cuted; but let it not be supported from our exchequer. Abridge not the liberties of the Papist; but let him not forge chains for us and our children. Enact no penal laws against his superstitions; but give him not the power to pull down the British Constitution, that he may climb up its ruins to the throne. Equally determined must we be that no bastard Popery be propagated in our National Churches, nor in the Protestant seats of learning. Let the ample revenues of this land be no longer perverted by the support of Puseyism and Ritualism. Dissenters, this question belongs to you as well as to the National Church. If the National Church be infected, you will not escape the contagion, nor your children its deadly results. If persecution comes, you will be among the first to suffer. Protestants of Great Britain, arise and act at once; lose not another day. Promptitude may save us, but delay may be our ruin. Too much time has been lost already. Let our pulpits speak with a certain sound. Let tracts be circulated by thousands. Let our children be taught to understand and abhor the Man of Sin. Let public meetings be held in all our great towns, and calm, prudent, but decided and effective measures be adopted to meet the exigencies of the times.* Above all, let fervent prayer be offered up daily in the closet, at the family altar, and in the public sanctuary to the God of heaven, that he may have mercy upon us, forgive our past supineness, give us wisdom and strength adapted to our onerous duty, and bless our efforts with success. "Arise, O Lord, and plead thine own cause."

P.S. Since the above was written, we find it reported that the venerable Dr. M'Neile said at the Liverpool Bible Society Meeting that, as Dr. Pusey had published an Eirenicon for union with Rome, he wished to put forth an Eirenicon for union with Evangelical Dissenters. Appealing to his Nonconformist brethren, he said, "Have we, the Evangelical body of the Church of England, offended you? Have we been cold and distant, and done anything that you have taken amiss? Perhaps some of us have; and if we have, it is the duty of man to pass by offences. I am not ashamed to appeal for combination in this crisis, and I am not afraid to avow that, without your help, I see no human means of maintaining in its integrity the Protestantism of England." He followed this up by the proposal of a Protestant League. We hail these sentiments. They are worthy of the good Doctor, and we hope they will be echoed by his brother clergymen of the Establishment, and be cordially responded to by Dissenters in general. Surely a common danger from a common foe should excite a common sympathy, and prompt to combined and earnest action.

While these sheets are being sent to the press, we learn that a great meeting has just been held in London, where important measures were adopted for immediate action against Puseyism, and a fund of £50,000 to be raised to support the needful operations. We hope and pray it may be crowned with abundant success.

MODERN SCIENCE: ITS LAWS AND LESSONS. We purpose in these papers to lay bare some of the revelations of physical science, in order that the ordinary reader may see what kind of a world he lives in, what kind of provision has been made for his physical comfort and well-being, and what infinite skill and boundless benevolence have been exercised in order that he might live out happily and worthily this earthly life.

The pleasures and advantages derivable from the pursuit of knowledge of this kind may not appear very obvious to those who are constantly engaged in business pursuits. The merchant, the trades

man, the artizan, and the labourer may imagine he has enough to do to follow his employment without spending his time in pursuits which yield no substantial benefit; but the time usually spent by most men in newspaper-reading, in novel-reading, and in idle chitchat, would be amply sufficient to make them conversant with the leading phenomena of natural science, and to give them an intelligent appreciation of the wisdom and goodness of that Being who created and still upholds and governs the outward universe. In the study of God's works the mind derives a pleasure nowhere else to be found. Every step we take is marked by unmistakable traces of wise design and careful adaptation; and to an intelligent, accountable being, we know nothing more calculated to yield satisfaction than time spent amid such displays of infinite wisdom and goodness. So vast and so numerous are the traces of skill in every accessible department of nature, and so multiplied and ramified, and sometimes involved, are the means employed to produce given ends, that where we cannot see the same evidences of wisdom and goodness, we cannot help concluding that the fault lies in our own feeble powers, which are incapable of understanding the whole plan of the great Architect of Nature. So far as can be seen, the entire universe, from the minutest to the mightiest parts of it, is one grand and harmonious display of infinite power, of infinite wisdom, and of infinite benevolence. Nor, in the pursuit of this kind of knowledge is the mind ever satiated. The more it feeds upon it, the keener becomes its appetite, while the source from which it springs is perennial.

