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his just judgments come upon them without the possibility of escape, as they did upon the Jews of old. Their state is awfully described in the book of Isaiah i. 5-9.

The longer individuals sit under the sound of the gospel, and refuse to receive its grace, the greater is their guilt.

To have the gospel and the means of grace are unspeakable mercies-mercies which include great and solemn obligations-obligations which we cannot neglect without contracting great guiltgreat guilt, for which a full and impartial account must be given at the bar of God. This idea is evidently included in our Lord's words to the Jews, John xv. 22, 24.

How fearful, then, must be the guilt of those who have sabbaths and means of grace continued for a long succession of years, and yet evince no genuine love to the Saviour, no practical obedience to his laws, nor any actual fitness to meet him at his coming. Reader, if this is your condition your state is affecting, your guilt is awful, and if you die as you are living, the very heathen will rise in judgment against you, and condemn you, Matt. xi. 20-24. O be persuaded, at the commencement of another year, seriously to consider your state, to give earnest heed to the day of your merciful visitation, and to cry for mercy while Jesus waits to be gracious.

The longer individuals refuse the grace of the gospel, the greater is the danger lest they should provoke God to give them over to judicial blindness and hardness of heart.

It is neither the writer's province nor wish to determine when individuals have so sinned as to provoke God to abandon them, but that this may be the case is a revealed fact, and this very circumstance should arouse us to great carefulness lest we should so sin as to provoke his displeasure.

Such was the provoking and rebellious conduct of the Israelites, that God "sware in his wrath that they should not enter into his rest;" and from this awful fact we are admonished to "beware lest we also should fall after the same example of unbelief." When, at a subsequent period of their history, the ten tribes had daringly and presumptuously revolted from God, Jehovah said, "Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone," Hosea iv, 17; and Solomon adds,

"He that being often reproved," &c., Prov. xxix. 1. When individuals have so slighted mercies, and warnings, and judgments, as to provoke God to abandon them, they generally disregard the public means of grace, and neglect all holy exercises; or, should they still occupy their places in the sanctuary of God, the word of God produces no impression on their consciences, no emotions of penitence are felt, nor is any love to the Saviour cherished.

How dreadful! how dreadful beyond expression, is the state and prospects of such an individual! He may be busily employed with the cares, the pursuits, and the pleasures of time, but he neglects preparation for eternity; he is daily drawing nearer to death, to the bar of judgment, and to hell; and the moment he leaves the world he will find himself plunged into the regions of hopeless and everlasting despair. O sinners, "that ye were wise, that ye would consider your latter end!" "Kiss the Son," &c., Psa. ii. 12. Again,

The longer individuals refuse the grace of the gospel, the more awful will be their final state, if they die as they have lived.

An infidel on his dying bed said :"The day in which I should have worked is over and gone, and I see a sad horrible night approaching, bringing with it the blackness of darkness for ever. When God called, I refused; when he invited, I was one of them that made excuse. Now, therefore, I receive the reward of my deeds: fearfulness and trembling are upon me; I smart, and am in sore anguish already; and yet this is but the beginning of sorrows. It doth not yet appear what I shall be: but sure I shall be ruined, undone, and destroyed with an everlasting destruction."-Simpson's Plea for Religion, p. 64.

If such are sometimes the dreadful agonies of a guilty conscience while individuals are in the body, what must be their state when death has executed his commission, and when the final doom of the impenitent is sealed, unalterably sealed by God the Judge of all?

Consciousness will follow the lost into perdition; there, their state and circumstances in time will be perfectly recollected. This doctrine is clearly taught in the accounts which the Scriptures give of the process and issue of the last judgment, and by our Lord in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. When

the wretched sufferer asked for a drop of cold water to cool his tongue, he was charged to remember, and in that word there was every thing to aggravate his woe. Who can describe the dreadfulness of that misery which the lost will experience in hell, who have perished under the means of grace? misery arising from the consciousness that they were nurtured by the side of the pool of mercy, but that they rejected its cleansing and healing waters; that they were urged and invited to partake of the blessings of the gospel, but that they refused to hearken to the voice of love; that they were charged and entreated to seek for glory, honour, immortality, eternal life, but that they preferred the fading vanities of time to the imperishable glories of heaven, that heaven which they know they have lost, and they will also be fully sensible that their doom is fixed in that abode where there is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth for ever.

