of the pillar that was in Shechem (marg. by the oak of the pillar.) English councils were formerly held under wide-spreading oaks. Thus Augustine, the first archbishop of Canterbury, met the British bishops under an oak in Worcestershire, which was therefore called, as Bede tells us, Augustine's Oak. And Berkshire, or Barkshire, has its name, as it were-Bare-oakshire-from a large dead oak in the forest of Windsor, where they continued to hold provincial councils near its trunk, as had been done more anciently under its extensive and flourishing branches.-Ibid. p. 34. S. B. "The subjects of his sermons, for the most part, were, from whence salvation is to be fetched; and on whom the confidence of man ought to lean. They insisted much on the doctrines of faith, and works; and taught what the fruits of faith were, and what place was to be given to works. They instructed men in the duties they owed their neighbour; and that every one was their neighbour to whom we might do any good. They declared what men ought to think of themselves, after they had done all; and, lastly, what promises Christ hath made, and who they are to whom he will make them good. Thus he brought in the true preaching of the Gospel, altogether different from the ordinary way of preaching in those days; which was to treat concerning saints; to tell legendary tales of them, and to report miracles wrought for the confirmation of transubstantiation and other popish corruptions: and such a heat of conviction accompanied his sermons, that the people departed from them with minds possessed of a great hatred of vice, and burning with a desire of virtue.” Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. THE following prayer was printed in the year 1761, with an attestation purporting that it was copied from the original in Queen Anne's own hand-writing. Whether composed by her majesty herself, or by one of her bishops or chaplains, does not appear; though I should presume the latter, from internal evidence; and not least from the mitigated expression, "errors and failings," which a subject was likely enough to have put into the lips of his Queen, but which a penitent sinner would scarcely have selected as descriptive of her own sense of her misdeeds. F. R. "APrayer made use of, and thought to be composed by, Queen Anne, on the death of Prince George of Denmark, [who died in 1708.] "Almighty and Eternal God, the Disposer of all the affairs in the world! there is nothing so great as not to be subject to thy power, nor so small but it comes within thy care. Thy goodness and wisdom shew themselves through all thy works, and thy loving-kindness and mercy do appear in the several dispensations of thy providence, of which at this time I earnestly desire to have a deep and humble sense. It has pleased Thee to take to thy mercy my dearest husband, who was the comfort and joy of my life, after we had lived together many years happily, in all conjugal love and affection. May I readily submit myself to thy good pleasure, and sincerely resign mine own will to thine, with all Christian patience, meekness, and humility. Do thou graciously pardon the errors and failings of my life, which may have been the occasion of thy displeasure; and let thy judgments bring me to sincere and unfeigned repentance, and to answer the wise ends for which thou hast sent them. Be thou pleased so to assist me with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that I may continue to govern the people which thou hast committed to my charge, in godliness, righteousness, justice, and mercy. In the management of all affairs, public and private, grant I may have a strict regard to thy holy will; that I may diligently and heartily advance thy glory, and ever entirely depend upon thy providence. Do thou, O gracious Father, be pleased to grant that I may do the greatest good I can in all my capacity, and be daily improving every Christian grace and virtue; so that, when thou shalt think fit to put an end to this short and uncertain life, I may be made a partaker of those gracious, endless joys, which thou hast prepared for those that love and fear thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer. It is well known to every ritualist, that the Church of England enjoins immersion in baptism; for which purpose the fonts-not such fonts as are manufactured in these degenerate days-were formerly large enough to allow of the performance of that ceremonial, at least in the case of infants or young children, such as are usually presented for baptism. The Office for the Baptism of Persons of Riper Years says, the priest "shall dip him in the water, or pour water upon him;" the latter being probably allowed (not enjoined) either for convenience or for decorum, or both. In the case of children, it is only when "the child is weak," or that the sponsors do not certify that it "may well bear" immersion, that the alternative of pouring water is authorised. This, however, in our own climate, and under most circumstances, is so far preferable on every ground, that few persons, I presume, would wish to see the present practice changed: for the validity of the sacrament is clearly not to be measured by the quantity of water used in its administration. It is, however, a curious inquiry, as a point of British ecclesiastical history, at what period, and by what means, the practice of pouring, now superseded by sprinkling, became substituted for immersion in our church; and I shall be much obliged to any of your liturgical readers who can give me satisfactory information on the subject. QUÆRENS. MISCELLANEOUS. FABER ON THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. (Continued from p. 418.) 