ON GEOLOGY.

To Dr. Pye Smith, with reference to his Course of Lectures on "Geology and Revelation," now delivering at the Congregational Library, Blomfield Street, Finsbury Circus.

SIR,

I HEARD your introductory lecture on "Geology and Revelation."

The transmitted "answer" to Professor Sedgwick's "Commemoration Sermon,"* the high praises of which formed so prominent a part of your last night's lecture, will prevent the necessity of my here, or elsewhere, enlarging on any part of its contents. On this occasion I shall do no more than pass a few comprehensive remarks on your laudatory and significant introduction of the names of Mr. Babbage and Professor Sedgwick. Those names cannot be too highly extolled for intrinsic talent and scientific eminence: but there must be a pause before they are prominently held forth as supporters of revealed truth and friends of the gospel of Christ. No such pause, however, was to be found in Dr. Pye Smith, when he thus declaratively set them forth last evening.

Your pointed encomiums on Mr. Babbage's illustrations of the principles of natural sense, as those on which divine revelation should be received or rejected, were astounding indeed and as such they generated the specific motive of this public appeal.Such encomiums on such principles cannot be heard without alarm, and especially so as pronounced by a functionary at the head of the Dissenting gospel world. The natural-sense principles thus applauded would, if admitted, so go to justify Mr. Babbage or yourself in any scepticisms or blasphemous tenets concerning the fundamental doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the proper Deity of the Son of God, or the atonement. Such principles, would, we repeat, if carried out, sanction the rejection of any point of revealed veracity, or any doctrine of the everlasting gospel, that stood contrary to the conclusions of natural sense and reason.

Are these, then, indeed, Sir, the principles on which revealed truth is by man to be received or refused? I thought the Book of God taught the direct contrary-that the natural man (as such) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (or of his Word), nor can (so) receive them, because they are spiritually discerned, by the Holy Spirit bringing the natural senses and reason of man to bow to their sense-surpassing and reason-surpassing highness and authority! And I thought (as I presume you yourself have taught) that the Divine Record of the Creation was to be received" by faith," and not on the unsanctified principles of natural sense and human intellect.

You will find by the "answer" enclosed to you, Sir, that the * This answer has been privately sent to Dr. Pye Smith.

geological facts are by no means denied by the "watchmen" on the fortresses of divine revelation. They deny not that the facts exist; but they deny that their natures and dates are as yet sufficiently developed by the great Creator to enable us, his creatures, to see their harmony with his revealed word. The friends of the word of God will not, in the absence of such vouchsafed developement, tacitly permit divine veracity to be made to bow before the shrines of human science, mortal talent, and graceless ingenuity. When the Most High shall have been pleased (if he shall be so pleased) to bestow the needed solution, the glorious consonance of his word and his works will be fully manifest. And if Dr. Pye Smith's present course of lectures, when faithfully published, shall open and establish that consonance, he will have rendered the Christian and scientific world an exalted service, which will not fail of its due acknowledgment. Of this benefit, however, we nust, I fear, despair, from the sceptical and destructive priciples

laid down at the outset.

It will, doubtless, be said, "Why were not these observations postponed till the completion and publication of the whole course?" It is answered," In all these momentous present-day matters the prompt detection and destruction of principles render the greatest service to our God, and to our nation, which service is materially lessened by the delay of months for expected publications, and the accumulation of voluminous details and their answers. Principles evince the man-principles are the indices of the times. From destructive principles conservative consequences cannot flow, either to the nation or to the Church of Christ.

Mr. Babbage may be looked up to by Dissenters as an effective instrument in advancing their well-known causes and aims; and could Dr. Pye Smith get him handed into the House of Commons, he might, with his co-principled colleagues, do much for Dissenters, in furthering that unrighteous system of national education, to the exclusion of the word of God, which they are now exerting all their political energies to establish, And it is quite clear that Dr. Pye Smith stands not opposed to such a Godless system of instruction for the rising generation. But that Mr. Babbage's criterion for receiving divine revelation, ou the principles of natural-sense decision, should be thus held up as a standard for the Christian and scientific community by you, Sir, a professed head of the gospel-professing world, is a startling sign of the times.

And when, moreover, you so highly-extolled Professor Sedgwick, and put him forth so prominently as a champion of Divine Truth, as well of science, and as a pillar of the Gospel of Christ, were you really conscious, Sir, of the religious principles on which bis code of Christian (or rather unchristian), ethics is built, in the commemoration sermon which you thus unqualifiedly applauded? Were you cognizant that the Professor denies the "total fall of man," and asserts" that man cau, by the volition and energies

of his natural and moral powers, commend himself to, and approach the God of nature, and build thereon his hopes of continued being in future glory?" How could you have made such copious extracts from the Professor's "Sermon," and not have read his declaration," that it was through the effects of the persuasion of the apostle on the remnant good qualities in man, that the heathens of old were converted by his ministration and that, had it not been for these remnants of good in them, he would have spent his breath in vain ;" and that," but for these elements of good remaining in man the apostles of our religion might as well have wasted their breath on the stones of the wilderness as on the hearts of their fellow-men in the cities of the heathen?" With the consciousness of these religious principles, professed and published by Professor Sedgwick, you surely must, Sir, in your high profession and position, and as expressly separated from the National Church, for the Gospel's sake, and its defence, have felt it your bounden duty to distinguish, by a very marked line, the geologist from the theolo gian-the eminent mathematician from the minister of the Gospel -the friend of science from the friend of Christ! These distinctions, however, and the faithful and fearless maintenance of the principles of the Gospel, and of all revealed and eternal truth, do not much employ the testimony, or trouble the consciences of the scientifico-political evangelists of the present millenial century! The above principles are to be found in abundance in the Com. memoration Sermon' and the Answer.'