Reader! consider this while the day of hope lingers. Consider it, at the very beginning of the year, ye that forget God, "lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver." If the danger of continuing profitless under the means of grace be so dreadful, surely it is important to consider,

The divinely-appointed means whereby this awful state of mind may be counteracted and controlled.

God says, "Why will ye die ?" And in proof of the sincerity of his solicitude for the sinner's salvation, "He spared not his own Son;" "He sent him not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved." It is through faith in Christ alone, that we can be saved-that faith which is the gift of God; but those blessings which God has promised to bestow, he requires us to seek at his hands. In what way, then, are we to seek those blessings which are necessary to prevent a profitless attention on the means of grace ?what are some of those holy and voluntary exercises, which indicate a right state of heart in the sight of God?

In order to prevent profitless attendance on the means of grace, there must be sacred prayerfulness of spirit for the assisting and sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit.

It is the prerogative of the Divine Spirit to communicate heavenly knowledge to a depraved understanding; to turn men from darkness to light; and to

effect the spiritual resurrection of such as are dead in trespasses and sins; pray earnestly for the grace of the Spirit, for without his aid you cannot do any thing that will either be profitable to your own souls, or acceptable to God. Are you tempted to delay; or to fear to ask so great and gracious a boon; or to wait till you feel the stirrings of his grace? Why should you procrastinate or fear, when God has revealed himself as the answerer as well as the hearer of prayer? Go now, at the very opening of the year, and plead for his grace; the Apostles waited for the descent of the Holy Ghost; but they waited in the exercise of earnest and expectant prayer. The Divine record warrants you to plead for promised blessings, "Turn you," &c. Prov. i. 23. And our blessed Lord gives every encouragement to plead in the exercise of hope, 66 If," &c. Luke xi. 10-13.

In order to prevent profitless attendance on the means of grace, seek diligently to know the mind of the Spirit in the Scriptures.

The Divine charge is, "Seek ye out the book of the Lord, and read;" seek, with a desire to understand the Scriptures; those Scriptures which are able to make you wise unto salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Compare your hearts with the word of God, and give diligent and prayerful heed to the Divine and authoritative counsel, "Search the Scriptures, for in them," &c. John v. 39.

Again, If you would prevent a profitless attendance on the means of grace, be careful to reverence and keep holy the times and services of the day of God.

The decalogue enjoins, "Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy;" it is elsewhere added, "Ye shall keep my Sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord," Lev. xix. 30. And an inspired apostle counsels, "Forsake not the assembling," &c. Heb. x. 24. The sanctity of the Sabbath should be observed out of the house of God, as well as in it; and during the intervals as well as during the seasons of public worship.

Further, That fruitless attendance on the means of grace may be prevented, show your solicitude to hold sacred the instructive and admonitory admonitions of conscience.

Does conscience speak? Does its inbred and monitory language tell you of the guilt of sin? Does it remonstrate

with you-and warn you to flee from its indulgence and practice; and to flee to Christ for salvation? Does it call upon you to begin the year by deciding publicly for God? O disregard not its admonitions, lest God bid conscience to warn and counsel you no more!

Finally, If you would prevent profitless attendance on the means of grace, look to Jesus and consider him. Look believingly unto Jesus, and exercise entire reliance on him for salvation.

He is the foundation on which your hope must rest; He is the ladder by which you must ascend to God; He is the door through which you must obtain admission into heaven.

Reader! remember this, and if other years have passed away neglected and misimproved, let the year on which you have entered be the beginning of years to your soul; the year on which you shall assuredly date your entrance on the road to glory. G. N.

THOUGHTS ON GEOLOGY.
To the Editor of the

MR. EDITOR,-As your extract from Dr. Pond of America, on Geology and Revelation, cannot fail to benefit and improve your readers, I should be very unwilling to weaken or counteract its influence. But I consider it nothing less than a duty that presses on my conscience to apprise your less learned readers, that there are grave reasons for dissent from some of the positions of the modern geologists. I admit that the first verses of Genesis may refer to a creation long anterior to that of man; to say nothing of the notion that the six days may be applied to six geological periods. But I protest against our coming, in the present state of our knowledge, to the conclusion that the first of these opinions must be the true one. For I deny that geology has reached the point at which it is entitled to be called a science. We have not yet sufficiently examined the whole globe; and especially that part of it which was the cradle of the human race. Years, if not ages, must elapse before we shall have a right to speak of the science of geology, except in that very inferior sense in which it means a collection of materials to form a science. It has unhappily been the characteristic vice of geologists to be in a hurry to systematise. It is said that there have been eighty of these systems created, each one upon the ruins of its predecessor, but the newest fashion always claims the merit of being the only

true one.

