the superiority of one mind over another. Is not the fact that such thoughts came into the mind of Plato or Shakespeare, of Bacon, Watt, or Fulton, encompassed with the same difficulties which are implied in the idea of supernatural inspiration; that is, of communicating directly to the world thoughts that God designs to communicate to mankind? If it be said that the thoughts in such cases of genius come through human powers, and can be measured by those human powers, we ask whence were those powers themselves? They are not the result of any transmitted or inherited genius; they are not the effect of development from the seminal genius of ancestors whose powers are unfolded into this form; they cannot be measured by any thing in the line from which they are descended that has grown to this growth; they are apparently the result of a divine arrangement above any mere "laws of nature," for the very purpose of throwing these great thoughts upon the world. Assuredly it will not be maintained that the germ of Hamlet, and Lear, and the Tempest, was laid in the hearts of some remote ancestors of Shakespeare, and were in the course of ages developed into these wonderful creations of genius." It will not be pretended that in the intellect of John Shakespeare, the father of Shakespeare," originally a glover, and then a skinner and woolstapler," in Henley Street, in Stratford-on-Avon, there was anything that could be developed into those marvellous works that have placed his son in creative genius at the head of the race. And even if all this could be traced back to some germ in some very remote ancestor which had been slowly developed for ages and generations until it last appeared in the form of Hamlet and Lear, still we would ask what is the true account of the origin of the germ there? Had it a beginning there? If so, what caused it? Or had it also come down as a germ as yet undeveloped, from the beginning of things: and if so, what formed or produced it in the beginning? Now, what we are saying is, that in the case supposed in our example, as a specimen of millions of such examples in principle on the earth, there is something-that something which we call " genius"that lies above and beyond any of the operations of natural laws; above and beyond anything of the nature of development, above and beyond anything that can be measured by what is anterior in time or in order, as really as in the visions of Isaiah there is that which is above and beyond all that there was of a similiar kind in his origin and training, or as really as there was in the act when Peter healed the lame man in the temple, or when he raised up Tabitha from the dead. Any valid objection in the one case, in the sense of its being of the

* Ulrici, Dramatic art of Shakespeare, p. 70.

nature of a "miracle," or as being "supernatural," would be a valid objection in the other; any theory which would explain the one case, so far as the point before us is concerned, would explain the other; any argument that the one could not be received, on the ground that it is a departure from "the course of nature," would be an argument of equal force in the other. Let a man explain the phenomena of genius, and he would probably find that he would have little additional embarassment on the score of inspiration. In either case, we apprehend, the fact for which a solution is to be found is, that there may be such a control over a created mind, either in its origin, or by some mode of communicating with it after its creation, as to lodge a thought in that mind whose existence there cannot be explained by any mere natural laws. We see not that the infidel gains any thing by denying the fact that God can and does suggest thoughts to a mind that is already made, while he cannot but admit that there must have been, in the creation of "genius," some departure from settled "laws," or some direct agency in bringing upon the stage a mind of remarkable powers. We see not that the Essayists and Reviewers gain any thing by adopting the same principle as the infidel, and by attempting to explain what the infidel rejects. In either case the difficulty is merely removed a step backward; but it is no removal of a difficulty, and no explanation of a subject, to place it a little farther back.

We shall not, we trust, be considered as intending to concede, by these remarks, that there is no difference between the play of genius and the teachings of inspiration; or that in the doctrines of the prophets and the apostles there is nothing more than can be explained under some proper view of the phenomena of genius. We believe that there is a marked difference. But what we are saying is that, so far as we can see, the objections and difficulties in the one case may be urged also in the other; that if the difficulties could be removed in the one case, they might in the other; and that what may be an explanation in the one case may contain, in principle, all that might be necessary in the explanation of the other. For ourselves, we shall not regard it as absurd to suppose that God could have inspired the mind of Isaiah, when we have in our recollection the fact that he created the mind of Pascal; nor shall we think it absurd to believe that he may have made use of the mind of Paul to suggest truths to mankind quite in advance of what the world knew, or could otherwise have known, on subjects of the highest importance, when he created the mind of Bacon, to place the world on a higher elevation in regard to science than it had before attained, or than it could have attained by any contemporary minds, if his had not been created.

2. The second point on which Christianity is to be readjusted is, the long duration of the earth itself, and the long duration of man upon it. For the former of these, geology asks that it shall be conceded that the earth itself has existed for an indefinite period, perhaps millions of ages; that that long period was necessary to prepare it for its present inhabitants; and that, during its preparation for the abode of man, countless numbers of races of beings, inferior to its present inhabitants, and adapted to the state of the earth as it then was, have appeared, and played their part, and have vanished for ever. For the latter of these points, those who would readjust Christianity and the Bible demand that the Mosaic record, which describes the appearing of man upon the earth at about six thousand years ago, shall be so far set aside as to allow the Egyptian records to be regarded as authoritative, and to admit, if necessary, no small part of the hitherto rejected records of the Hindoos in regard to the ancient history of their race.

The former of these, as we have seen, has been readily conceded by the Christian world. The friends of the Bible see no reason why all that the geologist asks in this respect should not be granted, and are willing that the general statement in Gen. i. 1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," should be laid as far back as the geologist may demand. They are willing to give to geologists ample time for the slowest possible evolution of things upon the earth, and for the most gradual of the processes by which they suppose that the earth was wrought into its present form.

