made all things out of nothing by his word; who also made man in his own likeness, rules over him by his providence, and opens a communication with him in its sacred pages.

But the sceptic here interposes and arrests our hand, as we eagerly stretch it forth to grasp this precious boon for our fallen race. This book cannot be authentic, he suggests. It claims to be written by the Maker of the world, and yet the author was ignorant of the mechanism of nature; its language involves errors in physical science which the all-wise and omniscient One could not have made, and which the progress of knowledge has revealed to us. If the Bible professed to be in any degree a treatise on Natural Philosophy, there might be some room for this objection. But it is not; it has wholly a moral purpose, and it treats of the history of the universe, or of the history of man on the earth, only so far as is subservient to that. It was given to man not as an ignorant but as a sinful being; not to instruct him in physical truth, which he could find for himself, and could do without, if not found, but to convince him of his moral errors, and open up to him a remedy which he could not find for himself, and could not do without. This being its professed object, what wonder if the author of the book, adopting the language and ideas in physical subjects current at the time, strove merely to reach the heart? Does any valid objection arise to its authenticity because its language is inconsistent with the modern discoveries in science? But we can go much farther: it is more in accordance with divine wisdom that the language in which a providential scheme meant to affect the moral nature alone was conveyed, was not adapted to discoveries not then made, and which it would have been unsuitable to the grand purpose of the writing to reveal. This Dr. Whewell well shows:

"If any terms had been used, adapted to a more advanced state of knowledge, they must have been unintelligible among those to whom the Scripture was first addressed. If the Jews had been told that water existed in the clouds in small drops, they would have marvelled that it did not constantly descend; and to have explained the reason of this, would have been to teach atmology in the sacred writings. If they had read in their Scripture that the earth was a sphere, when it appeared to be a plane, they would only have been disturbed in their thoughts, or driven to some wild and baseless imaginations by a declaration to them so strange. If the Divine Speaker, instead of saying that he would set his bow in the clouds, had been made to declare that he would give to water the property of refracting different colours at different angles, how utterly unmeaning to the hearers would the words have been! And in these cases, the expressions, being unintelligible, startling, and bewildering, would have been such as tended to unfit the Sacred Narrative for its place in the providential dispensation of the world."-Pp. 131-2.

There was indeed one thing which it was important for man to know the fact of creation, and the omnipotence and unity of the Creator-and that is explicitly revealed, and to that no contradiction is found in nature; for that, as we have seen, science, even in its ripest maturity, leaves room-standing apart, with the silent but upwardly-directed look of expectation.

Dr. Whewell remarks also, that the imagined discrepances between Scripture and science arose in great measure only from divines stickling too much for a received interpretation, that having been previously moulded by the erroneous state of physical knowledge.

"The meaning which any generation puts upon the phrases of Scripture, depends, more than is at first sight supposed, upon the received philosophy of the time. Hence, while men imagine that they are contending for revelation, they are, in fact, contending for their own interpretation of revelation, unconsciously adapted to what they believe to be rationally probable. And the new interpretation, which the new philosophy requires, and which appears to the older school to be a fatal violence done to the authority of religion, is accepted by their successors without the dangerous results which were apprehended. When the language of Scripture, invested with its new meaning, has become familiar to men, it is found that the ideas which it calls up, are quite as reconcilable as the former ones were, with the soundest religious views; and the world then looks back with surprise at the error of those who thought that the essence of revelation was involved in their own arbitrary version of some collateral circumstance. At the present day we can hardly conceive how reasonable men should have imagined that religious reflections on the stability of the earth, and the beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve round it, would be interfered with by its being acknowledged that this rest and motion are apparent only."-Pp. 6-7.

The last remark of the learned Professor to which we shall allude, is his observation on the danger and impropriety of endeavouring to rest the authenticity of Scripture on its consistency with natural science. In so doing, divines necessarily embark the credit of the Sacred Writings on some hypothesis of natural philosophy, which in the end may turn out untenable, and in sinking, may draw down the cause perilled upon it. Therefore,

"If any one were to suggest that the nebular hypothesis countenances the Scripture history of the formation of this system, by showing how the luminous matter of the sun might exist previous to the sun itself, we should act wisely in rejecting such an attempt to weave together these two heterogeneous threads;-the one a part of a providential scheme, the other a fragment of physical speculation."-P. 134.

The lesson which our author thus reads to divines is fortified bya reference to various Christian writers, and a discussion of

VOL. IV NO. VIII.

2 B

the case of Galileo, on which our limits forbid our entering. We cannot, however, resist quoting the following passage from Kepler, which Dr. Whewell refers to as a specimen of the suitable temper of the Christian philosopher in regard to such questions:

"I beseech my reader that, not unmindful of the Divine goodness bestowed upon man, he do with me praise and celebrate the wisdom of the Creator, which I open to him from a more inward explication of the form of the world, from a searching of causes, from a detection of the errors of vision; and that thus, not only in the firmness and stability of the earth may we perceive with gratitude the preservation of all living things in nature as the gift of God: but also that in its motion, so recondite, so admirable, we may acknowledge the wisdom of the Creator. But whoever is too dull to receive this science, or too weak to believe the Copernican system without harm to his piety, him, I say, I advise that, leaving the school of astronomy, and condemning, if so he please, any doctrines of the philosophers, he follow his own path, and desist from this wandering through the universe; and that, lifting up his natural eyes, with which alone he can see, he pour himself out from his own heart in worship of God the Creator,-being certain that he gives no less worship to God than the astronomer, to whom God has given to see more clearly with his inward eyes, and who, from what he has himself discovered, both can and will glorify God." -P. 145.

