to show where a "wide continent bloomed," that had existed, as such, myriads of ages after the true geologic Atlantis had been engulfed.

We ascertain that the Juratic Alps formed in those early times the bottom of the sea-nay, that the cuttle-fish discharged its ink, and the ammonite reared its sail, over the side of the gigantic Himalaya range; whereas, from the disposition of the Oolitic patches on both the eastern and western coasts of Scotland, it seems at least probable that in that remote period this ancient country-" old Scotland"-had got its head and shoulders above water. From the Weald we merely learn that a great river entered the sea somewhere near what now forms the south of England or north of France-a river which drained the waters of some extensive continent—that occupied, it is probable, no small portion of the space now covered up by the Atlantic. It is not at all impossible that the long trails of sea-weed, many fathoms in length, which undulate in mid ocean to the impulses of the gulf stream, and darken the water over an area hundreds of miles in extent, are anchored beneath to what once formed the Rocky Mountains of this submerged America. The cretaceous system, as becomes its more modern origin, tells a somewhat more distinct story. It formed the bed of a great ocean, which extended from Central England to at least the shores of the Red Sea, and included within its area considerable portions of France, Spain, Italy, Dalmatia, Albania, and the Morea,-a considerable part of Syria, as indicated in the ichthyolitic strata of Lebanon,-and large tracts of the great valley of Egypt, as shown by the numulitic limestone of the pyramids.-MILLER.

RELIGIOUS BEARING OF GEOLOGICAL SCIENCE.

The Christian has nothing to fear, the infidel nothing to hope, from the great truths of geology. It is assuredly not through any enlargement of man's little apprehension of the Infinite and the Eternal that man's faith in the scheme of salvation by a Redeemer need be shaken. We are incalculably more in danger from one unsubdued passion of our lower nature, even the weakest and the least, than from all that the astronomer has yet discovered in the depths of hea

ven, or the geologist in the bowels of the earth. If one's heart be right, it is surely a good, not an evil, that one's view should be expanded; and geology is simply an expansion of view in the direction of the eternity that hath gone by.

It is not less, but more sublime, to take one's stand on the summit of a lofty mountain, and thence survey the great ocean over many broad regions,-over plains and forests, and undulating tracts of hills, and blue remote promontories, and far-seen islands,-than to look forth on the same vast expanse from the level champaign, a single field's breadth from the shore. It can indeed be in part conceived from either point how truly sublime an object that ocean is-how the voyager may sail over it day after day, and yet see no land rise on the dim horizon-how its numberless waves roll, and its great currents ceaselessly flow, and its restless tides ever rise and fall-how the lights of heaven are mirrored on its solitary surface, solitary though the navies of a world be there-and how, where plummet-line never sounded, and where life and light alike cease, it reposes with marble-like density, and more than Egyptian blackness, in the regions of a night on which there dawns no morning. But the larger view inspires the profounder feeling. The emotion is less overpowering, the conception less vivid, when from the humble flat we see but a band of water rising to where the sky rests, over a narrow selvage of land, than when, far beyond an ample breadth of foreground, and along an extended line of coast, and streaked with promontories and mottled with islands, and then spreading on and away in an ample plain of diluted blue, to the far horizon, we see the great ocean in its true character, wide and vast as human ken can descry. And such is the sublime prospect presented to the geologist, as he turns him towards the shoreless ocean of the upper eternity. The mere theologian views that boundless expanse from a flat, and there lies in front of him but the narrow strip of the existing creation,—a green selvage of a field's breadth, fretted thick by the tombs of dead men ; while to the eye purged and strengthened by the euphrasy of science, the many vast regions of other creations, promontory beyond promontory, island beyond island, stretch out in sublime succession into that boundless ocean of eternity, whose sumless, irreduceable area their vast extent fails to lessen by a single handbreadth-that awful, inconceivable

eternity-God's past lifetime in its relations to God's finite creatures-with relation to the Infinite I AM himself, the indivisible element of the eternal now. And there are thoughts which arise in connexion with the ampler prospect, and analogies, its legitimate produce, that have assuredly no tendency to confine man's aspirations, or cramp his cogitative energies within the narrow precincts of mediocre unbelief. What mean the peculiar place and standing of our species in the great geologic week? There are tombs everywhere; each succeeding region, as the eye glances upwards towards the infinite abyss, is roughened with graves; the pages on which the history of the past are written are all tombstones; the inscriptions epitaphs: we read the characters of the departed inhabitants in their sepulchral remains. And all these unreasoning creatures of the bygone periods-these humbler pieces of workmanship produced early in the week died, as became their natures, without intelligence or hope. They perished ignorant of the past, and unanticipative of the future -knowing not of the days that had gone before, nor recking of the days that were to come after. But not such the character of the last born of God's creatures-the babe that came into being late on the Saturday evening, and that now whines and murmurs away its time of extreme infancy, during the sober hours of preparation for the morrow. Already have the quick eyes of the child looked abroad upon all the past; and already has it noted why the passing time should be a time of sedulous diligence and expectancy. The workday week draws fast to its close, and to-morrow is the Sabbath!-MILLER.

