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at the same time; for it is not, of course, so common that the organs of sight and hearing, even although they were both disordered, should report the presence of the same object. In days of yore, apparitions, hobgoblins, ghosts, fairies, and water-kelpies, were often seen, but much seldomer both seen and heard at the same time; being rather uncivil in the response, as we have heard—not speaking when spoken to the eyes of our ancestors having oft been "made the fools of the other senses." In dreams, indeed, when the instruments of perception without the brain receive no impress from the material world around them, our conscience is as fully assured of the reality of its objects as when we are awake; but each perceptive organ, on these occasions, confirms the testimony of all the rest, each adds its respective evidence to the real existence of every thing perceived. Who, in the time of his dreams, ever thought that he was dreaming? His heart beating high with rapture, the dreamer will exclaim, "I have dreamt of rifling from earth's bosom unsunned heaps' of hidden treasure! But this is no dream; it is reality: here are

a thousand fearful wrecks;

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea,'

The spoils of wanderers over Ocean's waste domain,
Who now hath fled, and left his booty all unguarded."

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Speaking purely philosophically, then, and putting religion altogether out of the question, the natural history of human observation or experience can never be admitted as a test of the truth of phenomena of the material universe: for may it not happen, that man shall discover some new imperceptible power, whose operation would control those which he already knows?-Magnetism is a past instance of what we have been supposing to take place in the future; and nothing can be more beautifully appropriate than the following illustrative argument of Bishop Watson of Landaff concerning that imperceptible power, in reference to what we have just been stating. "The laws of gravitation," says the Bishop, are the most obvious of all the laws of nature; every person in every part of the globe must of necessity have had experience of them. There was a time when no one was acquainted with the laws of magnetism: these suspend in many instances the laws of gravity; nor can I see, upon the principle in question, how the rest of mankind could have credited the testimony of their first discoverer; and yet to have rejected it, would have been to reject the truth. But that a piece of iron should ascend gradually from the earth, and fly at last with an increasing rapidity through the air; and attaching itself to another piece of iron, or to a particular species of iron ore, should remain suspended, in opposition to the action of its gravity, is consonant to the laws of nature. I grant it; but there was a time when it was contrary, I say not to the laws of nature, but to the uniform experience of all preceding ages and countries; and at that particular point of time, the testimony of an individual, or of a dozen individuals, who should have reported themselves eye-witnesses of such a fact, ought, according to your argumentation, to have been received as fabulous.

And what are those laws of nature, which, you (Mr Edward Gibbon) think, can never be suspended ? are they not different to different men, according to the diversities of their comprehension and knowledge? and if any one of them (that, for instance, which rules the operations of magnetism or electricity) should have been known to you or to me alone, whilst all the rest of the world were unacquainted with it, the effects of it would have been new and unheard-of in the annals, and contrary to the experience, of mankind; and therefore ought not, in your opinion, to have been believed."

Away, then, with these dogmas of false philosophy! If men are really anxious to extend the boundaries of human knowledge, the world of organic and inorganic matter lies all before them where to choose. Let them subject it to the hidden powers of nature as they will, observe the phenomena to which these powers give rise, and thus ascertain the laws of their action. It has not been found that those who were the first to lead men into the true path of physical science, and the first to follow in that path when so pointed out, were infidels in divine revelation. The author of the inductive method of philosophy was a Christian. The discoverer of the laws of gravitation by that method was not only a Christian, but also a commentator upon the prophecies both of Daniel and St John. For our own humble part, we must sincerely say, that, so far from finding divine revelation inconsistent with the profoundest philosophy, we have always found it the very reverse; and that we wonder how any one can fail to be struck with admiration of the simplicity and grandeur of the truths both of religion and philosophy, which are disclosed to us in the Testaments of Heaven. Oft, when bewildered and dumbfoundered by the speculations of men, have we turned to the pages of our Bible, to learn in simple language all the theology that man can ever know. Though human pride and human passion have often perverted to their own base purposes, the testimony of God's two Witnesses here below, yet they are still faithful counsellors, to him who will examine them with singleness of heart, and an honest desire of learning what God requires of man. With the humility and sincerity of a child have we perused their evidence; and if, in any thing we shall advance in these dissertations, we shall be found to err against the standard of our established Church of Scotland, we shall do so unwittingly; for we have not perused its Confession of Faith. Nor mean we to read it; for, if God be pleased to spare our life, we mean to devote some of our leisure hours to the study of some points of doctrine which have been the cause of some of its ministers being expelled from our national church; and we would fain enter upon such study unbiassed, for these men have told us that they are persecuted for the true faith undeservedly. It was but the other week that we stood within the walls of our native parish church, and heard ordained ministers of the Word of God praying with the utmost sincerity for the removal of each other's errors; each intimating, in very plain terms, that the other was standing on the brink of a bottomless pit, which opened wide to swallow him. This should not have happened in the house of God; for which among

