lation."* So these consequences, however clear, have no necessary scriptural authority to render them obligatory on the consciences of men, and each man is left at liberty to decide for himself what is the meaning of the will of God. The overthrow of Anglicanism and Romanism, creeds, articles, and church formularies is complete.

Since then the formularies of the church are nothing more than human deductions from Scripture, some of them, it may be, quite true, and since these deductions were the objects of exceeding reverence on the part of the Tractarians, our readers will at once perceive that the conflict was inevitable, and that it must continue until one of these elements shall become sufficiently predominant to cast out the other. With these two parties in the church there can be no peace. They are at irreconcilable enmity. Personalities, politics, heresies, the influence or obstructions of the state, may all add their quota to the gathering storm, and perhaps hide, in their violent and dark commotions, the real question at issue; but here lies the true source of the conflict. It is the old battle renewed between liberty and slavery, Luther and Leo, Protestantism and Popery. It is therefore no wonder that the elevation of the champion of the genuine Protestant principle should be the signal for a loud outcry, and for renewed assault from that party to whom that elevation would be tantamount to defeat. Our readers doubtless know the series of events which have agitated the State Church during the last two months. We need not repeat them; but two considerations press themselves on our attention.

First, the disunity subsisting in the church itself. Nearly one-half the episcopate is at war with the other half, and that upon no inferior question of ecclesiastical arrangement or law, but upon the first principle of their constitution as a church. It is well known that our reformers, while accepting generally the main principle of the Reformation-the supremacy of Scripture, did not accept its correlative-the supremacy of conscience. Set

*Observations on Dissent,' p. 9.

"The notion," says Dr. Hampden, in his exculpatory letter to the Premier, "the notion of church authority will be found to be the root of the objections of this class of theologians, to the teaching of all who require that all doctrines should be drawn from Scripture. With them the reference to Scripture is an 'heretical principle,' because it holds up Scripture over that of the church in all questions of doctrine. Hence that animosity against all who thus establish the articles of faith, and their unchecked boldness in repeating charges of heresy against any confession of faith, however sound in itself, which claims to be simply scriptural in its authority. A person, in their view, is no believer, who does not hold church principles-that is, who does not build his faith on the church in their sense."-The Times, Dec. 20, 1847.

ting free the Bible, they did not set free the conscience, but bound it up in the swathes and swaddling bands of creeds and articles. From these "We will not endure any varying or departing in the least degree," saith the Royal Declaration. Accordingly, anathemas and penalties accompanied the expression of dissent. But everything has failed to prevent "disputations, altercations, or questions." These very formularies bear in their very bosom the marks of their original, and have become the means of leading many to embrace the principles and practices of Roman worship, of which that of the Church of England is but an expurgated edition. It cannot be denied that there are sufficient grounds for papistical views in these very documents, and hence the rise and constant existence in the church of a party in maintenance of them. The elements of the strife are within the church, and as its members are attracted to the positive or negative pole, their attitude becomes uncompromisingly warlike. The Papal and the Protestant elements are immutably repulsive.

A second consideration is the supremacy of the state. It is hard, unyielding, triumphant. The most sacred rights of conscience, and of the Church of God, are trampled down before it. The Dean of Hereford, in impotent rage, memorializes, protests, votes against the minister's appointment; but yields to the overpowering necessity, and signs the document of election. The bishops petition, prophesy, and one, him of Exeter, even announces to the Premier that persistance in his "unhappy career," will be a crime; "aye," says he, "and I dare not forbear adding, a sin."* It is unavailing. One bishop, the son of Wilberforce (alas !), retracts, another confesses the wrong he has done to a man to whom he owes his bishopric, a third, with illconcealed insolence and disappointed rage, lectures and threatens the Premier, and the rest fall back into inglorious silence. Objectors present themselves, on summons of the Archbishop's Vicar-General, to oppose the confirmation of the bishop elect, armed with all the subtilties of canon and ecclesiastical law, but they are not permitted to appear: the royal letters override all objections; in the car of the state the new bishop passes triumphantly onwards to his throne. But what of conscience? these objectors have any, "it is trampled," says Dean Mereweather, "in our persons, to the very dust." And what of the Church? It is subject to its Head-not Jesus Christ-but Queen Victoria. And what is worse, we find that party in the church with whom we most sympathise, the successors of

If

* A Reply to Lord John Russell's Letter,' by the Bishop of Exeter, p. 16.

