Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

geologists have for supposing that animals must have died before Adam was created? If facts will admit any other solution, they are satisfied; they have nothing to gain or lose in the matter. Would your correspondent, in arguing a question from Euclid, say, "Can any man in fairness suppose that an equilateral triangle is, or is not, equi-angular? There is no room for the question of fairness, unless a person has formed his conclusions before he considered the facts, and only looked at the facts to make them support his conclusions. A man applying himself to the enlargement of his knowledge, does not study to be unfair; he wants truth; he desires to increase his information; and he would think it very unfair to himself to throw dust into his own eyes. He may be blind, prejudiced, ignorant, mistaken, infatuated; but he can have no wish to cozen himself as to a dry matter of fact; nor is it very charitable to fancy, in such a case, that he wishes to be unfair to others in stating the results of his examination. Can any man suppose that Dr. Buckland would turn a straw to make people believe that an iguanodon is older or younger than he really believes it to be? He may be wrong; but he ought not to be charged with the moral guilt of wilful obliquity.

I admit, however, that there is danger of unfairness if we mix up scientific inquiries with other questions. Galileo's judges blended an astronomical question with the infallibility of their church; and as they did not mean, under any weight of proof, to be driven to relinquish the latter, they were likely enough to be unfair towards the arguments which supported Galileo's views of the former. I myself long felt it very difficult to be fair to the arguments of the geologists, because they opposed my interpretation of holy writ; but there was no danger of my being wilfully unfair to any argument which seemed to support my own opinion. If your correspondent is conscious of having weighed the facts collected by the geologists, with as much impartiality as I have those which have been alleged against their conclusions, I may without vanity say we are both very fair men, though differing in opinion. But I much doubt whether he can affirm that he has thus impartially examined them; indeed he could not possibly do so while he cherished the notion that they opposed the word of God. In that case his business was not to weigh, but to attempt to overturn; as I did, as long as in conscience I could. He had no right to tamper with truth; and what God says must be truth;-all that fairness required was to inquire what results geological facts lead to, and then whether his clashing view of Divine revelation was the only possible view which the sacred record would honestly bear. There may be unfairness in a good as well as in a bad cause; but "shall a man lie for God?

[ocr errors]

But if your correspondent by "fairly" means reasonablythat is, by the use of common sense or intellectual effort, apart from revelation, then it is for him to shew that it is unfair or unreasonable to suppose that the death of animals may have occurred before the human race sinned. But he must put his proposition into plain words; for the phraseology which he has adopted covers an ambiguity that places the replicant at an unfair disadvantage. It sounds as if he said, "Does it not stand to reason that there cannot be sorrow without sin; death without guilt? Can we fairly suppose otherwise?" But when we "fairly” examine his question, we shall see that the words “ unfallen world' are used in an equivocal sense; the stress of the appeal to our fair

ness being, that if the world had not sinned, can we suppose that it would have been punished? But it was not the world of birds, beasts, and fishes, that sinned, but man; and his question really is, "Can death fairly be supposed to have fallen upon the brute creation if man had not sinned? To this, if he appeals merely to intellectual deduction, apart from revelation, the reply would be, " Yes; it can be as fairly supposed that the brute creation which had not sinned, died without their death being penal, as that they died in consequence of the sin of man, they being unoffending." Your correspondent takes for granted that the whole difficulty is on the side of supposing that animals may have died without man having sinned; whereas if there be any difficulty, it is on the other side. That no animal died till man had sinned, and that death visited animals in consequence of human transgression, if they be facts, are facts to be learned only from revelation; nor can any person be justly accused of unfairness because he does not arrive at them by unassisted reason. Let your correspondent select an impartial arbiter; before whom he is to prove (revelation apart; for he is speaking of "fairness," of natural reasoning, not of belief of divine testimony, for where God speaks it would be preposterous to talk of fairly or unfairly), that it argues wilful unfairness to suppose that animals may have been permitted to die as a wise and merciful provision; in order, for instance, to keep down the innumerable tribes of sentient being within certain limits of food and space; or for some unknown but infinitely just and good reason; and that the only natural supposition which any unbiassed person would come to is, that they died because the human race had broken the laws of God. The arbiter might reply, that whatever may be the facts, there is nothing to the eye of natural reason which makes it absurd to suppose that animals may have died without man having sinned, or having so much as existed; for it is quite as reasonable to imagine that an animalcule was intended to exist only for a short time, as that it was created to live and multiply to all eternity; a hypothesis which, traced to its results, involves so many difficulties, that so far from its standing to reason, nothing short of a revelation could induce one to believe it.

