strata, 1,100 feet thick, where the coal-seams are most frequent, there exists clear proof of root-bearing soils at 68 different levels. So, again, in the Sydney coal-field at Cape Breton, where the coal-measures have a thickness of 1,843 feet, upright trees occur at 18 different heights, and decisive evidence is furnished of at least 59 fossil forests, ranged one above another.

This coal-region is of very great extent, and is estimated to cover an area of 36,000 square miles. It includes a large part of New Brunswick, and reaches to Prince Edward's Island. We have seen that in one place the formation has a thickness of more than 14,000 feet. It is also known to have a vast thickness at Pictou, more than 100 miles to the eastward of South Joggins. Lyell, taking an average thickness of 7,500 feet as his basis, which gives 51,000 cubic miles of solid matter, estimates that, according to the rates already mentioned, it would take the Mississippi 2,000,000 of years to carry an equal quantity of sediment down to the Gulf; while the Ganges might accomplish the task in 375,000 years.

Of course, Mr. Lord gets you up coal-formations much faster than this. "Six, eight, or ten of these layers," says he, "were sometimes formed, not improbably, in half the number of years." And he urges the fact of the fossil trees standing where they grew, as proving that the strata enveloping them must have been deposited in quick succession. "How," he asks, "could they have been thus preserved, if, as the common theory represents, hundreds, and perhaps thousands of years were employed in their burial?" Perhaps he forgot, that in modern times submerged trees have been known, in divers places, to outlast several centuries, maintaining their erect posture, and quite unmastered by decay. For instance, in a submerged cedarswamp, near Cape May, where the logs are quarried in the soft mud for making shingles, an upright stump was found, measur ing six feet through. Dr. Bresley counted 1,080 rings of annual growth in it between the pith and the bark. Beneath it lay the trunk of another tree, ascertained in the same manner to have been 500 years old when it fell. As the stump evidently stood in the spot where it grew, of course the prostrate tree must have been buried before the larger tree sprouted.

Such are some of the Wonders of Anti-Geology wrought out and offered to the world by this singularly inventive genius; who, therewithal, as our readers may have judged, is not more original in his views than in his way of propounding them. On the whole, he is a very edifying illustration of how much better are the doubts of some men than the dogmatism of others. But it is of far dearer concernment to remark, that the cause of Christianity has no worse enemies in fact, however many it may have in intention, than those who undertake to serve it by such means. Mr. Lord probably will not carry his methods of anti-geologic argument into the subject of religion: if he should, they would soon prove as fatal to his faith, as he meant they should to other men's science.

BROAD VIEWS.

THERE IS nothing so popular as Broad Views. The judge on the bench is expected to take a Broad View of the case. The politician is praised by his partisans, as a man of Broad Views; the clergyman is, above all things, required to avoid narrow views, and to bring out the Broad Principles of the Gospel; in short, nothing will go down with the American people, as we are everywhere told, but Broad Views and Broad Principles. What are they? The true answer to this question is a little remarkable. Broad Views are the views. which are taken by narrow minds, and Broad Principles, those which tend to narrow the heart.

"All things," saith the Son of Sirach, "are double one against another; and He hath made nothing imperfect. One thing establisheth the good of another; and who shall be filled with beholding His glory?" Ecclesiasticus xlii. 24, 25. This passage is from the Apochrypha; but the same idea seems to be involved in a text of canonical Scripture: "In the day of prosperity," writes Solomon, "be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider GOD who hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after Him," Ecclesiastes vii. 14. The idea which is in common between these passages, seems to

be this, that nothing can be understood unless it be considered in connection with its opposite. For everything is set over against some other thing with which it is intimately connected. But this looking at two sides of a matter at once, is precisely what a narrow intellect cannot do; the incapacity of taking a large view of things, which will show both sides, is the very quality which is properly called intellectual narrowness. This narrowness, which conceals the argument of the other side, naturally leads men to suppose that those who differ from them, do so without reason, and from dishonest motives. This is narrowness of heart.

The idea that all sound propositions are limited by other propositions apparently inconsistent with them, and if both are carried to an extreme, really so, is one not generally received, but it is, notwithstanding, true. Men often repeat, by rote, proverbs which involve this idea, such are: "Extremes meet,"" The truth lies between." But they do not understand their true meaning. They suppose that the truth is to be found between extreme opinions in some miserable compromise; which is founded in expediency, and seeks quiet, not truth. There cannot be a greater mistake.