Romaine, Newton, and Venn, those whom we believe to have the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ in all sincerity, applauding the minister, and regarding Lord John Russell as their saviour. A saviour indeed he may be from the rampant bigotry of Tractarians: but at what a cost!-at the cost of the rights of conscience, of the claims of the Church of God, and, above all, of the royalties and prerogatives of the Prince of the kings of the earth, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Is it not time for them to vindicate the crown rights of their Redeemer, and come out from this Egyptian bondage?

V.-FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND.*

THE author of First Impressions of England' is a writer already well known to the public. The Red Sand Stone' created for him a name and a place among all persons who feel interested in geological science; he is considered, by competent judges, as having by that work rendered essential service to geology. As the editor of the 'Witness-the Free Church newspaper-his labours are influential in directing and forming the public mind in the north of the British empire.

In the work to which we would call the attention of the readers of the Baptist Record, the author gives us his feelings and impressions on his first journey across the Tweed. He visited various places, to which he was directed by his early reading-places celebrated by the poets Shenstone, Thomson, Pope, Lyttleton, Shakspeare, and Cowper. The remarks which he makes on these writers, the correct judgment he pronounces on their merits, and the enthusiasm and con amore spirit with which he addresses himself to this part of his task, will render the book interesting, instructive, and entertaining, to most readers. He describes the emotions he experienced while treading the classical ground of Hagley Park, the seat of Lord Lyttleton, and the haunt of Pope and Thomson; the Leaseowes, once so famous for horticulture and landscape gardening; and, at Stratford-on-Avon, visited the grave of pious Mrs. Hall, lying at the feet of her father— the Shakspeare of England and of the world. He devotes a chapter or two to the author of 'The Task,' to Weston-under-wood, and Olney; tracing the walks of the poet from the latter place to the former, and contemplating the spots rendered so famous by his description of them; feeling, as most others do who visit those places, that, in descriptive poetry, it is the writer's own mind, rather than the scenery itself-his sensibility, his associative faculty, his creative energy and will-which is the real charm, the all in all.

Mr. Miller is, as we have said, a man of science; but he is also,

*By Hugh Miller.

what all men of science are not, a man of fine taste and genius. He describes with the picturesque effect of a poet, as well as with the knowledge and accuracy of a philosopher. His style, too, is, we think, excellent; it is pure, simple, Addisonian. It reminds us of Southey; like him, occasionally uniting terms recondite and learned with purity, idiom, vivacity, and ease. But the crowning excellency of the work is the tone of sound religious feeling and sentiment which pervades it, and his just views on all questions connected with ecclesiastical matters, and non-conformity.

We should not, however, notice the work in the pages of the 'Record,' were it not that the author treats on subjects of science closely connected with theology. Many prejudices have prevailed against modern geology; it has been thought that its discoveries, or at least its assertions, militate against the truth of the Mosaic narrative of the creation. These objections Mr. Miller takes up, and treats with great ability, and in a manner convincing and popular; and we have referred to his work for the purpose of making some extracts on these topics.