The issue then comes to this; if your correspondent puts the question as a matter of unassisted reason, there is no proof that a person must in common fairness come to the conclusion that unsinning animals died because man had sinned; and if he puts it as a question of revelation, then the Christian geologist denies that there is any thing in Scripture which teaches that animals never died till man fell. Your correspondent, indeed, says: "If we add to this consideration the express words of the Almighty to the apostate Adam, Cursed is the ground for thy sake; may we not scripturally conclude that the mortality of the inferior creatures is to be referred to the offence of man as its first and prevailing cause? But it may be replied, That if the death of animals is owing to the sin of Adam, then all animals will rise again; "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Is your correspondent prepared to admit such a conclusion? Of course not; and yet I might echo his own words, and say, "Can the effects of death be supposed to remain in a redeemed world?" Does he reply that the brute animals are not included in the redemption? I may rejoin, Why then necessarily in the fall; for the words are as strong in the one case as the other. Death was penal to man, who was created for immortality; and animals partake

of the evils arising from man's fallen condition; but an animalcule might have lived, and died after the enjoyment of its little span of life, on the very day that Adam was created, without its death being penal. There is nothing in Scripture to disprove this.

The long-deposited, but plainly legible, records of geological phenomena attest that animals lived and died anterior to the existence of man; Scripture does not contradict this; and so far from its being an "unfair" supposition upon the principles of reason, it is much more obvious than the supposition that it was a chastisement for man's transgression; though if Divine revelation asserted that it was, it would be an article of belief, for God cannot mistake or falsify. But the alternative does not come to this.

FIDES.

LETTER FROM THE EAST ON THE STATE OF TURKEY.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THINKING that the following extract from a letter of a Christian friend in the East may interest your readers, I inclose it for your

use.

R.

"The future in this country of the East seems to be big with great events. I should not wonder if in a few months we were to see all the Turkish dominions in a flame. Albania, Thessaly, and Macedonia, are said to be ripe for revolution. You will have heard of the simultaneous events of Mahmoud's death, and the battle on the Euphrates. It seems very much as if the death-knell of the Turkish empire was sounding, and the waters of the Euphrates drying up. I was told to-day that the Turks had a prophecy amongst themselves, which led them to expect that this year their Sultan would die, and next year their empire would be overthrown; and it is singular that all the tribes in these countries, Turks, Greeks, and Jews, look forward to the year 1840, as a year full of portentous changes. The Jews say that if their Messiah does not come then, they shall expect him no longer. The Greeks expect troubles that will lead to the re-establishment of their empire, and the triumph of their orthodox church, preparatory to the fulfilment of our Lord's words, that there shall be one fold under one Shepherd.' May the events in preparation all tend to the furthering of God's kingdom."

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE LIFE OF SIR RICHARD HILL, BART.

The Life of Sir Richard Hill, Bart., M.P. for Shropshire. By the Rev. EDWIN SIDNEY, A.M., Author of the Life of the Rev. Rowland Hill, the Rev. S. Walker &c. 1839. IN addressing ourselves to a notice of the Life of Sir Richard Hill, we may pass over much prefatory matter, which it might have been

very necessary or desirable to premise thirty years ago. There is a much better public understanding of the character and principles of

those excellent clergymen and laymen, who, during the reign of George the Third, were instruments in the hands of God in promoting a revival of piety in this and other lands, and especially in our own church. Much misconception has passed away; and above all, the absurd misconception that in resuscitating the truly Scriptural doctrines of the Reformation, they were sapping the foundations of morality, and teaching men to sin that grace might abound. The Oxford tractators are quite as bold as Dr. Daubeny; but they would not dare, in the face of public conviction as well as of truth, to assert, as he did in his "Guide to the Church" (see our review of it, in our vol. for 1805, p. 162), that "Sir Richard Hill and Mr. Wilberforce decry good works." If they did they were superfluously wicked, for few men did so many of them.

We are equally relieved from the necessity of rebutting the charge, that those who coalesce with such clergymen as Whitfield, Wesley, Walker, Venn, Newton, Harvey, Romaine, Fletcher, Adam, the Milners, Robinson, and Simeon, or such laymen as Thornton and Sir Richard Hill, in those fundamental articles of doctrine, and those duties of piety, in which, notwithstanding all their mutual differences, they cordially concurred, are responsible for all their sayings or doings; and are forced either to accept them as party leaders, or to reject them as heresiarchs. We see much to love, to admire, to venerate; we see also not a little to lament and to avoid. All could not be right in their doctrinal disputations with each other; nor could we, as Christians or Churchmen, call any man master: for One is our master, even Christ; though so far as they followed him we are not to part company from them.

