fragments of new truth, or more exact adjustments | good,' this signifies that they had only a relative of old truth, may be perpetually expected. Lastly, goodness; and this is the sponge which wipes out we shall reply, that the objection to a revelation's all the difficulties which are to be found in the being consigned to a "book" is singularly inapposite, considering that by the constitution of the world and of human nature, man, without bookswithout the power of recording, transmitting, and perpetuating thought, of rendering it permanent and diffusive-ever is, ever has been, and ever must be little better than a savage; and, therefore, if there was to be a revelation at all, it might fairly be expected that it would be communicated in this form; thus affording us one more analogy, in addition to the many which Butler has stated, and which may in time be multiplied without end, between "Revealed Religion and the Constitution and Course of Nature." Laws of Moses." This is a truth which we are persuaded a profound philosophy will understand the better the more deeply it is revolved; and only those legislative pedants will refuse weight to it, who would venturously propose to give New Zealanders and Hottentots, in the starkness of their savage ignorance, the complex forms of the British constitution. In a similar manner, many of the old objections of our deistical writers have ceased to be heard of in our day, unless it be from the lips of the veriest sciolism; the objections, for instance, of that truly pedantic philosophy which once argued that ethical and religious truth are not given in the Scripture in a system such as a schoolman might have digested it into; as if the brief iteration and varied illustration of pregnant truth, intermingled with narrative, parable, and example, were not infinitely better adapted to the condition of the human intellect in general ! For similar reasons, the old objection, that statements of Christian morality are given without the requisite limitations, and cannot be literally acted upon, has been long since abandoned as an absurdity. It is granted that a hundred folios could not contain the hundredth part of all the limitations of tentious casuistry; and it is also granted that human nature is not so inept as to be incapable of interpreting and limiting for itself such rules as "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." And this leads us to notice a saying of that comprehensive genius, which we do not recollect having seen quoted in connection with recent controversies, but which is well worthy of being borne in mind, as teaching us to beware of hastily assuming that objections to Revelation, whether suggested by the progress of science, or from the supposed incongruity of its own contents, are unanswerable. We are not, he says, rashly to suppose that we have arrived at the true meaning of the whole of that book. "It is not at all incredible that a book which has been so long in the possession of man-human actions, and all the possible cases of a conkind should contain many truths as yet undiscerned. For all the same phenomena and the same faculties of investigation, from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, were equally in the possession of mankind several thousand years before." These words are worthy of Butler; and as many illustrations of their truth have been supplied since his day, so many others may fairly be anticipated in the course of time. Several distinct species of argument for the truth of Christianity from the very structure and contents of the books containing it have been invented-of which Paley's "Hora Paulina" is a memorable example. The diligent collation of the text, too, has removed many difficulties; the diligent study of the original languages, of ancient history, manners and customs, has cleared up many more; and by supplying proofs of accuracy where error or falsehood had been charged, has supplied important additions to the evidence which substantiates the truth of Revelation. Against the alleged absurdity of the Laws of Moses, again, such works as that of Micholis have disclosed much of that relative wisdom which aims not at the abstractedly best, but the best which a given condition of humanity, a given period of the world's history, and a given purpose, could dictate. In pondering such difficulties as still remain in those laws, we may remember the answer of Solon to the question, whether he had given the Athenians the best laws; viz., that he had given them the best of which they were capable or the judgment of the illustrious Montesquieu, who remarks, "When Divine Wisdom said to the Jews, I have given you precepts which are not In the same manner have many of the objections suggested at different periods by the progress of science been dissolved; and amongst the rest, those alleged from the romote historic antiquity of certain nations on which infidels, like Volney and Voltaire, once so confidently relied. And it is worthy of remark, that some of the old objections of philosophers have disappeared by the