generalized too hastily upon the facts of science, or have interpreted too superficially the words of scripture. This has been the history of all past disagreements; and, one after another, we have seen alleged discrepancies vanish, and true science laying her offering at the footstool of the truth of God. Thus, when some learned writers on the formation of language pretended to have discovered proofs that it was not possible for all the dialects of the world to have had one common origin, Sir William Jones, and others, addressed themselves to the task, and demonstrated affinities between all the languages of the earth, explicable only on the hypothesis of one primary So when the celebrated tables of Indian history were first produced, and Christians were becoming alarmed at historic records, having every appearance of being anterior to the Mosaic era, it was permitted to Laplace, no special friend to Christianity, to show that some of the facts on which these tables were based were astronomically impossible !* root. In like manner were the pretended objections to the sacred record brought forth by Volney, founded on some exhumed Egyptian obelisks, permitted for some time to disturb old faiths in Bible history, till Champollion discovered a new reading of the hieroglyphics, which wrested the weapon from the sceptic's hand and turned it against himself. Of late, as we know, the ground of objection most commonly taken is that of the alleged inconsistency of the Mosaic account with the discoveries of geology; and, system after system of this new science has been broached, with every one of which it has been customary to urge that the Mosaic cosmogony is at variance. Now, we are far from wishing to undervalue the results of geological investigation. It is one of the noblest fields ever opened for human thought, and to the cause of truth is giving promise continually of yielding a glorious harvest. But when successive theories in relation to it are urged as being at variance with scripture, is it not competent to us to ask, Have not all these geological hypotheses been at variance with one another? Has not system risen against system, and theory displaced theory, till the devotee of a science, itself but of yesterday, finds himself already walking among the fossil remains of extinct philosophies, and obliged to relegate the speculations of the early founders of his school to the same shelf with an old almanack? Is it reasonable, then, we ask, to require that revelation, which must, from its nature, be a fixed and everlasting thing, should contain the unfolded germs of physical science, which must be a shifting thing, and in the case of geology, as we have seen, a very rapidly shifting thing too? Assume that we have got hold of the right theory at last, that "the testimony of the rocks" will never give forth more truthful utterances than those made * Wiseman's Lectures, pp. 69-73. for them by Hugh Miller; and assume, further, that in putting, "days" for "æons," and other methods of interpretation, our revelation could be shown to be in exact accordance with the modern state of geological science; yet, since the modern rod swallows up all the other rods; and since two things which disagree with each other cannot agree with a third, we should be found to have a revelation which was right for Hugh Miller, but wrong for all the geologists which had gone before: in other words, Moses must have written an account which for thirty-three centuries would have appeared to mankind as false, but in the thirty-fourth century would begin to be hailed as true! Our space allows not that we should pursue this thought further. The great truth, in relation to it, we shall have to maintain, is, that holy scripture was given unto us, not to make us wise unto physics, but wise unto salvation; that whilst there is an accordance, and, except on the hypothesis of an inspiring influence upon the writers, a wonderful and inexplicable accordance, between scripture and science, that is, between a standing thing and a progressive thing, he who looks in scripture for a scientific résumé of all the physical phenomena connected with the formation of the universe, will assuredly look in vain. And hence, we doubt the wisdom of any attempted harmonies of scripture with the discoveries of modern science,—at least in the pulpit. It may be very well for Buckland, and Pratt, and Hitchcock, and Pye Smith, to propound their several peacemaking schemes in books; but since Moses cannot be made to agree with all of them, and since we know not how soon we may be called upon to force his record into adjustment with some new hypothesis, it seems better that we do not commit the sacred narrative to agreement with any specific theory at all, but only to that general harmony with observation and fact, which would make the document intelligible to all readers, and, in its leading and essential features, true for all times. One thing is certain. Religion has nothing to fear from scientific discovery, whatever it may suffer at the hands of that superficial and pretentious sciolism which usurps the name. With science itself revelation has no quarrel. It is ready to welcome it, to encourage it, to go hand and hand with it over the ample field of inductive philosophy, assured that the deeper the sounding, the deeper will be laid the foundation of its own truth, and the greater the discovery, the more exalted will be the golden candlestick from which will shine forth its own. light. The truth of Christ is imperishable. Empires may decay. Races may die out. Intellectual systems may live through their little day, and the "oppositions of science" may perish by their own suicidal hands. But the word of the gospel will live on; unchanged in its contents; unshaken in its evidences; unmutilated in its integrity; unalterable in its fulfilments: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." It would be easy to show how a similar antagonistic, while still only a defensive, line might be taken with regard to other controverted topics, particularly the nature, criteria, and evidential value of miracles; the structure, purpose, and cognate relations of prophecy; and, especially, the preventive tendency of a well-defined scheme of dogmatic teaching, in that it ministers to those desires and emotions of our religious nature, which the dry husks and shell of these modern heresies cannot satisfy and cannot keep alive. But our limits have been exceeded, and we have space only for one practical caution. It is contained in these words of the apostle: "Let all your things be done with charity." Forced, as it were, into a posture of controversy against our will; conscious of being engaged in a high and holy cause; we must see to it that the "weapons of our warfare are not carnal." Let there be no unfairness; no exaggeration; no charging upon the holders of a contrary opinion consequences which they neither intend nor see. let there be godly jealousy over our own spirit: a simple and trustful looking up for Divine guidance; ay, a prayer, before we write a sermon on these subjects, for those whose errors we are intending to expose ;-and one and all of us, whatever disparity there may be of natural or acquired endowment, may confidently look up to the Holy Ghost to fulfil in us that gracious promise: "I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist." D. M. But LORD MACAULAY'S HISTORY.