yes, your own children, especially in the well-educated and inquiring classes of society, and what vantage-ground you are surrendering to the impugners of the Bible; thus giving your aid for undermining the faith of, probably, the dearest to you in this world. Dr. Smith is either completely carried captive by the devil at his will, and so, unconsciously, serving him; or he is doing what we could not believe him to do. Is Dr. Young, Whitby, and Prebendary Gisborne, or all who believe the Bible, deceived? Is geology, hatched in hell only yester day, to overturn the Bible? How dare any man, sprung of earth, thus pretend to argue against God? I caused Mr. James Anderson read to Mr. R. B. Ånderson pp. 497, 498. He said it would not do. But we need ask no man's opinion, as if we were in doubt; it is fully answered in Rev. vii. 9-17. To that redeemed company we safely appeal. Know ye not the universal rule of language, that the figurative is always to be explained by the simple, the obscure by the perspicuous. We know it. You admitted, Doctor, that the whole of the first chapter of Genesis is in the style of plain narrative, evidently intended to be understood as a simple, straightforward, unadorned history. The account of the flood is quite the same; and no man but Powell ever could have conceived the moral law, which Christ came into the world to obey, and fulfil to the letter, and even the spirit, to be figurative. Galileo, who, in 1633, was made to swear, with a sincere heart, and undissembled fidelity, I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies; but said with great emotion, as he rose, E pur si muove,-It moves, however, (p. 258.) Galileo died 1642, the year of Newton's birth. It is the manner of the Scriptures, and most copiously in their earliest written parts, to speak of the Deity-His nature-His perfections-His pur poses-and His operations, in language borrowed from the bodily and mental constitution of man; and from those opi nious concerning the works of God in the natural world, which were generally received by the people to whom the blessing of Revelation was granted, (p. 266.) This is more efficacious than the lever, the wheel and axis, the pulley, the inclined plane, the wedge, and the screw, the six mechanical powers. It is a greater discovery than the steam-engine and all its congeners. Upon it he relies to cause the Bible to bend to

geology, though I cannot see how. His attempt to harmonize the Bible and his geology, is exactly like Mr. Miller's five of six different creations, annihilating the infidel argument-both equally abortive. Mr. David Cousin, Superintendent of Public Works, who, we think, from his generally correct opinions on

many subjects, will never be brutalized by geology, expressed a pretty correct opinion of scientific men in general; and the wish to be scientific, has laid prostrate both Dr. P. Smith and Mr. H. Miller, neither of them mean, or ill-disposed men. They both seem to wish to bring glory to God and good to mankind; but they will never do it while, like moles, they work under ground. At the close of Lecture III., (p. 97,) we took a brief review. We do so again at Part II. of Lecture VII., before we enter what we reckon the rapids, or the Falls of Niagara. If he has been bad and fearful before, he becomes awful, horrible, and overwhelming now, (p. 268.) We stop at p. 267, and look back to p. 95. He has got geology to fill the recesses of an unfathomable antiquity, and he now enters upon the flood, which he justly calls a tremendous fact. But he says, It is remarkable, that learned writers have not perceived the absence of any logical connection between the universality of historical tradition, and a geographical universality of the deluge itself. Some have ascribed, he says, the depositions, the fractures, the dislocations, the devastations, the transport of materials, and the entire formation of strata, to the deluge. Others, like the great Linnæus, and the consequential Dr. John Fleming, ascribe to it nothing at all. My friend, Alexander Henderson of Hazelbank, and, most likely, his son Thomas, of Greenbeck, incline rather to this side; whether by the contagion, or infection of the Free Church, we cannot say, and may never learn. Thomas was going to ask old men about the Kinnel cutting its course from above St. Ann's bridge, perhaps opposite Raehills, to the Carse of Kinnel; while one, nearly as old as any of them, and as learned as them all, was assuring him what he might have seen at a single glance, that it must have done so. Dr. P. Smith thinks the truth lies between the extremes. During both the increase and subsidence of the waters, a considerable action, from the rushing among obstacles, would seem inevitable; but the admission of this by no means necessitates the farther position, that those effects would not be distinguishable to men after the lapse of many ages; and that they should have produced the stratifications of the earth, is, he says, a notion which must appear impossible to any one who has a tolerably correct idea of what these stratifications are. I have not, perhaps, the idea of Dr. Smith, though I should not be far behind him; and to me it has never appeared impossible, considering who sent it and directed it. No doubt, the mineralogical, or lithological strata, are overwhelming; but what are they to Him to cause the flood perform, who made all things, about 6000 years ago, out

of absolute nothing. Geology, doubtless, enlarges the mind, and is a useful science when Scripturally founded. He has a great work with the drift, sand, gravel, boulders. This, though the very last effect of the flood, because these are upon, or near the surface, yet, according to him, there is evidence, we do not know of what kind, or degree, that these formations were effected in periods much more remote than the date of the flood in the days of Noah, and even before the creation of man, and his contemporary animals. We really do not know what animals were not contemporary with him. We do beg Mr. Miller, after he reads this, or any of the cockneys of London who may be geologic editors of newspapers, to put them all in their first publication after they peruse this, with the Divine stamp upon them; for we will not take even their affidavit; and they may depend upon it, that they shall have, by return of post, the price of the newspaper. By this, the Doctor is compelled to the conclusion, that the flood of Noah was not absolutely universal. Now, we do beg the attention, even of dispassionate geologians, to the fact of a flood after 40 days and night's rain, and the fountains of the great deep giving forth their stores for 150 days, or five months, slow or fast, as they please to conjecture; and the mighty God of Jacob threatening this for 120 years, and seeing this drift universal over continent and island, and all upon, or nearly upon the surface, and all done by water; and the Divine evidence, that there never was water universally upon the earth at any other time; and let them say, as they shall answer to the Most High God, if they are not brought almost to the conviction, that this drift must have been caused, if anything at all was caused, by the flood. After the drift, comes the strata, since there was no water at any other time mentioned in the Bible; and by it we must keep till we get a better. The indubitable fact of there having been a most unimaginable flood, and of there never being water over all the earth at any other period, shall we be allowed to say, since God existed, puts the matter beyond the very possibility of doubt, and drowns, for ever, unscriptural geology. The assertions, assumptions, declarations, deductions, and inferences of geologians, we care no more than the craws care for Acts of Parliament. The Christian Observer for February, 1831, gives the following anecdote of the late good Dr. Waugh, London :-When the subject of church establishments was like to be the apple of discord at some meeting before 1831,-the year before Dr. Marshall's wonderful discovery,Dr. Waugh said, Weel, it may be so. I remember, when I