the flock shall decide, when their doctors disagree. But, to believe what each of the casuists then represented as the tenets held by his antagonist brother, it seemed as if Truth had got to the bottom of that bottomless pit which yawned between them, and nothing but the art of a Mortimer could call her from the vasty deep. Yet though, as the worthy old Baronet observed, much might be said on both sides, we think that plain common sense might decide the question of controversy on that occasion, while one with moderate haste could repeat the Lord's prayer. It was upon the nature of our Saviour's humanity that the reverend gentlemen argued. Now, our Saviour's nature was simply two-fold,—it was human flesh and blood informed by the Spirit of God. But "the flesh profiteth nothing," says our Saviour of himself, John, vi. 63. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth." Flesh in itself, indeed, can neither be holy nor unholy; and when we find it said of our Saviour, that he was born in the likeness of sinful flesh, the word "flesh" is there figuratively used to signify man, fallen man, a compound being. Seemingly, however, to put all cavilling to rest upon the nature of our Saviour while on earth, he is called by the angel "that holy thing" -holy in spirit-holy in flesh-in every respect holy. No evil emotions, no wicked thoughts, no carnal desires, could have arisen in Jesus Christ, even to be combated and overcome; for had they so arisen, he had known sin, which, we are told, "he knew not.". All other argumentation upon so plain a point of doctrine, we hold to be loathsome equivocation and dishonest quibbling upon words; denying in one place what is affirmed in another. Theology, as well as metaphysics, sometimes requires the aid of common sense, to rescue her from one of those perilous ledges on which she gets pitched in her arduous attempt upon the rocky steep "where Fame's proud temple shines afar;" and from which unhappy situation she can of herself get neither up nor down, but remains an object, not of applause, but of pity, to the learned and the good.

Having shewn divine revelation and true philosophy in consultation upon a metaphysical dogma, there is just one other subject which we would wish to illustrate by their united lights. It is that of the visions of Daniel and St John. By the light of philosophy alone, we have already shewn how easy it is to conceive, that the great Intelligence which operates perception and thought in man, could make him perceive what ideas he pleased, provided that such ideas were made up of different parcels of those which had already been derived by his perceptive organs from the material world. We say provided,-because, although it ill becomes a creature to say that any thing is impossible for his Almighty Creator; yet we may, perhaps, go so far without impropriety as to conjecture, that if God wished to communicate ideas to man, which he had given him no perceptive organs to derive from the material world, the first thing that the Almighty would do, would be to furnish him with such organs. Suppose, for example, that a man had been born with all his perceptive organs but those of sight, both within and without the brain; and that the Almighty had wished to communicate to such a being ideas of light and colours, and

