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that he is not? Phyrro's idea of absolute om omnipotence is, that he ought to have power to destroy himself. This is

I think the Christians idea of to me the childish idea imaginable!

is, he has power to fulfil his own will, which is to give an eternity of bliss to all his creatures, who will, by virtue of their freedom, make application to him for it. Which is also the end and design of all creation.

June 22nd.

I am, dear Sir,

Yours sincerely,

J. G.

IGNORANCE.

It is admirable to consider how many millions of people come into, and go out of the world, ignorant of themselves, and of the world they have lived in.

If one went to see Windsor Castle, or Hampton Court, it would be strange not to observe and remember the situation, the building, the gardens, fountains, &c. that make up the beauty and pleasure of such a seat. And yet, few people know themselves; no, not their own bodies, the houses of their minds, the most curious structure of the world; a living, walking, tabernacle; nor the world of which it was made, and out of which it was fed; which it would be so much for our benefit, as well as our pleasure to know. We cannot doubt this, when we are told that "the invisible things of God are brought to light by the things that are seen," and, consequently, we read our duty in them, as often as we look upon them, to Him that is the great and wise Author of them, if we look as we should do.

The world is certainly a great and stately volume of natural things, and may be, not improperly, styled the hieroglyphics of å better; but, alas! how very few leaves of it do we seriously turn over! This ought to be the subject of the education of our youth; who, at twenty, what when they should be fit for business, know little or nothing of it.ugend him Bea

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THE TRUE SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRER INTO NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.

His mind should always be awake to d devotional feeling; and in contemplating the variety and beauty of the external world, and developing wondere, will always refer to that Infinite Wisdom through whose benef cence he is permitted to enjoy knowledge. In becoming wiser he will become better; he will rise at once in the scale of intellectual and moral existence; his increased sagacity will be subservient to a more exalted faith; and in proportion as the veil becomes thinner through which he sees the causes of things, he will admire more the brightness of the divine light by which they are rendered perceptible.

INCONSIDERATION.

The want of due consideration is the cause of all the unhappiness man brings upon himself. For his second thoughts rarely agree with his first; which pass not without a considerable retrenchment or correction. And yet that sensible warning is, too frequently, not precaution enough for his future conduct. Well may we say, "Our infelicity is of ourselves;" since there is nothing we should not do, but we know it and yet do it,

PREPARATION FOR DEATH.

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege i but to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack,

A PRAYER.

"Lord! who art merciful as well as just
Incline thine ear to me, a child of dust-
Not what I would, Oh Lord! I offer thee,
Alas! but what I can :

Father Almighty! who hath made me man
And bade me look to heaven, for Thou art there,
Accept my sacrifice, and humble prayer—
Four things which are not in thy treasury
I lay before thee Lord! with this petition,
My nothingness, my wants,
My sins, and my contrition."

Southey.

Never

A SHORT LECTURE TO YOUNG MEN.-Keep good company, or none. be idle. If your hands cannot be usefully employed, attend to the cultivation of your mind. Always speak the truth. Make few promises. Live up to your engagements. Keep your own secrets, if you have any. When you speak to a person, look him in the face. Good company and good conversation are the very sinews of virtue. Good character is above all things else. Your character cannot be essentially injured, except by your own acts. If one speaks evil of you, let your life be so that none will believe him. Drink no kind of intoxicating liquors. Ever live, misfortune excepted, within your income. When you retire to bed, think over what you have been doing during the day. Make no haste to be rich, if you would prosper; small and steady gains give competency, with tranquillity of mind. Never play at any kind of game of chance. Avoid temptation, through fear you may not withstand it. Never run in debt, unless you see a way to get out again. Never borrow, if you can possibly avoid it.

Never speak evil of any one. Be just before you are generous. Keep your self innocent if you would be happy. Save when you are young, to spend when you are old.-Hunt's Merchant's Magazine.

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OF CHRISTIAN EXPOSITION AND ADVOCACY.

Who knows not that truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.-MILTON.

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In your 2nd letter in reply to mine on the 'Design Argument,' you again combat my opinions on the Eternity of Matter,' and say but little on Paley's noted argument. My rejoinder to your reply needs a few lengthened observations on the cardinal point of Atheism.

You say, "but even if you had succeeded beyond the possibility of a doubt, in establishing the indistructibility of matter, would that be proof of its eternity? I think not. An event of which man is the cause, as a fact in history, may be indestructible, but who would argue that it is, therefore, eternal. That Sebastopol has been besieged for nine months by the allied forces of France and England, is a fact absolutely indestructible, but we all know that that is evidence for its eternity. A thing, then, may be indestructable, and yet have begun to be." Is this, then, to be the proof, that matter can be indestructible, and yet have begun to be? The argument is fallacious for the one is finite the other infinite; the one is a fact of an operation once taking place and then ceasing to take place; to make the argument TENABLE, you should have proved that the allies began to besiege Sebastopol; and that they will continue throughout eternity to besiege it-then you would have a beginning without an No. 2, Vol. II.

ending, and the finite would merge into the infinite, but no argument can be deduced from the observance of any event of history, separate from nature (or the aggregate of involuntary matter) for the simple reason that before we can know that it will be INFINITE, we shall have to be INFINITE OURSELVES—and as we are but FINITE we can only deduct FINITE objects from finate

means.

You say, 'The eternity of matter involves the eternity of the globe which we inhabit. But there is proof, in the present appearance of the earth, that it is not eternal.' Suppose one particle to be washed from the peaks of the primary rocks in a million of years; the time would at length come when they would be reduced to the level of the surrounding soil, if indeed, the wasting process would not reduce the entire surface of the earth to one dead level, which would everywhere be covered with water. Those mighty rocks, lifting up their rugged heads to heaven with a silent but lofty eloquence, demonstrate the non-eternity of the world, and serve as steps by which the human mind may rise to the great Creator.'