aid of that very science-geology—which has led, as every new branch of science probably will, to new ones. Geology has, however, in our judgment, done at least as much already to remove difficulties as to occasion them; and it is not illogical, or perhaps unfair, to surmise that, if we will only have patience, its own difficulties, as those of so many other branches of science, will be eventually solved. One thing is clear-that, if the Bible be true and geology be true, that cannot be geologically true which is scripturally false, or vice versâ ; and we may therefore laugh at the polite compromise which is sometimes affected by learned professors of theology and geology respectively. we demand of either-all that is needed-is, that they refrain from a too hasty conclusion of absolute contradictions between their respective sciences, and retain a quiet remembrance of the imperfection of our present knowledge both of geology and, as Butler says, of the Bible. The recent interpretation of the commencement of Genesis-by which the first verse is simply supposed to affirm the orig All ately refers to the commencement of the human economy; passing by those prodigious cycles which geology demands, with a silence worthy of a true revelation, which does not pretend to gratify our curiosity as to the previous condition of our globe, any more than our curiosity as to the history of other worlds-was first suggested by geology, though suspected and indeed anticipated by some of the early Fathers. But it is now felt by multitudes to be the more reasonable interpretation—the second verse certainly more naturally suggesting previous revolutions in the history of the earth than its then instant creation and though we frankly concede that we have not yet seen any account of the whole first chapter of Genesis which quadrates with the doctrines of geology, it does not become us hastily to conclude that there can be none. If a further adjustment of those doctrines, and a more diligent investigation of the Scriptures, together, should hereafter suggest any possible harmony-though not the true one, but one ever so gratuitously assumed it will be sufficient to neutralize the objection. This, it will be observed, is in accordance with what has already been shown-that wherever an objection is founded on apparent contradiction between two statements, it is sufficient to show any possible way in which the statements may be reconciled, whether the true one or not. The objection, in that case, to the supposition that the facts are gratuitously assumed, though often urged, is in reality, nothing to the purpose.* If it should ever be shown, for example, that supposing as many geological eras as the philosopher requires to have passed in the chasm between the first verse, which asserts the original dependence of all things on the fiat of the Creator, and the second, which is supposed to commence the human era, any imaginable condition of our system-at the close, so to speak, of a given geological period --would harmonize with a fair interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, the objection will be neutralized. inal creation of all things, while the second immedi- | English*, Latin Italian, and ancient Greek modern (though these languages have been affected by every conceivable cause of variation and depravation ;) that it would require hundreds of thousands, nay millions, of years to account for the production, by known natural causes, of the vast multitude of totally distinct languages, and tens of thousands of dialects, which man now utters. On the other hand, the geologist is more and more persuaded of the comparatively recent origin of the human race. What, then, is to harmonize these conflicting statements? Will it not be curious if it should turn out that nothing can possibly harmonize them but the statement of Genesis, that in order to prevent the natural tendency of the race to accumulate on one spot, and to facilitate their dispersion and destined occupancy of the globe, a preternatural intervention expedited the operation of the causes which would gradually have given birth to distinct languages? Of the probability of this intervention, some profound philologists have, on scientific grounds alone, expressed their conviction. But in all such matters, what we plead for is only-patience; we wish not to dogmatize; all we ask is philosophic abstinence from dogmatism. In relation to many difficulties, what is now a reasonable exercise of faith may one day be rewarded by a knowledge which on those particular points may terminate it. And, in such ways, it is surely conceivable that a great part of the objections against Revelation may, in time, disappear; and, though other objections may be the result of the progress of the older sciences or the origination of new, the solution of previous objections, together with the additions, to the evidences of Christianity, external and internal, which the study of history and of the Scriptures may supply, and the still brighter light cast by the progress of Christianity and the