EVENINGS AT CALVARY. In our last number, we gave an extract from Mr. Aikman's volume. That passage spoke for the whole book: and must have already commended it to the readers of the Christian Journal. The sentences which we quoted were a noble specimen of what we would fain see our preaching become. Men were sent away from the cross-dismissed from the sanctuary-not to leave their religion behind them in the holy place but to make it their directress in the house. We have seen ministers conduct their hearers to Calvary, and describe around the accursed tree, the mysterious passion of Christ. The ears of the groundlings were pleased with the tawdry rhetoric, as the eyes of savages are delighted by the Turkey red of Higginbotham: and as the church dismissed, the people were thinking about anything else than their own duty, or their own sin. They were gloating over their superiority to the murderous Jews, as the Pharisee in the parable gloated over his superiority to the despised publican; they ever forgetting they had not been directly told that the executioners of Christ were harboured in their own bosoms. Our author sends us away from the cross to show piety at home, by making glad, through our displayed affection, the parental heart in whose warmth our infancy and our youth rejoiced. Many thanks to thee, John Logan Aikman, for thy words on Filial Duty in thy Third Evening at the Master's Cross! Numerous are the sons into whose hands we would fain thrust the volume, that the words in question might, perchance, make them ask, whether they who neglected their aged parents can look for salvation through the atonement of him who, amid the lockjawed agony of the cross, consigned his mother to the care of John. We honestly and heartily congratulate Mr. Aikman on his first appearance in the field of authorship. He has produced a readable and interesting book on a familiar theme. This, we think, deserves praise: and it is no slender eulogy. Mr. Aikman's readers must often have listened to the same topics-must often have listened to them from the beloved lips of their own pastor, and in the sanctu ary's most impressive services. Surely, then, if Mr. A. carries, as we think he will, his readers from his first line to his last, he has achieved a most creditable, because most difficult, success. There is a manliness of style and thought in this book which we greatly admire. Those preachers who discourse in the sing-song method, which weak women and silly men reckon inseparable from true piety; they had better plagiarize in some other quarter. Mr. Aikman's sentences will not suit their peculiar intonation of voice. He seems to think that religion should be taught with the earnest tones which the patriot employs in the senate, when pleading for a nation's rights; and which the advocate uses at the bar, when seeking to rescue his client from the scaffold. The tones with which mothers lull their infants into sleeep in which bad actors labour to express the pathetic-in which the deceivers of the sunny East chant their litanies—and in which the insincere occupants of too many pulpits practise on the gullibility of the multitude these are tones with which he does not appear to associate his ideas of Peter's preaching, or of Paul's. Mr. Aikman seeks to get at the heart through the intellect; and we respect him for doing so, although he goes direct in the teeth of the mawkish sentimentalism now so rife. Perhaps if we may hint at any thing that bears resemblance to advice -we would have him remember more lect may be successfully assailed from frequently than he does, that the intel EVENINGS AT CALVARY. By John Logan Aikman, F.S.A., Minister of the Gospel, the heart. The book before us, good people will welcome for its power to edify. It keeps the eye fixed on that cross, apart from which, as old Leighton has it, the whole world is one grand impertinence. Christ is in every page; and his work is constantly dwelt upon. Mr. Aikman may never boast, like one of whom we lately heard, of the numbers who died with his book in their hands; but his volume contains passages that could not be profitless, with God's blessing, to read in chambers about to be entered by "the shadow cloaked from head to foot!" We warmly recommend to our readers, Sabbath Evenings at Calvary. One of our finest intellects we happen to know, has already put upon it his hearty imprimatur. We refer to a man whom, in our youth, we admired for the boldness of his originality; and whom, in our manhood, we respect for the guidance derived from his spoken and written words: but our testimony may be deemed little worth, when coming after his. But, whatever stress may be laid upon it, it is at least ungrudged and sincere. DISCOVERY OF FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN. DEAR SIR,-In looking over Cham bers' Journal of the 26th ultimo, I was much interested by the following paragraph: have been. "One or two interesting facts from the Continent are worth mentioning: the German Association for the Advancement of Science have held their thirteenth meeting at Tubingen, and a most successful gathering it appears to But the great fact