as ignoble as it is false, that the whole force of the infidel objection depends. It is not the doctrine of Christ, therefore, but the principle, which makes it necessary, on the part of God, to quit the care of one part of his works before he can show mercy to another, that is disrespectful to his infinite attributes, both natural and moral. The fact, nevertheless, of Christ's advent into this world, which Mr. Paine calls, in his own peculiar style, a solitary and strange conceit, is confessed by all Christians to be a solitary and wonderful instance of divine condescension. Without controversy GREAT MYSTERY of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh. the Lord's doing; it is MARVELLOUS in our eyes.* This glorious truth is the head of the corner. Take it away, and nothing of Christianity remains, worthy of being defended.

IS THE

This is

Let the argument, however, be tested by a fair application of the principle which it involves, to cases which come within the sphere of common observation, and then its fallacy will appear to every one. If the vast extent of God's dominions precludes him from making a particular display of the riches of his goodness in any one part of his empire, then the husbandman is prevented, by the largeness of his farm, from building his house and cultivating his garden upon any part of his property then the ruler of a civilized commonwealth is, by the greatness of the number of his subjects, absolutely excluded from showing kindness to any person whatsoever, and from cherishing habits of particular friendship with any one individual in the community. Then, too, if no sovereignty is to be exercised in the distribution of privileges, the several classes of creation have a right to complain of the hand that formed them, saying, Why hast thou made me thus? Then, not only should man himself present his accusations for having been made lower than the angels, but the inferior creation. should impeach the justice of him who put them in subjection.

Let it not be understood, that we have any controversy with men of a liberal and scientific character, about the utility of

* 1 Tim. iii. 16. Ps. cxviii. 23.

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literature and philosophy. The lights of science are too valuable to be extinguished-too delightful to be defamedtoo splendid not to be admired. They are favourable to every improvement in civilized society, while they direct individuals to many sources of high enjoyment; and, as truth is uniformly consistent, it is not possible that the progress of knowledge, in any department, should, of itself, become injurious to the hope of the children of Israel. He is not a child of light that would deprecate a spirit of inquiry among his cotemporaries; that would offer restraints to liberal discussion in others; or receive, as an article of his own faith, any idea which is confessedly inconsistent with some other truth demonstrated. It is a prejudice, as injurious to the true interests of religion in the world, as it is in itself contemptible, that represents sound philosophy as hostile to piety, or that would proscribe from the pulpit all allusion to the arts and sciences. It is not necessary for Christian Pastors to be superficial, in order to be intelligible, or to be unphilosophical, in order to be evangelical. Enough has already been done, through timidity, through indolence, and ignorance, to banish from the public ministrations, boldness of speech, extent of research, profoundness of thought, together with didactic and polemic theology. "It were well," says Dr. Chalmers, in his preface, referring to those who take alarm at the semblance of philosophy, "it were well for our cause, that they would suffer theology to take that wide range of argument and of illustration which belongs to her.”

The volume which now lies before us, and which suggested these remarks, contains seven sermons, "chiefly delivered on the occasion of a week-day sermon that is preached in rotation by the ministers of Glasgow." The New-York edition is executed in the style of the Glasgow copy, and printed from it, page for page. Independently of the partiality in favour of popular British publications, which prevails in this country, these discourses deserve to be well received; and they have already obtained a good share of public estimation.* They

* We have seen already the fifth edition from Great Britain, and a second American edition is published.

require only to be read, in order to be admired; for they are as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument."*

The object of the work is to refute the argument which the modern astronomy is supposed to furnish against the Christian system. "This argument," says Dr. Chalmers, "involves in it an assertion and an inference. The assertion is, that Christianity is a religion which professes to be designed for the single benefit of our world; and the inference is, that God cannot be author of this religion, for he would not lavish on so insignificant a field such peculiar and such distinguishing attentions as are ascribed to him in the Old and New Testament." The Preacher combats both the assertion and the inference, and he combats them successfully; generally, too, with sound reasoning, and always with eloquence. He is far from calling in question the discoveries of astronomers. He admits, moreover, the hypothesis of countless worlds. He declares his own belief, that all the planets belonging to the solar system are inhabited by rational creatures. He thinks too, that all the fixed stars are the centres of so many distinct solar systems, every planet of which is peopled with moral agents. He even suggests, that each of these suns, having a progressive motion, travels, with all his tributaries, around some distant centre, from which there emanates an influence to keep them all in subordination. Nay, in referring to the Nebula, which the telescope has revealed to the human eye, he indulges a conjecture, that these higher and more magnificent systems are arranged into clusters, each forming a part of a more complicated and still more extensive system of peopled worlds. Indeed, no astronomer, not even those, who, leaving their de monstrations, indulge in hypothesis, can complain of Dr. Chalmers's liberality in calculating the dimensions of the uni

verse.

