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heaven, and was ready to fall on the earth; to poison her fountains with bitterness, or to convert their (her) waters into blood. The whole firmament of the civilized world, with all its glorious and beneficent luminaries, looked as if about to suffer some fearful and ruinous eclipse. To thicken the horror and confusion of the time, the very depths of hell* appeared to open, and to send forth a smoke that darkened the sun itself; a vapour teeming with the noisome swarms of impiety and blasphemy, in number overwhelming as the plague of locusts, in venom deadly as the scorpions of the earth."

In the fourteenth Sermon, delivered upon Easter Day, from Gal. i. 2. the preacher very justly considers the testimony of St. Paul to "the actual existence and personal agency of Jesus Christ, at a period subsequent to his crucifixion," as a proof of his resurrection, "of such solidity, that the understanding might repose on it with confidence, if all other proof were wanting." Upon this point, he makes use of the admirable reasoning of Paley, in his Hora Paulina; which is as well entitled as any thing with which we are acquainted, to be called a "moral demonstration." This naturally leads him to speak of the Christian doctrine of a future state; the most important truth which our divine religion has "brought to light;" and to notice the inextricable confusion respecting it, in which the heathen philosophers universally, and indeed necessarily, were involved. He illustrates this matter with his usual felicity of poetical allusion.

"In those days (says he) of perplexing twilight, the path of the human intellect, in exploring these awful depths, is, perhaps, not unaptly imaged to our thoughts by the wanderings of the apostate spirit, (as represented by our own immortal poet t), when, in search of a happier and a brighter world, he plunged into the secrets of the hoary deep,' the regions of elementary confusion and darkness; soaring sometimes to immeasurable heights, then sinking back into the gulph of a dreary vacuity; assaulted and confounded on all sides by the tumult of mutinous elements; and compelled, with hands and feet, and wings, to achieve his uncertain and toilsome enterprise. Such seems to have been the painful and desperate journeying of the human mind, when it committed itself to the wild abyss' of unhallowed speculation, without a ray from heaven to illuminate its path: when it ventured into that empire of doubt and anarchy, in which the conflict is but embroiled by decision!"

He afterwards, notices the doubts of Cicero, upon this mo

* Rev. ix. 2, 3.

+ Paradise Lost, Book II.

1

mentous question. But it is clear that the sages of antiquity, without exception, from Plato to Seneca, could arrive at no fixed decision upon the point, as has been shewn at large by Bishop Warburton, in the third section of the third book of the Divine Legation.

The fifteenth and sixteenth Sermons were preached before the University of Cambridge. In the former a dificult subject, the Analogy of the Priesthood of Christ, to that of Melchisedec, is treated with considerable skill and ingenuity. But in the latter, which is a continuation of it, a position is advanced, which, we confess, startled us a little, and for which we are not aware of any sufficient authority. We were the more surprised to meet with it, because we had but just before read this eloquent description of our inability to pe netrate the mysterity of the godhead.

"Where is the human mind that can presume to tempt the depths of that dreadful gulf which separates us from the abode of the Divinity? What mortal does not tremble at the thought of bursting into the sanctuary of that incomprehensible and Sovereign Will, which is felt, at every instant, throughout the whole fabric of the universe? Our intellect sinks even under the attempt to scan the meanest of his works. We cannot view, without wonder and terror, those mysterious instruments of his might, by whose operation the system of the material creation is carried on. And if we are troubled when he thundereth with the voice of his excellency; if our faculties are outstripped and baffled by the speed and brightness of his lightning; if we essay in vain to trace his path in the tempest and the whirlwind; how shall we draw nigh to that unknown habitation, in which his power resides in all the plenitude of glory; that throne from whence issues the commandment that gives birth and movement to the energies of the visible world? The very mode of the divine existence is to us utterly inexplicable. That supreme nature presents to our conceptions nothing but one uniform blaze of simple, uncompounded perfection.”

Within a page of this occurs the passage to which we bave alluded, and which we shall quote, and submit to the reconsideration of its able and learned author. The hypostatic union, during our Saviour's abode upon earth, though perhaps indispensable for the purposes of his mission, is a subject which it almost oppresses our faculties to contemplate. But to suppose its continuance in any degree, in the celes tial mansions, seems an immeasurable increase of difficulty, and wholly uncalled for by any necessity. The Son may surely be conceived to sympathize with us, though he should no longer retain any portion of our infirmities: singe the

Scriptures uniformly ascribe, even to the Father, feelings of kindness and commiseration for us, who has yet never experienced our sufferings and sorrows. Nevertheless, we are told, that

"It is a further source of unspeakable joy, that our Lord's assumption of humanity was not temporary and transient: that he still retains his union with that very nature which suffered so much for his redemption, and with it a personal and experimental knowledge of all the perils and conflicts which beset the path of our pilgrimage. Our souls may now be fixed on the truth, that we are not only at the disposal of an omnipotent Creator, but under the protection of one who calls himself our Brother, with a combination of all the feelings and sympathies which belong to that relation. Had the union of the two natures in our great High Priest been limited to the duration of his appearance here; had he, on his ascension to heaven, laid aside his earthly tabernacle, and left it to moulder in the dust, the scheme of redemption, however, abounding in mercy, would scarcely have addressed itself so forcibly, as now it does, to our affections and our hopes. For we should then have wanted that confidence, which we now possess, springing from the blessed assurance that he who was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,' hath entered within the vail, bearing with him a tender sense of our wretchedness and infirmity. Had the termination of Christ's ministry on earth been instantly followed by his disunion from humanity, we might have been cast back into a state resembling that condition of fear, that 'spirit of bondage' and distrust, which is the reproach and the curse of what, by some, is called the religion of nature. The satisfaction for sin would still indeed have been offered; but then we should have been without a mediator to plead it. Our applications must still have been made immediately to God, in all the unmitigated blaze of his perfection and power.