Besides, there is an indescribable pleasure in the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. No one is ambitious to be distinguished as ignorant, nor generally, whatever be a person's deficiencies in knowledge, can you possibly hurt his self-respect more than by applying to him that very descriptive and emphatic epithet. Even if he spends the greater part of his life without looking into a book, he has still a vague and indefinite desire to be thought intelligent. And you, perhaps, never in civilized society meet with a man, however ignorant, who is not anxious to keep a knowledge of his want of intelligence from others. And this feeling arises at an early age. Every one will remember, in youth, discussing with his betters, and, when fairly beaten, refusing to give in, out of mere shame of ignorance; and some may recollect this at a considerably more matured period of their lives. This feeling, doubtless, arises from the natural desire which God has implanted in every mind for acquiring knowledge; sɔ

that when he feels, by negligence or idleness, he has wholly failed to satisfy that desire, he is very reasonably wishful that no one should know it. Why else should one care to be thought ignorant? Because all that this means is, that one is destitute of intelligence. We all know by a kind of instinct, however much we may sometimes seem to ignore it, that intelligence and goodness are the only elements of character which command respect and admiration. And then all have the capacity of being pleased with what they may learn, as well as the capacity to learn; all are pleased to know what their neighbours know, and all are pleased to know what others do not know, and therefore there is a pleasure derived from the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. But, besides this, there is a higher and a purer pleasure, one which arises from the conscious gratification of a divinely implanted curiosity in the human mind; and this pleasure rises into unutterable delight, when it is excited and fed by those beautiful and ennobling truths which come from a better and an ever-widening comprehension of the great universe in which it has pleased God to place us. How can the mind fail to derive pleasure on its first becoming acquainted with the wonderful truths of mechanical science? How strange and, at first sight, how apparently impossible the laws which regulate the pressure and motion of liquids, the weight, the pressure, and the elasticity of the atmosphere, the intensity, velocity, and reflection of sound, the motion, intensity, reflection, refraction, absorption, decomposition, dispersion, recomposition, diffraction, and polarization of light; the intensity, the motion, and the absorption of heat, and all the stupendous, intricate, minute, and ever-active machinery of the weather? Where, in fiction, even in its most gorgeous falsehoods, can be found anything half so wonderful as is the law of liquid pressure, which tells us in truth, and not in fiction, that a few ounces of water, without the aid of machinery, by being placed in a certain position, can produce a pressure which sets at defiance the force of a whole team of the strongest horses? What can be more strange and interesting than to learn that an ounce-weight can be made to balance a ton by means of a simple lever; that what we call light, which to the vulgar observer appears to have no colour at all, should be a mixture rather of all colours; that the sun, the great source of heat, which appears to dry up the moisture from the earth, should be the principal agent, in conjunction with certain cold atmospheric currents, in supplying the earth with moisture; that the atmosphere, an invisible (except in large masses) and almost impalpable fluid, should be the means of communicating the thoughts of intelligent beings in the shape of sounds; that that same atmosphere, by its superior weight, should push up and drive away into space, daily and hourly, immense quantities of the most poisonous effluvia, the continued existence of which, in the lower strata of the air, would make human life impossible; that the brilliant diamond is simply a piece of charcoal crystallized by the great Author of all beauty; that water is made up mainly of one of the most inflammable of substances; that an acid which dissolves nearly all metals, is one of the ingredients of the air we breathe, and without which we should soon cease to live; that the light, seen to sparkle and heard to crackle on the back of a

cat when stroked on a frosty night, is the same kind of fluid which darts in flashes from the thunder-cloud, and sends our messages through the Atlantic to the New World; that the same thing which makes metals rust, causes our fires to burn, our plants to grow during the darkness of night, also forms acids, and enables man and all animals to breathe? These and a thousand other wonders revealed by modern science, along with the examination of the reasoning founded upon the innumerable facts which experiment and observation have disclosed, are sources of untold enjoyment to the student of Nature, and pre-eminently so when he sees in every part of the great whole the impress of the finger of God.