But least of all is it necessary to make ecclesiastical professions, because some of these excellent men, whose memory we highly venerate, mistook, as we apprehend, the path of duty in matters of church discipline. The circumstances under which they did so are now well known; the general apathy caused the zeal of some to be misinterpreted, and of others to flow into irregular channels, from a mistaken apprehension that the accustomed bounds were not wide enough for its due exertion.

Much that was then accounted very indecorous-such as a clergyman's "unseasonable" preaching and praying, his expoundings in the cottages and school-rooms in his parish, and his laborious visitings, tract-distributings, and the like-would now be better appreciated; and as to what was really inconsistent with ordination obligations and church discipline, its amount was greatly exaggerated; and, be it what it might, there is no obligation to imitate or defend it.*

66 a

*The Rev. T. Binney, in a recent discourse upon the duty of "nonconformity" (appropriately delivered at the opening of a chapel for Mr. Ridley Herschell, converted Jew," who so admirably exhibits this glorious principle, that he can only be an unordained teacher, not a minister, in his own chapel, as he cannot unite himself in conscience with any ex

isting body of Christians, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Independent; PædoBaptist or Anti-pædo-Baptist; being "converted " to a sui generis phase of Christianity) states that "the advocates of Evangelical religion," in the days we have been referring to, "were not perhaps the best churchmen," he is speaking of their doctrines," but they were the best Apostolicals." He adds: "Dissenters willingly rejoiced in their success, and overlooked in their conduct what they did not understand, for the sake of that in their character which they did. So far, however, has the Puseyite doctrines imbued the minds of the Evangelical party, that it is difficult to know whether the exclusive and unscriptural side of the above-mentioned points, is not now ge

Sir Richard Hill was an attached member of the Church of England; and being a layman, is not subject to the charge of ecclesiastical inconsistency which lay at the door of his excellent, though erratic brother, Rowland. He was a fine example of an English country gentleman; he was firm, frank, manly, generous, courteous; no member of the House of Commons was more respected, beloved, or confided in; and to say that he was an ardent constitutional patriot and loyalist,

with "

nerally advocated by its adherents." It seems then that Dissenters rejoiced in the conduct of those who, professing to be churchmen, were inconsistent with their professions; while they denounce as "imbued with Puseyite doctrine those who are what they profess. We deny that the body of clergymen alluded to are imbued Puseyite doctrine;" which they dread, deprecate, and oppose, as contrary both to the word of God and the formularies of their own church. And as to the remark, that "time was, when evangelical clergymen recognized, or were thought to recognize, Presbyterian, Independent, and other ministers, as ministers of Christ; to admit that the Episcopal was not the exclusive and only church;"—we do not know, or believe, that there has been any change either as to recognition or non-recognition; we presume that individuals form their opinions on such subjects much as they always did; that the persons in question are quite right in firmly upholding and adhering to the doctrines and discipline of their own 66 "Apostolical" church, without going out of their way to unchurch every body else; and if there has been any practical breach of charity, as we fear there has, it has chiefly originated in the harsh words or wrong doings of those who consider that the church of England ruins more souls than it saves, or have united politically with popery, socinianism, infidelity, and radicalism, for

its overthrow.

[blocks in formation]

would be superfluous, for unless his blood ebbed and flowed differently to that of the unsullied stock of his ancient and venerable house, five brothers of which fought at Waterloo, and one of whom has long filled and adorned the post of commander of her Majesty's forces, the institutions of his country in Church and State could not but be entwined with his dearest feelings. We shall have occasion to exhibit him in some of these aspects in the course of our remarks and quotations, of which we hope not to be sparing, for his biographer has afforded us a bountiful supply of matter both profitable and entertaining. We only add at present, that which gave colour and tone to his whole character, that his heart was pervaded by true religion; he determined to know nothing among men contrary to, or in comparison with, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, as his most blessed Lord and Master, to whose glory he lived, and in whose faith and fear he died, after a long life of piety, charity, and active usefulness. Mr. Sidney has not dilated much, and we shall dilate less, upon some things in his opinions, speeches, and writings, which were not to be commended or admired. His racy humour was sometimes coarse (we mean broad, not licentious), sometimes satirical, and often misplaced; his doctrinal statements were strongly Calvinistic; and he did not always do right things in the wisest mode; but whatever might be his mistakes or imperfections, he was "a burning and a

shining light" in the important station of life which he occupied ; a blessing to the generation in which he lived; and a man whose name ought to be handed down to posterity as a faithful servant of Christ in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

« AnteriorContinuar »