The eternity of the globe,' in its PRESENT SHAPE, as an argument, is diametrically opposed to the views of all atheists, for, it is an incontestible FACT, proveable by goeology and (fossil) zoology, that this, and other planets have come into their present-FORMS by a long series of progressive developments, commencing, not all simultaneous, with a GASEOUS diffused MATTER thrown off from a central body, which by its own rotation has gradually been condensed, thereby receiving its opacity in structure and sphericity in form.

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Dr. Nicholl speaking on this mighty rock' subject says, 'geologists could tell at what particular epoch in the development of the earth any given mountain chain rose, or was first thrown up. All the rocks with which we are acquainted consists of two grand classes-the chrystalline or primary rocks; and the stratified, or those laid down by the agency of water. Now, the stratified rocks must originally have been laid horizontally, for in that way only could water deposit rocks. Therefore, when we found stratified rocks not in a horizontal position, it was very evident that they have been disturbed by some convulsion after being laid down. In some places we find a nucleous of primary rocks, with stratified rocks, as it were, leaning against it, and other stratified rocks lying horizontally beside the uplifted ones. In this case it is evident that the crystalline rock had been thrown up after the stratified rock that was lifted up by it, and before that which was lying horizontally. The stratified rocks were connected with each other in point of time all over the world, and therefore, when we find a crystalline rock between two stratified rocks, one of which was thrown up and the other not, we fixed its time, and thus the apparent chaos and confusion disappeared.' Enquiry has enabled us to fix the age of all the great masses of mountains. There was seventeen epochs in this history, each epoch succeeded by a long period of comparative repose. The last great epoch was that which threw up the Andes; the last previous ones, that in which the Himalaya mountains were thrown up. Between each of these steps or epochs, lay almost immeasurable periods of time. Was it possible to form any conception of the period of time that elapsed since the formation of the Andes? Since that time all the rivers now in existence had flown on undisturbed. How long then had the Mississippi flown? Fortunately we are enabled, by estimating the thickness of matter called delta, carried down by rivers to calculate how long the river had been flowing. A small part of this delta occupied THREE MILLIONS OF YEARS in its formation! Now, this is an indisputable geological fact; and if the present rivers have been flowing on above 3,000,000 of years, what can we make of the Mosaic Cosmogomy of 6000 years. Either geology or scripture is at fault-they cannot both be true. I ask, you, sir, what knowledge have you that 'those mighty rocks' have not been undergoing

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the wasting process' for millions of years, and can you prove that ALL 'the present mountains have not been ten times their present height to allow for the 'wasting process' of nature. The mountain avalanche rolls down its annual congeries of frozen particles which militate against the size of the Alps, but then, we must not forget that the snows of winter descend upon the peaks of the highest rocks and CLOTHE them anew with a carpet of icicles.

I come now to your argument on the population. You say 'the present amount of the population of the earth furnishes another proof of its non-eternity, Though particular races, at given periods, may decline in numbers, population, on the whole, is of an increasive nature. There are vast tracts of land, which a few centuries ago were without a single inhabitant, now giving full scope to the enterprize and energy of teeming thousands. Had the race been eternal these tracts of land would have been inhabited ages ago, every corner of the earth, capable of yielding food to man and beast, would have been crowded with living beings, yea, the world would have been too small to contain its inhabitants, and immense tracts of it would have become sepulchres of the dead. This has never been the case, and is far from being the case even now. The world is not half-populated. There are islands and almost continents that do not sustain one tithe of the inhabitants they might. There are millions of acres lying waste that by cultivation could bear as rich cereal crops as were ever raised on the banks of the Don or the Nile; and there are hundreds of millions of acres, which superior husbandry could make fourfold more productive than they are at present. But had the race been eternal, ages ago the pressure of the population would have been so great that necessity, the mother of invention,' would have forced men to the highest cultivation of every available acre. That it is not so, and that the earth is not half-peopled, are difficulties with which the theory of the eternity of matter' is environed, which the highest genius of infidelity will find it difficult to remove. The human race, with many-voiced but unanimous speech, proclaims, like the Alps and Andes, that it must have had a beginning, and therefore, a Creator.'

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I do not confound the eternity of matter with the eternity of organisms, as you seem to imagine, although I differ from you in the point of time at which MAN in his present form first appeared on the face of the earth-you (taking the Mosaic Cosmogomy) believing it to be about 6,000 years since the first pair of the human species were born. I believing it to be near as many millions of years. 1 cannot accept your argument on the amount of the population on the earth,' and do not believe that (on the whole) the human species increase, in an extensive ratio, simultaneously over the globe. We always find that population increases when it is unrestrained by poverty, war, crime, misery, disease, or famine. These are checks to population, and has the world ever been free from them? History speaks of the follies of nations, under the name of history, and what is it, but a record of misery and disasters? Babylon with her crimes -Syria with her wars-Persia with her refined barbarism--Carthage with her competitive cowardice-Greece with her municipal squabbles-Rome with its wars-Sycthia with its desert scourge-the Huns, Goths, Franks, and Danes. with their savage murders-and the Anglo-Saxon power with its riches and poverty-its pride and its misery, all these are symbols of national disasters, powers which rose into being by destroying their opponents, and most of them ended by being destroyed in their turn. Are there not whole nations that have disappeared from their collective form, and exist but as scattered individuals. The North American Indians are fast losing ground-three hundred years ago they swarmed in America-now the progress of civilization is the signature of their death-warrant. When we read history, we are surprised how the ancients used to collect their numbers. Xerxes could raise an army of 5,000,000; and Cæsar, along with most of the Roman generals, have met and defeated armies,

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