This subject also is resumed in the following course. We have introduced it here, not only as forming a part of the Reviewer's objections consequent on what precedes, but for the purpose of obviating a capital error, into which expositors seem to have very generally fallen in their comments on the Mosaic details of creation. It is this, that the inspired historian has concerned himself solely with the Optical, to the neglect of the Physical, narrative; a supposition which, if understood in an unlimited sense, would produce more danger to the record from the cavils of the unbeliever, than it would acquire security by conceding to his prejudices.

The Reviewer proceeds in the same spirit; "The purpose of his" [St. Augustine's (a)] "opinion is, to show, that those who seek to confirm, by means of natural philosophy, the records of the Holy Scriptures on the subject of Creation, act imprudently, and injure the cause of religion. We believe the Scriptures on the ground of Revelation; and if we seek to confirm our belief by physical proofs, we shall learn to doubt of all we cannot thus confirm, and thus refuse to believe in the resurrection of the body and a future state, since that is contrary to physical possibility." p. 461.

To this it is replied, that we are not of the number of those, who profess "to confirm the subject of Creation by Natural Philosophy," as there exists no class of phanomena, within the sphere of the latter, which can, in the way of direct proof, demonstrate the certainty of that event. The belief of it, on independent grounds, must wholly be left to our reasonings on what we can arrive at, by legitimate inference, concerning the Divine Attributes and Being (b). Yet it is not less certain, that, as the Eternal Power has been made known by the things that are made, so the exercise of that power, in

its highest conceivable degree, has not been left without some faint attestations in the system it has originated; sufficient at least to exculpate those, who seek to elicit them from the volume of nature, from the grave charge of "acting imprudently." In what the real imprudence consists, has been already explained (c).

As to "doubting of all we cannot confirm" by an appeal to Natural philosophy, it may with truth be observed, that such a posture of mind can only attach to those, who possess not understandings sufficiently strong to distinguish between the subjects to which it is applicable, and those to which it is not. It is an old, and a just, distinction, that in Revelation there are things above, and things according to, Reason. Now it appears to me to be a solecism in argument, to impugn the grounds on which the Christian philosopher would proceed in the case of the latter, by reason of his inability to adapt them to the circumstances of the former.

When it is said; "we believe the Scripture on the ground of revelation," the principle is recognised, which discloses to the Christian's view the mysteries of his religion, unappreciable by the mere exercise of the rational faculty. That principle is Faith; announced by an inspired writer, as the ground of our belief of that theistic tenet, which forms so important a part of our present inquiry; yet announced also by the same, as an "evidence," and, by another Apostle, in one of its effects on the Christian's mind, as that of which we should be "able to give a reason."

The Reviewer proceeds to confirm the foregoing statements by a particular example; "No ingenuity, nor any perversion of Scriptural commentary, can reconcile the solar system, or that of astronomy at large, to the Mosaic history." p. 462.

c

This I conceive as said with reference to the cosmogonic record; and as a vindication has been entered into at considerable length, of its announcements in this particular, in one of my discourses (d), it is unnecessary to detain the reader at present by anticipating its details. As to other portions of the inspired writings, even though critical ingenuity should fail of accommodating them to the placita of modern science, it stands perfectly valid as an apology, that the writers spoke "secundum veritatem popularem;" that, (to use the language of the Reviewer,)" the physical portions of the narrative are not essential," but "incidental to the primary object of the inspired writer" (p. 462); that, most frequently, it would not consist with the attainment of this primary object, to use expressions at variance with received opinions. This subject also is considered in one of the Lectures of the following series. Vid. pp. 45-8.

Nor are we confined to the Biblical records alone for instances of this deviation, adapted to a particular purpose, from accuracy of expression. It occurs even in works professedly scientific. Thus astronomers are wont to speak of the Sun's orbit, motion, etc. although, at the same time, both they and their readers are quite aware, that such language only consists with optical truth. Now the rule that the astronomer observes, in the regular development of the principles of his science, should naturally be looked for from the inspired writer, when considering the circumstances of human intellect.

The writer reverts in the same page to his former objection; "the injury which the cause of religion may suffer from a fashion, of which other authors besides the present one (Mr. Penn) have been guilty; namely, that of seeking for physical proofs of scriptural records."

It is clear, that the whole force of this objection rests

on what the writer means by a physical proof. If a complete reconcilement of those records with principles of science, or an erection of them into Principia, what he alleges is perfectly true. But the whole course of recent investigations has shewn, that physical proofs of them may subsist in a lower degree; that natural phanomena may afford attestation to the events which they announce; and become, in the hands of the accomplished philosopher, a copious source of illustrative evidence.

The sentiments of the Reviewer, as to the doctrine of Final Causes, and the support which it derives from geological researches (pp. 463 ss.), meet with our entire concurrence; more particularly the remark (p. 464), that "no branch of Science more clearly evinces the original exertion of Divine creative power" than Geology. This opinion is expanded at some length in the following paragraph:

"It has been said by certain Theists, that the Deity interferes no longer with a creation which he originally arranged by general laws. Whatever we may think of this opinion, in a moral or theological view, we can scarcely infer that interference by any physical fact with which we are acquainted, except in the solitary department of geology. In contemplating the revolutions of the globe, we trace the evident marks of periodical interpositions of a power, which changes and maintains, as it created; we are, at least hitherto, entitled to consider them such, because we can trace no arrangement of secondary causes, by which they are to be necessarily produced at certain periods." Ibid.

The general sense of this paragraph is unexceptionable; at the same time, the word "necessarily," as applied in its concluding sentence to the operations of

secondary causes, is to be received with somewhat of limitation. Does the writer mean, that even though the secondary causes (supposing such to exist) which originate the phænomena, of which geological science is the history, were discovered, the fact of Divine interposition would therefore be disproved? I think not: for regarding those latter in their true and undoubted import, as qualities not essential, but superadded, to matter; selected out of an infinite number, as best adapted to the results contemplated by the First Cause, I cannot but deem their continued inherence in matter as a proof of continued superintendence, equally strong with that which, it is granted, would exist under contrary circumstances. We should look in fine beyond the observable effects of those causes, to the Power which preserves them in exercise.

This opinion is expressed with much perspicuity in the Vindicia Geologica of Professor Buckland; a tract which contains more sound views and interesting results appertaining to the present question, than any production of the present day. This author has traced the coincidence of the proofs derived from geognostical science of the great doctrine of intelligence and design in the First Cause, with those exhibited in other departments of physics; and concludes his summary in the following terms: "Thus Geology contributes proofs to Natural Theology, strictly in harmony with those derived from other branches of natural history; and if it be allowed, on the one hand, that these proofs are in this science less numerous and obvious, it may be.contended, on the other, that they are calculated to lead us a step farther in our inferences. The evidences afforded by the sister sciences exhibit indeed the most admirable proofs of design and intelligence originally exerted at