2. SUCH are the difficulties which present themselves to those who would explain the wonders of the subterranean world by calling in the agency of the flood; difficulties, if I mistake not, which are wholly insurmountable. But let us admit the six demiurgic days to be each a period of more than six millenaries, and not only will our difficulties in a great measure vanish, but we shall likewise find the very order of the fossil strata confirming, in a most curious manner, the strict accuracy of the Mosaical narrative. Crude matter having been previously created out of nothing by the fiat of the Almighty, the next operation was the reducing of this crude matter into regular organized form an operation, not instantaneous, but extending itself through six successive day or periods. (1.) The work of the first day was the separation of light from darkness: the former henceforth constituting the natural day; and the latter, the natural night. There is some difficulty in forming a distinct idea as to the precise nature and results of this operation. Evening and morning are said to have been the first day: yet it is clear, that such terms must not be understood according to their present or common acceptation. For the natural evening and morning are produced by the revolution of the earth round its axis, while exposed to the action of the solar rays and the formation of the sun, we are assured, did not take place until the fourth day or period. Hence, as the evening and morning of the first day plainly could not be natural, they must, I suppose, be deemed artificial: in other words, they must simply be equivalent to commencement and termination; the evening apparently being made to precede the morning, because chaotic darkness was prior to distinct light. Still, influenced as we are by familiar existing circumstances, we find it no easy matter to conceive the existence of light, as separated from darkness, previous to the existence of its fountain or receptacle the solar orb and (we may add) the fixed stars. I can only understand this revealed fact, so as to reconcile the work of the first day with the work of the fourth day, in some such manner as that proposed by Bishop Patrick. "It seems to me most rational," says that eminent prelate, "by this light to understand those particles of matter, which we call fire (whose two properties, every one knows, are light and heat), which the Almighty Spirit, that formed all things, produced as the great instrument CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 260. for the preparation and digestion of the rest of the matter; which was still more vigorously moved and agitated, from the top to the bottom, by this restless element, till the purer and more shining parts of it, being separated from the grosser and united in a body fit to retain them, became light." (Bishop Patrick's Comment. on Gen. i. 3—5.) Where these igneous particles, then, were collected together in one place, there was light; and, where the gross residuum was left, there was darkness. The two separated conditions, both then and henceforth, were equivalent to day and night; though day and night, produced as they are now produced, most certainly at that time could not have been in existence*. (2.) By the work of the first day, the element of fire was disengaged from the crude aqueous matter which constituted the primeval Chaos : but as yet the ascent of water by exhalation was impossible, because as yet there was no atmosphere. The work therefore of the second day was to disengage the element of air from the same discordant mass, as that from which the element of fire had been previously disengaged: and, when this was accomplished, a separation of the waters immediately and necessarily * By the Hebrew word w, rendered in our translation darkness, Mr. Parkhurst understands, not a non-entity or a bare negation of light, but the celestial fluid in a stagnant inactive state: as he deems the Hebrew word ", rendered in our translation light, to be the same celestial fluid in a state of activity. Whatever may be the proper interpretation of the first day's work, this at least is clear, that there could be no natural evening and morning, until the sun was formed and until the earth began to revolve on its axis. I may therefore take the present opportunity of remarking, that, as the sun was not made until the fourth day, no argument can be fairly drawn, from the phraseology evening and morning, in favour of the six days being six natural solar days; an argument, which, I believe, has sometimes been ad duced. 3 S took place. For, when fire acted. upon the great aqueous congeries, and when the atmosphere was now ready to receive all the particles raised by exhalation, the waters were forthwith divided from the waters some remaining below in an unevaporated state; and others ascending above, thence to return, from time to time, in the form of rain or snow. Our English translation, copying the Greek of the Seventy rather than the Hebrew of the original, has expressed the word, which Moses employs to designate the air, by the term firmament. Its proper and literal import is the expansion: and so it doubtless ought to have been rendered; for the word firmament by no means exhibits the real idea of the Hebrew substantive. In truth, no single term could have been found more happily expressive of the leading property of air, than that which Moses has here selected: for its vast powers of expansion, by which it stands very remarkably contradistinguished from the fluid of water, are well known to every physiologist. the This expansion or atmosphere is designated by the appellation of heaven; a name clearly indicative of that material heaven, through which the birds of the air wing their devious course, and which supports higher waters in a state of solution, (3.) The work of the third day was the separation of the lower waters from the element of earth and the consequent production of every sort of vegetables. During the earlier part of this period, the granitic and other primary rocks, which constitute as it were the skeleton of our globe, must plainly have been formed: and, when the waters were collected together into the bed of the ocean, and when a sufficient quantity of productive soil had been generated upon the dry surface of the primary rocks, then, during the later part of the period, the earth was made to bring forth grass and herbs and trees. Let us now suppose that the length of the third day was more than six