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE NOTICES OF GEOLOGY AND OF REVELATION.

The first idea of every religion on earth which has arisen out of what may be termed the spiritual instincts of man's nature, is that of a future state; the second idea is, that in this state men shall exist in two separate classes-the one in advance of their present condition, the other far in the rear of it. It is on these two great beliefs that conscience everywhere finds the fulcrum from which it acts upon the conduct; and it is, we find, wholly inoperative as a force without them. And in that one religion among men that, instead of retiring,

like the pale ghosts of the others, before the light of civilisation, brightens and expands in its beams, and in favour of whose claim as a revelation from God the highest philosophy has declared, we find these two master ideas occupying a still more prominent place than in any of those merely indigenous religions that sprung up in the human mind of themselves. The special lesson which the adorable Saviour, during his ministry on earth, oftenest enforced, and to which all the others bore reference, was the lesson of a final separation of mankind into two great divisions—a division of godlike men, of whose high standing and full-orbed happiness, man, in the present scene of things, can form no adequate conception; and a division of men finally lost, and doomed to uncontrollable misery and hopeless degradation. There is not in all revelation a single doctrine which we find oftener or more clearly enforced than that there shall continue to exist, throughout the endless cycles of the future, a race of degraded men and of degraded angels.

We

Now, it is truly wonderful how thoroughly, in its general scope, the revealed pieces on to the geologic record. know, as geologists, that the dynasty of the fish was succeeded by that of the reptile-that the dynasty of the reptile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous quadruped-and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped was succeeded by that of man as man now exists-a creature of mixed character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alternations of enjoyment and suffering. We know, further-sc far, at least, as we have yet succeeded in deciphering the record that the several dynasties were introduced, not in their lower, but in their higher forms; that, in short, in the imposing programme of creation it was arranged, as a general rule, that in each of the great divisions of the procession the magnates should walk first. We recognise, yet further, the fact of degradation specially exemplified in the fish and the reptile; and then, passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the dynasty of man in the mixed state and character is not the final one, but that there is to be yet another creation—or, more properly, re-creation, known theologically as the Resurrection, which shall be connected, in its physical components, by bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity, conscious and actual; but which, in all that constitutes superiority, shall be vastly its superior, as the

dynasty of responsible man is superior to even the lowest of the preliminary dynasties. We are further taught that, at the commencement of this last of the dynasties, there will be a re-creation of not only elevated, but also of degraded beings -a re-creation of the lost. We are taught, yet further, that though the present dynasty be that of a lapsed race, which, at their first introduction, were placed on higher ground than that on which they now stand, and sunk by their own act, it was yet part of the original design, from the beginning of all things, that they should occupy the existing platform; and that redemption is then no after thought, rendered necessary by the Fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general scheme, for which provision had been made from the beginning; so that the Divine Man, through whom the work of restoration has been effected, was in reality, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, what He is designated in the remarkable text, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Slain from the foundation of the world! Could the assertors of the stony science ask for language more express? By piecing the two records together-that revealed in Scripture and that revealed in the rocks; records which, however widely geologists may mistake the one, or commentators misunderstand the other, have emanated from the same great Author-we learn, that in slow and solemn majesty has period succeeded period, each, in succession, ushering in a higher and yet higher scene of existence-that fish, reptiles, mammiferous quadrupeds, have reigned in turn-that responsible man, "made in the image of God," and with dominion over all creatures, ultimately entered into a world ripened for his reception; but, further, that this passing scene, in which he forms the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long series, but merely the last of the preliminary scenes; and that that period to which the bygone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their well-proportioned gradations of being, form the imposing vestibule, shall have perfection for its occupant, and eternity for its duration. I know not how it may appear to others, but, for my own part, I cannot avoid thinking that there would be a lack of proportion in the series of being were the period of perfect and glorified humanity abruptly connected, without the introduction of an intermediate creation of responsible imperfection, with that of the dying irresponsible brute. That scene of things in which God became man, and suffered, seems, as it no doubt is, a