"If during a period so vast as to be scarcely expressible by figures, the creatures now human have been rising, from globules, until they have at length become the men and women whom we see around us, we must hold either the monstrous belief, that all the vitalities, whether mites, or fishes, or reptiles, or birds, or beasts, are individually and inherently immortal; or that human souls are not so!"

This startling difficulty is sufficient of itself to make any reasonable man pause. But the one fatal objection to all "developement" theories is, that they are utterly opposed to all the known facts of the case. All the insight into the earth's structure that geologists have been gaining for the last halfcentury, combines in one decided protest against any such dreams as these. Some twelve years since, the Edinburgh Review justly said, "Geology, not seen through the mist of any theory, but taken as a plain succession of monuments and facts, offers one firm cumulative argument against the hypothesis of developement."*

Let us try to illustrate this truth. Imagine some dreamer or impostor inventing a story resembling Dean Swift's Travels of Gulliver, and then trying to make his followers believe that his Strulbrugs and Laputans, and Brobdignagians and Lilliputians, had actually existed in some former age of the world. Geology would immediately interfere and shatter the whole story to atoms. The Lyells and Murchisons and Owens would immediately reply, "We know, full well, what sort of creatures peopled this earth in the ages before Adam. We have, in our museums, specimens of the animals of the Palæozoic period, of the Permian and Triassic, of the Oolite and the Cretaceous; of the Eocene, the Meiocene, the Pleiocene, and the Pleistocene, which last is the most recent before the creation of man; and among all these we find no trace of your wonderful races of people. As to the ages from Adam downwards, you do not pretend to place them there; hence, your whole story is an outrageous fiction."

The same reply, and in equally indignant language, may geology make to the developement theory. If the lowest kinds of creatures were developed from inorganic elements, and then grew by progressive steps upwards, from the frog to the crocodile, from the rat to the dog, from the monkey to the man, would not geology know it? Her investigations have reached back through long vistas of milleniums, until they arrived at the period when life was not. But in no one of all these periods, at no stage of its investigations, does geology ever fall in with "developement." Thousands of fishes has it found; but not one of them all, developing into an alligator. Myriads of reptiles; but none in the process of becoming deer or oxen.

* Edinburgh Review, No, clxv. p. 62.

As to the creature that was "developing" into a human being, not a glimpse of it has geology ever obtained; she declares, therefore, with all her voices, and with the strength derived from her tens of thousands of fossil specimens, that "developement" may be found in the books of dreamers, but that not a trace of it can be found in nature.

This "rational interpretation of things," then, as Mr. Combe calls it, is one of the most utterly irrational theories that ever scepticism spawned. Any honest and reasonable man begins an inquiry by collecting all the facts of the case, and then examining their respective relations, and the bearing which they have on each other. But the Combes and Baden Powells begin, carry on, and complete their inquiries, by a careful exclusion of the two main sources of information! We have the word of God in Scripture; we have the works of God in geology. To the first, neither Mr. Combe nor Mr. Powell make the slightest reference. From the second, they carefully pick out only those two or three scraps of evidence which may be supposed to favor their hypothesis,-excluding fully nineteen-twentieths of the results of geological research. Mr. Hugh Miller has eloquently described these results in one of his finest passages. More than a million of years ago, he tells us―

"Nature lay dead in a waste theatre of rock, vapour, and sea, in which the insensate laws, chemical, mechanical, and electric, carried on their blind, unintelligent processes. The creative fiat went forth, and amidst waters that straightway teemed with life in its lower forms, vegetable and animal, the dynasty of the fish was introduced, Many ages passed during which there took place no farther elevation.

When the fiat again went forth, and through an act of creation, the dynasty of the reptile began. Again, many ages passed by, marked, apparently, by the introduction of a warm-blooded oviparous animal, the bird,-when again the fiat went forth, and through an act of creation, the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped began. And, lastly, after the further lapse of ages, the elevatory fiat went forth once more in an act of creation; and with the human, heavenaspiring dynasty, the moral government of God, in its connection at least with the world which we inhabit, took beginning.'

With this view, we take leave to say, all the labours and researches of Cuvier, Lyell, Murchison, Buckland, Owen, and others, entirely harmonize. The written word of God, and the "records of creation," ineffaceably inscribed on ten thousand rocks, all tell one story; and he who disbelieves it must be a man of more arrogance than wisdom. But surely, such a dis

*Miller's "Footprints of the Creator," p. 293. In our January number we showed the entire consistency of these discoveries of Geology with the statements of Moses. In the first chapter of

Genesis, the earth "brings forth grass," and the moving creature, and fowl, and the beast of the earth; all of which had existed ages before, and then God proceeds to create man.

Do the Combes and Baden Powells do this?

believer ought to be able, when he questions a case so proved, to advance in favor of his own hypothesis an amount of evidence exceeding that which in the other case he deems insufficient. So far from it, they are obliged to admit that all they can offer is a vague something, which to them (having resolved to reject the idea of creation) seems to be a reasonable probability. The words of the Vestiges are :-"I embrace, not as a proved fact, but as a rational interpretation of things as far as science has revealed them, the idea of progressive developement." We say, that this is not a "rational interpretation" of things; we say, that of "creation" we have abundant records, both in God's word, and in the rocks through which geologists have been for nearly a century searching. But of "developement" we have not the slightest evidence; and to be unsupported by evidence, is to be refuted by facts. Why do all geologists agree, that man lived not upon the earth until the present, the human period, and that this period began only a few thousand years ago? Because the rocks prove it. Why do they assert, that for many ages there was neither vegetable or animal life on this earth? Because the rocks prove it. Why do they all concur in the belief, that after the azoic period, when life was not, came a period of prolific vegetation, with mollusca, and afterwards fish? Because the rocks say so. Why are they all satisfied, that, after a long period, came in the age of enormous reptiles; then, birds, and long subsequently, the quadrupeds? Because the rocks testify to these facts. And, just as they assert with perfect confidence, that during all these hundreds of thousands of years, there were no human beings, so do they maintain, that there was no "developement." And the reason for their confidence is still the same. The facts of the case have been transmitted to us by the durable, ineffaceable evidence preserved in the crust of the earth; and any other evidence than that which is contained in God's word, or that which is found in the face of nature, there can be none.

