Though I have dwelt so long upon this subject, I should feel unpardonable in passing by the Indian Antiquities of Mr. Maurice, a compilation that entitles him to the thanks of the Christian world, and which ought to be even more abundant for his late History of Hindoostan --a work that carries with it its own reward, as defending, and nobly defending, that cause which, under every worldly disappointment, will bring peace and consolation to its supporters. I have not the pleasure of knowing him, but he will have the goodness to accept this acknowledgment of my obligations to him, and my warmest wishes for his welfare. No language, no assertion, no documents, could establish stronger proofs of the corruption of the grand primeval tradition, than the two extraordinary prints of Creeshna, which Mr. Maurice has given in the last part of his history; and once more we will speak of this work, as replete with the most useful and interesting information.* We now come to consider Moses as a philosopher, and as a philosopher taught of GOD. Rolling on with its ceremonies of the Hindus, and of the Brahmins especially-are extremely interesting and curious. In short, with their little shades of difference, we consider the picture of nations, exhibited by these two great and learned men, as preserving those uniform features of religion which the Almighty stamped upon his work, and in which the deformity of idolatry only serves to set forth the beauties of the original. * Vide Ancient History of Hindoostan, by the Rev. T. Maurice. train of uniform effects, his system of the world still continues to diffuse life, and health, and comfort to man; who, instead of looking to the book* of God's word, has been employed in hunting for truth and science in the operations of nature, and at last brought back nothing but error, conceit, and ignorance. The fabulous theories of the universe, which have thus been raised, and for a time believed, with all the rubbish that filled the schools, and disgraced the name of philosophy, have long since been consigned to oblivion by the sagacious discoveries of Sir I. Newton. Of this great man I speak with the utmost veneration; I speak of him as of one who has produced a work which will always stand first in its kind, which the capacity of man ever did, or ever will produce; as of one, who, in a material point of view, might say with more justice than his ancient predecessor-Dos mū δω και την Γην κινήσω. But when he carries me beyond the limits of this visible world; when his gigantic powers of genius projects the planets into boundless space, and then impels and * It may be worthy of remark, and certainly comes in indirect proof of the inspiration of Moses, that although learned, as he is represented to be, in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, who were familiar with the motions of the heavenly bodies, and well versed in the calculations of astronomy, he makes no scientific remark, which he naturally would have done, had he invented the history of the creation, but simply relates, that God made the light, that he divided it from the darkness, that he made the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night. arrests their course; when, from their periodical revolutions, he not only measures, estimates, and computes the different distances, magnitudes, and motions of the heavenly bodies, but prescribes to them their motive force, and sustains them in their orbits; when, having freed them from every obstruction to their rotatory im pulse, he approaches their central sun, and from thence darting forth a light to illuminate their hemisphere, he calculates the velocity of its luminous rays; I must confess I pause, whilst I wonder-I am not reading the book of revelation, and for that alone have I an implicit faith. It becomes a question, whether in some cases his calculations be not imaginary; whether he be not a computer of proportions which do not exist, and of forces, of which the positive existence, as well as agency, remains to be proved. I feel myself as unwilling, as I am unable, to set myself in opposition to opinions so long cherished and so ably supported; but the basis of many of them is surely hypothetical, and the only truth that I lay up in my mind as such, is a truth that can never be shaken. I know with what bitterness every occasional opposition to any part of the Newtonian Philosophy has been treated, and it might be safer and more prudent, as far as this world is concerned, to treat Moses with contempt, than to entertain the smallest doubt about the exemplified phænomena of Sir I. Newton. In the former case, one might be thought singular-in the latter, one must be ignorant. But till they are reconciled, till scripture and nature be made to agree, the error must be in the demonstration of the cause, since the effect remains invariably the same. If the discoveries of Sir I. Newton had remained unknown, the planetary system would have moved on in its appointed course, and without our knowledge of attraction or gravitation, would equally have fulfilled all the purposes of its destination. Besides, also, time makes great discoveries; though to the end of it, man will be left in ignorance of many things. Had Sir I. Newton lived to witness the surprising properties of electricity-had he seen a powerful agent, acting according to no known laws of gravity, projection, or attraction, and yet solving several phænomena in the universe; and even from actual experiment producing in a spherical body a revolutionary and a rotatory motion-he might have combined other powers with those of attraction and gravitation, to account for the origin and perpetuity of motion. Had he weighed in his capacious mind the plain and direct assertion of Moses-GOD said, Let there be light, and there was light-he would not have thrown into the hands of infidelity so powerful an argument against the truth of God's work; and which, upon the supposition of all light emanating from the sun, has been industriously made use of to falsify the whole history of creation. Also, since it is now incontestibly proved, that we live in an ocean of elementary fire; that in all free spaces, and within the poręs of all bodies, whether solid or fluid, there exists a subtle æther, which, while at rest in equilibrio, seems to be doing nothing, but is at the same time silently at work in all nature; that till it is thrown out of its balance it does not shew itself, and even then we know it not in its total force, but only in its accidental differences. And if, moreover, this subtle and elastic substance, (which, in the most attenuated and unresisting state, Sir I. Newton himself admits readily to pervade all bodies, and to be expanded through the whole heavens) when acting by electricity, blow, burn, and shine; may it not be presumed without inconsistency, and upon the fairest deductions of analogy, to be the old light which filled creation, before the sun was placed in the firmament, to put it into motion, and thus to warm and illumine the earth with his beams?* Might we not assume a doubt, as to the cal 66 * Vide a most ingenious dissertation on this elementary fluid, by Mr. King, "Morsels of Criticism," p. 48, et seq. But I hope, also, I may refer the reader to some Letters on Electricity by the late and much-lamented Mr. Jones, which have been kindly communicated to me in MS. and are designed, I believe I may say, for the press.Vide also, the Bishop of Landaff's Chemical Essays, vol. i. essay 4. Also, Nature Displayed, vol. iii.-The German philosopher, though his inference be not just, wholly denies emanation. Having esta"blished," says Euler, a perfect vacuum between the heavenly "bodies, there remains no other to be adopted, but that of emana"tion; which obliged Newton to maintain, that the sun, and all "other luminary bodies, emit rays, which are always particles, in"finitely small, of their mass darted from them with incredible "force. It must be such to a very high degree, in order to impress on rays of light that inconceivable velocity with which they come "from the sun to us in the space of eight minutes. But let us see 66 66 |