If this inference be rejected by the Scriptural geologist, or if it can be proved unsound, I confess I should find myself in a labyrinth, from which I conceive there could be no possible escape. For I must then admit, that though " the wages of sin is death," yet, in point of fact, death preceded sin in the history of created beings. Without any intention whatsoever of disputing the facts of the geologist, or rather, while little competent to follow them into all their depths, I would fain receive such an answer to my present query, as may vindicate the truth of Scripture on that subject to which I have ventured to callthe attention of your readers.

GEOLOGY NOT OPPOSED TO SCRIPTURE.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer,

Πιστις.

I SAID, in your No. for April, that there was nothing in the first part of the paper of F. S. which appeared to me to require a reply; nor do I know that there is in the second part, as the writer merely reiterates the oft-discussed and oft-refuted objection, that the supposition that animals lived and died long before the creation of Adam is antiscriptural; without attempting to show how he would avoid the inferences which geologists are forced to admit from undeniable facts. If he can satisfy himself that he can reconcile those phenomena with the popular interpretations, I have no wish to disturb his repose in that conclusion; but I have never yet found any person who had duly weighed the facts, and was able to estimate the force of induction, who pretended to do so. A declaimer in the newspapers, who is evidently ignorant of the details, or incapable of estimating their bearing, or determined to shut his eyes to the truth, has been aspersing the geological professors at our Universities, together with numerous clergymen and laymen whose belief in the word of God is quite as firm and implicit as his own can be, as if they were infidels or sceptics; while those who really are so, triumph in such invectives; well knowing that nothing better serves their cause than for men who have not science enough to appreciate facts, to contend for interpretations which are inconsistent with them; and to represent the sacred text as admitting no other.

Your correspondent F. S. says: "If A Scriptural Geologist' asserts that this seventh period was likewise one of a thousand years, of which whole our week of days is only a reduced and retrospective representation, then I would ask him when did Adam fall?" In reply, I beg leave to observe, that I never said or supposed anything of the kind; and indeed I do not clearly know what he means. Mr. Faber, who is an antediluvian antiquary rather than a geologist, urged some years since a notion that the days of creation might be periods of a thousand years, a thousand years being with the Lord as a day; and he thought that this hypothesis would account for the appearances of successive organization; but this was but an ingenious fancy, for which geology is not responsible, and certainly stood in no need of. I never abetted any such fancy. Sound-minded geologists enter into no speculations, as to the details of the creation. They receive the Divine record that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;" and that in process of time he prepared the world for the habitation of man, in the

manner related in the inspired narrative; but they find in fossil remains ample proofs that there existed races of animated beings upon it long anterior to the slightest vestige of the human race; and they discover in the earth's strata a variety of striking facts inconsistent with the hypothesis that the early history of our planet goes back only to the few thousand years that man has inhabited it; and they therefore infer that, between the creation of the earth and the creation of man, there intervened a lengthened period; and they see nothing in the inspired account that contradicts this inference.

I have not read Dr. Buckland's recent discourse upon the existence of death before the fall of Adam; but I am acquainted with what has been written by Bishop Bird Sumner, Dr. Chalmers, by Buckland himself in his former works, and by other Christian geological writers, and I see nothing in the supposition that is unscriptural; whereas it is certain that existing fossil records so clearly lead to that conclusion that we must contradict facts if we deny it. I perfectly agree in the statement of the Rev. H. Melvill, quoted in your January Number, where he says:

"And though you may think it strange that there should have been death before there had been sin, you are to remember that there is nothing in the Bible to inform us that animals die because man was disobedient. We may have been accustomed to think so; but we do not see how it can be proved. And when you observe that whole tribes of animals are made to prey upon others, this species being manifestly designed for the food of that, you will perhaps find it hard to believe that every living thing was originally meant to live for ever; you will ask something better than a popular persuasion, ere you conclude that the insect of a day was intended to be immortal; or that what is the appointed sustenance of a stronger race, was also appointed to be actually indestructible."