fulfilment of its prophecies, may inspire increasing confidence that the new objections are also destined to yield to similar solvents. Meanwhile, such new difficulties, and those more awful and gigantic shadows which we We have little doubt in our minds that the ulti- have no reason to believe will ever be chased from mately converging, though, it may be, transiently the sacred page-mysteries which probably could discrepant conclusions of the sciences of philology, not be explained from the necessary limitation of ethnology, and geology (in all of which we may our faculties, and are, at all events, submitted to rest assured great discoveries are yet to be made) us as a salutary discipline of our humilityI will tend to harmonize with the ultimate results will continue to form that exercise of faith which of a more thorough study of the records of the is probably nearly equal in every age-and necesrace as contained in the book of Revelation. Let sary in all ages, if we would be made "little chilus be permitted to imagine one example of such dren," qualified to enter the kingdom of God." possible harmony. We think that the philologist may engage to make out, on the strictest principles of induction, from the tenacity with which all communities cling to their language, and the slow observed rate of change by which they alter; by which Anglo-Saxon, for example, has become 66 * Some admirable remarks in relation to the answers we are bound to give to objections to revealed religion have been made by Leibnitz (in reply to Bayle) in the little tract prefixed to his Theodicée, entitled "De la Conformité de la Foi avec la Raison." He there shows that the utmost that can fairly be asked is, to prove that the affirmed truths involve no necessary contradiction. In conclusion, we may remark, that while many are proclaiming that Christianity is effete, and that, in the language of M. Proudhon, (who complacently says it amidst the ignominious failure of a thousand social panaceas of his own age and country,) it will certainly "die out in about three hundred years;" and while many more proclaim that, as a religion of supernatural origin and *It contains, let us recollect, (after all causes of changes, including a conquest, have been at work upon it,) a vast majority of the Saxon words spoken in the time of Alfred -nearly a thousand years ago! : supernatural evidence, it is already dying, if not quiry, but that it is now at length discovered to dead; we must beg leave to remind them that, be fictitious. * * On the contrary, thus much even if Christianity be false, as they allege, they at least will here be found, not taken for granted, are utterly forgetting the maxims of a cautious but proved, that any reasonable man, who will induction in saying that it will therefore cease to thoroughly consider the matter, may be as much exert dominion over mankind. What proof is assured as he is of his own being, that it is not, there of this? Whether true or false, it has al- however, so clear that there is nothing in it.” The ready survived numberless revolutions of human Christian, we conceive, may now say the same to opinions, and all sorts of changes and assaults. It the Froudes, and Foxtons, and to much more foris not confined, like other religions, to any one midable adversaries of the present day. Chrisrace to any one clime--or any one form of politi- tianity, we doubt not, will still live, when they cal constitution. While it transmigrates freely and their works, and the refutations of their works, from race to race, and clime to clime, its chief are alike forgotten; and a new series of attacks home, too, is still in the bosom of enterprise, and defences shall have occupied for a while (as wealth, science, and civilization; and it is at so many others have done) the attention of the this moment most powerful amongst the nations world. Christianity, like Rome, has had both the that have most of these. If not true, it has such Gaul and Hannibal at her gates but as the an appearance of truth as to have satisfied many" Eternal City" in the latter case calmly offered of the acutest and most powerful intellects of the for sale, and sold, at an undepreciated price, the species;-a Bacon, a Pascal, a Leibnitz, a Locke, very ground on which the Carthaginian had fixed a Newton, a Butler;-such an appearance of his camp, with equal calmness may Christianity truth as to have enlisted in its support an immense imitate her example of magnanimity. She may array of genius and learning genius and learn- feel assured that, as in so many past instances of ing, not only in some sense professional, and often premature triumph, on the part of her enemies, the wrongfully represented as therefore interested, but ground they occupy will one day be its own; that much of both, strictly extra-professional; animated the very discoveries, apparently hostile, of science to its defence by nothing but a conviction of the and philosophy, will be ultimately found elements force of the arguments by which its truth is sus- of her strength. Thus has it been to a