Without entering into anything like detail in this paper, we shall content ourselves with some general remarks on the traces of intelligence, benevolence, foresight, and superintendence displayed in the constitution of the animal world. If we take the common fish, we are not at once struck with any special and particular skill displayed in its formation, nor with any special adaptation for the element in which it lives. Its head especially has a somewhat clumsy aspect, and its whole body little of symmetry. Yet-and the ancients said that "God worked by geometry"-the fish is formed strictly according to mathematical principles. The head especially is of a form the best adapted to move freely in water, closely resembling what scientific men call a solid of least resistance. Had any other form been made, the animal would have moved much less freely in its natural element. That the best out of all possible forms should have been employed, must be indicative of intelligent choice. And, notwithstanding this peculiar formation of the head, in consequence of its specific gravity, the fish would have had great difficulty in supporting itself in water, but for a peculiar provision, which was evidently designed to meet this difficulty. In the interior of the fish is a small bladder filled with air, which the animal has the power to expand or condense at pleasure. When the air in the bladder is expanded, the fish enlarges, becomes specifically lighter, and rises in the water; and when the air is condensed, the fish becomes less, specifically heavier, and sinks in the water. If we should attempt to persuade ourselves that this provision is a lucky accident, the question arises, "Why do we not find the accident elsewhere in the infinite number of living animals which people the earth?" But no land animals have airbladders, and it seems reasonable to conclude that this happens from purpose. Some flat-fish, however, are not provided with this "airbladder," but the skill of its Maker is none the less manifest; for such fish live almost exclusively on the banks of seas and rivers, where the "air-bladder" is unnecessary.

Now, it is known that we are able to see objects because the light which is reflected from them enters the eye, and forms images of them on a membrane at the back of it. By means of a nerve the images are conveyed to the brain, and produce the sensation of sight. Rays of light, too, in passing through transparent substances of a certain form, are bent to a point, and produce images there of the bodies they come from. This may be partly shown by holding a pair of spectacles between a window on which the sun shines and a piece of white paper, on which will be seen an image of the

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sun, and, under certain conditions, a picture of the houses, fields, clouds, and so forth. Further, the eye is found to be composed of different natural magnifiers, in the shape of a kind of crystalline lens, and certain transparent liquids; and it is on precisely the same principle that our telescopes are constructed, though telescopes were invented long before optics had made familiar the action of light on the organs of vision. And then, the point to which a magnifier collects the light is more or less distant, as the magnifier is more or less convex or concave, that is, more or less round, or flat or hollow. A globe of any transparent substance-say of glass-therefore, makes a microscope. Now the eye is a very delicate organ, and a very slight matter will seriously injure or even destroy the power of vision. It must have struck most observers that birds run great risks, in their rapid flight through thick trees and dense thorny hedges, of blinding themselves by the eye coming in contact with the thorns and foliage; and it is really wonderful how they escape with impunity. But we never find birds that have lost their vision through such accidents. There is a special provision in the construction of the eye of birds which protects them from such accidents; but there is no reason at all, as far as we can perceive, why this provision should have been made in special for birds, except that something like intelligence should have seen its necessity for the safety and comfort of these creatures. Birds have the power of flattening or rounding the eye at pleasure. They can do this with marvellous rapidity; and, as they pass through close bushes and hedges, they use this peculiar power, and, flattening considerably the eye, they are enabled to protect the organ from accident, by preventing its protrusion beyond the general surface of the head. But this power of flattening and rounding the eye-which is done by tightening a set of very delicate hard scales, by means of fine fibres-answers other purposes equally important. Most birds live largely—many entirely-on insects which they have to pursue and capture mostly during flight. We often wonder how the swallow can see and pursue so unerringly the minute flies which sail through the air. Before rain, we have noticed, especially in the country, that swallows fly near the ground. The reason is, that, though we cannot see them, the insects have descended from the upper regions, where there is always sudden cold before the condensation and precipitation of vapour, to seek the warmth near the earth's surface; and though millions of these insects visit the lower and warmer regions, just previous to rain, and quite unobserved by us, the swallow follows them with a perfectly distinct vision. These small insects, in direct flight, are lost to the human eye in an instant ; but birds follow them with the ease with which the human eye follows the flight of a flock of pigeons. This is entirely owing to the power birds have of rounding the eye, which becomes at once a real microscope. Even a common fowl will pursue and capture with unerring precision an insect which we cannot perceive for more than a moment; and where the insects-we have often seen this-are plentiful, and the fowl is eager to take them, the contraction and expansion of the eye-ball, as the fowl ceases and resumes the pursuit, by careful observation, may be distinctly perceived. If a larger and more distant object is to be seen, the bird flattens the eye, and thus adapts it to the