Your correspondent F. S. quotes against this that God gave "every green herb for meat;" and he cannot therefore credit the existence of carnivorous animals before the Fall. But does not every green herb teem with animal life in profusion? which would be destroyed by being eaten and digested. Herbivorous animals destroy innumerably more lives than carnivorous; just as in killing a sheep or ox we slay but one creature; whereas in "a dinner of herbs," or a draught of water, we may slay millions. Either therefore F. S. must deny that air, and water, and earth, and every green herb, were peopled with animalcules as at present; and that consequently God made all these animated beings for the first time after the Fall; or else he must tell us how it was possible to eat, or drink, or inhale, or crush with the foot, or masticate and digest, myriads upon myriads of insect beings, and yet never to destroy one. Will he resort to the usual ne-plus-ultra argument of the anti-geologists, "How do we know but it was a miracle?" When a disputant replies thus, it is useless to converse further. It is clear that he has nothing to urge, and yet does not choose to yield. It has been already remarked, in a former Number, that when anti-geologists are closely pressed with facts, they often try to escape by asking questions scarcely less unfair-not to add absurdthan if a disputant, borne down by Euclid, should stand at bay with, "How do I know that antediluvian triangles were like ours?" Even your good correspondent F. S., whom I respect for his piety and excellent spirit, and who I am sure does not mean to write uncandidly, is obliged to betake himself to this, species of defence-I cannot call it argument. When hard pressed with the fact that not a vestige of any thing human has ever been found in the older strata, or among

the relics of the extinct genera and species of animals; whereas such vestiges are innumerable in the recent crust, the legitimate inference from which, to any unprejudiced mind, is, that they were not contemporaneous-instead of admitting this obvious conclusion, he resorts to the usual anti-Baconian device of asking gratuitous," How-do-weknow-but" questions. He says:

"Let me demand of your correspondent, whether the sea and land, since that Mosaic deluge, may not have partially changed their relative places; whether he, or any other modern geologist, has searched the bed of the ocean; whether human bones may not have been hurled into its bottom, which is their grave, and their particles have been broken and dissolved, as if it had been the Divine Will that they who perished by the act of a judicial sentence, should have no other burial place, nor be raked out of such a receptacle, and that the event itself should be paradoxically noted by the total want of any such public mark at all, as would have been the result, had so many millions of our fellow-beings been hewn out of every quarry, and exposed to view, in the same manner as they may be disinterred from our church-yards? May they not be sunk in an abyss of oblivion, and enveloped with a coverlid from which they cannot be extricated, till, at the same Almighty bidding, 'the sea shall give up its dead?'"

It were puerile to reply to questions like these, which are not grounded upon any basis of fact or reason; but are merely vexatious interrogatories, just to ward off a conclusion which the writer does not choose to admit, and yet does not know how legitimately to get rid of. He has no reason whatever, either in revelation or geological facts, for supposing that human bones have thus been broken, dissolved, and concealed by a special act of the Divine Will; or that none of the antediluvians lived in Asia, or other parts of our present earth, but under what is now the Icy Sea or the Pacific Ocean, or any other place that fancy may devise; and assuredly he never dreamed of any such matters till he wanted a visionary "How-do-we-know-but " to oppose to the geologist's indicative inferences from undeniable facts; and even were I to prove-which I think I easily could-the utter improbability that the relics of mankind and of contemporaneous animals were thus separated, and that no part of the early world remains, I do not believe that he would fail to imagine some other hypothesis, rather than admit what he would have admitted at the first glance, if he had not feared that it opposed Scripture-though it opposes only his interpretation of Scripture. I honour this conscientious fear; but I am sure that in the present case it is quite misplaced. Let us not invent gratuitous hypotheses to stifle the voice of facts; the infallible Word of God is in no danger.

A SCRIPTURAL GEOLOGIST.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

"

"A DOOR WAS OPENED IN HEAVEN (Rev. vi. 1.)
How its apportioned time abide,

OH! for that brief mysterious view,
Once to the seer of Patmos given !
That vision of the favoured few,

The door that opened into Heaven!

To lift a corner of the veil,

To pass the canopy of sky;
And with unearthly wonder hail
The deep things of eternity!
How would the soul rest satisfied,
Its hope assured, its doubts dispelled;

With each impatient murmur quelled!
To bear the bursting flood of light,
Where seraphs bathe their glancing
wings;

To gaze on forms all pure and bright —
To hear unutterable things!

To mark a host arrayed in hues,

Known only to the Courts above; And angel guides, who with them muse The mystery of Eternal Love.

The hymn of love-the shout of Possessions at far distance hailed ;We walk by faith-and not by sight.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

PROFESSOR HAMPDEN'S LECTURE ON TRADITION.

A Lecture on Tradition, read before the University in the Divinity School, Oxford; with Additions. By R. D. HAMPDEN, D. D., Regius Professor of Divinity, &c. 1839.