irrefragably shewn. Intellect and volition are quite of a different nature from corporeal figure or motion, and must reside in, or emanate from, a different kind of being,-a kind which, to distinguish it from matter, is called spirit or mind. Of these, the one is necessarily inert, the other essentially active. The one is characterized by want of animation, life, and even motion, except as it is urged by something ab extra; the other is living, energetic, self-moving, and possessed of power to move other things. We often fancy, it is true, that matter moves matter; but this, strictly speaking, is not correct. When one wheel, or lever, in a system of machinery, communicates motion to matter, it can, at most, only communicate what it received; and if you trace the connection of the mechanism, you will, at length, arrive at a first mover, which first mover is, in fact, spiritual. If, for example, it be an animal, it is evidently the spiritual part of that animal from whence the motion springs. If otherwise it be the descent of a weight, or the fall of water, or the force of a current of air, or the expansive power of steam, the action must be ultimately referred to what are styled powers of nature; that is, to gravitation or electricity; and these, it is now well known, cannot be explained by any allusion to material principles, but to the indesinent operation of the Great Spirit, in whom we live, and move, and have our being the finger of God touching and urging the various subordinate springs, which, in their turn, move the several parts of the universe. Thus God acts in all places, in all times, and upon all persons. The whole material world, were it not for His Spirit, would be inanimate and inactive : all motion is derived either from His energy, or from a spirit which He animates; and it is next to certain, that the only primary action is that of spirit; and the most direct and immediate, that of spirit upon spirit. How will this comport with the Nebular Hypothesis and its correlate? (p. 545.) We take another extract from Olinthus Gregory, which, we think, bears upon our controversy:-It is only with regard to the facts recorded in the Bible that men ever talk of the daily diminution of credibility. Who complains of a decay of evidence in relation to the actions of Alexander, Hannibal, Pompey, or Cæsar? How many fewer of the events recorded by Plutarch, or Polybius, or Livy, are believed now, on account of a diminution of evidence, than were believed by Mr. Addison, or Lord Clarendon, or Geoffrey Chaucer? We never hear persons wishing they had lived ages earlier, that they might have had better proofs that Cyrus was the conqueror of Babylon-that Darius was beaten in several battles

by Alexander-that Titus destroyed Jerusalem-that Hannibal was entirely routed by Scipio, or Pompey by Julius Cæsar; though we sometimes find men of ardent and enterprising minds, exclaiming,-Oh! that I had lived and been present when such splendid events occurred! how lively an interest should I have taken in such scenes! how much concern in their termination! and, indeed, it is the frequent hearing of such exclamations, that causes men to confound weight of evidence with warmth of feeling, and to lose sight of the essential difference between real evidence, or the true basis of belief in history, and the sensible impression or influence which such history may make upon the mind. Every science has its ultimate questions, boundaries which cannot be passed. Let the fair grammatical import of Scripture language be investigated, and whatever propositions are, by an easy and natural interpretation, deducible from thence, let them be received as the dictates of infinite wisdom; whatever aspect they bear, or whatever difficulties they present. Repugnant to reason they never can be, because they spring from the author of it; but superior to reason, whose limits they will infinitely surpass, we must expect to find them, since they are a communication of such matters of fact, respecting the spiritual and eternal world, as need not have been communicated, if the knowledge of them could have been acquired from any other quarter. How just that remark of Mr. Hall's,-How, without special revelation from the very mouth of the Great Angel of the covenant Himself, could we ever have known, that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, or ceased to create. The rest of the law, almost except the preface, is strictly enactive. This is doctrinal and declarative. Speaking of the analogy betwixt the difficulties offered in the sciences, and the mysteries of religion, Olinthus Gregory says,-Philosophers, notwithstanding all these difficulties, recommend the cultivation and diffusion of the sciences, because of their tendency to sharpen the intellectual faculties of man, and meliorate his condition in society. With how much greater reason and earnestness, then, should Christians recommend the dissemination and adoption of pure and undefiled religion, considering its direct tendency to enlarge the understanding; and yet fill it with the contemplation of Deity; to purify and harmonize the passions; to refine the moral sense; to qualify and strengthen for every function in life; to sustain under the pressure of affliction; to afford consolation in sickness, and enable us to triumph in death. What other science can even make a pretension to de

throne oppression-to abolish slavery-to exclude war-to extirpate fraud-to banish violence-to revive the withered blossoms of Paradise? Such are the pretensions and blessings of genuine Christianity; and wherever genuine Christianity prevails, they are experienced. Thus, it accomplishes its promises on earth, where it alone has enemies; it will therefore accomplish them in Heaven, where its friends reign. Here, indeed, its advocate must be reduced to silence; for how shall he display the meaning of its celestial promises? how describe dignity so vast, or picture glory so brilliant? How shall language delineate what mind cannot imagine? and where is that mind among puny and ephemeral creatures, that can penetrate the thick obscure-that can describe the light of perfect knowledge that can feel the glow of perfect love, and can breathe the air of perfect happiness? How far the Rev., and now Venerable T. Gisborne, Prebendary of Durham, has exposed geology, when he opposed the sentiments of Dean Buckland and Archbishop Summer, for which he received a reproof perfectly unmerited,-but no man must touch the almost universal idol,-we do not know; but had he given it such an exposure as he has justly given the lover of money, it would not soon have recovered. The covetous, the man who is under the dominion of the love of money, shall not inherit the kingdom of God. In the present life he has a foretaste of the fruits of his sin. He is restless, anxious, dissatisfied; at one time harrassed by uncertainty as to the probable result of his projects; at another, soured by the failure of them; at another, disappointed, in the midst of success, by discerning, too late, that the same exertions employed in some other line of advantage, would have been more productive. But suppose him to have been through life as free from the effects of these sources of vexation as the most favourable picture could represent him, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God. He may not have been a miser; but he was a lover of money. He may not have been an extortioner; but he was a lover of money. He may not have been fraudulent; but he was a lover of money. He shall not inherit the kingdom of God. He has had his day and his object. He has sought, and he may have accumulated earthly possessions. By their instrumentality he may have gratified many other appetites and desires. But he did not first seek the kingdom of God; therefore he shall not obtain it. He loved the world; therefore he shall perish with the world. He has wilfully bartered his soul for money. In vain he is now aghast at his former madness. In vain does he now detest the idol which he worshipped. The gate of sal

