Possessor of heaven and earth. The question is not whether we have refuted and demolished the works of Dr. J. P. Smith, Dr. Candlish, and H. Miller, Esq. ?-but whether, by our brief, simple, and, it may be thought, senseless remarks, we have made them refute themselves? We have attempted to keep to the letter and spirit, to the law and the testimony. We take the world as it appears, and as it must of absolute necessity have been remodelled at the flood, as Fairholm and Rhind both think,-as there was no other catastrophe since the creation to destroy and relay it, and no other time to raise the everlasting mountains and fruitful hills with which the strata are dovetailed-as both revelation, and reason, and experience, and fact, do not authorize the creation of any matter in heaven above or the earth beneath, above six days of twenty-four hours each, before Adam; and the Bible, as it speaks, without note or comment, without the sledge-hammer of philosophy, or the steam-engine of Biblical criticism; and they perfectly harmonize. We reckon nothing upon matter, but everything on the veritable revelation of the Eternal mind. Mr. William Rhind, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, in his Age of the Earth, justly says, However simple a writing may be, especially if that writing be in a dead language, apply the Proteus power of verbal criticism, and it becomes anything or everything. Take from, or add to a sentence a single word, or half a word, and, like a child's edifice of cards, it falls instantly to pieces, and you may build it as your fancy pleases. Accordingly, he adds, among all the laborious verbal criticisms of the Hebrew text, (and he might have added the Greek,) there is not one but what seems to have darkened or perplexed the meaning of the original. The book of Genesis is throughout a plain, simple, and matter-of-fact history, with the names and dates given to a scrupulous nicety. Will the first verses of Genesis, he continues, bear the construction of a pre-Adamite world put upon them? Does the first sentence or verse appear an isolated announcement of a previous creation, unconnected with the detail of a second creation which is to follow? Or does it not at once suggest the plain, and obvious, and unequivocal meaning of a general announcement of the subject which is to follow, that all things were created by God. This, we think, is distinctly evident from the second verse; there is no interval of time in the remotest manner suggested; on the contrary, the narrator, without pause or interruption, proceeds to describe the state of things immediately after the first act of creation. As to the Sabbath, the Jews, he says must have understood the meaning of Moses

in the literal sense of one day (of twenty-four hours,) and not, according to the acceptation of Faber and Miller, that the Sabbath is a protracted period till the resurrection terminates the work of redemption. Dr. Smith will be uplifted that he is ranked by Mr. Miller with Buckland, Chalmers, Conybeare, Duncan, Fleming, Sedgwick, and Sumner. In our book, there may be errors in grammar, in logic, in literature, in philosophy, in science, and in art, arising from unobservance or haste of the pen, or the press. There may be beauties or blemishes, courtesies or discourtesies; but it has been our endeavour to keep by, Thus saith the Lord. The Bible is true, and geology, till based on the flood, ever will be false. We shall regret every word or sentence which can legitimately be construed into asperity, impropriety, want of Christian courtesy, still more scurrility or vulgarity, after every deduction has been made for what the Presbytery of Glasgow causelessly inflicted since the 5th September, 1811;-which Mr. Dick, one of their number, said, would have sent the half of the clergy of the Church of Scotland to their graves, before he died in 1826. And making the same allowances which must be made for the lesser roughnesses of Lord Cockburn's letter to the Lord Provost, William Johnston, Esq. of Kirkhill,-for I could not be guilty of such a want of taste,-and his Lordship's letter is just an essay on taste, with a witch-like title, or such impiety, as to compare Solomon's Temple, though oftener than once destroyed, and rebuilt, to Trinity College Church, founded by Mary of Gueldres, widow of James II., 1462, or Jerusalem to Paisley. All the cities that ever were, are, or shall be in the world, could not be compared to Jerusalem, the City of the Great King; and no earthly building will ever compare with the temple, filled, immediately after it was built, with the visible and unapproachable glory of the Lord; and where that same Lord of Hosts, was so often present in human form. Talk about Galileo, and the apparent or real motion of the stars, sun, or earth, to support the vagaries about the bantling geology !-He made all these suns and all their systems on the fourth day of creation,-only forty-eight hours before Adam. He counts the number of the stars, and nan es them every one, and upholds and guides them every instant. Speak about laws of attraction, cohesion, and gravitation,-they are nothing but His superintending Providence, whether Mr. Miller calls them chemical, mechanical, or electric. When He was God manifest in the flesh, often did He tread the streets of Jerusalem, and teach and do deeds of mercy in that sacred edifice. When forty days old, He was presented in

that temple, and just and devout old Simeon clasped Him in his withered arms. What would Lord Cockburn, what would Dr. Steven, what would any master and calibre-minded geologist have thought; and how would they have felt, and how would they have been abashed, and how would they have preached, and how would they have written, had they beheld such a scene? These are not cunningly devised fables, but awful overpowering realities. When twelve years of age, He was brought to Jerusalem at the Passover, to fulfil the duties of adult church membership. When missed and found by His guardians, He was in that temple in the midst of the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions, attending diligently to His Father's business. In that city and in that temple He was arraigned, tried, and condemned; He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter. The places have always been celebrated, where kings, or queens, or princes have visited, and have been killed. There the King of kings visited, and there He was crucified. Why such a rout about astronomy, by creatures who know that the poorest, silliest, human being, carries within him a soul and spirit of more value than the matter of all the stars. Dr. Neil may be praised by Lord Cockburn for saving the Flodden Tower. At Flodden we lost 9000 men, the flowers of the forest? Did Lord Cockburn never know a better provost than Adam Black, Esq. He proposed, but never tried the raising the degraded population of Edinburgh. He tried, and got the bill-passers' aid to change the southern districts. His Lordship may praise the Commissioners of Woods and Forests for squandering the public money, making a road for the street-walkers-the offScourings of Edinburgh; keeping up Mr. Nixon at how much. Whether it be a Whig or Tory job, it merits the severest censure. How much has been spent on Dunsapi Loch, and to what purpose? How would Mary Lady Clerk of Penicuick, have liked the epithet of The Peripatetic Lady? The shuddering at the Barracks, and shrinking at the Bank of Scotland, may be in taste; but we do not sympathize. The removal of Trinity Hospital, or monastery, is a lamentation, and will be for a lamentation. Where are the forty old men, and women, who should be in the house, and the hundred out of it. Has his Lordship even hinted to the Magistrates that a house as capacious as the old one, and as like it as practicable, must be erected; and the public see what and where the funds are ? Who has a right to take one penny from these establishments? But who is better entitled to give an unmistakeable hint, that the removal will not be long permitted? There are roughnesses in his Lordship's letter, good and pertinent as it is so

