and so may any of the gifts of God: health, strength, property, family, education, talents, the esteem of our friends, the advantages of our social position, and even our heavenly religion itself. All our enjoyments of the divine beneficence may be abused, by some kind or other of an association with unworthy principles, or a subserviency to wrong pursuits. But does any man abandon these blessings on that account; or declaim against them as sinful, or in their own nature pernicious? The oppugners of philosophy do not act so with their own favourite enjoyments. They ought to reflect that the pursuits which they misunderstand and misrepresent, and then decry, are no other than obedience to the divine command, Consider the works of God: remember that thou magnify his work which men behold. If, to any attainments which we may make in the study of physical objects, we do not add sincere love, and devotion, and obedience to the Lord of nature and grace, the blame is our own; and no slight blame and guilt it is. But let not the good principles be condemned for the bad practice. Does it not so much the more become sincere Christians to labour to add to their faith, knowledge;' to acquire, so far as they have opportunity, that true science which diffuses innumerable benefits among men, unfolds many of the divine glories, and is the proper handmaid of vital piety?"- pp. 179 181.

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The work from which this extract is taken, and to which we now invite the attention of our readers, contains Dr. Smith's lectures, delivered in the Congregational Library, upon the connexion between the statements of Scripture and some of the facts of geology, enriched with notes, and a copious appendix. By the progress of geological investigations many discoveries have been made which are utterly at variance with the commonly received interpretations of some portions of the inspired records, and which seem to bear hard upon the great doctrines of revealed religion. Of course there can be no real discrepancy between the word of Jehovah and the works of his hands; and where any discrepancy is apparent, it is either because our conceptions of the meaning of Scripture are erroneous, or our scientific results are wrong. Nature and Revelation speak in different dialects, but their language is the same; and we have only to interpret the written word upon just philological principles, and to subject science to a rigorous process of honest induction to perceive their agreement. This is precisely the ground occupied by Dr. Smith; and we are firmly persuaded that nothing is wanting on the part of the friends of Revelation, but ordinary diligence and patience in ascertaining the sense of the inspired documents, and the true conclusions of geology, in order to arrive at a satisfactory result. It has however been unfortunately the case, that many christian writers have assumed the correctness of those interpretations of Scripture which are commonly received, and with which their own minds have been long familiarised; and hence Genesis and Geology, the inspired writers and the scientific schools of London, Freiburg, and Paris have been supposed to be in open conflict, without any pains being taken to ascertain whether a real case for hostility has been made out. There is much arrogance displayed in this mode of procedure, because expositions at variance with those so tenaciously held, are maintained by men who have an equally religious regard for the sacred oracles, and are equally competent in point of scholastic attainments to pronounce judgment in philological questions, and who have quite as valid a right, therefore, to dogmatise with reference to their opinions. Much injustice has also been done

to science; for facts in geology, held to be incontrovertible by a large number of accomplished observers, and clearly proved to be so by the rules of inductive philosophy, have been rejected in such a summary manner, as would necessarily lead to scepticism respecting universal truth, if generally adopted and applied. The doctrines of geological science do not claim our attention as the conceptions of curious speculatists, or the opinions of men prone to hasty conclusions, but of those whose minds have been prepared for accurate investigation by mathematical training, who are accustomed to sift and probe to the uttermost the objects they examine, who have laboured with unparalleled industry to gain an exact knowledge of the coating of the globe, and who have subjected large tracts of country to careful scrutiny for this purpose, and surely the conclusions which they unanimously regard as firmly established truths, are entitled to some degree of confidence. Dr. Smith, himself a man of science, as well as one of the first theologians of our time, gives his voice decidedly in favour of the chief conclusions to which geologists have come; nor do we see how any man experimentally acquainted with the phenomena upon which they are built, can refrain from doing so likewise, crediting the evidence of his senses, and capable of a logical deduction. We are free to confess that in learning we have had much to unlearn; and have experienced no little mental discomfort in the process, clinging to early imbibed and widely entertained notions, yet compelled to discard them as irreconcileable with the visible testimony of nature. We are deeply convinced, however, of the perfect harmony between physical and revealed truth; we have submitted to some painful drudgery, not to reconcile them, for that we believe to exist, but to see the conciliation; and we have strong confidence that though the fulness of the "vision may be yet for an appointed time, in the end it will speak." To us it appears the sacred duty of theologians in the present day to apply themselves to the careful study of geology, and to an unprejudiced examination of the sacred oracles, and then we fear not but that all seeming incongruity between the two will vanish.

