hold, he is alive for evermore, and has the keys of hell and of death;" and he has now bruised the serpent's head, and he chains him, and opens the bottomless pit, "and casts the old serpent into the lake of fire and brimstone, there to remain for ever." Here we see striking evidence of unity in the whole texture of the sacred volume; and when we consider how long a period of time separates the events of the book of Genesis from those of the Apocalypse, we recognise a remarkable confirmation of the truth, that the history and the prophecy are from the same divine hand, and that the events which they describe are under the control of Him with "whom a thousand years are as one day.". Wordsworth.

THE SCIENCE OF THE SCRIPTURES.

WHEN we consider that the Sacred Writings are specially devoted to the moral and spiritual concerns of mankind, we are not to look into them for scientific disquisitions, much less for the explanation of many of those deep mysteries—those ultimate causes, which seem beyond the grasp of the human intellect, and were evidently intended to be for ever hid from man in his sublunary condition. At the same time, considering the high authority of the Scriptures, when they do casually allude to physical phenomena, we naturally expect that no statements at variance with physical science shall be given. Accordingly, we find that the language of Scripture is extremely guarded—we might almost say most wonderfully precise on this particular; and, moreover, where there may appear a discrepancy between its statements and the phenomena of nature, that discrepancy will be found to arise from the limited observation or erroneous views of man, not from any misstatement or inaccuracy in the sacred record.

It has been said that the Scriptures contain the germ of all true philosophy. Most certain it is that science has grown up and flourished almost exclusively among that favoured portion of mankind to whom the sacred writings have been made known. These ennobling truths have expanded the mind, subdued the crude and roaming intellect,

and directed the judgment to views both of physical and moral nature, which have been conducive in the highest degree to the progress of civilisation.

Though the sacred writers on no occasion professedly treat of natural science, yet we find many allusions to the operations of nature scattered through their pages. Much of the beautiful imagery of Scripture, too, is drawn from natural objects-the flowers of the field, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the forest are all employed to illustrate and exalt the ways of Providence with man. What a treasure would be found, could we recover at this day the lost treatises of Solomon on all these subjects!

Many illustrations might be given of the accuracy of scientific allusions found in Scripture; we shall select a few.

Solomon says (Ecclesiastes i. 7), "All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: into the place from whence the rivers come thither they return again." This is just the modern explanation of atmospheric evaporation. Clouds of moisture rise from the ocean, float about in the atmosphere, descend in rain, and, collecting into rivers, this moisture, after ministering to plants and animals, flows again into the sea. From the expression, "there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea" (1 Kings xviii. 43), and various other similar allusions, it is perfectly evident that the sacred writers were familiar with atmospheric evaporation. Yet, at a comparatively modern period, it was a favourite theory of meteorologists, that the waters of the

ocean made their way up from the sea through the porous sand and rocks; and thus filtered, lost their saline particles, and then issued as springs of fresh water from the mountain tops and sides. And this explanation was made to harmonise with the words of Solomon just quoted. Nothing, however, could be more incorrect than this explanation, both in a chemical and mechanical acceptation. Unchemical, because no filtration will deprive water of salts dissolved in it by a chemical solution-unmechanical, because no fluids, even supposing a capillary attraction, will rise in such quantities, or to such heights, contrary to the known laws of hydrostatics. When clearer views of the laws of evaporation revealed the falsity of this theory, the error was extended to Solomon also, although it is evident that his statement agrees both with the actual process of nature, as well as with the latest and more correct exposition of this process.

It is not a little remarkable to observe, that Moses in his detail of the animal creation follows exactly the modern zoological arrangement—that is, he begins with the formation of the simplest animals, and ascends in the scale according to the complexity of the higher structures. Now, it is evident that Moses did not in this instance adopt any contemporary system of zoology, because the system of the Egyptian priests, as far as we learn from Pythagoras and Aristotle, who gleaned part of their information from them, was by no means so scientific. From Aristotle downwards, a very incomplete

arrangement of the animal kingdom prevailed; and in fact, it was not till the time of Cuvier, in the beginning of the present century, that anything like a correct arrangement of animal beings was accomplished. After long and laborious researches made by this great naturalist and his coadjutors into the minute structure and comparative anatomy of animals, a system was framed, beginning with the simplest and lowest forms of creeping things, and ascending by a progressive scale to the most perfect animals.

Now, supposing an uninspired and unscientific person in the time of Moses to have set about constructing an account of creation, it is most likely that he would have commenced with man and the higher animals, and gone on in the descending scale -a system which was, indeed, followed by all the writers on animals previous to the discoveries of Cuvier.

The spontaneous production of animals from the earth or soil without a parent, and the equivocal production of new species from the bodies of other larger animals, were also dreams of the philosophers of former days, and are indeed to some extent prevalent in the present times. Yet the distinct succession of species from parent species, is an express statement of the scriptural narrative-"Let every plant and every animal bring forth seed after its kind." The minute observations of the microscope have, by prodigiously enlarging the field of vision, shown that the habits of even the smallest animal