very nature cannot cope. What varied resources are open to a power that, exalting itself above the law of God, has unlimited control over the human conscience, to which oaths are no barrier, and murder is no crime. From how many trammels are those set free to whom truth has ceased to be a law, and the only guide of whose words is policy. How boundless the pecuniary resources of that harlot city, among whose merchandize are reckoned "the souls of men," for what will not an awakened sinner give for the salvation of his soul. We know such power must be short-lived, like the desolating conflagration of an American prairie; but, while it lasts, how fearful is its energy; no weapon, save the tempered sword of the Spirit, can resist it, no shield but that of faith, blunt its fiery darts.

English women, do you ask what you can do against this deadly foe. Be in heart what you are in name,— Protestants. "A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid:" Love Protestant truth in the very depths of your hearts, and hate with equal earnestness the soul-destroying wiles of Popery, and the quiet shining of your light will, of itself, suffice to reveal many of the hidden works of darkness. Rome, who might indeed be our teacher in every lesson of policy, is far too wise to despise woman's influence. The Sisters of Charity, the numerous orders of nuns, are some of her most effective instruments. In the cottages of the poor, by the bedsides of the sick, she makes her first advances through the sympathy and tenderness of female attention. Shall we suffer the votaries of error to exceed us in works of love? Shall Popery be able to commend itself to the hearts of our poorer brethren, as, far more than Protestantism, the religion of Him who went about doing good? The poor cannot be expected closely to discern

motives, but they can warmly appreciate sympathizing kindness, and surely the religion of Jesus furnishes us with as many motives for its exercise as the religion of Rome. When we speak of leavening a nation with Protestantism, it seems a mighty task, quite beyond a woman's province; but this abstract thing a nation, is only a company of individuals. Protestant principles must work their way separately into every man's bosom, before the nation becomes Protestant, and who can say what influence the daughters of Britain may have in the glorious work. In a beleaguered city, women have joined the ranks, tending the wounded, bearing water to the soldier, braving the common peril; because if the city fell, they knew it must involve the loss of all they held most dear. The Protestant citadel is beleaguered, and if it falls, the women of England must lose their dearest treasures: is it then unreasonable to call on them to render all that feeble hands, but devoted hearts, can accomplish for its defence?

THE

CHRISTIAN LADY'S MAGAZINE.

MARCH 1847.

THE TREASURES OF WISDOM.

No. VI.

In our last paper we endeavoured to shew that there is a real harmony, of a very simple kind, between the alleged facts of Geology, and the Mosaic records of Creation. That week of wonders, in which our planet, with its firmament, sea, and dry land, was prepared by Divine wisdom for the habitation of man, ought not to be confounded with that absolute beginning, when the Eternal God began to reveal Himself in time, and not this earth only, but the empyreal and the starry heavens, rose into being. The transition, from the eternity of the Creator to the finite duration of the creature, must ever be a deep mystery, the object of faith and not of science, whether six thousand years, or millions of ages, have since passed away. There is still much uncertainty about the vast intervals which some ascribe to the eras of Geology. Reason and observation combine MARCH, 1847.

to assure us that the conflict of the elements must have been far more intense, and great changes more rapid and violent, in those remote ages, than in the times of the earth's recent history, and hence that our conjectures may err very widely, when we pretend to calculate those volcanic eras of time. But even if we receive them in the largest estimates, they are only a point, when compared with that absolute eternity, which is the dwelling-place of the Most High. The first verse of the Bible, however, with a sublime simplicity, transports our thoughts over this immeasurable gulf, which separates time from eternity. Why then should we account it strange, if the second verse, however short and simple, bridges over all the dark ages of our embryo planet, until it was ready for His light-creating and life-giving voice, who had long been rejoicing in the "habitable parts of the earth, and His delights were with the sons of men ?"

There is still, however, one scruple which may have deterred many from resting in this simple explanation of the inspired narrative. The death of the animal

creation, in their view, is clearly associated with the Fall of Man. How then can we admit, that races of animals existed on our earth, and preyed on each other, before the sin of Adam had first opened the floodgates of misery and ruin ?

To enter fully on this question would detain us too long from our main object ; yet perhaps one or two suggestions will remove the difficulty. And first, the death mentioned by St. Paul, which passed through to all men, because of sin, was clearly human death, and included both moral and natural elements. It has its contrast in the resurrection; "for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." But the re

surrection plainly does not extend to the beasts of the field. The effects of the fall, again, must be limited to the creatures over which Adam had been appointed to rule, and which were afterward subjected to vanity for his sake. We have no direct warrant for any inference respecting the natural history of our planet before the week of his creation, if such a period be allowed to exist. The relation, also, between the Fall of Man, and the state of the animal world, seems to have been simply the sudden removal of a restraining power. The carnivorous instincts were there already, and when the dominion of man was forfeited by sin, these began at once, even in Paradise, their work of destruction. We may infer, perhaps, that animals themselves are liable to a relative fall, the effect of unrestrained instinct, and which resembles sin and guilt in moral agents. The terms we commonly apply to them are witnesses of this truth, and imply something in brutes, closely analogous to virtue and vice in reasonable beings. All creatures are defectible in themselves, and need some higher power, to bind them in perpetual harmony with the will of God, and the supreme good of the universe. And thus a world of mere animal life, left to its own instincts, might rush blindly into destruction, before the earth was repeopled by fresh inhabitants, and finally prepared to be the habitation of mankind.

Let us now inquire whether these views, borrowed from modern science, instead of contradicting the sacred narrative, do not really bring out its secret emphasis and beauty, and thus illustrate the unity of that majestic design, which reigns in the whole course of Divine Providence.

We shall assume, then, as highly probable, if not certain, that our earth was in existence, for ages, after