thousand years; and what will be the consequence of such a supposition? Doubtless the whole face of the earth, already separated from the waters, would soon become overspread with a rank and luxuriant vegetation: one generation of trees and plants would succeed another: a large accumulation of vegetable mould would be produced through their decomposition: and, either by one of those sudden and mighty revolutions which appear to have repeatedly agitated this globe previous to the formation of God's last work, man*, or even (we may venture have taken place in the productions of the * The changes, says Mr. Cuvier, which shelly strata, have not been entirely owing to a gradual and general retreat of the waters, but to successive irruptions and retreats; the final result of which, however, has been an universal depression of the level of the sea. These repeated irruptions and retreats of the sea have been neither slow which have occasioned them, have been nor gradual most of the catastrophes, sudden: and this is easily proved, especially with regard to the last of them, the traces of which are most conspicuous. The breaking to pieces and overturnings of the strata, which happened in former catastrophes, shew plainly enough, that they were sudden and violent like the last: and the heaps of debris and rounded pebbles, which are found in various places among the solid strata, demonstrate the vast force of the motions excited in the mass of waters by these overturnings. Life, therefore, has been often disturbed on this earth by terrible events; calamities, which, at their commencement, have perhaps moved and overturned to a great depth the entire outer crust of the globe, but which, since these first commotions, have uniformly acted at a less depth and less generally. Numberless living beings have been the victims of these catastrophes: some have been destroyed by sudden inundations, others have been laid dry, in consequence of the bottom of the seas being Such are the instantaneously elevated. conclusions, which necessarily result from the objects that we meet with at every step of our inquiry, and which we can always verify by examples drawn from almost every country. Every part of the globe bears the impress of these great and to say) in the ordinary course of nature itself, vast masses of fallen timber would be plunged beneath the surface of extensive bogs and morasses; there, through the process either of stony accretion or of bitumenous fermentation, to be gradually transmuted partly into fossil wood and partly into fossil coal. On this hypothesis, little need we be astonished at the huge stores of the last-mentioned invaluable mineral: little need we perplex ourselves to account for the existence of those enormous forests, which at some period or other must have been buried under the ground. A term of more than six millenaries will have produced timber and plants and herbs, amply sufficient both for the formation of vegetable mould and for the production of the most extensive coal mines. (4.) As yet there was heat and a general diffusion of fiery light, though as yet there was no sun: hence, as in a hot-house, germination would proceed without interruption. But, when the fourth day arrived, God, we are told, formed and placed in the material heaven the sun and the moon and the whole collective body of the stars: from that time therefore the succession of natural day and night, of morning and evening, of months and of years, and perhaps of summer and winter, would commence. Such is the simple account of the matter, given us by Moses: and, since we can know nothing of the order and process of God's demiurgic labours beyond what he himself is pleased to teach us, and since we have abundant reason to believe that the Hebrew lawgiver was di terrible events so distinctly, that they must be visible to all who are qualified to read their history in the remains which they have left behind. But, what is still more astonishing and not less certain, there have not been always living creatures on the earth; and it is easy for the observer to discover the period at which animal productions began to be deposited. (Essay on the theory of the earth. § 5, 6, p. 15.) vinely inspired, I do not feel any way anxious to account for what shortsighted mortals might please to deem a palpable disproportion in the amount of the several works which are ascribed to the six days. To argue, in fact, from such disproportion against the veracity of the narrative, is the height of presumptuous childishness; for every argument of that description is virtually built upon the assumption, that the powers of God are to be measured like the powers of man, that the lapse of time bears the same relation to him as to ourselves, and that to the Almighty it is more laborious to effect comparatively much in a comparatively short period than comparatively little in a comparatively long period. On this abundantly ob vious principle, unless we choose to maintain that it is more difficult for the Supreme Being to create a world or an assemblage of worlds in a moment than in a million of years, we may well be content to acquiesce in the demiurgic arrangement propounded to us by the voice of inspiration, however we may be struck (to speak after the manner of men) with its semblance of disproportion. (5.) The work of the fifth day was two-fold: during the earlier part of it, the waters brought forth fishes ; during the later part of it, they produced birds. Here we may argue just in the same manner as in the last case. Some great mundane revolution, or rather several great mundane revolutions, must have taken place ere the commencement of the sixth day, and therefore in the course of the third and fourth and fifth days. The perpetual discovery of fossil fishes and of other marine exuviæ in the very centre of the largest continents, deposited above the strata of fossil wood and vegetables, sufficiently demonstrates, with respect to one of these revolutions, not merely that the waters of the ocean must have passed over those continents, but that the continents them |