In the conclusion of your lecture, Sir, you very pointedly remarked, "that none but a true geologist can see the errors of his opponent; that the opponent is blind to those errors himself." This is, to a certain extent, scientifically true. And equally true it is, Sir, that none but the true Church of Christ, and the true ministers of his Gospel, are likely to see the position in which you stand in your public capacity, as promulgating the principles which your introductory lecture on "Geology and Revelation" exhibited; but that solemn declaration which you made concerning all false geologists will inevitably have application to yourself. "Though they are themselves ignorant of their errors, yet, for the destroying effects of them on the moral and religious world, they are responsible to God!"

39, Highbury-place, March 13, 1839.

I am, Sir, yours, faithfully,

-000

HENRY COLE.

To Dr. Pye Smith, with reference to his Course of Lectures on

66

Geology and Revelation," now being delivered at the Congre gational Library, Bloomfield-street, Finsbury-circus.

DEAR SIR,

As my remarks on your introductory lecture which appeared in "THE TIMES" of the 15th, were public, it is but an act of due

Christian courtesy and candour on my part to acknowledge publicly a private letter received from you, containing this expression of open willingness to confess discovered error:-" If I were convinced of the error of any sentiments which I have held and taught for the last 35 years, I trust I should openly avow the conviction. More than this cannot, so far, be desired of any man.”

I trust then, Sir, that upon adequate reflection you will admit that my concerned strictures on the unqualified and exulting man. ner in which you, standing at the head of the Evangelical world, sanctioned the natural-sense principles of Mr. Babbage for receiving or refusing Divine Revelation, and in which you lauded the religious principles of Professor Sedgwick, were just, and a service demanded of the friends of revealed truth, for the welfare of our nation, and for the glory of the church of Christ therein.

You very truly say, "our science and literature, and all that we think and do, MUST be baptized with the influence of pure religion, or no divine blessing will descend upon it." I must, therefore, ask," are the sanction and praise of sceptical and unhallowed anti-Gospel principles to be received thus far as proofs that the present lectures have, in their digest and delivery, been so bap

tized ?"

Further public observations will be made or withheld, according to the line and principle on which the course of lectures shall proceed. I am, dear Sir, your's faithfully,

39, Highbury-place, March 16, 1839.

000

HENRY COLE.

To the Editors of the Gospel Magazine.

DEAR SIRS,

QUESTION FOR ELUCIDATION.

I HAVE read from the year 1805, your excellent periodical, and have been pleased, instructed, and comforted through that channel; let the Lord take the glory due to his name. I find it is usual for the ignorant to ask of you, or of your correspondents, to elucidate such parts of God's holy word as SEEM mysterious, may I be allowed to ask the same favour?

The 5th chap. ver. 25 and 26, of Matthew's Gospel, have occupied my mind (more or less) for years, I have made inquiries, but all seem to me a confusion of tongues. Should you, or one of your correspondents undertake to give an exposition, I do pray the Lord, the Spirit, may teach, then we shall have the genuine sense of the passage," For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." That the Lord may bless and prosper you; is the wish and prayer of

New Lakenham.

A POOR BAPTIST.

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THE LAW AND GOSPEL-MOSES AND CHRIST.

"So Moses finished the work."-Exod. xl. 33.

FROM Adam to Malachi there is one master-key which unlocks the chief treasure of the inspired writings-one common centre from which all things diverge, and to which all things return. When brought to see Christ as the beginning and the end, a rich mine is disclosed, even to the unlearned, which to the learned may be sealed; a treasure which the ignorant and unschooled, would not part with for all the wisdom of the wise-the scribe-the disputer of this world. We trace, and retrace, the ground, that has been traversed again and again; nothing new appears to be presented; but the subject is beyond interesting-it is important, for the concerns of eternity are involved. The opinions we advance, whether those of others, or our own must, in general, be either true or false -either support the truth of scripture or oppose it.

It may well now be asked, "What is truth? Some say, Learning is with us, and the ignorant have no right see with their own eyes, or judge by their own understandings-we are the people and wisdom shall die with us. Some maintain their right of bringing the word of the learned, to the testimony of the translated volume, if deficient in classical knowledge-or of giving credence to one learned man in preference to another. Others, and by far the greater part, hear, see, and believe, as their teachers would have them; but where are they who allow the Bible to be a sealed book unto themselves. There are some parts of scripture upon which we may touch, without fear of censure, or opposition; and there are points, nay truths, against which man rages with uncontrolable violence, and decided enmity.

The Law and Gospel-Moses and Christ, have been suggested to the mind by the text-the one finished the shadow-the other completed the substance. Moses' work as types of the work of Christ, as it neither interferes with man's conscience, nor his freewill, nor his self-righteousness; and the epistle to the Hebrews being so very explicit-it is not a subject for controversy. In this latter day we have little to do with the shadows, more than receiving them as one united whole, setting forth their substance, and giving their testimony to the purposes of God; while we look with wonder at the completion in Him who has, to us made plain that which was hidden.

We are led from the finished work of Moses, to the finished work of Christ. Moses as a servant was faithful, and made all things to the pattern given-the strictest minuteness was observed-and according to all that the Lord commanded him so did he. Christ as a Son completed all that the Father had given him to do. The Mediator of a better covenant-yes-an everlasting covenant; for by one offering he hath perfected for ever, them that are sanctified. And how sanctified? "Then, said he, lo! I come to do thy will, O