removal of this body of water, we can imagine no cause but the miraculous intervention of Omnipotence; whereas the narrative in the book of Genesis assigns two natural causes, raised to an extraordinary degree of action. Notice was also taken of the animals preserved with Noah in the ark-the number of existing species so far exceeding what the commentators in the Bible have taken into their calculationsthe very different kinds of receptacle which would be neces sary-the amount of food-the necessity of ventilation, or cleaning out of the stables or dens-the provisions for reptiles and insects-the fact, that some fish and shell animals cannot live in salt water, and others not in fresh. The difficulty also was mentioned, if we suppose that the resting place of the ark was Mount Ararat, pointed out by tradition, of conceiving how the eight human persons, and their accompanying animals, could descend down the precipitous cliffs,-a difficulty which amounts to an impossibility, unless we call in divine power operating in the way of miracle. The existence of trees in the equatorial regions of Africa and South America, which are shewn to be of an antiquity which goes further back than the date of the deluge, by the known method of ascertaining the age of exogenous trees, tend to prove, that the deluge of Noah was not absolutely universal. The opinion which ascribes to the deluge the vast amount and variety of animal and vegetable remains found in a fossil state in all parts of the earth, is flagrantly inconsistent with a correct attention to the circumstances in which such remains occur. From any of these considerations, the probability of a universal contemporaneous flood is, to say the least, rendered very small; but their united force appears to me decisive of the negative to this question. In the case of Noah, we may understand the ani mals preserved with him in the ark, as having been connected more or less with man by domestication, and by other modes of subserviency to his present and future welfare. This idea answers the enumeration given, which only comprises the four descriptions given,—wild animals, such as we now call game, serviceable to man, but not tamed; cattle, the large domesticated mammifers, such as the ox, the camel, the horse, the ass, the sheep, and several species of the deer and goat genera; the creeping things, the smaller quadrupeds, and birds, the peaceable, and useful, and pleasing kinds. The dif ficulties seem to be insuperable with respect to the animals saved in the ark, on the supposition that every species had its representatives. To assume a literal universality, would involve the idea of a crowding and compressing, such as would destroy all distinctness. If Mr. Rose had him, he would give him a pommeling. I cannot doubt, but that some alarm and anxiety may he produced in the minds of many, by the hearing of these statements. They will be thought to be in direct contradiction to the sacred narrative; and we cannot justify to ourselves any twisting and wresting of that narrative in order to bring it to an apparent accordance with the doctrines of human philosophy. But let my friends dismiss their fears. The author of nature and the author of revelation is the same. He cannot be at variance with himself. The book of His works and the book of His words, cannot be contradictory. On the one hand, we find certain appearances in the kingdom of nature which stand upon various and independent ground of sensible proof; and on the other hand, are declarations of Scripture which seem to be irreconcilable with those appearances which are indeed ascertained facts. But we are sure that truth is immutable; and that one truth can never contradict another. Different parts of its vast empire may, and do lie far asunder; and the intermediate portions may be covered with more or less of obscurity, but they are under the same sceptre; and it is of itself, and antecedently certain, that the facts of nature, and the laws that govern them, are in perfect unison with every other part of the will of Him that made them. There are declarations of Scripture which seem thus to oppose facts, of which we have the same kind of sensible evidence that we have of the letters and words of the Sacred Volume; and which we understand by the same intellectual faculties by which we apprehend the sense of that volume. Now those appearances, facts I must call them, have been scrutinized with the utmost jealousy and rigour, and they stand impregnable; their evidences made brighter by every assault. We must turn, then, to the other side of our research; we must admit the probability that we have not rightly interpreted those portions of Scripture ; we must retrace our steps; let us resort to the renewed examination in the great instance before us. Who can believe his sincerity? He cannot believe himself; he speaks as if he knew all things better than Him who made them. The cultivation of Natural History and the sciences, will be a dignified means of excluding those modes of abusing time, which are the sin and disgrace of many young persons; vapid indolence, frivolous conversation, amusements which bring no good fruit to the mind or to the heart, or such reading as only feasts the imagination, while it enervates the judgment, and diminishes or annihilates the faculty of command over the thoughts and affections, a faculty whose healthy exercise is essential to real dignity