i. 21), "He saw the monstrous reptiles, whose bones are imbedded in the secondary rocks." It was, then, one vast charnel-house into which the man Moses was led, when under the visions of the Almighty! It was not that grand vision of life, and living, moving, healthful things, which we used to think was set before us in verses 20, 21! The chief objection which our author alleges against the scheme of 1804, is in connection with the use of "And" in Gen. i. 2. Is it not copulative? Mr Miller has answered this in the extract given above from "First Impressions of England." While Mr Sime pleads for a partial deluge, he makes two noticeable admissions. On the limited theory, he admits God might have removed Noah beyond the reach of it, as he did Lot from Sodom; and also, that the deluge may have reached beyond the bounds of the inhabited earth. Another objection to the old scheme is found in the alleged parallelism between Gen. i. 1 and Exod. xx. 11. The words, "in six days," are held to be equivalent to "in the beginning." But if we associate Exod. with Gen. ii. the difficulty is solved: : were finished."-Gen. ii. 1. We place "Cardinal Wiseman's Lectures"-" The Geological Facts," and "Things New and Old"-in the third class referred to above; because in them the scheme of Dr Chalmers is received and illustrated from the point of view of modern discovery. The Cardinal's volumes are in good keeping with the name he has obtained for learning, for breadth of view rarely met with among Romanists, and for the power of commending "mother Church" to educated minds. It will not do, however, to magnify the Papacy as ever a true patron of progress in literature and in science. Even in the Cardinal's readable and pleasant volumes, there are unmistakeable evidences that he loves Rome more than the subjects under discussion, which would be all fair, did he not love to get a back-thrust here and there at Protestant combatants. Then, have we not the experience of Galileo-have we not the History of the Inquisition-and, under our very eyes, the Index Expurgatorius, to read us the lesson of Rome's attitude to progress? We rank "Geology and Genesis," by "C.," under the fourth class. Genesis, this author holds, may be a myth-a Jewish fable-a work of imagination by several authors-a narrative written by a man called Moses, but it cannot be a book of God a divinely inspired volume. Geology says, No; Professor Baden Powell says, No; and so does "C"; therefore there can be no doubt about the matter. It is all settled. Is not "the Hebrew Testament clothed in garments that outrage our senses Genesis and Geology by "C." 363 by their inappropriateness?" Is it not "the work of a somewhat unscrupulous Jewish leader?" Does it not sound the praises "of a people whose progress was deluged with blood, stamped with rapine," and whose only motive was "ungoverned selfsatisfying impulse?"-(P. 4.) Yet there is a certain kind of ability about the book, which will assuredly lift it up into a leading place among publications of a stamp which are always acceptable to a large half-instructed class, whose morals are not in the best possible condition. Every time we have taken up "C.," we have remembered what Franz Carvel's mother1 said of the German philosophers-"They believed everything except the Bible: they believed, with this exception, everything which they could not --and disbelieved everything which they could." Thus, equally great in credulity and in unbelief, "C." begins his work by an ominous want of sincerity. He tries to fix upon the Church the folly of holding "that what is true in science, may, in its religious aspects, be unsound, or dangerous to promulgate." And with a ludicrous air of self-importance, he tells us he has found the true key to "the historic account of the life of Moses, the assumed writer of Genesis." What is it? Hush! Political cunning in adapting his delineations "to the idiosyncrasy of the Hebrew character!" The account of the creation was fabricated for this purpose. Yet this author believes himself equal to deal with "Geology and Genesis." It is this kind of spirit which makes works of this class piquant. If their authors would keep to their task, and deal with their subject dispassionately, they would find no readers. The exhibition of this animus against the Scriptures should vitiate the whole book. Or, if he were desirous to be great on these points, he should have shown that the literature of apologetical Christianity has signally failed on the question of the canon of Genesis. Had he been able to detach Genesis from other books of Scripture, his Geology might have been used to illustrate his historical and exegetical skill. But it is wholly beside the point to try a book by what it does not profess to teach, and by what none who receive it as inspired. say that it teaches. There is no claim made for it as if Moses had a prescience of the discoveries of science." "C's" dread of miracles amounts to something like monomania. The mere reference to analogy creeps like a dark shadow over his temper, and leads him to speak unadvised words. Nevertheless we would again darken his dreams by askingDoes not the whole connection of God with the earth represent it as a scene for the forth-putting of miraculous power at certain great stages in its history? Do we not find the analogy to this in the work of Redemption? Do we not see it in the birth of 1 "The Metaphysicians." Longmans. 1857. Christ-in His life, at His death, in His resurrection? Buds it not out everywhere in the conversion of souls to God; and shall the world not witness its triumph in the dread future, when the quick and dead shall be raised up? Why not expect this same power leaving its footprints at each great epoch in the history of the earth's crust? "C.'s" strong point is found in holding that the present aspect of nature has existed for great ages, which it could not have done if the Hebrew chronology be true. He repeats all the old points about deltas. The mud deposit of the delta of the Ganges would require 10,000 years for its accumulation. Of course, there can be nothing, either in the consideration that at one time there may have been an amount of detritus brought within the action of the water greater than we have ever seen during the historical period, or that at the mouth there may have been retarding processes not now at work. The debacle, or outburst of lakes, has been little taken into account in these calculations.1 To notice other features in this book, in which Sciólism looks smartly forth from behind the Mask of Science, would be to repeat matters already passed under review. We leave it, with the expression