was the clearing up of the mystery of the fossil human teeth exhibited at last year's meeting. They were found in the Swabian Alps, in strata of the mammoth period, and doubt had been expressed as to their being human teeth, because it had always been believed that human beings did not exist in the time of the mammoths. However, since the meeting in 1852, a number of perfect human skulls have been found in the same locality with teeth in them; and this discovery is regarded as establishing the fact, that a race of human beings was in existence contemporaneously with the mastodon and some of the larger antediluvian animals." and the public at large, so far as they would listen to me, not to be too hasty in adopting that theory as a system of truth, which appeared, to me at least, to be alike at variance with sound science and the Word of God. But so popular and pleasing to human pride was the supposed discovery of newlyforming worlds, that for any one to attempt to be heard in opposition to it was like endeavouring to be listened to on the sea-shore, or amid clusters of mighty trees, "When all the forest fluctuates in the storm." Not only were philosophical lecturers travelling the country with splendid drawings, exhibiting to the gaze of wondering audiences the various stages of these new worlds, but even grave doctors of divinity have I heard, in Synod assembled, altogether forgetful of the fourth commandment, urging the propriety of having the Confession of Faith and Catechisms altered to suit the dis coveries of modern science in reference to the time of creation! And, had it not been for the penetrating eye of the gigantic telescope of the Green Isle, every parlour, platform, and pulpit Coming from such a respectable quarter, such information is certainly worthy would still have been ringing with wonof notice. Ten years ago, when the drous tales of infantine creations of the nebular mania was in its noontide splendour, I ventured, as you well know, to starry sky. But that wild theory, however beautiful and pleasing to the human lift up my feeble voice, and, amid much imagination, vanished at once by derision, to caution my fellow-townsmen light even of science itself. the cock :-"On reviewing what I have written in former numbers of this work as to human remains in rocks, I am inclined to believe that I have expressed myself rather incautiously, to say the least. I do not mean to say, that because no remains of man occur in the secondary rocks of countries that have been hitherto examined, therefore they will not be found in those rocks in countries to be explored." Now, what is all this but merely saying, in other words, "I do not mean to say, that because nothing has yet been discovered in the secondary rocks of countries examined, to contradict directly and successfully even the LITERAL and real meaning of Moses, therefore there will not yet something be found in such rocks in countries yet to be explored, which will, for this purpose, be quite sufficient ?" Surely such statements and reasoning, which admit of such possible consequences, ought to be received with the greatest Caution; nay, ought at once to be rejected by every one who believes that the literal or real meaning of the Divine Word CAN NEVER BE FOUND UNTRUE! Moses, they all admit, undoubtedly means to teach that man was not in existence above six thousand years ago; and yet they do not mean to say that the rocky pages of the volume of nature may not, at no distant period, clearly reveal, in a manner not to be contradicted, that man has already existed on the earth for more than myriads of ages!! Such language, I admit, may be consistently used by infidels, but certainly not by men believing in the infallibility of God's Word, believing that Moses, in giving his account of creation, was merely the amanuensis of the Holy Spirit. One of the most masterly writers of the present day, and who has conceded to geologists the point for which I still contend, says, in reference to contending for such points, "It is thus that the cause of truth has often suffered from the misguided zeal of its advocates, anxiously struggling for every one position about which a question may have been raised; and so landing themselves at times in a situation of most humbling exposure to the arguments or ridicule of their adversaries."* But in what a state of humiliating exposure would Dr. Chalmers himself, and all his followers, be placed by the discovery of even a single human bone embedded in a secondary rock? And let it not be forgotten, that human bones have already been discovered, mixed with the remains of extinct animals, if not in the secondary rocks themselves, at least in caverns in these rocks. † Would that bone not be, according to their own laws of interpretation, pretation, a token of victory being at length gained by Infidelity over the Word of God? Would they not have to retire from the conflict ashamed and confounded covering their heads; while the infidels of France would, as of old, keep jubilee, and make all their hills to blaze with beacons of joy? There may be misguided zeal in holding old opinions too long; but that is