AFFINITY OF KNOWLEDGE.

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3. All the natural sciences ramify into each other, in so extensive a manner, that their points of contact show themselves perpetually. This fact not only brings to view the necessity of the combination of these parts of knowledge, but it creates an ardent desire for practically effecting it; it opens numerous avenues in to the domain of other sciences; it suggests methods of proceeding for making the desired acquirements; and, while we feel ourselves obliged to submit to the necessity of being but imperfectly acquainted with many parts of the field, we are preserved (if we maintain a becoming moral discipline) from the vanity and pedantry of half-knowledge, we are enabled to apprehend with accuracy what we do learn, and we gain safe positions from which, when the opportunity may occur, we can make further advances.

4. Any person of good mental faculties and liberal edueation, if he will take the pains of attention and some self-cultivation, may acquire an ability to draw satisfactory inferences from the facts recited and the reasonings propounded in the best geological works; or at least to exercise an unpresuming judgment whether the conclusions. are sound which others have drawn.

But it cannot be denied and ought not to be suppressed, that a different view of the whole matter is taken by many estimable persons. The objects of geological inves、 tigation, especially in the department of organic remains, are in the highest degree attractive: casual allusions and fragments of information float plentifully in the atmosphere of social intercourse, so that none but the incurious can fail to hear something: and the periodical papers of the day have occasionally paragraphs of wonder, upon real or alleged geological discoveries; which frequently indeed turn out to be the echoes of ignorance. Hence, the assumption is easily made, that the circuit of this kind of knowledge may be filled up by any young and ardent

pre

mind, with a small degree of trouble and a little easy reading; without laying in even a moderate share of the requisites. Above all, it is incumbent upon us to be aware, that a vague idea has obtained circulation, that certain geological doctrines are at variance with the Holy Scriptures. This notion works with pernicious effect. The semblance of discrepancy is indeed undeniable; but I profess my conviction that it is nothing but a semblance, and that, like many other difficulties on all important subjects which have tried the intellect of man, it vanishes before careful and sincere examination. The naked fact, however, the mere appearance, is eagerly laid hold of by some irreligious men, and is made an excuse for dismissing from their minds any serious regard to the Law and GOSPEL of GOD, and any rational investigation of the Evidences of Revelation; for they are very willing to assume that Christianity is either a mass of obsolete prejudices, or a theory so labouring under heavy suspicion as to have but slender claims upon a philosopher's attention. In the opposite extreme, many excellent persons, devout and practical Christians, knowing that "the word of our God shall stand for ever," feel no desire to become acquainted with the real merits of the question; and sit down with a persuasion, that geological theories are visionary plausibilities, each having its day of fashion, then being exploded in favour of some other vagary, which in its turn gives way, and all falling under the description of false "philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, the rudiments of the world; the oppositions of science falsely so called; perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth,-reprobate concerning the faith." (Col. ii. 8, 1 Tim. vi. 5, 2 Tim. iii. 8.)*

* A clergyman whose piety and integrity, as manifested in his book, attract my sincere respect, notwithstanding egregious defects of candour and justice in his animadversions, has expressed the opinions of many

CHRISTIANITY INJURED.

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That such a state of opinion is injurious to the cause of Christianity, can admit of no doubt. It is a fearful thing to array science and religion against each other; for, however unnatural and unjust this antagonist position certainly is, the fact of its existence is pregnant with evil on both sides. Men who have well studied the questions at issue, and who know the evidence of those geological facts to which such strong exception is taken, cannot by any possibility be brought to renounce their convictions. Were they treated as Galileo was, were they, like him,