But what a predisposition to atheism is manifested in the fact, that, confessedly without proof, men choose to invent schemes and theories of developement, which can only support themselves for a single moment, by throwing out of sight God's own word, and by refusing to look at the results of geological investigation. In truth, this predisposition is the whole key to their strange conduct; they "do not like to retain God in their knowledge." So was it in the beginning. More than three thousand years ago, Job described the wicked, as saying unto God, "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways." And in the last century, Dr. Bentley remarked, that "a man might easily rob, perjure, debauch, or drink himself into atheism; but to think himself into it was not

so easy." The same remark holds good in all ages. If we meet with a man who has an evident hankering after atheism, we may reasonably suspect, that, if old, he is indulging in unlawful gains; if young, in unlawful pleasures. Every such man has a natural bias in favour of any scheme which throws God to an immeasurable distance, and makes his interference in human affairs clearly improbable. He who cannot but shrink, when he hears the words, "Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment," is inevitably predisposed in favour of any scheme which tells him that God has not interfered in the affairs of the world for some millions of years, and probably will never interfere again.

But such a God is not the God of the Bible, nor is He a being whom men can either love or fear. The God with whom we have to do is One who is "about our path, and about our bed, and spies out all our ways,"-One to whom Abraham's servant could pray, "Let the damsel who shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also, be she whom thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac," and to whom David could say, "O Lord, I pray thee, turn the counsel of Ahitophel into foolishness." One to whom every sparrow is known, and who, in the person of Christ, could say to his servant, "Go to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up, and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money." Is this God a fiction of priestcraft?-is the whole Bible a romance?-and have we clergymen of the church of England who will dare to say so? To Mr. Baden Powell we can no longer put any question, but of Dr. Temple and Mr. Jowett we are entitled to ask, "Does not Mr. Powell's Essay teach unbelief of the whole of the narratives of Scripture? And did not you, being ordained ministers of the church of England, procure, put forth, and assist to circulate its impugnments of God's own word? Nay, are you not still doing so?"

But to conclude: This, the peculiar temptation of our time, will pass away, we know, as Tractarianism has passed. It will pervert and ruin, as Tractarianism perverted and ruined in its day, many individuals, but it will not arrest the progress of the Gospel. When Mr. Jowett was a vehement Tractarian, he could speak of an "expiring evangelicism," and he seemed really to believe at the time, that the faith of Bradford and Hooker, and Newton and Scott, was rapidly dying out, and that the Newmans and Wards were about to become the apostles of an English Catholic church. That dream is over; the Newmans and Wards are gone, but the church of England remains unchanged.

So is not Mr. Jowett. By a rapid transmutation, he has been converted from a believer in false miracles, into a disbeliever of true ones; from one who thought that the church believed too

little, into one who considers that she believes too much. And in all this, he is only the type of a class, the evidence of a prevalent temptation; but amidst these transformations, while individuals fall, and in some cases rise not again, the work of God is not stayed. Even externally may this be seen. Casting the eye back through a brief twenty years, to the days when Tractarianism came in like a flood, is not a large progress of Gospel truth visible? A very hasty and cursory comparison shows us, a church not less, but more, earnest; efforts, both at home and abroad, increasing; a larger number of pulpits proclaiming the same truths which Paul, and Augustine, and Luther preached; a constant growth of zeal, growth of exertion, growth of charity. The enmity of the Pharisees failed to arrest the progress of the Gospel, nor will the opposition of the Sadducees prove more successful. There is but one truth, but one cause, but one Leader, that will finally triumph. And as we believe that no further or worse temptation than that of this modern Atheism remains behind, we indulge a hope that this full and final triumph cannot be much longer delayed.

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

High Roding Rectory, Dunmow, Essex; 29th October, 1861.

SIR, The perusal of the article in this month's number of the Christian Observer, entitled "Clerical Education at Cambridge and Oxford," has recalled to my mind some thoughts, which first presented themselves to my mind some years ago, and which I now ask your kind permission to submit to your consideration. You may be aware that, some time since, a successful effort was made to raise funds for a bust of the late reverend and honoured Mr. Simeon. This memorial of his worth now stands in the University Library at Cambridge. Along with many others I was applied to for a contribution to the fund. My reply, however, to the gentleman who wrote to me was to the effect, that a bust would be but a poor memorial of such a man. And I suggested that an effort should be made to establish a Professorship for the purpose of preparing young men for the ministry, as an appropriate testimonial to the name of one who had been such a good minister of Jesus Christ.

The reply was, that such an attempt would be hopeless. And possibly I was in error in thus seeking to connect such a scheme with such a name. But now I would again ask, Why should not such a plan be attempted on its own intrinsic merits, (if it has any,) and on the ground of the acknowledged deficiency in Church Education at Cambridge ?