It is now demanded that the other point shall also be conceded, and the authors of the "Essays and Reviews" have undertaken the task of shewing that it must be conceded; the Westminster Review assumes it as an undoubted fact that the race has existed upon the earth for that long period, and that the Mosaic record is false. In the apprehension of the writers of that Review this is no longer a matter of doubt, but may be spoken of as among the settled points pertaining to the pasta point as clear as the existence of the earth itself during the long periods claimed by scientific geologists. The Chevalier Bunsen demands a period of " twenty thousand years" as requisite to explain the "changes of commerce" which have occurred upon the earth; the rise and fall of the governments which have existed; the changes of language, and the development of the physical features of the race. He thinks that he finds evidence of this in the Egyptian records. Vice-Principal Williams, as we have seen in the quotation which we have made from the "Recent Inquiries in Theology" (pp. 61-63), is disposed to concede all that is thus demanded.

Now, whatever credit may be due to the Egyptian Records,

as interpreted by Lepsius and Bunsen, there are some things, on this general subject, which will make it not altogether easy for the world to embrace this view, and which may shew that all the credulity in the world is not on the side of those who are willing to believe the records of the Bible.

There are, then, besides those Egyptian records as thus interpreted, no such memorials of those ancient times as we have a right to expect to find, if the race of man has been upon the earth for a period of twenty thousand years. All the records of history terminate at a period long subsequent to that. No authentic records go back to a period beyond that assigned for the appearance of man upon the earth in the Mosaic records. The Bible states the manner in which man appeared upon the earth, and describes the origin of nations, and the first settlement of the different parts of the world. That account is a statement on that point, clear, and plain, and natural enough, for we see how, according to that account, the different nations of the earth may have sprung up, and how the fact of the different locations of the nations, and the diversities of language, customs, and laws may be explained. The statement has, moreover, this element of probability, that in many of those nations the names which were originally given to individuals, as stated in the Bible, have been perpetuated in the nations which have descended from them. The account in the tenth chapter of Genesis, apparently quite a dry and uninteresting accountalmost as much so as the enumeration of the Grecian hosts at the siege of Troy, in the first book of the Iliad-is one of the most remarkable records in the world; for, taking that as a basis, it is easy to account for the origin of nearly all the ancient nations, and to explain how it was that the earth was peopled. But, setting the Bible aside, and relying simply on the records of the earliest profane histories, nothing is more confused, tangled, and inexplicable than the early history of this world. Take away the history of the past which we have in the Bible, and there are at least some two thousand years of the history of the race-even supposing that man appeared upon the earth at so late a period as that assigned by Mosesof which we know nothing, and that, too, the forming period, and in many respects the most interesting period of the history of the world. Begin, in the investigation of past events, when ancient profane history begins, and we are plunged into the midst of a state of affairs of whose origin we know nothing, and where the mind wanders in perfect night, and can find no rest. Kingdoms are seen, but no one can tell by whom they were founded; cities appear, whose origin no one knows; heroes are playing their part in the great and mysterious drama, but no one tells us whence they came, and what are their de

signs; a race of beings appears upon the earth, whose origin is unknown, and the past periods of whose existence no one can determine-a race formed no one can tell when, or for what purpose, or by what hand. Vast multitudes of creatures are suffering and dying for causes which no one can explain, and generations, in their own journey to the grave, tread over the monuments of extinct generations, and with the memorials of fearful changes and convulsions in the past all around them, of which no one can give an account. Begin the knowledge of the past at the remotest period to which profane history would conduct us, and we are in the midst of chaos, and we cannot advance a step without plunging into deeper night—a night strikingly resembling that of which the oldest poet in the world speaks when he describes the abode of the dead: “A land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness" (Job x. 21, 22). The history of the world-of the whole world-in this respect, is much like the history of the tribes that wandered in the wilds of America when the western world was disclosed to the eyes of Europeans. Who could tell what was their origin? Who could recover their history? Who could explain whence, or how, or why they came? Who can do it now? The Bible states, at least, the way in which the race began, and professes to shew how those nations, which, at the oldest period of profane history, we find already organised, and in some degree civilised, were originated; by whom those cities were built; who the heroes are that are playing their part in the mysterious drama.

All ancient records, unless it be those on which Baron Bunsen relies, and the records of India, agree in regard to the recent origin of nations. They do not even pretend to carry up their own history to a remote period. The Greeks, for example, acknowledge most freely the recent origin of their own, and their indebtedness to others. Herodotus (Book ii. 50, 51) admits that his countrymen derived a great part of what they possessed from Egypt. Lord Bacon well remarks in regard to the ancient "fables,"-as he justly calls them-of Egypt itself, as thus coming to our times modified by Grecian genius, "The writings that relate these fables being not delivered as inventions of these writers, but as things before believed and received, appear like a soft whisper from the traditions of more ancient nations, conveyed through the flutes of the Grecians.”

Meantime there are no monumental records of those fardistant times-those remote ages beyond the period of the Mosaic record when, according to the theory to which the Bible is to be adjusted, nations played their parts-of those portions