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"Although Geology," he says, "is confessedly yet in its infancyalthough it mutters only a feeble and inarticulate language-although its professors are notoriously at variance as to its fundamental positions, yet it has ventured to set itself in opposition to the declarations Diverse theories concerning the past of the Scripture of truth. history of our globe swarm every season, and buzz like ephemera for a time, until they perish before a fresh generation of their kind. Various as these speculations are, however, they agree in one particular: they completely ignore, and set at nought, the revelation which it has pleased the Creator himself to give us, respecting the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created.' This is strange; and stranger still, Geology is believed, and Revelation is rejected; or if not positively rejected, its plainest statements are so twisted and tortured by learned critics, that they are made to harmonize with whichever theory happens to be for the nonce in most favour with geological savants."

There is inconsistency as well as unfairness in this accusation. The author condemns Geology because it has "set itself in opposition to the declarations of the Scripture of truth." Geology is a science of facts, and the hypotheses of geologists are rather accidental than necessary to its development. The deductions drawn from geological facts are the opinions of individuals, and for the greater part, especially for those of a theological tendency, the science is not answerable. The author of the "Vestiges of Creation" is a geologist, and so was the late Hugh Miller, but Geology cannot teach both theories-one is pure Atheism, the other is Mosaical, for even if it be heterodox, it is a hypothesis which admits the obligation of the human reason to the Divine revelation, and seeks to reconcile the scientific opinions of the author with his reading of the Mosaic narrative. Geology cannot teach at one and the same time that there is no God, and that God has given a revelation which cannot be rejected without sin. A man may be thoroughly acquainted with the chemical composition and physical condition of rocks, their superposition and organic remains, and yet his mind may be undecided as to the circumstances under which they have been produced, and the time occupied in their formation; but he is nevertheless entitled to call himself a geologist. The author is in error when he says that geologists "are notoriously at variance as to its fundamental principles." It is not possible that a science can have antagonistic principles. Difference of opinion may exist among a certain class of students, and the author has pointed out the class to which he refers-it is that to which he belongs. It embraces all those who avail themselves of the investigations of scientific men to support the speculations by which they propose to reconcile the testimony of the works and word of God. Such are the men who "every

season" publish "diverse theories concerning the past history of our globe," and whose speculations, according to the author, "set at nought the revelation which it has pleased the Creator himself to give us respecting the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created."" Geology is no more to be blamed for the follies or sins of these men than the laws of society are chargeable with the crimes which they have specified and defined. We heartily wish these men would leave the science alone, for if it be "confessedly in its infancy" we have not yet the information necessary for a comparison of the works and word of God.

We need not look beyond the three books before us, to sustain the position we have taken; and we might add, to prove the uselessness of their speculations, if the influence of two out of the three were not absolutely pernicious. Presuming them to have been written by Christian men, holding the authority of the Bible to be supreme, and anxious to remove every appearance of discord between the narrative of the Creation and the deductions of scientific men, we have in the results of their serious and patient research, a distressing instance of discord in their representations of the meaning of the history, as well as in the theories by which they severally attempt to explain the geological facts. Hugh Miller who, without controversy, possessed a knowledge of Geology to which the other authors before us can lay no claim, applied his earnest mind and the force of his genius to the subject, and with high authority as a Christian and a geologist, explained his method of reconciling the testimony of the works of the Creator with the words of the lawgiver. But the position he took, and the theory he proposed, are indignantly rejected. The author of the "Voices" cannot "conceive how any honest believer in the inspiration of the first chapter of Genesis, can hold to a scheme which so plainly contradicts some of its most evident statements;" while the author of the "Atheisms" believes, "that metonymy, carried so far as it is in the Testimony of the Rocks,' is only calculated to destroy the credit of the Bible altogether, to justify infidelity, and to sap, even in the mind of the Christian himself, the whole foundation of his hope and trust." If from this apparent agreement in denouncing Hugh Miller's scheme of reconciliation, any hope of further unanimity between these writers should be entertained, it will be disappointed; for, except that they both believe the Mosaic day to be a period of four-and-twenty hours, the hypotheses by which they explain the formation of rocks are as opposed to each other as to the one they mutually condemn. Would that these authors had been actuated by that noble faith in the ultimate conquest

of scientific truth, and the virtue of patience, which Kepler evinced, when, in anticipation of the scepticism of his contemporaries, he said of his "Harmonies of the World,"—" It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."

It is not our intention to examine the safety of the position Hugh Miller has taken in his "Testimony of the Rocks," or to criticize his hypothesis. We will, therefore, quote one passage from which the reader may form his own opinion of both, and pass on to some remarks upon the " Atheisms of Geology."