great extained, and that "hope full of immortality" which tent with the discoveries in chronology and hisits promises have inspired. Under such circum- tory; and thus will it be, we are confident, (and stances it must appear equally rash and gratu- to a certain extent has been already,) with those itous to suppose, even if it be a delusion, that an in geology. That science has done much, not institute, which has thus enlisted the sympathies only to render the old theories of Atheism untenof so many of the greatest minds of all races and able, and to familiarize the minds of men to the of all ages-which is alone stable and progressive idea of miracles, by that of successive creations, amidst instability and fluctuation-will soon come but to confirm the scriptural statement of the to an end. Still more absurdly premature is it to comparatively recent origin of our race. Only raise a pæan over its fall, upon every new attack the men of science and the men of theology must upon it, when it has already survived so many. alike guard against the besetting fallacy of their This, in fact, is a tone which, though every age kind-that of too hastily taking for granted that renews it, should long since have been rebuked they already know the whole of their respective by the constant falsification of similar prophecies, sciences, and of forgetting the declaration of the from the time of Julian to the time of Boling- Apostle, equally true of all man's attainments, broke, and from the time of Bolingbroke to the whether in one department of science or another time of Strauss. As Addison, we think, humor- -"We know but in part, and we prophesy but ously tells the Atheist, that he is hasty in his in part.' logic when he infers that if there be no God, Though Socrates perhaps expressed himself too immortality must be a delusion, since, if chance absolutely when he said that "he only knew that has actually found him a place in this bad world, he knew nothing," yet a tinge of the same spirit— it may, perchance, hereafter find him another place a deep conviction of the profound ignorance of the in a worse-so we say, that if Christianity be human mind, even at its best-has ever been a a delusion, since it is a delusion which has been characteristic of the most comprehensive genius. proof against so much of bitter opposition, and It has been a topic on which it has been fond of has imposed upon such hosts of mighty intellects, mournfully dilating. It is thus with Socrates, there is nothing to show that it will not do so still, with Plato, with Bacon, (even amidst all his magin spite of the efforts either of a Proudhon or a nificent aspirations and bold predictions,) with Strauss. Such a tone was, perhaps, never so Newton, with Pascal, and especially with Butler, triumphant as during the heat of the Deistical in whom, if in any, the sentiment is carried to controversy in our own country, and to which excess. We need not say that it is seldom found Butler alludes with so much characteristic but in the writings of those modern speculators who deeply satirical simplicity, in the preface to his rush, in the hardihood of their adventurous logic, great work:"It is come," says he, "I know on a solution of the problems of the Absolute and not how, to be taken for granted by many persons the Infinite, and resolve in delightfully brief demthat Christianity is not so much a subject of in-onstrations the mightiest problems of the universe -those great enigmas, from which true philosophy shrinks, not because it has never ventured to think "Dimmed with incessant weeping are my eyes; of them, but because it has thought of them Meanwhile we conclude that God has created "two great lights," the greater light to rule man's busy day-and that is Reason; and the lesser to rule his contemplative night-and that is Faith. But Faith itself shines only so long as she reflects some faint illumination from the brighter orb. From Ainsworth's Magazine. THE BEGGAR OF THE PONT NEUF. And he, ere long, starved at my feet will lie. From the N. Y. Tribune. BY THOMAS L. HARRIS. NIGHT without star or eve or dawning, gloom Each beautiful Belief whose living form FROM THE GERMAN OF THE FREIHERR VON GAUDY. Each Faith whose radiant wing shed sudden morn CROUCHING the brazen pedestal beside Where Henri Quatre's equestrian figure towers, The light is faded, and her pale cheek's hue Still the mob's cruel jests I seem to hear: Hark! Vive le Roi!' his latest accents say. I'm living still! My gallant brother fled And on our father's hearth his life-blood shed. In ten sad years my beauty passed away. 