“And after all,” he exclaims, "though it be a mighty and difficult conception, yet who can question it? What is seen may be nothing to what is unseen; for what is seen is limited by the range of our

*The text of the last discourse in the series. + Page 6.

instruments. What is unseen has no limit; and, though all which the eye of man can take in, or his fancy can grasp at, were swept away, there might still remain as ample a field, over which the Divinity may expatiate, and which he may have peopled with innumerable worlds. If the whole visible creation were to disappear, it would leave a solitude behind it—but to the Infinite Mind, that can take in the whole system of nature, this solitude would be nothing ; a small unoccupied point in that immensity which surrounds it, and which he may have filled with the wonders of his omnipotence. Though this earth were to be burned up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory, which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it, were to be put out for ever-an event, so awful to us, and to every world in our vicinity, by which so many suns would be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life and of population would rush into forgetfulness-what is it in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship? A mere shred, which, though scattered into nothing, would leave the universe of God one entire scene of greatness and of majesty. Though this earth, and these heavens, were to disappear, there are other worlds, which roll afar; the light of other suns shines upon them; and the sky which mantles them, is garnished with other stars. Is it presumption to say, that the moral world extends to these distant and unknown regions? that they are occupied with people? that the charities of home and of neighbourhood flourish there? that the praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness rejoiced in? that piety has its temples and its offerings? and the richness of the divine attributes is there felt and admired by intelligent worship: pers?" pp. 48—50.

Having, in the first discourse, presented us with a sketch of the modern astronomy, so far as it has any connexion with his subject, he shows, in the second, that the assertion which he combats, is made without sufficient warrant. He argues, that it is a bare presumption from human ignorance, and utterly unworthy of the followers of Bacon and Newton, as votaries of the inductive philosophy.

"It is not I who am pitching my adventurous flight to the secret things, which belong to God, away from the things that are revealed, and which belong to me and to my children. It is the

champion of that very infidelity which I am now combating. It is he who props his unchristian argument, by presumptions fetched out of those untravelled obscurities, which lie on the other side of a barrier that I pronounce to be impassable. It is he who transgresses the limits which Newton forbore to enter; because, with a justness which reigns throughout all his inquiries, he saw the limit of his own understanding, nor would he venture himself beyond it. It is he who has borrowed of this wondrous man, a few dazzling conceptions, which have only served to bewilder him-while, an utter stranger to the spirit of this philosophy, he has carried a daring and an ignorant speculation far beyond the boundary of its prescribed and allowable enterprises. It is he who has mustered against the truths of the Gospel, resting, as it does, on evidence within the reach of his faculties, an objection, for the truth of which he has no evidence whatever. It is he who puts away from him a doctrine for which he has the substantial and the familiar proof of human testimony; and substitutes in its place a doctrine, for which he can get no other support than from a reverie of his own imagination. It is he who turns aside from all that safe and certain argument, that is supplied by the history of this world, of which he knows something; and who loses himself in the work of theorizing after other worlds, of the moral and theological history of which he positively knows nothing. Upon him, and not upon us, lies the folly of launching his impetuous way beyond the province of observation-of setting his fancy afloat among the unknown of distant and mysterious regions-and, by an act of daring, as impious as it is unphilosophical, of trying to unwrap that shroud, which, till drawn aside by the hand of a messenger from heaven, will ever veil, from human eye, the purposes of the eternal." pp. 82, 83.

In the third discourse, the Author proposes to show, that, were the assertion true, that Christianity is a religion which professes to be designed for the single benefit of our world, the reasoning constructed upon it is false: and he pursues, with great ability, the same subject in the three following sermons. The seventh, and last discourse in the volume, is not immediately connected with his argument, but is designed to show, that the illusion of seriousness and of sentiment, which the circumstances under which Christianity is publicly taught, usually