1

returned home at the vacation of Earlston school, I frequently went out to the muir to have some talk with my father's shepherd,-a douce, talkative, and wise man, in his way; and he told me, a wondering boy, a great many things I had never read in my school-books,-about the Tower of Babel, seven mile sank, seven mile fell, and seven mile stands, and ever mair sall; and about the craws, that they aye lay the first stick of their nests on Candlemas day; and that some of them that big their nests in rocks and cliffs, the corbies, have siccan skill of the wind, that if it is to blaw mainly frae the east, in the following spring they are sure to build their nests on what will be the bieldy side; and mony a ane that notices it, can tell frae that, the airth the wind will blaw. After expressing my admiring belief of this, I thought, as I had begun Latin, and was, therefore, a clever chield, that I wadna let the herd run away wi' a' the learning. It was at the time when the alteration of the style (1752) had not ceased to cause great grief and displeasure to many of the good old people in Scotland; and I knew the herd was a zealous opponent of the change; so I slily asked him, Do the craws count Candlemas by the new or the auld style? He replied, with great indignation, D'ye think the craws care for your Acts o' Parliament. In March, 1751, Dr. Johnson publishes an amusing letter in the Rambler, well worth the attention of geologers I must take another little excerpt from the late excellent seceding minister, born in 1754, and died in 1828. A gentleman, who obtained an introductory letter to him, and who is now eminent, was thus addressed on its delivery: Where do ye come frae, lad? I replied, D'ye ken Earlston and Leader Water ! Ken Earlston and Leader Water! he exclaimed; ken Earlston and Leader Water! oh! my dear laddie, the last time I was in Scotland, I went, alone, to the top of Earlston hill, and looked along the valley, and there wasna a bend o' the water, nor a hillock, nor a grey stane, nor a cottage, nor a farm onstead, on Leader Water, that I didna ken as weell as my ain hearthstane. And I looked down the side o' Earlston hill, and I saw there a bit green swaird enclosed, wi' a grey stane dyke, and there wasna ane o' a' I had ance ken'd o' the inhabitants of the valley, that wasna lying cauld there. Heavenly John Anderson and his godly sister, (p. 43,) are worth the price of this volume,-their burials only ten days divided, (2 Sam. i. 23) Earlston churchyard contains them till the resurrection. Though Dr. Waugh may be a type of the last century, he would do for any. How such a man

would put to shame aspiring Dr. John Brown of Broughton Meeting-house!

To return to our weary geology. Why do geologists wish to depreciate the flood? There must be a cause. Is it an honourable reason? We trow not. What has any man to do but to believe Moses, and improve his veritable writings? (Heb. xi. 3.) The getting the water, (p. 151;) the disposing of it, (p. 151;) the size of the ark, (p. 155;) the collecting the animals, (p. 156;) even their getting down from the summit of Ararat, (p. 158,) are all questioned,—all looked upon with awful suspicion, and said to be improbable; nay, even impossible. What interest has the Doctor in this special pleading? Is it seemly for a minister of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, for a divinity tutor to the Protestant Dissenting College at Homerton; is it possible for a Christian-to be using every effort to prove the Bible false; denying the sun, moon, and stars were only made 48 hours before man; limiting the flood to about 500 miles square? But does he make it out! No, never. In much less time than 1656 years after the flood Ireland was peopled; and, of course, England and Scotland. All Africa, America, Asia, Polynesia Australia, and Europe, were peopled 1656 years after the flood; and when mankind lived ten times as long, and produced, of course, ten times as many; and the world, as it came from its Maker's hands was, in beauty and fertility, before that after the flood,—is it not everything but certain, they would be as widely spread! Geology is the enemy of God and man. It hardens the heart, cauterizes the conscience, darkens the understanding, renders obstinate the will. It makes rational, immortal men, to be completely taken up with such creatures as limpets, mussels, crabs, and oysters, to the neglect, nay, the certain destruction of the immortal soul. It denies the essential attributes of Deity, His veracity, and His Almighty power. Following a professed determined infidel, it will, at pleasure, create earth, air, fire, and water, or steal them, and say it made them, or they existed, when as yet there were none of them. The Bible must be tortured, by what they call criticism and philology, to speak the very reverse of what it plainly declares; and yet it never speaks it, but in their bold, baseless assertions. Dr. P. Smith says, We are born for great and noble purposes,-namely, as he strenuously urges, to disbelieve, deny, divide, the Scriptures of truth, before they will believe that geology commenced at the flood. We stand, therefore, upon safe ground, and are fully war ranted, by Divine authority, to translate the language of the