to unfold, after his divine pleasure, coloured images before his conscience; it is likely, as far as our conceptions can carry us, that the Almighty would furnish him first with the material apparatus of vision as it exists in man--viz. with eyes to receive the physical impression of the rays of light-the pictures upon the nerve of sight, and also with the organ of perception within the brain to perceive such pictures: for both are equally necessary to vision.-Far be it from us to suppose that it would be impossible for the Almighty, previous to such endowment with new organs of sight, to give to such a being as we have imagined the ideas of light and colours; all we humbly submit is, that the manner we have pointed out is the most likely one in which we can conceive that God would accomplish such a thing. Accordingly, if any one will be at pains to examine the objects seen in their visions by the prophets of sacred scripture, they will find, that, however singular the images may be, and however different from any which it had ever entered into the heart of man to conceive, they are, notwithstanding, made up of those which had been presented to their consciences by their perceptive organs, which had derived them from the organic or inorganic world of matter. Accordingly, also, the glories of heaven, which man is perhaps unprovided with perceptive organs to perceive, and which, therefore, he could form no conception of, our Saviour does not attempt to describe, otherwise than by saying, " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”The truth is, that perception is the father of conception; no man having ever conceived ideas, the elements of which he had not previously perceived. The inhabitant of the sunny valley of the tropics, whose natural history extends no farther than the humble hills which limit his horizon, will never once dream of standing upon solid water, if he has never in his life seen ice. Though the singular manner in which the images of Daniel and St John were compounded from those of the material world is such as almost to prove the divinity of their origin, yet the elementary images of which they were made up, bad all been treasured up in the panorama of the prophets' memories; for neither Daniel, nor St John, nor one of the prophets who saw visions, was blind. That the figure of the glorious personage which Daniel describes to us in chap. x. ver. 5, 6, was not imprinted upon his retina, we are led to believe by his telling us, with all the simplicity of truth, that the men who were with him saw not the vision. The image must, therefore, have been produced by the divine power operating upon the organ of visual perception within the brain of the prophet: and who will deny to the Creator of man the power of controlling the circulation through the perceptive organs of his creatures, and of giving rise to what ideas he pleases? But, after all, the divine origin of the visions of Daniel and St John must be established mainly upon the authority of the Books in which they are recorded; upon the characters of these two persons themselves as handed down to us by human testimony; and, above all, upon the fulfilment of the prophecies which such visions communicate and this work has been written for the purpose of add

ing our mite to the treasury of exposition of their prophecies accomplished, and to shew that, in the present day and generation, an event foretold by Daniel, the man beloved of God, has actually come to pass in the very year in which he had predicted it to happen.

Having shewn how beautifully the study of man through his material organs illustrates and confirms divine revelation, we have only further to offer a few observations upon a very profound question intimately connected with the subject of this work, before we close this Introduction with some remarks upon the types and interpretation of prophecy; the more especially as this question has great light thrown upon it from some of the reasoning upon the human faculties already advanced. Most of our readers will no doubt often have asked themselves, How can future events, accomplished by the agency of man, be predicted by God, and yet the wills of men be free, and their actions in relation to God be contingent, from which such events arise? The question is not so difficult to answer as some would have us to suppose. We think that we have sufficiently shewn, that man cannot accomplish the slightest motion in his body, nor even think the thought that precedes that motion, without the operation in him of an intelligence far transcending his own. How then, we would ask, can he be free, whose thoughts and whose motions arise not from himself? Some will tell us, perhaps, that it is the soul or spirit of man within him which is possessed of that intelligence, by which his functions and his faculties operate. But again we ask, what shall we say of the functions and faculties of the brutes, in which no spirit dwells, as far as we are informed, that survives their death? by what intelligence are consciousness, memory, judgment, and loco-motion operated in them? The scriptures tell us that it is God which works in man both to will and to do of his good pleasure; and although they do not inform us on the same point as to the brute creation, yet there are many passages of scripture from which we may infer the same of the lower animals.* The fact of the matter is, that consciousness of freedom of the human will is itself an argument against that freedom; for consciousness is the result of the operation of a foreign intelligence upon a material organ within the brain of man, of whose locality man is entirely ignorant. Suspend for a minute the circulation of the blood through the brain, and where is consciousness then? It is extinct. It may be said, certainly, that the higher orders of created intellect may perhaps be allowed by God both the knowledge and power to operate perception, thought, and loco-motion in man; but these creatures not having life in themselves, their faculties must, in their turn, be operated by some intelligence higher than their own: so that by reasoning in this manner we must come to God, who has life in himself, and whose

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* 1 Kings, xvii. 3-6-" Get thee hence," says God to Elijah, "and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord: for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of

the brook."

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