of character. No person will find fault with the study of Natural History or the sciences, save and except the miscalled science of Geology. It destroys the mind more than all the sciences can improve it. The committee of the congregational lecture, called Dr. P. Smith to deliver to them, about 1840, the contents of this volume. How must their minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ! (2 Cor. xi. 3.) They can have no Christianity, else they would allow no man, by philology and criticism, to destroy the truth of the Scriptures. We do not affirm, that there cannot be a real Christian among them; but the real Christianity of the congregation must be very low. Solomon pronounces a woe upon a land who has a king in a certain state, (Eccles. x. 16, 1 17,) what woe would he have pronounced upon a congregation who had such managers, and such a lecturer and minister! Alas! religion in England must be very low, when an Arch bishop of Canterbury demeans himself to grace a geological dinner; and the head congregation of the Independents has such managers, and such a divinity tutor. Count who have occupied these high stations since the days of the great Eliz abeth. Mark them attentively, and you will find among them both great and good men. No man is truly great who is not good, (Psal. xxxvii. and lxxiii.) If it be said, that the great mystery of godliness, the display of the Divine perfections in the work of redemption, forbids such an extent of our conceptions, I would reply, with humility and deference, that the objector has forgotten the grand attribute of Deity, the basis of all the Divine perfections, Infinity. He is measur ing Jehovah by a standard applicable only to creatures. And are not the purposes of God, including the glorious plan of salvation to a lost world (Ephes. í. 4, 5; iii. 11) from eternity! To my judgment and feeling, the grandeur of those heavenly counsels is presented to us the more sublimely, by the views for which I have been pleading, of the extent, antiquity, and endless duration of the products of God's creative power and provident wisdom, (p. 324, 562.) Here geology again has mate rialized his mind. It is very difficult to say what is the basis of the Divine perfections. God himself alone can tell it. But, n my opinion, holiness or goodness would take precedence far of Infinity. I quote with pleasure, says he, and entire assent, the remark of an excellent writer, yet observing that it is applicable only to questions of pure theology. The case before us is widely different;-it is a case in which physical facts compel us to question, not the authority of the Bible, but the tness of certain interpretations and inferences; and our J 324, 326, 333, 340, 352, 358, 403, 404, 408, 417, 423, 451, 453, 472, 481, 482, 483, 484, 486, 494, 496, 497, 503, 504, 507. He will be cleverer than the desolator of Stanfield Hall, 28th November, 1848, if he clears all these counts. I wish my reply had been as regular. He is clear, but cool as an iceberg. How would Dr. Steven, or Dr. Begg, describe him? I must be permitted, in conclusion, to put down mine in opposition. I wish to make him, and Mr. Miller, and all, to Archbishop Sumner, confess that they are wrong, if I can; and if I cannot, some body else will do it; for done it will be, as surely as Rev. from xvi. to xx. shall be fulfilled. He says, Dana's remark is applicable only to questions of pure theology. It is an utter mistake. Is the Bible true, or is it not. According to the venerable Lord President Boyle, taking the authorized version without interpretation, criticism, or philology, It is; and geology is false as falsehood concentrated. Dr. Smith, here, as a divine and philosopher, has involved himself, like Professor Powell, in serious difficulty, (p. 196.) I fear that his expressions are in danger of involving some inconsistency with his own sacred profession and obligations. His own convictions were just staring him in the face in the next page, (p. 327.) His distinction was not in Dana's mind. He had written, that lengthening the days to obtain the object desired, was sacrificing the propriety and certainty of language, and producing a feeling of revolt in the mind of a plain reader of the Bible, (p. 205.) When Dr. Smith gives his entire assent to Dana's brilliant passage, he has completely committed himself, as Mr. Miller did, when he admitted that the act of the creation of the fossils, of the earth, vegetable and animal, regarded simply as an act of power, does not, and cannot transcend the infinite ability of the Almighty. Professor Powell says, From ill-informed, or too often prejudiced persons, we hear frequent remarks disparaging the inquiries and conclusions of the geologist, while they allow and applaud the inferences of the astronomer and the chemist. They condemn, as visionary and presumptuous, the results of the one, as to the antiquity of the strata, and the successive areas of animal organization, the monuments of which are before their eyes, while they revere, as unquestionable truths, the most marvelIous and paradoxical inferences of the other, which refer to subjects utterly beyond the scope of the senses, to periods and distances which transcend our arithmetical powers to conceive, and to processes of nature which exceed our faculties to apprehend; yet, when the geologist contends, that the crust of the earth, with its organized productions, has been gradually |