I may be told by professors of this soi disant science, that I know nothing about it. I acknowledge that I do not know much; but I could tell those who know more, that they know next to nothing; that is, of the true system; for in facts

Evangelical Magazine.

I acknowledge that they are rich. I have, however, read celebrated works on geology, and have gazed on nature, from the rocky heights of Cornwall to those of Aberdeen; and descended into her dark caverns in the coal bed of Yorkshire. But I deny that it has been demonstrated, as Dr. Pond asserts, "that the world has existed much more than six thousand years." Cuvier, who appears to me the greatest and the wisest of geologists, has produced in my mind the contrary conviction, by his "Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe, et sur les changements qu'elles ont produits dans le regne animal."

Dr. Pond, assuming the truth of the pre-Adamite theory, goes through the six days of creation, according to that hypothesis; but they must be strangely credulous disciples of these geological masters who do not see that this is a lame attempt to force Scripture into a partnership with a theory. Our respected American divine says, "The previous revolution had destroyed nearly every trace of animal and vegetable life," before the Mosaic creation began. Now, who that reads the Bible can learn from it that there were animals and vegetables, and specimens or remains of them left, on this earth before the creative act recorded in Genesis? All the specimens of this fancied ante-Mosaic creation are so manifestly formed on the same type with those of the scriptural creation, that no man would naturally think they were the stray wrecks of a former world. Dr. Pond says, "The forming hand of

the Creator covered the earth with new species of vegetables, in place of such as had been destroyed." But it appears to me that the progress of natural history

is continually diminishing the evidence of new species by discovering additional marks of identity between the present and fancied former worlds.

But whoever comes to the Scriptures without prepossessions, will think of nothing but a primeval creation when reading the first chapter of Genesis; and I suppose Dr. Pond, and all our Christian geologists, pretend to find no other in verse 26, where the creation of man is recorded. But what is there in this verse to intimate the very first creation more than in verses 9, 14, 20, and 24? If we are to believe that there were plants and animals before those of which Moses records the creation, why not men too? The one is mentioned in the same way as the other. I must, therefore, protest against the paragraph in page 576, commencing,

"It appears, therefore, that in the six days' work which has been considered, we have an account, not of the original creation of the world-this had been created long before-but of its renovation; of its being remodelled and refitted, after one of those terrible revolutions by which it had been desolated, and its being prepared for the residences of innocent and happy men.”

I know that geologists tell us we do not find the remains of man, as we do of other creatures. But, for this, good

reasons may be assigned. It may be

said that, in 1656 years, man must have spread over the earth, and therefore there must have been a general destruction of our race all over the globe by the flood. But as we are not led to this conclusion by the Scriptures; but rather are induced to think that the human family were within the warning voice of Noah; so we find that when Noah was six hundred years old, his family was small and few, that is, eight "persons" constituted all his house that were saved in the ark. If this was a fair specimen of a human family in the sixth hundredth year of its head, the race of man was not very widely spread. Now, I repeat it, that this part of the world, that was the cradle of our race, has not been geologically examined. Besides, I complain of the manner in which geologists have treated the specimen of a human fossil found in the island of Guadaloupe. They have, in a very curious way, assigned it to a recent date; though this is not the opinion of some compe

tent judges who have examined the limestone in which it is embedded.

I am not unaware that some will exclaim, "Can you deny that there are successions of strata that absolutely require many ages for their formation ?" If I cannot deny, I can, with Lord Eldon, doubt. For I want the data that are requisite to make me sure. I cannot examine half a dozen other worlds, of whose date I am certain, to enable me to judge by analogy of the age of this on which I dwell. I know that productions which have been supposed to require many years, if not ages, have been proved to be the work of a few days. Witness the experiments of Mr. Crosse.

But I think there are two things that have been strangely overlooked by geologists-the state of the globe at the creation, and the flood.