-VOLUME V. The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second. By Lord Macaulay. Vol. V. Edited by his Sister, Lady Trevelyan. London: Longman. 1861. THE reviewer of this volume performs of necessity a melancholy task. He sits in judgment on the dead. If incompetent, his vanity makes him ridiculous; if capable, his judgment, unless he pronounce a funereal eulogy, seems harsh and out of place. Lord Macaulay was an illustrious man; great in his talents, great in his opportunities, great in his successes, great in his renown. An instinct of our nature impels us to speak with respect of the lately dead; the feeling deepens into reverence as we pass by the tomb of one whom the world acknowledges to have been amongst its few master minds. The time has not yet arrived for a calm judgment upon Lord Macaulay as a writer. We stand too near the fire, and are dazzled by the blaze. We are still influenced by our first impressions of astonishment and delight. Since the time of Gibbon, no historian has been greeted with such applause. Since the revival of letters, no two historians ever received such universal homage. It has been a homage such as only poets and writers of fiction are accustomed to receive; and they only at rare intervals, and even then not often from the wiser and more thoughtful, but from the young, the passionate, the imaginative; that is, the least mature or the least powerful minds. Gibbon's fame has grown paler ever since his decease, and now he scarcely ranks in the highest class of English writers. It is not merely that his scepticism has rendered him unpopular; for this is an offence which literary men are but too ready to condone. His readers discovered beneath a gorgeous style the absence of those greater qualities for which his admirers, in their first burst of ecstacy, had given him credit too easily. The nectared sweets of his luscious banquet have produced a surfeit; and many writers, less admired at the time, are now universally held in higher estimation. Whether any such revulsion will take place in the case of Lord Macaulay, it is too soon to judge. Another generation must pass before a final decision can be made. And yet it is scarcely probable. It is not likely that the vicious sweetness of such a writer as Gibbon will be again the fashion; it is still more improbable that the manly grandeur of Lord Macaulay will ever be disdained. There may be a short return of depraved taste as well as of depraved morality; the latter would indeed inevitably produce the former. But, after all, the writer who appeals to the judgment, -the writer in whose pages not one misty sentence can be found; whose illustrations startle by their flash of light; whose arguments, where they fail to convince, never fail to instruct and entertain; whose descriptions have at once the charm of fiction and the force of truth;-can surely never cease to be regarded as one of those great authors who live for every age; who belong not to the literature of a country, but to the great family of man. We shall leave it to others to explain at large the defects of Lord Macaulay as a writer, and his still more patent faults as an historian. It will be easy to show,-and future critics and grammarians will no doubt revel in the task,-that the style of composition of which he has proved himself a master is not formed upon the purest model: that there is an occasional rusticity, like that quædam Patavinitas in Livy with which Quinctilian finds fault-a rudeness which offends the cultivated ear that the sentences, even in his arguments, chase each other with an impetuosity which disturbs the reason to which they are making their appeal: that they fall upon the ear with the sharp sound of platoons of musketry: that they are cast too much in one mould, hammered on the same anvil, till the ear becomes familiar with the cadence; and thus, when we have heard the former clause of a sentence, we anticipate the rest, which answers to it like Hebrew poetry-the conclusion to its antecedent in the verse. As an historian, critics of a future day will probably maintain, that lord Macaulay was less successful than as an essayist: that he is an apologist, frequently a partisan: that, although he describes human character as few have described it, he is chiefly successful when he deals with its darker shades: that he could more readily appreciate, or at least that he could more successfully depict, and that he took more pleasure in depicting, the meanness of mankind than their virtues. They will add, that his prejudices were unworthy even of a plain man of ordinary sense, while the scale of his intellect magnified them till they were at once gigantic and grotesque. They will smile to see that Quakers, Scotchmen, and the clergy were the special objects of his aversion; and wonder that so great a mind should have submitted to be bound in green withes which a child might have snapped asunder. This last volume, which contains the history of three years, 1697 to 1700, abounds in episodes; the episodes, indeed, constitute the chief interest of the book. For the history itself scarcely deserves one of the three chapters which make up the volume. It is the story of a factious parliament and of an unreasonable nation, suspicious of every action of the king; it is the story of bribery and servility among the great, and amongst the people of fears and passions, such as only a degenerate age displays. We turn away, wondering if these can be the children of those heroic men-great even in their errors who fought with Cromwell in all his campaigns, or stood by king Charles through all his misfortunes. As if glad to escape from such society, lord Macaulay diverges often from his path, and recreates himself amidst scenes which have but a remote connection with his story. They may be separated from it without injury to themselves or to the narrative, and will be read by thousands who never saw the history of which originally they formed a part. Thus, we have the controversy touching standing armies, in which the question, now of so much interest, is discussed, whether volunteers may safely be matched with regular troops. All history, lord Macaulay contends, is against the perilous experiment. Then we have the story of the colony of Darien: a sketch of unusual power and beauty, equal to the siege of Derry, and more difficult, since the interest lies scattered over two worlds, and its climax must be reached in one. Then follows |