When people speak of Broad Views, they sometimes mean those compromises which are supposed to be founded in Broad Views of the public interest. In that sense, so long as the compromise does not involve any sacrifice of truth, the phrase may be applicable enough, in a practical view; but, in questions of doctrine, whether moral or religious, such views are really very

narrow.

All difficulties, respecting doctrines, have their origin in the limitation of one proposition by another. The first idea which strikes a man when he hears of two propositions which seem inconsistent with each other, is, that one or other of them is untrue. A man is told that GOD is omnipotent, and governs the world according to His good pleasure, and that His counsel shall stand. He is also told that the will of man is free. and that he can choose his own course of action. It is obvious, that the two propositions, taken absolutely, cannot be reconciled. One or other, the man conceives, must be false. This is a Broad View, because it takes at once a decided stand, and obviates the neces

sity of inquiring how far the two propositions can be reconciled, or how far they limit each other. He makes up his mind that one of the propositions is true, and the other untrue. But which is the truth? This question is commonly decided by every one according to his previous habits of thought. If he be what is called a practical man, he decides in favour of free will; if a closet logician, in favour of predestination.

Such, at least, is the ordinary course, but it is liable to some remarkable exceptions. The idea of fatalism is extensively held by soldiers, and was so, in a very striking manner, by William III., and Napoleon I. Neither of these men were at all inclined to be pious, and neither of them held the doctrine of fatalism in connection with that religious tone of mind which converts it into predestination or Calvinism. William, indeed, had been educated a Calvinist; but his life does not indicate that any deep impression had been made by his religious education. On the contrary, he seems to have been nearly as indifferent to relig ious truth as Napoleon himself. He was a Calvinist, because the welfare of his House was bound up in that of the political party which had adopted Calvinism as its religious badge. But he really held, in common with Mohammed and Napoleon, a sort of military fatalism; which he expressed in a pithy saying, that he either invented or adopted: "Every bullet has its billet." The sense of security until the billeted bullet arrives, and the confidence that when it does come it cannot be evaded, combine to render the soldier fearless. Hence William and Napoleon, together with many soldiers of lower stations and obscurer names, have delighted in fixing this sort of fatalism in their own minds, and in those of the men under their command. But it may be doubted if either William or Napoleon held that the actions of men were not governed by their own free will. In fact, it would be perfectly possible to prove the contrary.

As a general rule then, practical men, men of action, as our ancestors called them, hold that the will of man is absolutely free. On the other hand, a class of closet logicians hold that there is no such thing as freedom of the will; because it can be logically shown, that an OMNIPOTENT and OMNISCIENT BEING must control all things, and that nothing can happen without His appointment. Both these are Broad Views. They set out

with an idea, to which they allow no limitations. It is a view which must be broad because it fills and takes in the whole horizon. But the horizon is a narrow one, because it is the horizon of a narrow mind; just as the horizon of a narrow valley is narrow. The dweller in the valley may well form erroneous ideas of the form and extent of the clouds, because he sees only a part of them.

In every department of science and in every walk of practi cal life, the same phenomena occur. Every man takes a Broad View of every subject, neglects all distinctions, and treats every one who differs from him as taking the precisely opposite view as broadly as he takes his own. This is especially the case with theology. The Romanist cannot understand, that any one, who denies the doctrine of transubstantiation, can stop short of Zuinglianism. The Zuinglian believes that every one who holds that the Holy Communion is any thing more than a bare commemoration, holds transubstantiation.

This is particularly evident when theology is treated of incidentally by those who have not made it their study. Macaulay, Hallam, and all the popular historians of England in the seventeenth century, unite in giving to Archbishop Laud and the divines who agreed with him the name of Arminians. The cause of this no doubt is that the Puritans, with whose politics these men sympathize, fixed on the divines who opposed them the name of Arminians as a party nickname. But it is quite evident, though the historians were quite ignorant of the fact, that the doctrine of Laud was as different from that of Arminius as from that of Calvin. They only understood that the Caroline Bishops were not Calvinists, and as Arminius was the latest opponent of the Calvinistic doctrine, his name was used to designate all who were not followers of that doctrine. This is a specimen of what is meant by Broad Views.

The same sort of Broad Views prevail among politicians. If a man publishes the opinion that slavery is an evil, but one for which there is no immediate remedy that will not produce a greater, and that it is therefore to be endured until a mode of curing it can be found, he is regarded by one party as a fanatical abolitionist, and by the other as a fanatical advocate of slavery.