All men have heard of the humiliation of Galileo, who was compelled by the pope to recant certain things which he had advanced on astronomy; it is but fair to state that most divines of the time, as well as the pope and his cardinals, partook of the same error. The theory of Galileo contradicted, not the scriptures themselves, but the interpretations of them then generally adopted. It is exactly the same with geology: it leaves intact the integrity of the scripture narrative; it disturbs only the interpretations which divines have put upon certain passages. Divines have been all along jealous for the credit of their own interpretations of doubtful texts. They have assumed, and presumed, and taken for granted; and then thundered out their denunciations against that light of science which has discovered their errors. It has not been a zeal for God's word so much as concern for the credit of their own judgment, which has called forth their choler. If geology demolishes some of these arrogancies, it will confer a benefit on the world. It has been the same on many other points. If it were not for this practice of divines, baptismal regeneration could never have gained such general credit, built as it is on one doubtful figurative expression in the bible, though buttressed up by the theological inferences and speculative assumptions of Saint Austin, and other uninspired authorities. On the important subject of the connexion between science and revelation, our author observes— It may have been merely the effect of an engrossing study long prosecuted, but so it was, that of all I had witnessed amid the scenes rendered classic by the muse of Cowper, nothing more permanently impressed me than the few broken fossils of the Oolite which I picked up immediately opposite the poet's windows. There they had lain, as carelessly indifferent to the strictures in the "Task," as the sun in the central heavens, two centuries before, to the denunciations of the Inquisition.

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It is in no degree derogatory to the excellent sense of Cowper that he should have striven to bring revelation in direct antithetical collision with the inferVOL. I.-No. II.

b H

ences of the geologists. No scientific question was ever yet settled dogmatically, nor ever will. The Church of Rome strove hard, in the days of Galileo, to settle an astronomical question theologically; and did its utmost to commit the Bible to the belief that the earth occupies a central position in the system, and that the sun performs a daily revolution around it; but the astronomical question, maugre the Inquisition, refused to be settled other than astronomically. What would have been the result, were the thing possible, had Rome, backed by the Franciscan, succeeded in pledging the verity of Scripture to a false astronomy? The astronomical facts of the case would have, of course, remained unchanged. The severe truth of geometry would have lent it its demonstrative aid to establish their real character. All the higher minds would have become convinced for themselves, and the great bulk of the lower, at second hand, that the Scripture pledge had been given, not to scientific truth, but to scientific error; and the Bible, to the extent to which it stood committed, would be justly regarded as occupying no higher a level than the Shaster or the Koran. Infidelity never yet succeeded in placing Revelation in a position so essentially false as that in which it was placed by Rome, to the extent of Rome's ability, in the case of Galileo.

Now, ultimately at least, as men have yielded to astronomy the right of decision in all astronomical questions, must they resign to geology the settlement of all geological ones. I do not merely speak of what ought, but of what assuredly must and will be. The successive geologic systems and formations, with all their organic contents, are as real existences as the sun itself; and it is quite as possible to demonstrate their true place and position, relative and absolute. And so long as certain fixed laws control and regulate human belief, certain inevitable deductions must and will continue to be based on the facts which these systems and formations furnish. And one of these great conclusions respects the incalculably vast antiquity of the earth on which we dwell. It seems scarce possible to over-estimate the force and weight of the evidence already expiscated on this point; and almost every new discovery adds to its cogency and amount. That sectional thickness of the earth's crust in which, mile beneath mile, the sedimentary strata are divided into many-coloured and variously-composed systems and formations, and which abounds from top to bottom in organic remains, forms but the mere pages of the register. And it is rather the nature and order of the entries with which these pages are crowded, than the amazing greatness of their number, or the enormous extent of the space which they occupy (rather more than five miles),—though both have, of course, their weight-that compel belief in the remoteness of the period to which the record extends."

The writer then proceeds to show that the discoveries of geology are consistent with the Mosaic narrative:

"It is held by the Dean of York, that the fact of the Noachian deluge may be made satisfactorily to account for all the geologic phenomena. Alas! No cataclysm, however great or general, could have produced diversities of style, each restricted to a determinate period, and which become more broadly apparent, the more carefully we collate the geologic register as it exists in one country with the same register as it exists in another. The fact of the Ark satisfactorily shows, that man in his present state has been contemporary with but one creation. The preservation by sevens and by pairs of the identical races amid which he first started into existence, superseded the necessity of a creation after the Flood; and so it is the same tribes of animals, wild and domestic, which share with him in his place of habitation now, that surrounded him in Paradise. But the paleozoic, secondary, and older tertiary animals, are of races and tribes altogether diverse. We find among them not even a single