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Che Barmony of Revelation and Natural Science;

WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO GEOLOGY.

TWO LECTURES.

BY

L. W. GREEN, D.D.,

PRESIDENT OF HAMPDEN SIDNEY COLLEGE

I.

GENERAL SPIRIT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY-MIRACLES-RECENT ORIGIN OF MAN-AND THE FINAL CONFLAGRATION.

THE spirit of infidelity is not the spirit of true philosophyintellectual, physical or moral. Doubt is to the mind what hunger is to the body-the stimulus which nature, or the God of nature, has provided to incite and prepare us for the enjoyment of healthy nutriment-but it is not that very nutriment itself. Habitual skepticism is intellectual disease-the atrophy of mind, the ordinary cause, the invariable symptom of mental inanition, or ill-digested knowledge-and bears the same relation to that calin love of truth, and scrutiny of evidence, which characterizes all large and healthy understandings, that the insane and insatiable craving of some dyspeptic patient, after stimulants and trash, bears to the discriminating relish and healthy appetite which belong to every vigorous and well-developed human frame. To doubt may be "the beginning of philosophy;" but devout and assured faith in God and nature-this is its glorious and triumphant consummation. Hence, of all those mighty men who have stood foremost in every department of inquiry-have enlarged the boundaries of knowledge-have fathomed the depths of the human understanding-unveiled the mysteries of nature-penetrated the infinitudes of space, or mastering the whole wide domain of matter and of mind, have given new laws to guide our investigations in either your Bacon, your Locke, your Newton, Leibnitz, Des Cartes, Euler, Kepler, Tycho Brache-of all those mighty men of old, who tower before us, there, upon the page of history, in their colossal grandeur and gigantic strength, high above all their fellows, the luminaries of their own age, and of all succeeding generations-scarce one has been an unbeliever. "I had rather believe all the fables of the Legend, the Shaster and the Koran," exclaims Lord Bacon, "than that this universal frame is without

a mind." And, in his "Advancement of Learning," "A little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline a man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."

On the contrary, there is a sympathy deep, intense, all-pervading a harmony profound, stupendous, universal, between the revelations of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science, in the broadest range and the boldest grasp of its largest and most comprehensive generalizations-in the whole spirit, tone and temper of its legitimate inquiries-in that attitude of devout humility and conscious ignorance, yet of erect and fearless, of hopeful and even confident attention, with which she stands in the great temple of nature, and traces each "Footprint" of the Almighty, whether amidst the infinitude of space or amidst the depths of a past eternity-the chronicles of extinct races, or the wreck of departed worlds.

If the Creator of the universe be, indeed, an intelligent and moral agent-infinite in wisdom and goodness, as boundless in his power-then, besides the physical universe around us, there is another, of rational and moral beings, of correspondent extent, variety and grandeur.

Now let any one appropriate, if he can, at a single glance of thought, all that our modern astronomy has discovered the universe of greatness above us, which the telescope has revealed, and the descending universe of littleness, which the microscope has made known-let him accept her boldest assertions as indubitable truths, and follow onward in her most adventurous speculations, till the fevered brain grows dizzy, and the strained intellect bewildered, as whirling by suns and systems, as they rise, in rapid and dazzling succession, in ever-enlarging magnitude and increasing splendor around, he strives to picture to his imagination that lapse of ages and those intervals of space for which arithmetic has no formula, and language no expression, and the mind of man, in its boldest efforts, no approximate conception. Then let him turn to the Bible, and in the revelations there will he find the parallel and exact counterpart of all which, in the grandeur of the material creation, has most awed and subdued, most enlarged and exalted, his conceptions. Will he not find here, too, the march and the movement of a high moral administration-the progressive evolution of one stupendous system, coëval with all ages, and coëxtensive with all worlds-the

omnipresent majesty of one supreme and all-pervading legislation, binding together, as in one bond of sympathy, the remotest parts of this great moral universe-system after system of intelligent existences-angels and archangels, and cherubim and seraphim, rising one above another, in ever-ascending progression, indefinitely high, until at last the eye of inspiration is dimmed with excessive radiance, and the telescope of revelation rests upon those upper Intelligences-those mysterious and nameless "Powers in heavenly places," for which earth presents no analogies, and language has no titles-yet unto them "is made known through Christ the manifold wisdom of God?"

And now, when he learns that the whole family in heaven look with intensest sympathy upon our fallen race; that the Great Father of all has so loved the world that he sent his own Son upon an errand of infinite compassion to redeem it-that he who was mighty to save, "travailed in the greatness of his strength,” and all the attributes of the Godhead were summoned and concentrated here, as for some high achievement; while he contemplates with adoring wonder this amazing condescension, will he not find an analogy, at least, if not an adequate illustration, in the ways of him who, though he has garnished the heavens by his power, and called forth the stars by number, hath given to Saturn his girdle of light, and to the sun his diadem of fire-yet hath stooped to gild the insect's wing, and to pencil the hues of the lowliest floweret of the valley; nay, hath not disdained to lavish all the resources of his infinite wisdom, his boundless benevolence, and Almighty power, in moulding the minutest portion of the minutest member of one of those invisible animalculæ, whose teeming myriads live, and revel, and die unseen, amidst the sweets and fragrance of a single flower. Doth God care for the flower of the field?--and will he not care for you, oh ye of little faith?

Did it become him thus to concentrate all the attributes of the Godhead, and lavish all the resources of omnipotence on such as these, and is it inconsistent with the dignity of his exalted nature that he should stoop to redeem a whole lost world of immortal spirits?

Again, long centuries before Herschell handled a telescope, or Newton had studied the laws of the planetary motions, or Cuvier had touched a fossil bone, or Hume had reasoned upon the permanency of a course of nature; while all those astounding facts

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