which he must desire and yearn after, by his very nature and position. Though it may be thought that there is little in the doctrines of Revelation to exercise man's understanding, like other departments of science, yet there is a greatness and a grandeur in them truly elevating and ennobling to the mind contemplating them; and the greatest minds that have been, and are, have found, that a reverent faith in the sublimities of Christian Doctrine, has not only harmonised with, but greatly raised and dignified, the pursuit of all other knowledge and science. Thus then, because Christianity is not science, appealing specially to the reason or intellectual powers of man, it is not so of weakness and imperfection, as though below reason, but for its very greatness, and the height of its excellence. Reason was inadequate to the discovery of its doctrines; and reason, humbled and in abeyance to holy faith, receives them; and to a mind so adjusted, never we believe, was there wanting a persuasion of the celestial character of Christian doctrine, man's great honour and happiness in Christian adoption, and the wondrous fitness of these sublime discoveries of Revelation to form the base, or constitute the frame and setting of the moral and spiritual economy of the Gospel. Let the faithful Christian frequently fix his mental view on this phase of his religion; the congruity, the agreement between the doctrines proffered to his faith, and the rule laid down for his character and life; he will see how beautifully range side by side, Christian piety and virtue, with the revealed Christian heaven and the God of heaven; he will feel himself the power of this inward evidence; that it cannot be gainsaid by the caviller; and that while as a truth, it might convince the most cautious and searching mind, it rises supremely above such, and every higher grade of human intellect. We believe indeed, that it has strengthened the conviction of Christian truth in many minds, to observe, how happily these same sublime and affecting doctrines which are revealed to our faith, are fitted to give the sentiment of trust and assurance in life; in fact, to constitute all the significance and reality of life; and also to bear on their high and holy power, the message of pardon and peace; the "Glad tidings of great joy" to the sons of men; and that inculcation of piety and virtue to the heart of man; that revealing of his inward self to himself, and that rich supply of the wants and wishes of his spiritual nature, which Christianity alone proffers him; and which, as it will ever be adequate to all his necessities, so must it appear to him as most true and impressive in its agreement with, and in its sanction from the sacred sublimities which Christ revealed to his followers. It has been well observed, that as there is nothing in Christianity hostile to any supposeable case of intellectual progress in man, so also is it strikingly and unquestionably true, that we cannot even conceive of man's improvement in his spiritual life, in the purity and elevation of his moral nature, but as a movement in the Christian direction; as an advance and rising in the Christian spirit and character; and whenever our view is lifted up to the height, the very perfection of pure and spiritual excellence, we have an image before the mental eye, an ideal in strict analogy and beautiful accordance with the character of the Saviour, and the spirit of his religious and moral teaching. Men will progress; their minds will open, strengthen and sharpen. Whatever their faith, their intellect will advance; and we may challenge scepticism to disprove that whatever eminence he reaches as a rational being, the spirit and morality of the Christian faith will meet him there; occupying already the high ground; and, in purity, refinement and elevation, not only equalling his lofty rise of mental attainment, but lifting his view still higher, and opening a perspective of still farther reach and improvement. There can be no question of the auspicious influence of a pure religion on the mental man; the power of the devotional temperament in clearing the eye of the mind as well as elevating the spirit, and hallowing the whole range of mental capacity. Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Boyle, Newton, Pascal, Fenelon, Priestley, and Channing have felt and recorded it. How beautifully and affectingly we read it in the blind bard:— "And chiefly thou, O Spirit! that dost prefer Before all temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou knowest : -what in me is dark, Illumine! what is low, raise and support! And justify the ways of God to men." : He of Avon somewhere has it thus:-"Now, God be praised, who to believing souls, gives light in darkness," as well as 'comfort in despair." Elsewhere, he observes :"He that of greatest works is finisher, oft does them by the weakest Minister;-So, holy writ in babes hath judgment shewn, when judges have been babes." If this, be so, if religious faith and a devout spirit be both the inspiration and strength of the gifted mind; if genius is thus sublimed, and talent thus raised, and man's consecrated powers carried forward to their highest and holiest aim, we may say Christianity is attested and approved; for whether we place the precept or the pattern of the Saviour before us, we attain the conviction that what he taught and what he exemplified as the true spirit of human affection, will ever tend to raise man's rational powers to their best estate. Few, perhaps, of the general readers of our immortal Shakespeare are aware of the very many beautiful expressions of religious sentiment, of devotional feeling and moral truth, which must have been prompted by his own Christian faith; his knowledge of the scriptures; and his deep sense of the sublimity of its doctrines, and beauty of its precepts; and it is very interesting to imagine the blending of Christian conviction, belief and sentiment, with the wondrous structure of his mental powers; how all would be enriched, raised and hallowed by them. As many of your readers with myself, doubtless, have felt, that