We may learn, from contrasting the fine spirit which breathes in these words of the sincere and pious Kepler, with the opposite temper which some other philosophers have displayed in their researches, that there are two ways of studying the phenomena of the material world. We have too often seen those who have engaged in that study, in order to build up some novel theory, and to gain the reputation of arduous and original thinkers, and who contemplate with self-satisfied pride the structure which they have reared. But these, while they investigate nature, are not adoring its author, but themselves, and their own skill and research; they go into the temple of the universe, but they are so proud of unfolding its elaborate carvings, and deciphering its hieroglyphics, that they forget to worship and love the Lord of the Temple; and the incense which they offer is to their own vanity, or to the wisdom of their species.

There is another way of studying nature-not presumptuous, and yet exciting, pursued with less self-complacency, but more delight. The firm believer in revelation examines the results of scientific inquiry, or himself "opens the more inward explication of the form of the world" as food for the reverence he would feel for his Father in Heaven. He is satisfied with the divine word, and, reposing on the promises therein contained, he is grateful

and happy. How can he better show his gratitude than by examining the wonders of the omnipotent hand, which, to make a dwelling-place for man, has hung over frowning mountains, and laughing fields, and rejoicing rivers, the ever-shifting and manycoloured canopy of the sky? He may meet with wonders he cannot fathom, and seeming contradictions which he cannot reconcile; but he looks at these as a child regarding some masterpiece of his father's skill, his uncertainty melting away into reverence, his perplexity swallowed up in admiration. He has a patient confidence that all is right and reconcilable, and that one day he will himself see how. Meanwhile, as he walks abroad in a world which, to his cultivated eye, is teeming with wonders, from the starry host above him, in their exquisite and almost tuneful regularity, making music to their Maker's praise, down to the smallest flower and insect on which he treads, pencilled and articulated with the most delicate care-each new development of complicated structure which he witnesses—each marvellously simple law which he unravels each adaptation, each curious mechanism or strange chemical effect, affords fresh subject for humble adoration, and for genuine gladness of heart. To borrow the idea of the Christian poet, all the works of nature are peculiarly his, who can, without presumption, look upward and say with a smile of joy, "My Father made them all."

We have endeavoured to follow the train of Dr. Whewell's reasoning, and to connect some of the most characteristic extracts from his work. If we have failed in conveying an idea of the cogency of his general argument, at least we hope that the excellence of the passages cited may induce many of our readers to peruse for themselves this useful, and neither bulky nor expensive,

volume.

ART. V.-Eloge Historique de Joseph Fourier. Par M. ARAGO, Secrétaire Perpétuel de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de l'Institut de France. Lu à la séance publique, du 18 Novembre 1833.

THE illustrious philosophers who flourished during the French Revolution, and who distinguished themselves either in legislation or in war, have, for some time, excited a very deep interest among the more intellectual portion of our countrymen. Denounced as the bitterest enemies of England-charged with the atrocities of the period in which they lived-and regarded as the apostles of infidelity and anarchy, the heroes and sages of France have never been justly appreciated, or righteously judged. To have pronounced Napoleon a hero, and Carnot a sage, would at one time have been regarded as an act bordering on treason; and might have subjected to scorn, if not to persecution, the author of so daring a sentiment. Time, however, and the knowledge which it brings, have smoothed the asperities of national feeling; and the generation which has since arisen, has not caught from the pages of history the prejudices or the rancour of contemporary animosity. The bust of Napoleon now graces the halls and the libraries of British statesmen; and could Carnot and Fourier now visit the modern Carthage which they once strove to destroy, they would be received with the distinction due to genius, and the admiration inspired by patriotism.

Living, as we do, in insular security-governed by a popular dynasty, and under equal laws-we have, even yet, formed but an imperfect estimate of the sufferings and sacrifices of those distinguished men, who were hurried from their intellectual and peaceful pursuits into the tumult of devouring factions, or among the dangers of foreign war. If the soldier earns his name of glory by his prowess in the field, how bright must be the reputation of the sage who gives the vigour of his mind, and the strength of his arm, for the salvation of his country ;--who, with the scaffold in view, rushes into the arena of inveterate passion to soothe and to guide;-and who, in the crisis of his nation's fate, exchanges the immortality of genius for the blood-stained laurels of war.

In those grave emergencies, when European hosts were marshalled to devour them, the Institute of France sent forth her intellectual conscripts to combine the elements of matter, and put in requisition the armoury of science, for the defence of their country. In that glorious campaign, which filled the arsenals of