We have spoken highly of Dr. Smith's lectures, and we conceive that there are few of our writers, certainly none known to us personally or by report, who could have produced such a volume. Profound theologians may be found, men also eminent for their scientific attainments, and others for enlightened and fervent piety, but the blending of the three is a rare combination. Throughout these pages the scholar, the divine, and the Christian appear; a devout adhesion to the word of God, and a rigid enforcement of the philosophy of Bacon; and after having been vituperated by the uninformed, and treated with grave suspicion by the half-informed, Dr. Smith has most triumphantly cleared himself from the imputation of practising "a dark art, dangerous and disreputable." We do not say that we are prepared to adopt all his views, theological or geological; we honestly acknowledge, however, that we are not prepared to show cause against them, in any degree adequate to counterbalance that which he has adduced in their favour; our business, therefore, will be to pursue a course of patient investiga

tion for ourselves, and to submit a faithful representation of the case to the judgment of our readers. That many of those opposed to Dr. Smith upon political and ecclesiastical grounds will cavil; that some timid minds, accustomed to regard those interpretations of the inspired text in which they have been trained with as much reverence as the text itself, will take alarm as though the foundations of their faith were in danger; that some honest philologers will seriously object, while a host of superficial ones will clamorously dogmatise; that such things will occur we can readily believe, but Dr. Smith may safely be indifferent to fiery positiveness, and we would advise the timid to exercise their judgments before they yield to their fears, while we are sure that no one will more candidly receive or patiently examine frank philological criticism than the Theological Tutor of Homerton. All must agree with him as to the principle he lays down with reference to the exposition of the Bible; that its meaning is to be ascertained by a rigorous examination of its words and phrases; that we are not at liberty to bend it from its grammatical sense out of regard to the discoveries of science; that such expressions, therefore, as "some little concession" being required from the interpreter of Scripture, cannot be tolerated if applied to the document interpreted, though "concession" may be proper enough with respect to the human interpretation.

The principal points in which geology opposes the generally understood sense of Scripture, are its claim for an immense antiquity of the earth, its recognition of the existence of death in the animal kingdom previous to the fall of man, and its silence as to physical traces of the Noachian deluge. Into each of these points Dr. Smith enters at large in his lectures; and we proceed to state his views upon them in our pages, beginning with them in inverse order.

Evidences of that awful dispensation of Providence, which destroyed the human race almost in the infancy of their being, with the exception of the family of Noah, were usually supposed to exist in the undulating, or gently inclined, or steep-sided vallies, the erratic blocks, and the clay, mud, and gravelly deposits, called diluvium, overlying in various thicknesses almost every kind of strata. We vividly remember the delight we received from Prebendary Gisborne's volume on Natural Theology in our young days, which pictures the dry vallies as the vacant records of a stream which survived not the deluge that gave it birth, and of which we thought it might be said that the stream "being dead yet speaketh." Indeed the most illustrious geologists once regarded the superficial drift as the deposit of the deluge, and their testimony was hailed as triumphantly establishing the veracity of the Mosaic record. further investigation has compelled them to abandon the idea that the vast and universally scattered masses of diluvial gravel are referable to a simultaneous and comparatively recent origin; and however they may have been carped at for this change of opinion, and whatever judgment we may form of its correctness, we cannot refrain from the avowal that, considering how fully they were committed to their previous views, and how prized those views were in public esteem, their recantation indicates a nobleness and honesty

of mind but rarely paralleled. quences of subsequent research.

Dr. Smith thus states the conse

"One of the first results established was, that the outspread masses of which we are treating, sands, gravel and bowlders, were not of one formation, nor of one age. The separate divisions into which they had been traced, put upon each a sort of historical mark. Some were found to belong to origins almost on their own spot; that is, the rocks of the locality within but a few miles. Others were traced to a considerable distance, yet in the same country; others were shown to have been derived from mountains in remote lands, from which they are now divided by lofty ridges or by seas, which are thus proved not to have existed when the passage was free. The order of priority or posteriority has been evinced by palpable proofs. The course of a more ancient drift has often been overlaid by a more recent one. In many instances, or I might more correctly say, in most, it is evident that the masses of drift have been formed by action long continued under water; that is, by currents, eddies and tides, working for unknown ages, at the bottom and on the shores of the ocean: thus standing opposed to the idea of any short-lived inundation. Frequently, large tracts of country have been stripped bare of their drift and underlying strata, evidently by the action of an elevating movement from below, and a vast body of water on the surface: and sometimes considerable masses of the materials, which had thus been swept away, occur heaped up in a corner, so to speak, or where an obstacle was presented to their further distribution. The idea of sea-beaches covered with shingle is graphically presented, and their successive elevation by slow rising of the land. The respective ages, in relation or comparison to each other, are determined by the position of the distinguishable kinds of drift; that of one character lying under or over that of another; by relations to movements of underlying or neighbouring rocks; and by the geological constitution of the parent rocks whence the mass had been derived."-pp. 127–129.

