Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

1 trust that under God's blessing, their exertions will continue to be unabatedly employed.

But after all; no individual exertions of their's, howéver energetic and strenuous, can in the present circumstances of things, be adequate, or any thing like adequate, to what is necessary to defend the Church against those arts which are under the most diversified forms resorted to by Methodists to thwart the design of their Ministry. New and extraordinary evils require new and extraordinary remedies. Legislative interference is become absolutely requisite for the protection of the Church of England, if she is to maintain her ground. Effectual provision must be made to guard against those abuses of toleration to which I have alluded. The State must defend the Church as well as the Clergy, and it is not to be doubted, that in its wisdom, such measures might be devised, which while they would cut off those facilities, to the ready use of which the Methodists are principally indebted for success, in their endeavours to undermine and weaken the interests of the Church, would at the same time be of that purely defensive nature, as not in any degree to infringe on the principles or spirit of toleration properly understood; and therefore would not furnish any reasonable grounds of complaint to those who, as separatists from the Church, wish for no farther liberty than that of following and professing their own doctrines in a quiet and unobtrusive way; and of paying their homage to their maker in that mode, and according to those forms most agreeable to their ideas.

I cannot, Mr. Editor, better conclude this subject, than by a quotation from a sermon of one of the ablest Divines, and one of the best Christians of the age, in which he lived, I mean Dr. Calamy, "Did I know, (says he) any constituted Church in the world that did teach a Religion more holy and useful, that delivered doctrines in themselves more reasonable, or in their consequences tending more directly to the peace of society, and the good of every particular person; to the promoting of piety and morality, and the discountenancing of sin and vice, that did give more forcible argument for the one, and against the other; that did lay greater stress upon a pure mind and a blameless life, and less upon voluntary strictness, and indifferent rites and ceremonies than we do; I would very soon be of that Church, and even entice all I could to it: but till such a one be found, nay

[ocr errors]

So.

so long as it is manifest that all the zealous opposers of the Church of England do hold opinions either destruc tive of, or in their plain tendency weakening the force. of all the precepts, promises, and threatenings contained in the Gospel, and such as if they do not encourage men to, yet at least furnish them with pleas and excuses for their wickedness; I am sure it is our interest no less than our duty, if we sincerely love God and our Souls, and have any real desire of our own or others welfare, faithfully to adhere to that Church we have the happiness to be members of, and vigorously to maintain and defend it."

J. C.

Essays illustrative of the NATURAL HISTORY of the

BIBLE.

ON THE ORIGINAL FORMATION OF THE EARTH. (Continued from page 206.)

TH

Where is the Way where LIGHT dwelleth?

JOB XXXVIII. 19.

HE chaos being reduced into order and consistency, the Almighty WISDOM or WORD of GOD said "Let there be LIGHT and there was LIGHT." On this part of the sacred history much opposition, and much laboured conjecture and speculation have been displayed. Impertinent infidels, ever more ready to start difficulties and objections against revelation, than to discover truth, have assumed a triumph over Moses, for relating (as they pretend) the creation of the effect before that of the cause; and, well-meaning believers have endeavoured to explain the text, and to vindicate the history by asserting that either this primitive LIGHT means nothing more than the atmospherical fluid, or that what is said of the creation of the Sun and other luminaries on the fourthday, is only a particular recapitulation of what was generally related on the first*; while others again by a very forced and unnatural strain of conjecture, have supposed that this LIGHT was a special luminous body, created on purpose for that particular occasion, and like that which gave light to the Israelites in the Wilderness in the night timet. Such fanciful explications only -serve unhappily to confirm the perversity of sceptical + Calmet's Dict. of the Bible.

*Burnet and Whiston's Theories.

minds, and to disturb the faith of serious and inquiring Christians.

The sacred Historian expressly says that LIGHT began its operation at the Divine command on the first day of the creation, and that the Sun and Moon were not placed in their stations till the fourth. This is is the plain relation; now let us see whether it does not accord with the evidence of experience, and confirmed (as far as such a testimony needs confirmation) by most accurate observations upon the phænomena of nature.

Whatever opinions were entertained in former days, it will not now be questioned that LIGHT is a body. Its motion can be perceived, its velocity can be calculated, its direction can be changed, it can be accumulated or dispersed; its constituent parts can be separated and reunited; it can be combined with and separated from other bodies, and therefore it must be a substance peculiar and distinct.