vation is closed against him. He inherits the bitterness of unavailing remorse-the horrors of eternal death. A book written in that style by Prebendary Gisborne, would never have been forgotten. Some other writer and writers will arise and vin. dicate the truth of God's word. (Psal. Ixxiv. 22.) Whether the island of Tahiti was washed by the waters of the flood, we have no means of determining. Mr. Darwin, Secretary to the London Geological Society, in 1832, explored it, at once delighted and astonished, through scenery wild and magnificent almost beyond the reach of imagination. Precipices many thousand feet in height, that seemed to shoot their jagged and serrated summits into the middle sky, were cleft to their bases by ravines so steep and narrow, that until the mid-day sun stood vertically over them, the beams rested on their sides without penetrating to the bottom, columnar facades of lava reminded him of ancient sepulchres hewn out among the rocks. A fine cataract, several hundred feet in height, came leaping over a ledge in front, in one headlong bound to the bottom. Higher up among the cliffs, there was a second cataract; a third, lower down, sought the profounder depths below. The ferns and liliaceous bulbs, the bread-fruit-tree, and the broad-leaved banana, flung out their boughs and leaflets, with all the rich profusion of tropical vegetation, from every rent and cranny among the crags, or clustered in bushy and tangled thickets, or overhung, in luxuriant festoons, the steep ladder-like ridges; a clear blue sky looked down over all. Perhaps not one of my questions may difficult determined geologists; for it would not difficult them to bring before them all the difficulties in creation, providence, and redemption,-all the difficulties in a past or a future eternity. 26. Will H. Miller, Esq., keeping close to the point seriatim, even attempt to answer the one-half of the facts and questions in this short treatise? Will Dean Buckland, or the bold Professor Sedgwick, or any, or all the Geologic Society of London, dare to come to the rescue of their Goliath, Dr. P. Smith? They must give us a counterpart to creation,-the flood, the Fourth Commandment, on to Revelation, recalling and cancelling the present Revelation, with all its evidences, facts, doctrines, duties, exhortations, promises, threatenings. Testimony, Divine testimony, we require and demand. We put it to all who write in Macphail, if they can send forth a man who can frame an answer. It is absolutely impossible. We say, therefore, fearlessly, to the Endowed and Established, the Free, the Independent, the Episcopal, the Voluntary, or United Presbyterian, they cannot produce a Revelation diviner, older, truer, than the one Dr. P.

Smith has been unsuccessfuly attempting to coax, twist, wrest, but upon which he has made no impression. We fearlessly throw down the gauntlet to every man possessed of the Bible, and say, till you produce a realer, truer Revelation, Geology must be, in the language of the dramatist, false as hell. Dr. P. Smith, and those mentioned in his relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of geological science; H. Miller, Esq., and his 48th chapter, and other kind friends, have laid the gravestone on geological science; there let it lie, not deeper than my solitary companion, buried in Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's ground, at the Grange, in September, 1845, when Mr. John Thoms, factor, Keir Mains, died. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder himself was, in 1848, buried in the Grange Cemetery. Miss Gilfillan met her death, 28th June, 1849, in a similar manner with the late Rev. William Goold, Reformed Presbyterian Minister, Edinburgh. The time has come when the whole question must be understood and settled by the friends of Revelation, unless they wish it to be turned to evil account by its enemies, anti-infidel geologist Christian Observer, May, 1834. This is written anonymously in and about the year that Buckland, Sedgwick, Greenough, Powel, Babbage, Bishop Sumner, and others, recanted. Dr. P. Smith and Mr. Miller have repeatedly used the same threat, but we treat it like the idle wind; for the foundation of God standeth sure. Its enemies may and will turn it to what account they can; but they will be bounded like the raging ocean, or the still more determined adversary. We fearlessly say it is understood, and everlastingly settled, so far as God and His word will never change, and we subscribe ourselves anti-infidel geologist, 6th June, 1849. If the readers of Dr. P. Smith and Mr. H. Miller could, and would, suppose that their writings, and those of others in favour of geology, were calculated and intended to destroy their property and good name, and even everlasting hopes, they would see the Bible to be sure, and their writings, however laboured and iterated, and boldly affirmed, less tenacious than a rope of sand. It is because mankind are indifferent and unbelieving, that they find a single reader and believer. Mr. Miller is candid, and states the massy armour that is to overturn the Divine testimony. I am desirous, he says, for the special benefit of the uninitiated, to exhibit, deduced from a few familiar objects, the sort of circumstantial evidence on which the geologist founds no inconsiderable proportion of his conclusions. He is much a reasoner in the inferential style, and expatiates largely on the deductive and circumstantial, (Bass Rock, p. 94.) Evidence, sensible or moral, proof, testi