Speaking of the extensive bodies of drift that are found scattered over our island-of the more local Silurian bed, which is supposed to be the most ancient; and another, considered as more recent, spreading southwards from Lancashire to the Severn-Dr. Smith remarks:

"Hence some conclusions of importance force themselves upon our conviction. The first is, that the country occupied by the local drift had been raised above the level of the sea, which flowed up to its northern and eastern frontier. The second, that the waters bringing this newer drift from the north, did not flow over the region already occupied by the local and more ancient drift. But there is evidence that both 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 are therefore compelled to the conclusion that this flood was not absolutely universal: for, had it been so, the diluvial waters must have carried forwards the northern drift, mingled with other stones, gravel, and mud; and so have overspread the previous silurian bed. Thirdly: this newest drift carries further evidence that it was not deposited by any transient rush of a body of new waters, over a surface which had been previously dry land; for such must have been a deluge rising for 150 days, and then beginning to subside; and, in a little more than the saine period, coming completely to an end. On the contrary, the rounded forms of the pebbles and bowlders must have required a very long time of rubbing and grinding by currents, eddies, and tides at the bottom of the sea; and the occurrence of sea-shells, in considerable variety and abundance, affords evidence that the area itself had not been dry land, but the regular bed of the ocean."- pp. 131, 132.

The conclusion pointed at in these extracts is supported by a reference to the existing state of the volcanic districts of central and southern France. About a century ago two French Academicians, returning

from an exploration of Vesuvius, discovered in the province of Auvergne the most unequivocal marks of volcanic agency, and upon a most extensive scale. Upwards of two hundred hills and mountains, formed entirely of loose cinders, possessing craters, and surrounded by plains of black, rugged lava, demonstrate that, at some former period, unchronicled in history and unknown to tradition, hidden volcanic fires raged with tremendous power, and the" smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." Some of the mountains of Auvergne are not inferior to Vesuvius in bulk, and superior in height. The Puy de Dome is above 4000 feet high, and has a crater 300 feet deep, and 1000 feet in circumference. The following are the enquiries and inferences suggested by these phenomena to Dr. Smith:

"Yet, when did these fires burn? When took place this amazing combination of volcanic eruptions and their terrible accompaniments? How long ago was the last of them? And by what intervals of time could we ascend from that last, to the earlier eruptions; and to the earliest of the astounding number? These questions cannot be answered by any assigning of our measures of time, years, and centuries. Such analogies as may be inferred by comparative examinations of the condition of Etna, Vesuvius, and other active volcanoes, carry us to the contemplation of a period which runs back not to the age of Noah merely, but immeasurably beyond the date of the creation of man and his contemporary plants and animals.

"Further: many of these hills in the form of sugar-loaves consist of, or are coated with pumice-stone and other loose and light substances, which every person knows to be volcanic products. It is self-evident that these could not have withstood the action of a flood: they must have been broken down and washed away with the first rush of water. Either, then, the eruptions which produced them, took place since the deluge; or that deluge did not reach to this part of the earth. Against the former side of this alternative the argument from analogy is very strong. All that we know of the history of volcanoes impresses us with the vast improbability, that such an intensity and extent of volcanic action as belonged to the latter series only of these eruptions, could begin, run their course, and come to an end by settling in perfect quiescence, within the period from the deluge to our first historical notices of this district, which is about 2300 years. Supposing the eruptions in question to have commenced immediately upon the subsiding of the diluvial waters, it would be contrary to all known instances of volcanic action, to suppose that they would finally cease within a less period than many centuries. Now Julius Cæsar, in his Gallic wars, was encamped in this very district, at the closing part of the period just mentioned. His writings furnish abundant evidence of his observant, inquisitive, and acute character. Notwithstanding his vicious habits, he had a mind deeply imbued with literature and the love of philosophical pursuits; and he made considerable attainments in science, so far as in his day was practicable. Had he found in this place any tradition of volcanic action as having formerly existed, it is morally certain that his curiosity would have been powerfully awakened, and that we should have had in his Commentaries the result of his enquiries. But nothing of the kind exists, though he indicates his acquaintance with the features of the country, as having surveyed it with the eye of a general."-pp. 150, 153, 154.

These are the geological reasons which have brought Dr. Smith to the conclusion that the common idea of the universality of the Noachian deluge is inadmissible. The sole question here to be determined is, whether his premises are right; for if they are, his inference is so likewise. Living, as we do, at a distance from the metropolis, we deeply feel the want of the facilities which are there enjoyed for consulting the magnificent works of Murchison and others, in order to arrive at data,