far as it goes, that we will not meddle with. What Edinburgh will be in 1949, and still more in 2049, who that sees the lowering aspect of the sky, can prognosticate. His Lordship's letter came like a flash of lightning; and if all the booksellers' windows were stuck with labels like Paton and Ritchie's, the sale must have been great. Great may its sale be! But we say, Touch not the Bible, nor the land of the Bible, nor the place where the Bible was read, and the God of the Bible worshipped. Touch not the day of the Bible, nor the Jews, the custodiers of the Bible. These are the beauties of the Bible, and are, at least, as deserving of conservation as the beauties of Edinburgh, although attending to the beauties of Edinburgh wont hurt them. Keep the Calton Hill free from Dr. Steven's church, top or bottom; get Nelson's Monument instantly turned to the benefit of decayed seamen, wellbehaved, with widows and orphans, to raise, perhaps, another Nelson; cause the Observatory pay for the Monument. Neither Lord Cockburn nor Dr. Steven should again meddle with Jerusalem, or its temple, till they have a proper venera. tion for sacred persons, places, and things. The patient, persevering, unprejudiced reader must bear in mind, that the volume originally was intended to consist of only a few Sermons that had escaped, when hundreds, in every state of preparation, had been destroyed; dedicated to the representatives of those who heard some of them, in the parish of Cadder, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Dunfermline. As they filled only about the half of the 430 pages contained in the pattern volume, the Life of the Rev. John Brown, Minister of Wamphray, banished by Charles II. in 1663, which the author printed in 1839, being a distant relative,―other matter needed to be supplied, till the Notes on Revelation-intended to complete the Covenants, printed by the author in 1841-exceeded the pages stipulated. The Geology was necessitated to be added, from a note inadvertently inserted in the Oration when correcting the press, which the printer improperly allowed to pass. The printer, attending to everything else, kept it in the press from 18th February, 1848, to the end of September, 1849. In judging of the Geology, the Bible must be assumed to be true, according to the authorized translation, without note or comment, criticism or philology; and those passages. on which geology is more especially based, written not in the colloquial or figurative, but philosophical style, because the author of it communicated all the human faculties, and understood all real philosophy, past, present, or future, (Psal. xciv. 8-11.) The Bible alone raises man above the beasts. The natives of Africa and America, and many parts of the world,

know nothing about literature, science, or art. In some parts of the world even yet, rational, responsible man, as Mr. Miller calls him, eats his fellow-man,-an act not done by the lowest and fiercest of the brute creation. In heaven-favoured Palestine, and little less privileged Britain, how many deeds of horrid cruelty and of degrading baseness, have been, and are committed! Dr. P. Smith and Mr. Miller have both sheltered themselves under many, and, as they reckoned, great names; but all the master-minds that ever shall be, are not a mote in the sunbeam, or a drop in the ocean, to the mind of the Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable. Public opinion, said to be stronger than fleets and armies, is weak as tow compared with the word, will, and opinion of God. It is with the public opinions of Dr. P. Smith, Dr. Candlish, and Mr. Miller, and those they have mentioned, that we have had to contend. With the men, we have no difference. Our answers or censures may seem too severe. Mr. Miller says, the severe censure of Johnson on reasoners of the Lamarckian class, is not over severe. Now, every geologian who does not take the Bible in its plain, ordinary common sense meaning, or according to the plain sense and import of the words, (pp. 597, 690, 734,) is nearly, if not precisely, in the same state as the Lamarckian. Mr. Miller and Dr. Smith do not intend to go so far, but they are engaged in the same worse than Babel building. We recall every word or expression that may offend against the courtesies of Christian controversy. Instead of hurting person, character, or interest, we do not wish to give a moment's pain. The promulgator of error, Mr. Miller says, may be lively and entertaining, whereas his pains-taking confutator runs no small risk of being tedious and dull. Were art, and literature, and philosophy, and science all consecrated to God, our purpose would be gained. We must copy the painter who twice exbibited his painting; for it matters not, like Goldsmith, to draw on posterity. Sixty years since, geology was scarcely known; infidelity was confined to the few; Popery was kept by George III. in abeyance; Voluntaryism had not been reckoned a part of religion; many things durst not be mentioned, that we would not name; but now all these are condensing, and gravitating, and hanging like the clouds before the disparaged flood, ready to burst on the world. Would Mr. Miller be persuaded, he would burn, like the Ephesians, his books, and build up, as he is well able, that faith which he has destroyed. We part with him, and all with whom we have met, in peace; and are certain, as Dr. Gordon said in his Assembly sermon, 1842, that all who shall be saved, shall be changed.