"with respect to

"I occupy exactly the position now," he says, Geology, that the mere Christian geographer would have occupied with respect to Geography in the days of those doctors of Salamanca, who deemed it unscriptural to hold with Columbus that the world is round-not flat; or exactly the position which the mere Christian astronomer would have occupied with respect to Astronomy in the days of that Francis Turrettine, who deemed it unscriptural to hold with Newton and Galileo, that it is the earth which moves in the beavens, and the sun which stands still. The mere geographer or astronomer might have been wholly unable to discuss with Turrettine or the doctors, the niceties of Chaldaic punctuation or the various meanings of the Hebrew verbs. But this much, notwithstanding, he would be perfectly qualified to say-However great your skill as linguists, your reading of what you term the Scriptural Geography or Scriptural Astronomy, must of necessity be a false reading, seeing that it connects Scripture to what, in my character as a geographer or astronomer, I know to be a monstrously false Geography or Astronomy. Premising, then, that I make no pretensions to even the slightest skill in philology, I remark further that it has been held by accomplished philologists, that the days of the Mosaic Creation may be regarded, without doing violence to the genius of the Hebrew language, as successive periods of great extent; and certainly, in looking at my English Bible, I find that the portion of time spoken of in the first chapter of Genesis as six days, is spoken of in the second chapter as one day. True, there are other philologers, such as the late Professor Moses Stuart, who take a different view; but then I find this same Professor Stuart striving hard to make the phraseology of Moses fix the antiquity of the globe;' and so, as a mere geologist, I reject this philology on exactly the same principle on which the mere geographer would reject, and be justified in rejecting, the philology of the doctors of Salamanca, or on which the mere astronomer would reject, and be justified in rejecting, the philology of Turrettine and the old Franciscans. I would, in any such case, at once, and without hesitation, cut the philological knot, by determining that the philology cannot be sound which would commit the Scriptures to a science that cannot be true."

In this course of reasoning the author assumes the impossi

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ong for geological facts without admitting the longer period of time than that which intervened Commencement of human chronology and the Popinion he attempts to prove by an appeal to the rac rocks and their organic remains; and we need weresting these researches are made by the simple race of his style, and the amplitude of his genius. , and the argument by which it is supported, may The book is interesting. This is the substance of de by the authors of the two books we have, at scent of this paper, associated with the "Testimony end upon them we have a few remarks to make. Atheisms of Geology" charges geologists Dust Atheism be a denial of the existence of enable attempt to prove that they hold Jei as we cannot understand why these skaya» qal, hand-working, scientific men should be

a theking minds to adopt the doctrine of aconquerable difficulties, in preference to a er 4 Bust Cause, some proof of the fact must to the assertion. The author's object is to vacozies and establish his own, and, strange to a complish his purpose by the use of arguments Paie attribute of omnipotence. Surely the

of a logician is not necessary to prove that vi, must be based upon some acknowledged 444sumption admitted by the disputants. who believes geological theories to be false, 4 heists, could, we think, attempt to discclusions by arguments drawn from the We must, therefore, either believe that kare us is a misnomer, or that the author . the precise meaning of the words he the most charitable conclusion we can nately supplied, in the commencement ca of his misapplication of the offensive ologists, and thus provided an antidote

or heard a lecturer announce the - the facts of mathematical science are ...thus one and one added together er than two. It is impossible they ca with God. We are warranted cience, for on the authority of tings are impossible with God, Now this statement, strange

to er zie author eleves be atheistical, or, to use his own Tia 1 + s i gaten ʼn oge alenlated to ignore omnipotence mi :: sempre te astence of an Almighty God, on the mis, a cet muiory of 18 1 120stle. Much as we conde the innery of arriving deductions from moral or intele omites a scentde fiets, opinions, or assertions, and cứ tambang God's macuity to sin with his inability to make al mistrict mathematical truth a falsehood, we are quite Bosne as per Adjeism in the denounced assertion. Far me army to ve mndemn the author's attempt to refute the 19 un ilustracion drawn from our Saviour's first mirade uut die whence of chemistry. His reasoning may be thas expressed : Crygen is one element, hydrogen another, and the twa i temain proportions, make water; but of water Chris made wine and is wine contains more than two elements the assumed nice was a deception, or one and one do not necessary make two. Expressed in this form the fallacy of the argument is at once perceived. The author deals with created things and creative power as if they were the same existence Caries had before him two elements, as chemistry asserts, and by the exercise of his creative power there was an instantanence transformation or creation, and the elements or created things were many. This miracle does not prove that in the Divine prescience one and one can be some other number than two, though Omnipotence can from two substances produce any other number of substances. Had Christ broken up the two elements of water in the miraculous production of wine, and created seven out of the two, it could not be said that one seven times repeated make two, nor could the exercise of the creative power be said to throw a doubt upon the fact that one and one make two. It may be said that God has spoken to man in the terms he is accustomed to employ; but, by way of illustration, we may remark that if such an argument as that introduced by the author could be sustained, the Bible itself would be an enigma, and some of its most encouraging and consoling promises would be as valueless as the mystical dreams of the enthusiast, or the ambiguous declaration of a heathen oracle. If when Christ said, " Where two or three are gathered together in my name there will I be in the midst of them," he did not mean the numbers so designated by men, but some number he could create out of two or three, how could we in pleading his promise anticipate the fulfilment.

We shall not discuss the question raised by the author whether the apostle meant that "the impossibility of God condescending to lie, was from choice and merit in Him, and not from the force of any superior law or necessity upon Him." But we