of the hope that before the next time "C." shall seek to hold parley with the general public, he may have learnt that humility befitteth man who knoweth not all things, and that it is not very becoming, even for great men, to be "wise in their own eyes. Our design has been to put in a word in favour of the reconciliation scheme, now generally associated with the great name of Chalmers. We have attempted to show cause why we should not drift away from this, until the objections to it assume a more formidable attitude than they have yet done. The scheme of Dr Pye Smith has not been dealt with, mainly because it did not displace that of 1804, but merely laid alongside of it a thought, which its advocates could entertain without giving less weight to it than they had done. We would not, however, be reckoned as pledged to this one. All that we urge is, that for all present purposes it is liable to fewest objections. Every scheme of reconciliation will continue to be questioned and sifted, as Science, in her onward march, spreads out before us facts and phenomena unthought of before. Scepticism, from its dark standing place, will continue to watch what is passing in the sunlight, and it will not fail in the future, as it has not failed in the past, to step forth into broad day, when it sees anything in the progress of the physical sciences which will serve it as a weapon against God's truth revealed in the Bible. It has ere If "C." would make a study of "Rain and Rivers," he might learn something at pp. 5, 14, 75, 95, 114, 116. this achieved something. It has met young minds at that awful point at which their fresh thoughts either look humbly up to God, or proudly abroad on man; and it has given to many a bias towards the idolatry of their race, and ultimately a persuasion that their calling is to wage war with old beliefs. The position is a perilous one; and many who have begun the battle for truth, according to man's standard, have, at last, fallen fighting against God. The wonder is, that scepticism has not been able to do more. It occupies vantage ground of no ordinary kind. It has for weapons all the difficult points which both Christians and infidels have ever met with, and stated, in connection with the outward world, and it uses those of the former without the solutions which may have been given. Voltaire used to study Calmet's "Commentary," in which the Christian author notices difficulties in order to solve them; but the Frenchman gave no heed to the solution. He picked out the difficulties to use for his own purposes. This is a characteristic of the class, as all are aware who know anything of much of the literature which is current in cities. We have more than once been startled to find objections to the Bible, which have again and again been refuted, stated as if they were unanswerable. Scepticism has another advantage. What Bacon calls "the Harmony of the Sciences,"-a harmony which not only reveals each science as one great part having its distinctive place in a system, but which lifts theology up to the platform on which the physical sciences stand, and recognises it as in brotherhood with all the rest,-is not dreamt of by it. The sceptic finds his strength in singling out one from the midst of the many, and, shutting his eyes to all the rest, in torturing the phenomena of his favourite pursuit, until he wring from them utterances corresponding to his own habits of thought-his individual tastes and prejudices, and often his dislike of the Bible. Each science, ignorantly or wilfully misunderstood, furnishes many points of this kind. The attention of the Christian apologist becomes distracted, and the very imperfection of man's faculties comes to lend strength to the enemies of the truth, while the defence of it is weakened by the energies of the defenders being of necessity divided. "We come, lastly, to that science which the two former periods of time were not blessed with, viz., sacred and inspired theology: the Sabbath of all our labours and peregrinations."-Advancement of Learning. ART. III.-1. Diary of Narcissus Luttrell. Oxford: Univer sity Press. 1857. 2. The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior. 2 vols. Pickering. WE feel much more interest in some ages than in others. Two periods may be exactly contiguous, and yet one appear within the verge of ancient, the other of modern history. Even in those times which must be called by a common name, modern, one epoch impresses upon us a feeling of the closest affinity and analogy; we can understand the passions and point of view of its chief characters, and intuitively penetrate to the springs of their conduct; while, when surveying the annals of events occurring, it may be, but a single reign before, we wander in a comparatively strange land. We hear party names and party cries, and we know that the objects for which these factions were striving, are the same with those which roused the desires and regrets of our own fathers. But the people which assumed these appellations, and which strove so angrily for those privileges and rights, is to us as strange and foreign as the modern Norwegian, with his Saxon constitution and liberties. One great line of demarkation, indeed, there does exist between the different ages of our world. In a broad sense, all on that side Constantine is ancient; all on this modern history. In many prominent and strongly defined features, even the borderlands of this line differ from each other; in one mighty, common characteristic, all the constituent units of the two several aggregates agree. But we feel that the differences in the aggregate are greater, or, at least, more various and numerous than the similarities which bind them together. Then, waiving other and more distant boundaries, pass in our own history from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of his father, and what a strange feeling of isolation in a strange land and people comes over us! Bosworth field, and Queen Margaret, and princes smothered in the Tower,-what "Dark Ages"" tales are these overshadowing the traditions of the Reformers, and of the bold Hugh Latimer haranguing from St Paul's cross. Here, then, we discover another subdivision of history, even of that history which we call modern. The tie of a common special belief unites us lineally to those times. As long as the Protestant and the Roman Catholic Churches stand in Europe side by side, we cannot help recognizing and sympathizing with the countrymen of our Reformers as compatriots, almost cotemporaries of our own. The feudal system, with its barons and its villains, its strict and strange cumbrous forms and ceremonies, and its re |