With regard to the former, the Scriptures assure us that the earth was at creation covered with water, as with darkness. Now the fiat that made the dry land appear, operated, in all probability, chiefly on that spot where man was to dwell; and we are left very much in the dark concerning the condition of the rest of the globe. If the mightiest changes took place, they are not noticed in Scripture; because they did not affect man, for whom the Bible was written; and many of these appearances which now lead to the theory of a prior creation, may have been the result of 1656 years of revolutions of which we know nothing.

With regard to the Flood, geologists always appear to me very unwilling to give it a fair consideration. It is unphilosophical, it seems, to notice that which comes under the class of sacred texts, rather than of discovered facts. But Cuvier, who is more exempt from this charge than many others, so boldly maintains that the globe bears evidences of this deluge, of which the Bible alone contains the history, that it surely is as well entitled to the consideration of the philosopher as the fancied ante-Mosaic creations. As also Cuvier affirms that the Mosaic chronology is manifestly that of the present inhabitants of the globe I contend that it is the only philosophical course to assume that the globe is about six thousand years old—and that it has experienced a grand convulsion within two thousand years from its creation. All beyond this is fancy or something

worse, but within these limits there is a wide field unexplored.

I conclude, then, that though it is possible that the world may be very much older; and that the first verses of Genesis may be a record of an original creation much prior to that of man; yet this is very far from being certain. To me it appears highly improbable; so that, to be frank, I must say, I do not believe one word of it; but expect that, when the whole globe is more thoroughly examined, especially in the original seat of the human race; when the state of the earth, immediately after the creation, is well considered; and the grandeur of the flood is duly estimated; it will be found that the old and vulgar interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis will be found to be true.

Plain Christians, who have been long enough alarmed at the headlong manner in which revered divines have gone into the modern fancies of geologists, may comfort themselves with the assurance that philosophers are not always conjurors. These philosophers in stone have often spoken in a very oracular style of what must have and what could not have been; but we sometimes happen to know that, if their geology is no better than their logic, it is worth nothing. For instance, they have arrogantly contended that their notion of a creation immensely older than six thousand years is the only

rational idea. "For can we suppose," they ask, "that the Creator did nothing, till about six thousand years ago?" But what, if we can show that the same objection may be made to their date? What if we can prove that the same objection would lie against any other date of the creation? What if we can prove that the only way of escaping this difficulty is to plunge into a greater, and maintain the atheistic notion of the eternity of the world? For, suppose we abandon the Mosaic date, and maintain that the world is not six thousand, but six thousand millions of years old. Still, if it had a beginning, there was a time when it was only six days old, and it was possible that some wiseacre might say, Do you think God did nothing till six days ago? So much for the philosophy of certain geologists!

There are several things in the extracts from Dr. Pond, especially what he says on serpents, on which I should be disposed to animadvert, perhaps rather severely; but I wish it to be understood that I am far from thinking him peculiarly blameable; on the contrary, I highly value his paper, and esteem his talents and spirit; but I seize this opportunity of protesting against the positive manner in which an ante-Mosaic creation is asserted.

Yours, &c.,

BETA.

REVIEW OF RELIGIOUS PUBLICATIONS.

On the PHILOSOPHY of the MIND. By JAMES DOUGLAS, Esq., of Cavers. 8vo. pp. 392.

A. and C. Black, Edinburgh; and Longman and Co., London.

Mr. Douglas has well observed, that "the philosophy of the mind is of recent origin, and of slow growth. Its genuine materials are therefore very scanty. Most works upon the mind are chiefly occupied in refating former errors, and these errors being derived from ancient theories, the true philosophy of the mind, though conducted on very different principles, still continues to be involved in some degree in the disputes of metaphysics." So true are these remarks, that if all that has been professedly written on the doctrine of mind could be searchingly examined, and thoroughly purged from the alloy of mere speculative opinion,

it would be found that but a small contribution has yet been made to the most important of all branches of human investigation; viz., the science of mind. The very history of opinion on this subject, from the earliest periods of Grecian story, down to the days of Reid, and Stewart, and Brown, would itself demonstrate how much the real science of mind has been lost sight of in vague speculations, which have had little or no distinct bearing on the actual discovery of mental phenomena. The confounding of metaphysical theories with the true philosophy of mind, was the settled vice of all the ancient schools of mental science; and it has been more or less the error of every successive writer who has addressed himself to this most enchanting of all studies. How sadly has the grand fact been lost sight of, that the philosophy of mind

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