were as chaff before the wind,-was not a predestinated, but merely a foreseen, and such as is usually called a contingent, act. Nevertheless, it was not contingent, but certain, in the eye of God; and

As to the certainty of a contingency existing in the divine knowledge alone, and not in the expected event, this appears to me to put that knowledge at variance with the fact, of which to be true, it ought to be an exact counterpart; and as the fact itself is the only foundation of true knowledge respecting it, so the knowledge which differs from it, must be false. Therefore, God, who sees all things as they really are, if an event future to man be really uncertain, God must see it as uncertain, and can know it only as such; until the period arrives in which its contingency is exchanged for certainty, which makes God dependent on the issues of time, for accessions to his omniscience. Believing, however, as I now do, that there is no uncertainty in the divine mind, because there can be no defect in the divine knowledge of any thing; and that God's knowledge of all things, which, I believe, the attribute of omniscience necessarily implies, is an exact counterpart of the things known; I cannot conceive there is any uncertainty in any thing known by God, whether it be

*Although I have, in the course of this little essay, attempted occasionally to glance at the probable means by which the prescience of the Deity is enabled both to foresee the future actions performed by, yet contingent to, existence, and to penetrate the results, of men;-still I pretend not to suppose that I, or any other finite being, am able fully to comprehend the operations of the divine mind, or accurately to define the mode by which the Deity can see the future actions of free agents, as at present in actual existence. It does, however, appear to me, that, according to human comprehension, there can be but two general modes by which this can be accomplished: viz. 1st, By coercive power, in the production of all such actions as would coinexercise of which the Deity would compel the cide with, or subserve, the despotic counsels of his own will. Or, 2nd. That from the certain, but not necessary_connexion, subsisting bemedium of fixed principles, of which God is tween causes and effects operating through the himself the author; and always under the superintendence and direction of bis provi dence, (which in no case can ever be excluded from the affairs of men,) it is quite easy to a being possessed of the attribute of omniscience, to trace out with unerring accuracy the future actions of intelligent beings, who, depending on himself for their very existence every moment, can only live, think, and

is the unceasing play of affinities, or those active created energies with which the earth is surrounded, that when we have obtained a simple substance, almost immediately on its being exposed to the action of the atmosphere it becomes compounded with some other substance therein, viz. oxygen, &c. and these mutations are interminable. The foregoing substances, therefore, and those which remain to be described, are seldom, and some of them never, found in or upon the earth's crust in a simple state, but in general compounded in various proportions with others; and they are reduced by man to simple substances by great skill and perseverance for his information or use.

These circumstances in the relation of created man with the created matter which surrounds him, call forth those energies with which he is so eminently endowed, from age to age; and thus disclose the wise providence of the Creator, in suiting the capacity of man to his sphere of action. It is the province of his reason to investigate matter, and matter is within his reach, and yields to his experiments; whenever, therefore, and wherever he rouses himself to action, man finds an ample field before him, wherein he may observe, record his observations, and observe again; at each effort improving his knowledge, and multiplying his facts; and thereby enjoying the pleasure of approaching, if he never arrives at, perfection. Thus has the Creator given ample scope for the action of those vast talents wherewith he has gifted the head of His visible creation, man: the most profound investigator, setting out, as every man does, with the recorded experience of every age preceding his own, never yet arrived at a point whereon he could stand and say, "The whole arcana of creation are like an open book to me-I am in possession of all its truths!" For he who knows the most, beholds before him so vast a mass of the unknown, that, in comparison with all he knows, it is an immeasurable mountain. What a lesson in humility is this!

The principal metals are, gold, the most precious known; and silver, next in lustre and value; mercury, the only metal which remains fluid at the ordinary temperature of the atmosphere; copper, a yellow metal of

great lustre and general use; tin, white, and more soft than the preceding; lead, a bluish metal, yet more soft; iron, too well known to need a description; and zinc, blue gray in colour, and which, united with copper, forms the mixed metal in general use called brass. All these are malleable and ductile, and they have been generally known throughout every age since the creation. The next class of metals are, platina, the heaviest body known, harder than gold or silver, and in colour between steel and silver; cadmium, in colour a fine white, lightly shaded with bluish gray, resembling tin; nickel, approaching in colour to silver, hard and magnetical; and palladium, of a grayish white, harder than iron, and resembling platina. The discoveries of the two first and the last are recent, and nickel is so scarce that it cannot be brought into general use: the notoriety of these, therefore, has not been at all equal to the first class. The third class of metals are easy of fusion, and brittle, viz. bismuth, of a reddish white, harder than lead, and it may be reduced to powder by the hammer; antimony, of a dull white colour and scaly texture; arsenic, of a bluish white colour and laminated texture; and tellurium, in colour between tin and lead, of a foliated fracture, and so brittle that it may be pulverized with ease.

The fifth and last class of metals are brittle, and exceedingly difficult of fusion, viz. cobalt, a dull reddish-gray in colour, and rather less brittle than others of the same class; manganese, whiter in colour than cobalt, and of a rough texture; molybdena, gray, yet brilliant, but extremely difficult of fusion; tungsten, resembling iron in colour, but possessing greater brilliancy; titanium, approaching in colour to copper, and of a scaly texture; columbium, in colour and lustre resembling iron, and so brittle as to be pulverized with ease; chromium, grayish-white in colour, and in texture like needle-formed crystals; rhodium, white and lustrous; iridium, white, and extremely difficult of fusion; osmium, blue and dull; uranium, dark gray, glittering externally, and internally finely grained; cerium, reddish-gray, and salenium, the fracture of which in colour resembles lead.

Doetor Johnson defines minerals