'Twas my delight his joyous face to view: Till with disgust I strove his kiss to shun, As he each day more like his father grew. God! can I e'er forget that look? Oh no! Upon the illumined mind; Each Hope that stood with angel-finger spired The Soul's great destiny ; All to that unbelieving heart had died, Grave seemed to shout to grave like deep to deep, "No Soul, no God!" this wail for evermore Beat, surging o'er his rigid lips of stone, Wondering I gazed and mused and wept the while, and Night why Pain and Fear With dark and desolate pinions o'er him sweep? Learn thou that Sin clouds heaven from human sight: He sowed as he doth reap! "Doubt is the eternal shade by Evil cast, Very remarkable was it, says History, that until that July day, Brown the younger had never been present at the creation of a soap-bubble! The earth has bubbles as the water hath! IT is July 17th, 1835. Brown, Alderman and British Merchant, is at fashionable watering-place, getting old brain-cobwebs blown away by seabreeze process tiresome enough to him, but rendered endurable by help of daily newspaper and price-current. Brown is there and his family? Son of him is there, young Brown-promising were our childhood worth! Where hadst thou one day to become a man; doubtless, also, an ealder, elder-man, what we now call alder, woodenman; old Saxon meaning being sacrificed to modern orthography, or, perhaps, to true significance, unfortunately making room for insinuations not of the most complimentary description. At present, however, Brown junior, the unfathomable Past all behind him, is growing up into the infinite Future, out of morocco slippers with more or less sand in them-sand which old Ocean has borne from amid unknown ages to that shore, only from thence to be scooped up by shoe of young Brown. Possible angels, brothers and sisters of him, are there, or are not there-curiosity, whether laudable or otherwise, questions History of them in vain. Not with them has she to do-only with Brown junior lies all interest to her; others, therefore, remain behind in the past, there forever to dwell in silence amid the unthought-of forgotten. How few units act and work in what we call universal history! Vain biped! to dream that thou couldst write such a thing. More particularly absurd, also, to believe that when written it should be true! Even in such historiette as the present, can we be sure-can we, with any not remote degree of certainty, say that this also is true? lived, existed rather, O thou unlucky Brown? Unlucky in youth, wanting insight into bubbles; yet, perhaps, hereafter to be still more unlucky, experience absent from thee, and the bubbles thy too sanguine faith thought a world of light and beauty lasting as thy life, may suddenly and unexpectedly burst, and only a little dirty water remain to thee: accompanied by glorious recollections, perhaps, yet also painful ones, as thou carefully gatherest it up, that, if possible, Hope may yet again waft it, a glowing orb, up into that blue infinity, within whose starry depths all that is immortal of thee must also one day vanish from time. For the present, Brown junior stands, hoop in hand, at the hotel door; doubtless, did one know his desires, wishing for a more dog-day fitting occupation than hoop-trundling. When, lo! from the shady, cool recesses behind him, lying dark amid icy larders and curtained glass doors, emerges a vision of endless joy to him, that longedfor of his soul-a playmate! "Play," says Jean Paul, is the first poetry of the human being." This poetry now became visible to our young Brown in little daughter of his landlady. Shyly, yet smilingly, she approaches; but why, wondereth Brown junior, why carries she that clay pipe? why that saucer of what? O thou outdweller, And yet must truth be more easily drawn now shalt thou learn a new thing, have a new from deep well in small historiettes than in large world revealed unto thee, to which, for the preshistories-too often marvellously lead-like, super-ent, cycles of hoops, galaxies of marbles, and naturally ponderous; very apt therefrom to break such like, shall appear utterly insane and worththe rope, and so be lost in great revolutionary splash, disturbing thereby for a time the calm reflex of infinity. So also in seeking there for truth, the seeker dims by his shadow the light he looks for, seeing in its stead himself. Thus, therefore, must the truth of all history in some measure be shadowed by the individual historian; a portion of it be, more or less, a reflection of himself. Histories of nations! histories of confederations! what are they at best but dim shadowings forth of feuds, squabbles, fightings, intriguings, and what not, lighted up by lurid gleams of war-fires, whether internal or external, and of altogether the most insane way of getting through this life, and many-colored, bright and evanescent, as the sailout of it, conceivable by the cleverest demon! ing globes thy joyous breath gives life to. Incompatible, also, to most apprehensions, with all less! And now she dips the bowl of that long pipe in saucer of soapsuds, and gently blowing, raiseth wondrous piles of strangely-formed cells, changing ever, and seeming to his wondering eye still more and more beautiful-till, lost in awe, he sees her lift the bowl from this heaped-up pile of glowing rainbows and form a globe of sunny, swimming light. And little Brown, entranced and speechless, gazed for the first time at a soap-bubble. CHAPTER III.-BUBBLES. Beautiful, O childhood, art thou! Beautiful and Whom the gods love die young. |