no infallible token that well-guided zeal always hastily adopts the new! While those who are approaching the dreadful brink of a tremendous precipice, may, on turning round and halting for a moment, say to their lingering companions, "It is your ignorance that makes you stand back;" the others may properly reply, "It is your ignorance that makes you proceed.' The discovery, if real, may for a little please such as profess to deem it a greater honour to be able to trace their progenitors in a straight unbroken line back to the humble oyster, than to believe the Scripture account of man being at first, and at once, created in the image of his Divine Maker; while many, who had fondly imagined them * Chalmers' Works, vol. i., p. 254. † See Buckland's B. W. T., 103-106. Sharon Turner's Sac. Hist., vol. i., p. 385. When "the famous Zodiac at Dendera in Egypt was found, which assigned to the sun a place in the ecliptic that he could have had only some thousands of years before Moses allows the sun to have been created, jubilee was kept by the infidel corps at Paris when this was made known; and all Europe was made to ring with the notes of triumph over the Divine Word."-(Prof. Stewart.) ge brutish among the people; and ye focis, when we be wise? He that planned the ear, shall be not hear? He thus formed the ere, sh be not see? be at how? Ind til are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants there: He is naked before him, and destructive hath no covering. He stretcheck out the north over the empay place, and hath the earth upon nothing. By His Spirit he hath garnished the heavens. Let these are parts of his ways; but bow linie a portion is heard of him; but the thunder of his power who can understand? O! the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” selves to be in possession of a mode of Scripture interpretation which perfectly harmonized the Mosaic account of the recent creation of man with the modern geologial etization of the myrale. He that teacheti na hovedge, shall age of the world, may at fr be startled and somewhat puzzled how to meet fairly what to them must in the cim stances be a dirty. In those who believe that they have a more sure word of prophecy than what issues from the deep and dark fosserons caverns of the earth, will experience no disagreeable anxiety in the matter. They do not feel their hearts inclined to atheism, because they are surrounded with innumerable things beyond the grasp of their limited comprehension. The earth, the air, and river, and lake, and sea, they know to be full of animal life. The vegetable kingdom they also know to contain a rich and countless variety of trees, and shrubs, and herbs, and flowers. They have do doubt that every kind of animal and vegetable at first issued from the Almighty Creator's hand in a state of perfection. They look upon man himself, nay, on the meanest animal that has an eye to see, an ear to hear, lungs to breathe, and a heart to beat, as a system in itself more noble than the whole globe of lifeless matter, notwithstanding the precious things of which it is composed. Nor are they tempted, having even evidence of analogy on their side, to believe that earth's various minerals must have crept into existence at the speed of an hair's breadth in 10,000 years, while the more dignified parts of creation, the animal and vegetable kingdoms, sprung into existence at their Maker's call! They, in reading the sacred volume, find that holy men of old were also, in their own estimation, encompassed with things too high for them to understand, but those things rather made them humble and devout than proud and unbelieving. And, even amid the boasted light of the nineteenth century, they who take the lamp of divine revelation for their guide will not be ashamed to join those, their pilgrim fathers of old, in saying, "Understand, It may be said that I am too rash in calling attention to the supposed discovery of the human skulls, as such discovery may yet be found to have had no solid foundation. Bat, sir, although such human relies have not yet been found, who can say with certainty that they never can? And permit me, sir, to say, in conclusion, that I have been of late very much grieved at the irreverent familiarity with which some things are publicly treated, by even professed teachers of Christianity. To even hint that our holy religion must, to be respected, keep pace with the times, assume the cloak of the cameleon, and alter its phases to suit the increasing discoveries of scientific men, is, in my opinion, to deny its truth altogether, and make it a mere phantasy of the bewildered brain. I admit that Christians may be men of science, nay, that they ought to be so, if God has given them the talents and opportunity for benefiting their fellow-creatures, by searching into the nature and uses of physical things, but I deny that Christianity, as such, has anything whatever to do with science. Had it been otherwise, its divine Founder, who made all things, and who, having perfect knowledge of all things, would, when he appeared on earth, have certainly given some hint as to the importance of scientific know |