other good men, in the following words. “J. P. S.—deprecates the idea of any person entering upon Geological questions, who does not possess considerable acquaintance with the principles of Chemistry, Electricity, Mineralogy, Zoology, Conchology, Comparative Anatomy, and even of the sublimest Mathematics.' It will be readily conceded that, to prosecute the study of Geology advantageously, some insight into most of the natural sciences is necessary. But when this assertion is intended to deter men of good common sense from giving their opinion upon Geology in its connexion with the Scriptures, the position may be safely questioned. It would be just as reasonable to maintain, that a minute acquaintance with the principles of Surgery and Morbid Anatomy was requisite, before a man was qualified to say whether a leg of mutton was tainted, and ought to be sent from the table; or that an honest countryman was unfit to sit in the jury-box, because he was ignorant of the English LawReports, or Coke upon Lyttleton. In the controversy between geologists and the Sacred Scriptures, nothing more is required but an acquaintance with the common laws of evidence, and a knowledge of the distinction between Divine and human testimony." (Reflections on Geology, suggested by a perusal of Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise; with Remarks on a Letter by J. P. S. on the Study of Geology: by the Rev. J. Mellor Brown, B. A. &c. p. 52.) This Letter will be reprinted in the Appendix ; so that the reader may see whether Mr. Brown has not, undesignedly I am willing to believe, exaggerated the description of prerequisites to Geological study. It is hardly needful to remind him that comparisons are not arguments; and that, when they are intended to be illustrations, they ought to be just. Upon his first comparison I make no remark, for its propriety is equal to its elegance: but, to invest his second with any semblance of analogy, he ought to have made his "honest countryman" very ill informed upon the facts connected with the cause which he was called to try, yet imagining himself to know all about it, and determined to shut his ears against the evidence.

unwilling to be the martyrs of conscience, were they to profess a change of sentiment which they could not feel; they would act the part of hypocrites. The nature of the impression which is actually made upon such minds, may be judged of from the language of a mathematician and philosopher of the highest order, distinguished by the originality and independence of his mind, and a professed friend of Christianity.

"Let us consider what would be the conclusion of any reasonable being in a parallel case. Let us imagine a manuscript written three thousand years ago, and professing to be a revelation from the Deity, in which it was stated that the colour of the paper of the very book now in the reader's hands is black, and that the colour of the ink in the characters which he is now reading is white. With that reasonable doubt of his own individual faculties which would become the inquirer into the truth of a statement said to be derived from so high an origin, he would ask of all those around him, whether to their senses the paper appeared to be black and the ink to be white. If he found the senses of other individuals agree with his own, then he would undoubtedly pronounce the alleged revelation a forgery, and those who propounded it to be either deceived or deceivers. He would rightly impute the attempted deceit to moral turpitude, to gross ignorance, or to interested motives in the supporters of it; but he certainly would not commit the impiety of supposing the Deity to have wrought a miraculous change upon the senses of our whole species, and then to demand their belief in a fact directly opposed to those senses; thus throwing doubt upon every conclusion of reason in regard to external objects; and, amongst others, upon the very evidence by which the authenticity of that very questionable manuscript was itself supported, and even upon the fact of its existence when before their eyes.

Should of those who honour me with their attenany tion, be not at all, or only as the result of cursory reading, acquainted with geological science, they are entreated to consider the case before them very seriously. Here is a mind of high order, versed in philosophical know

* Mr. Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise; pp. 69, 70.

SERIOUS REFLECTION UPON THIS.

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ledge, whose acquirements in the exact sciences, their highest branches, and their most astonishing applications are acknowledged with admiration through the world; who has deeply studied the nature and rules of evidence ; and who is not an enemy, but a professed friend to Revealed Religion: he marches up to the front of the imag ined discrepance, and we see the strength of his conviction. He is indeed satisfied, for himself, that Geology and Revelation are not at variance; and his method of resolving the difficulty will be mentioned in a future lecture. But, we may ask in the mean time, What is the conclusion which the uninstructed observer ought in fairness to draw? Can he satisfy himself with the assertion, that the most eminent geologists are, in general, secret or open infidels; that their doctrines upon the constitution and antiquity of the earth, are fond fancies changeable as the wind, or irreligious hypotheses of men ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth;" and that he runs no risk of being mistaken, or of becoming the instrument of moral injury to others, perhaps his own children, by making it an article of religion to maintain that all dependent nature came from the creative power of the Supreme Being, only about six thousand years ago? Will he that all solicitude upon the question may be safely dismissed, and that he gains firm footing for his faith on this subject by reposing upon an interpretation of the Mosaic records, which though extensively received, has been seriously doubted of by sound expositors in ancient and in modern times, and by some absolutely disallowed:-yea, independently of geological knowledge ?

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say

An inquiry thus opens before us which cannot but appear, to every reflecting person, to be of the first importance. "RELIGION is the highest style of man." But