equally to all its branches. And he reckons this as one of the chief "impediments of knowledge." "I see sometimes (saith he) the profoundest sort of wits, in handling some particular argument, will now and then draw a bucket of water out of this well for their present use; but the spring head thereof seemeth to me not to have been visited."

In like manner Newton asserts, that the knowledge of truth can only be attained by proceeding "from compounds to ingredients, and from motions to the forces producing them; and in general, from effects to their causes, and from particular causes to more general ones; till the argument ends in the most general. This is the method of analysis. And the synthesis consists in assuming the causes, thus discovered, and established as principles, and by them explaining the phenomena proceeding from them, and proving the explanations." (Optics, iii). And he elsewhere asserts that "the argument, by induction, is so much the stronger, by how much the induction is more general." The most general cause, in the mind of Newton, always referred to God; from a knowledge of God he assumed those general principles by which the phenomena were explained aud proved. When I wrote (says Newton) my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity." Newton began with the being of God; he asserted that all natural philosophy led up to God (de Deo ex phænomenis disserere ad philosophiam naturalem pertinet); and he found that "it became Him, who created all things, to set them in order: and, if he did so, it is unphilosophical to seek for any other origin of this world, or to pretend that it might rise out of a chaos by the mere laws of nature." "Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be the effect of choice; and so must the uniformity in the bodies of animals. These and their instincts can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful everliving agent." (Optics, iii., passim).

Bacon and Newton both insisted on the necessity of going back to the source and origin of all law, to God himself, in order to understand rightly any law-that God is the first physical principle in physics, and the first moral principle in morals. And much more imperative is this necessity in geology, where, by neglecting it, our inferences will be, not merely defective, but will become positively false: where not only the chief and most important element is wanting in the induction, but where, in consequence of this want, all the other elements may be constrained to witness the very contrary to that which is true, and to that which would be inferred from the same facts, when rightly understood.

Any geological induction which we would make sufficiently large to be true, sufficiently general to include its first cause, must ascend to God-must assume for its basis that knowledge of God which we have acquired through revelation, and make his being and attributes the foundation and the guide of all its speculations. But, together with the knowledge of God himself, we have also acquired the knowledge of his works and ways through revelation, and we cannot divide the one kind of knowledge from the other; we cannot discover by the light of reason, or the properties of matter, how it came into being, or acquired its form, or became subject to its laws; we can only reason from things that are as they are-what was before, and what they were before, we must be told by another, by one who knew their former condition. The present and actual condition of things, is the proper region of knowledge; the past and the future conditions are properly regions of faith.

It is true, however, that we may, to a certain extent, infer, from present appearances, what has been, or shall be, their conditions in past and future time; but, since inference is only probability, and not knowledge, we must neglect nothing which is indispensable to a correct inference; and, above all, probability must not be set up in contradiction to the things which we know. We know, by the same revelation which has made us acquainted with God, how the world came into being; and, as Newton argues that it is unphilosophical to seek for any other origin of this world than from God, so it is equally unphilosophical to infer anything concerning its former condition, which is not borne out by, and entirely consistent with, our knowledge of its origin. The same revelation which has given us our knowledge of God, has taught us that the first condition of the world was very good; that the blessing of God was upon it; that the produce of the ground-the fruits, and grain, and herbs-was the appointed food of man and all other creatures; that the dominion over them all was given to man, without any fear or dread of man being implanted in them; and that, in token of this, they all came before Adam, to receive their names from him.

All this holds together as one connected narrative, of which we may not take one part, to suit one form of argument, or support one kind of inference, and reject other parts; but the whole must be taken, or rejected, together. And this narrative is so consistent with the other parts of Scripture, and with what we have learned of God from all revelation, that we cannot lose confidence in this narrative without being shaken in our faith on all revelation-we cannot consistently reject this part, without rejecting the whole of Scripture. Not that these men do reject cripture, but that strict consistency would force them to do so.

6

And not only concerning its first condition, but concerning the present condition of this world, the Scriptures are very explicit. They declare that sin changed the condition of the world; that this drew down the curse of God upon the earth which he had formerly blessed; and entailed misery upon man, and on the whole creation through him: Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." And at length, sin having brought forth its correspondent fruit, the earth having become corrupt before God, and being filled with violence unprecedented, God said, "The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them I will destroy them with the earth." And it was not till after this destruction that the present condition of the world began, in all its geological, and in many of its moral, aspects. Those who believe the Bible must acknowledge, in the destruction therein recorded, a total change of the earth's surface, and an entirely new constitution of things; and also such a change in the moral relationship between man and other creatures, that the fear and the dread of man is then, for the first time, implanted in them, and to man then, and for the first time, flesh is given for food, in addition to the fruits of the ground which had been given from the beginning. And these recorded facts consistency requires us to believe, as well as those of creation.

We do not impute to the geologists the dishonesty of being consciously guilty of the inconsistency which we show, nor do we say that they positively deny the facts which we have alluded to above; but they give these facts the go-by in a variety of ways. Many of these ways we have already pointed out, and of these we need not now speak; but we wish to direct the attention of our readers to some of the arguments which have been brought forward for the use of animal food in general, and to those also by which it is sought to prove, that it is a provision of love and mercy that animals should devour each other.