The last Sermon in this volume, is an appropriate discourse upon the consecration of the new church of St. Paul, Shadwell, of which Mr. Le Bas is the rector. We have not seen it, but we were rather surprised to find, by a note, that it had occupied no less than ten years in rebuilding. The new church of St. Pancras, the most finished structure, per haps, of modern times, in the kingdom, was completed in little more than one-fourth of that period.

We had marked several other passages in this work for commendation, which our limits will not permit us to transcribe; but we trust that we have produced enough to justify the favourable opinion which we have expressed at the com mencement of this article: and to prove that the Professor of Mathematics in the East India College, is entitled to hold Сс

VOL. XVIII, OCTOBER, 1822.

a very respectable rank amongst the writers of the present day, and that he deserves (which is probably his highest ambition) to "be numbered amongst those who have given ar'dour to virtue, and confidence to truth."

ART. VI.
Society.

Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Established November 15, 1819. Vol. I. Part II. 4to. Cambridge. 1822..

IN a former Number our readers may recollect we gave some account of the institution of the Philosophical Society in the University of Cambridge, which we contemplate as forming an interesting epoch in the history of science. The establishment of local centres of communication in which the labours of individuals may be brought to a focus, is at once the surest method of promoting the interests of science, and a strong proof of its increasing diffusion. The establishments, known by the name of "Institutions," which are increasing in number in many parts of the kingdom, are certainly likely to do much towards the furtherance of the general progress of philosophical knowledge; but we conceive a Society, like those whose memoirs are before us, founded on the exact model of the Royal Society, and regulated by a similar judicious spirit to that which has always ditinguished the proceedings of that illustrious body, affords an infinitely better centre of co-operation, and is more calculated to give a vigorous tone and impulse to the pursuit of scientific objects, than any other species of institution organized on the more modern plan of a display of laboratories, libraries, professors, lectures, syllabuses, sumptuous apartments, and elegant architecture, promoting, perhaps after all, but superficial, or even worse than superficial attainments and pretensions.

It is time, however, to proceed to an examination of the contents of the volume.

Under the head of Mathematical and Mechanical Science, we have, in the first place, a Paper, No. 14, on the application of hydrogen gas to produce a moving power in machinery; with a description of an engine which is moved by the pressure of the atmosphere upon a vacuum caused by explosions of hydrogen gas and atmospheric air. By the Rev. W. Cécil, M.A. Fellow of Magdalen College. In this curious Paper, the author explains the application of a new

principle in the movement of machinery. As the contrivance is of a complicated nature, we cannot hope to make it intelligible without a reference to the plate accompanying the original Paper. The general principle, however, may be stated thus: there are two ways in which explosions may be applied to move machinery, either by using the expansive force of the explosion, or by taking advantage of the vacuum which it produces. The contrivance here described belongs to the latter class. A piston moves in a cylinder, and as it retreats, the space which it leaves is occupied by a mixture of hydrogen gas and atmospheric air. When this mixture has nearly filled the whole cylinder, the motion of the piston opens a small aperture, through which the flame of a lamp is drawn in, so as to produce an explosion, followed by an instantaneous condensation. The expansion of the gas during the explosion (by which it is dilated to about three times its original bulk), is provided for by two other cylinders communicating with the one already mentioned; and the vacuum produced under the piston continues the motion by means of átmospheric pressure. The author also examines the advantages of the contrivance; the best proportion of the gases; the force of the explosion; and several other particulars relating to the engine and its application; as well as to the principle of producing motion by explosions in general.

No. 15. On a remarkable peculiarity in the law of the extraordinary refraction of differently coloured rays exhibited by certain varieties of apophyllite. By J. F. W. Herschel, Esq. F.R.S. &c.

In a former Paper, the author had noticed some remarkable deviations from the ordinary law of tints, exhibited by some specimens of this substance. It appeared to him, on further consideration, that these specimens could not be referred exclusively either to the class of attractive or of repulsive doubly refracting crystals, nor to the intermediate class, which is devoid of the property of doubly refracting. They appeared to belong at once to all three classes of media just mentioned. Possessing the property of attractive crystals, when exposed to the rays forming one extreme of the spectrum, and of repulsive, in their action on the other extreme; while for certain intermediate rays, they were altogether devoid of the property of double refraction. Mr. H. was led to these inferences from certain mathematical considerations, which were fully confirmed by experiment.

No. 16, consists of a notice of the astronomical tables of Mahommed Abubeker Al Farsi, two copies of which are

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