Shakespeare's Christian faith was sincere and earnest, so have they felt the exquisite beauty of the commixture of his Christian sentiments and notions with the Bard's sweet fancies; his treasures of thought, his character portraits, and the whole charm of his magic drama. Monstrous indeed, a late literary attempt to prove Him to be an Atheist. Is it not because Christianity is true and divine, that we have mental wealth like the Drama of Shakespeare; a Poem like that of old blind John Milton, Raphael's Cartoons and Handell's Messiah? We at least are not ashamed to avow, that we seem to have new illustration and fresh corroboration of our Christian faith, in the contemplation and study of those immortal works W. M. BOERHAAVE:-PRAYER. A FRIEND of this celebrated man, who had often admired his patience under the greatest provocations, asked him by what means he had so entirely suppressed that impetuous passion, anger. The doctor answered with the utmost frankness and sincerity, that naturally he was quick of resentment, but by daily prayer he attained that mastery over himself. It was his custom, which he never violated, to spend the first hour of every day in prayer, though patients from every country in Europe applied to him for advice. NATURAL THEOLOGY. No. VII. OMNIPOTENCE AND OMNISCIENCE. A GLANCE has now been given, most hurried and brief it must be confessed, at the motions of the Heavenly Bodies, at the structure of the Human Frame, at the Formation and Habits of Birds, Insects, and Vegetables, and at the past revolutions of the Globe which we inhabit; and on every side to which we turned our wondering and delighted eyes, we have been encountered by innumerable proofs of Design and Contrivance. By these proofs we are compelled, by the very constitution of our nature, to infer the existence of a Designer and Contriver; to conclude, that not from blind unreasoning Chance, but from an Intelligence of the most exalted character, proceeded ourselves and all things by which we are surrounded; to be convinced that there is a GOD, the Maker of the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that in them is. The Universe, however, not only informs us that it had a Creator, but reveals to us something about His nature and disposition, it imparts intelligence worth the gleaning, con. cerning some of his mental and moral characteristics. Perhaps the feeling which first arises in every man, who looks round him and above him into creation, is a conception of the vastness and infinity of the Power by which all things were at first fashioned, and are now sustained; and accordingly the earliest attribute we learn to ascribe to the Deity, is that of OMNIPOTENCE. Confining our view even to the surface of our Earth, we are awe-struck with the manifestations of surpassing strength and might, in the mountains upheaved, thunder and storm guided, cities and islands shaken to their foundation by earthquakes, and the apparently lawless and resistless potency of the great deep, swayed at will by the mere fiat of the Creator. But even this idea, vast as it is, is augmented to a degree that is absolutely overwhelming, when we consider the dimensions of our planet, and the velocity of its revolution round the sun. What power was requisite to launch the ocean of upon space body, whose superficies is about one hundred and ninety seven millions of square miles; and to retain it there, wheeling along at the rate of sixteen hundred thousand miles per day, or above sixty thousand miles per hour, or above one thousand miles per minute! Dealing with such large numbers, the mind becomes confounded; it may assist, therefore, in giving definiteness to our ideas, if we state that a railway carriage, travelling night and day at the speed of thirty miles an hour, would take a full quarter of a year to go over the same distance which is accomplished by our earth, in its journey through the heavens, in the brief space of a single hour, Yet God gave our globe its present motion on the morning of creation, and through century after century, age after age, millions of years after millions of years, it has continued in the same path, and whirling at the same speed, even until now. But the Earth is only one body pertaining to the Solar System. Reckoning also Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, the eight Asteroids (for two more have been added by M. Hencke, and as many by Mr. Hind, within the last four years) Jupiter and his four satellites, Saturn and his eight, Ūranus and his six, and the lately discovered Neptune and at least his one, we have not less than thirty-six bodies in motion round our Sun. Some of these are of immensely greater proportions than that on which we dwell; thus Neptune is almost two hundred and fifty times larger than the earth. Others, as Mercury and Venus, travel in their orbits at a much greater velocity than that of our planet. If, then, we marvelled at the Power which originally gave, and still continues, to our own globe its rapid movements, can we style that further display of it anything less than Omnipotence, which originated and conserves the various motions of the whole thirty-six Planets, Asteroids, and Satellites, which compose the Solar System. The Solar System itself is now considered to constitute a part of that magnificent galaxy known as the milky way. Sir William Herschell, in examining it with his twenty-feet telescope, found that not less than one hundred and sixteen thousand stars passed through his field of vision in almost a quarter of an hour; and from that fact, coupled with similar data, he concluded that the whole of that resplendent zone contained above twenty millions of stars. Each of these is a sun; each of these is the centre of a system; and supposing each of them to be surrounded by only as many planets, primary and secondary, as pertain to the solar system, we shall have twenty millions of suns with seven hundred and twenty millions of bodies moving around them; and all these bodies were put and are retained in motion by the power of GOD. This is at length the beginning of some adequate idea of OMNIPOTENCE! |