FIDELITY TO EVIDENCE.

29

We arrive at a conviction, that the same wisdom and rectitude of the omnipotent and infinitely good Being, which established the Laws of Matter, have also established Laws of Mind; and that to refuse our belief, where sufficient moral evidence has been laid before us, is not less unreasonable than it would be to doubt the dictates of our senses or the results of mathematical proof.

It is however a fact that even moral truth may derive important aid from a judicious application of mathematical methods of investigation. The progress made, within the last sixty years, in the most refined branches of Analytics, has contributed its measure of auxiliary support to the resolution of questions which have a relation to the evidences of religion; by the doctrine of chances. The probabilities for and against the occurrence of a supposed fact, or the credibility of witnesses, warranting the belief of a miracle, have been reduced to equations and satisfactorily worked out. The late Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Herbert Marsh) in his Letters to Archdeacon Travis, nearly fifty years ago, employed this method on a question of criticism; and Mr. Babbage, in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, has applied it to the refutation of Hume's endeavour to set up an argument against miracles wrought in favour of religion.

These considerations should deepen our conviction of the duty of dealing faithfully with evidence. Those who have temporary purposes to answer, and selfish interests to promote, may, if they be regardless of moral obligation, permit their predilections to infect their judgment, and to trample down their sincerity. But Christian principles will not allow us to do so. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever are (oɛuva) fair, whatsoever just, whatsoever pure, whatsoever amiable, whatsoever (svçnua) deserve honourable mention," it is our duty and our happiness to seek, and when acquired to profess. Let us exert our

utmost diligence to obtain true premises; let our attention be vigilant, that we may rightly understand them; let us watch carefully every step of our deductions, that they trespass not the limit of correct reasoning; but let us not be stopped in our course, nor desist from pursuing the straight line, because objections meet us which are drawn from other departments of human knowledge. Our duty is to bid those objections to stand aside for a time. In the pursuit of our present line of inquiry, it is more than barely possible that new light may arise; or another point of view may be reached, which will have the effect of exterminating the difficulty. Should this not be the result, our work then will be to trace the derivation of the difficulty from its own source; and to follow out the separate course of investigation by its own principles. Thus we may find a deliverance from our perplexity in the most effectual manner, by ascertaining that it had no founda. tion in its own class of knowledge: or the pressure of the difficulty may be diminished, so far as to yield a reasonable satisfaction that any remaining obscurity may be fair. ly imputed to the inherent weakness and the necessary limitations of our imperfect nature. Above all, let us not suffer ourselves to be beguiled into the foolish notion, if it be not an insidious pretence, for the purpose of undermining the foundations of religious truth,—that a position may be false in philosophy but true in theology; or, inversely, philosophically true and theologically false. It is scarcely conceivable that a sane mind could admit such an assertion yet it has been made, with some disguise perhaps in the phrase, by persons who apparently expect. ed to be credited.

The sum of objects which we can perceive, or know, or conceive of as existing, falls into two very different classes of description.

The one class is stamped with the proofs of mutability,

contingence, and dependence. It presents itself to our senses and our consciousness, in a variety of ways; yet all those ways and their results are limited, but the object itself is to us illimitable. We call it THE UNIVERSE, or more correctly the Dependent or the Finite Universe. We know not its extent: for, while the microscope, at the one extremity of the scale, and astronomical observations at the other, set before us multitude, magnitude, distance, and minuteness, which we feel to become overwhelming to our faculties, we have no reason to suppose that we have reached a term, in either direction of our observations. The vast space into which we look, and the 66 worlds upon worlds" with which we see it to be filled, may be but the threshold of the finite universe; and in the lowest part of the known scale of being, we gain no evidence of ever touching a boundary.

The other description of what we can know is not presented to our senses; but of its existence we gain an irresistible conviction by reasoning. The former class, however vast its extent and remote its antiquity, impresses us, by many facts and circumstances, with the conviction that it had a beginning. This material portion is that alone which is cognizable by our senses. We find it to possess a natural inertness; yet it is in perpetual motion. That motion supposes an impulsive power, as its cause. We can trace the so called causes of motion, from one to another that is prior, and so continually; and we cannot rationally stop till we have ascended to the idea of a voluntary First Cause. To this originating principle we are compelled, by the manifest evidence of the case, to attribute the properties of being intelligent, underived, and independent; in other words of being self-existent, spontane. ously active, and possessed in an infinite degree of every property that is an excellence; the ONE NECESSARY BEING. We combine all other beings into one group, and we call

it the dependent universe: but comparing this assemblage with that One Being, it becomes, in the comparison, a shadow of existence, "less than nothing and vanity;" mere emptiness. THIS BEING is GOD; not an object perceived by our organs of sense, but the Object of pure mental conception. He is MIND, in the highest sense; existing necessarily, and therefore having always existed and always to exist; a free-agent, of infinite intellectual and moral perfection; upon whom all other beings depend as their Originator, Preserver, and Benefactor, their Proprietor and Lawgiver, their Judge and Rewarder; the supremely wise, holy, and powerful Basis of the universe. Unbiased reason, no less than the book of revelation, utters the voice of satisfaction and gladness; "Give unto Jehovah the glory DUE unto his name; O, worship Jehovah in the beauty of holiness!-For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things; to whom be glory for ever!"

Of the existence and perfections, the providence and efficient activity, of this glorious Being, we have every kind and degree of evidence that can warrant the reception of any moral truth whatever. If any honest-hearted inquirer entertain a doubt, it is sufficient to refer him to the volumes of Ray and Derham, Clarke, Paley, and the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises.

Neither is this the place for adducing evidence that rational creatures are accountable, and that the Supreme Being exercises a moral government over them. The writings of Butler alone are sufficient for this purpose. We are convinced also, upon the most satisfactory grounds, that this Wise and Gracious Being has been pleased to give the elements of positive knowledge to mankind, sufficient to inform us upon subjects which it most highly concerns us to know, but of which, without such information, it would be utterly impossible for us,

CONNEXIONS OF GEOLOGY.

33

to have any other than conjectures, vague and painfully uncertain. The proofs that God has thus made known those facts and truths, and the realities of an eternal futurity; and that the communication is contained in the series of ancient books called the Holy Scriptures; are also to be found in many easily accessible works.

It plainly follows, that a serious attention to those books is the most important duty, and the most interesting occupation, to which we can apply ourselves.

Our great object is, to understand them in their true meaning; that is, to take them in the sense in which they were intended by the Spirit of truth from whose inspiration they have proceeded. This true sense and meaning must be brought out by an impartial application of the same means which men use, from a conviction of their necessity and adequacy, in order to obtain a just understanding of any writings composed in long past times and in ancient languages.

The study of revealed religion, thus pursued, cannot but be in perfect harmony with all true science. The works and the word of God are streams from the same source, and, though they flow in different directions, they necessarily partake of the same qualities of truth, wisdom, and goodness. Geology, in an especial manner, possesses its place in this beneficent association. It holds also the most interesting connexions with every other branch of Natural Science. It attracts and renders subsidiary to itself, the entire domain of Natural History; it is indissolubly combined with Chemistry, with which it participates in reciprocal advantages of the most important kind; it has connexions, which to many have been unexpected, with the sublime science of Astronomy, but which the genius and attainments of Babbage, Herschel, and Hopkins, both anticipated and have demonstrated,connexions of peculiar interest, and which go far to vin