What it precisely is, we know not, because of its extreme minuteness and subtlety; but it most probably consists of atoms or particles of singular tenuity, moving with inconceivable velocity in strait lines, operating upon all substances, attracting and capable of being attracted.

It is, therefore, necessarily different, according to the different sources from whence, and the media through which it passes. The velocity and impulse of the solar light, darts with inconceivable rapidity through the air, and yet that velocity and impulse have been as accurately calculated as the progress of sound. The solar light, however, does not combine with the atmosphere, or with any other gas, and consequently is only a more active and powerful kind of this wonderful body, and not exclusively either the substance, or the source of the substance itself.

The principles and experiments of electricity open to us somewhat of the nature of this secret, yet most powerful element. By this discovery we have been enabled to trace and convey it at pleasure, and we find, thereby, that while it is of itself a distinct substance, it unites with and influences all others. From chemical observations we farther learn, that light is the irritating princi ple of plants, and the means by which their circulation is carried on, that it penetrates the buds of flowers, gives a green hue to the leaves, enters the epidermis and bark

of

of trees, and even reaches far below the surface of the earth.

Upon the human frame the influence of light is plainly observed, and it is this only which will give a rational explication of the variations of feature and colour in different climates.

The existence, therefore, of this subtile and ever acting substance peculiar to itself, yet impelled by, and associated with others, not only clears up the supposed difficulty in the Mosaic cosmogony, but ought to lead us to admire the wonderful accuracy of that account so accordant with the result of modern observation and experi ment. If light be thus essentially necessary to vegeta tion, it must have been created before the earth could bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth."Geh. i. 11.

We must not suppose that the primeval light was a dazzling splendid illumination; but only a gentle soft and equal tint spread out over the earth, and entering into all its pores for the purpose of producing vegeta tion and other important effects.

The action of so powerful a body as that impelled from the surface of the Sun would have been too much in the infant state of the globe, till it was prepared to bear the refulgence of the solar rays, and the vegetative system had acquired strength to receive, and be invigorated by them.

That the body of the Sun is opake and only luminous in consequence of an atmosphere of light which surrounds it, appears at least probable, if not demonstrable, from the observations of a very accurate and indefatigable astronomer*. The light on the Sun's surface is nothing more than an active and immensely large collection of that element which, from the centrifugal force, is constantly driven off, and its place supplied by other masses in a less decomposed state. Thus this substance is perpetually passing and repassing throughout the whole system, till after various operations, and circuits, it gathers again to the Sun, from whence it is again propelled in a continued succession.

The LIGHT thus created, and set in motion at the beginning, naturally fell or was attracted towards the EARTH, and when that prodigiously larger body the SUN,

* Dr. Herschel,

was

was fixed in the centre to be its principal receptacle or grand agent, the force of attraction there being infinitely greater it was naturally directed to it; and formed thereon a luminous atmosphere, and it will continue to do so till the same FIAT which commanded its existence shall cause all the "Elements to be melted with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein to be burnt up." 2 Pet. iii. 10.

(To be continued.)

EXTRACTS.

No. IV.

THE TRUE DESIGN OF THE GOSPEL.

By RALPH CUDWORTH, D. D. Author of the Intellectual

L'

System.

ET us not (I beseech you) judge of our knowing Christ, by our ungrounded persuasions that Christ from all eternity hath loved us, and given himself particularly for us, without the conformity of our lives to Christ's Commandments, without the real partaking of the image of Christ in our hearts. The great mystery of the Gospel, it doth not lie only in Christ without us, (though we must know also what he hath done for us) but the very pith and kernel of it, consists in Christ inwardly formed in our hearts. Nothing is truly ours, but what lives in our spirits. Salvation itself cannot save us, as long as it is only without us; no more than health can cure us, and make us sound, when it is not within us, but somewhere at distance from us; no more than arts and sciences, whilst they lie only in books and papers without us, can make us learned. The Gospel, though it be a sovereign and medicinal thing in itself, yet the mere knowing and believing of the history of it, will do us no good: we can receive no virtue from it, till it be inwardly digested and concocted into our souls; till it be made ours, and become a living thing in our hearts. The Gospel, if it be only without us, cannot save us; no more than that physician's bill, could cure the ignorant

patient

« AnteriorContinuar »