For our part, we have no squeamishness whatever concerning the use of animal food, but following the precept and example of St. Paul, we would eat without scruple whatever is sold in the shambles, asking no question. And believing, moreover, that it was given for food after the flood, the use of it is thereby sanctioned; and what God hath cleansed, far be it from us to call that unclean. But when men are not content to leave the question thus general, or thus resting on the permission of God, but argue that it is better in theory that flesh should be used for food, both by men and carnivorous animals, and, consequently, that it might have been the food of men from the beginning, and

of animals before the creation of man, we then begin to demur, and examine the arguments by which this theory is supported.

It is often asserted, as an argument in favour of the use of flesh for food, and as a reason for inferring that there were carnivorous animals designed to prey on other animals from the beginning, that by it, by the feeding on flesh as well as vegetables, a greater number of living beings is sustained than could possibly be supported if all creatures lived on vegetable food alone. In this assertion there are two fallacies, from not considering that herbivorous animals consume a far greater bulk of food beforehand than they yield in the form of flesh to man or to the carnivorous animals, and from not considering that the carnivorous animals necessarily displace more than their own number of herbivorous animals, and are like the dog in the manger in the fable. Let our readers lay hold of these fallacies, and they will then find that the argument tells quite the other way.

For as men and carnivorous animals live upon the earth, and occupy space which would otherwise be filled by herbivorous animals, the question is, whether a greater quantity of food may not be obtained in the shape of produce, direct from the ground, than that quantity which can be obtained, indirectly, by feeding animals on the produce and using them for food. And we think there cannot be a doubt, when thus considered, that the use of animal food presupposes, in order to obtain it, the consumption and the loss of a still larger quantity of vegetable food; because, the quantity of vegetable nourishment which an animal consumes is far greater than the return of nourishment which its body yields when it is slain for food. This truth comes out in the well-known fact of political economy, that a country must be wealthy to enable its inhabitants to live on animal food, and that in proportion as the population of a country becomes superabundant, and poverty extensively prevails, in the same proportion the consumption of animal food diminishes, and the people are reduced to live wholly on vegetable diet; the difference in the superior price of meat being, in general, the exact measure of the loss sustained by the conversion of the produce of the ground into animal food. And hence in densely peopled and poor countries, like Ireland and the Indian provinces, potatoes or rice supersede animal food, as the most economical way in which life can be sustained-the way in which the largest numbers can be maintained on a limited surface. And if we turn our eyes towards earlier and ruder states of society, the same results appear; for the agricultural and pastoral tribes have

often been very numerous, while the hunting tribes, in scanty numbers, range over rather than inhabit, immense tracts of country, in search of a precarious and insufficient subsistence.

The hunting tribes among men, are like the beasts of prey among animals, roaming over solitudes which they create and perpetuate. It is a stupid libel upon law and order to call the carnivorous animals, the wild beasts, "the police of nature." Wolves are not the police of the fold-lawless bandits are not the police of society: the shepherd who guards the flock rather deserves the name; and represents the dominion at first given to man, and that exercised by Noah also over the congregated tenants of the ark. And this leads us to notice the second fallacy spoken of above, and to show that it is a fact, beyond contradiction, that the carnivorous animals displace a far greater number than themselves, of herbivorous animals, and consequently that the number of living creatures is diminished and not increased, "by adding to the stock of life all the carnivorous races.' But to do justice to Dr. Buckland, and render our argument more intelligible, we will quote the whole passage from his "Bridgwater Treatise," chapter xiii., p. 129:

Aggregate of animal enjoyment increased, and that of pain diminished, by the existence of carnivorous races!-To the mind which looks not to general results in the economy of nature, the earth may seem to present a scene of perpetual warfare and incessant carnage; but the more enlarged view, while it regards individuals in their conjoint relations to the general benefit of their own species, and that of other species with which they are associated in the great family of nature, resolves each apparent case of individual evil into an example of subserviency to universal good.

"Under the existing system, not only is the aggregate amount of animal enjoyment much increased, by adding to the stock of life all the races which are carnivorous, but these are also highly beneficial even to the herbivorous races that are subject to their dominion.

"Besides the desirable relief of speedy death on the approach of debility or age, the carnivora confer a further benefit on the species which form their prey, as they control their excessive increase by the destruction of many individuals in youth and health. Without this salutary check each species would soon multiply to an extent exceeding in a fatal degree their supply of food, and the whole class of herbivora would ever be so nearly on the verge of starvation, that multitudes would daily be consigned to lingering and painful death by famine. All these evils are superseded by the establishment of a controlling power in the carnivora; by their agency the numbers of each species are maintained in due proportion to one another-the sick, the lame, the aged, and the supernumeraries, are consigned to speedy death; and while each suffering individual is soon relieved from pain, it contributes its enfeebled carcase to the support of its carnivorous benefactor, and