CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



there is something in the thought derogatory to the omnipotence of 

 the Almighty, and, consequently, that it is impious! I cannot 

 bring myself to believe, but that books containing such unguarded 

 expressions tend to disturb principles of infinitely more value than 

 all the discoveries geologists ever made !" 



Many a true word we know to be frequently spoken in jest : our 

 author may be cited as a case in point. " If I am not too obtuse" 

 he sportively says, " the geologists would have us to believe (what 

 he is very angry with Bishop Sumner for believing too) that the 

 creation recorded by Moses was a mere reformation ;" and then he 

 becomes quite ironically merry, at their's and the Bishop's expense, 

 exclaiming '* O ! these reformers," &c. And yet this severe anti- 

 reformer — this anti-geological conservative — has his own little pri- 

 vate trading stock of peculiar opinions, quite as startling to us as any 

 of the assertions of his heterodox geologists. Thus, he flatly denies 

 " that there were any carnivorous beasts previous to the deluge." 

 He does not seem to be at all aware what a serious scrape he may 

 be getting into, by thus unadvisedly and boldly advocating the doc- 

 trine of new or successive generations of animals adapted to times, 

 seasons, and circumstances. As, however, this is his own affair, we 

 leave him to extricate himself as best he can. 



Sometimes, notwithstanding his dislike to scientific solutions of 

 difficulties, he, nevertheless, sets up for a philosopher, and explains 

 obscure points : for instance, reminding us " that the waters pre- 

 vailed 150 days, and did not subside in much less than a year," he 

 infers that this was quite enough " to have reduced the then young 

 earth to a pulp." A pulp ! That is to say, that mountains and 

 masses of granites and rocks of all kinds and qualities were all 

 melted into a pulp by the action of water in a year. And yet this 

 Rev. Mr. Fennell would fain persuade us that he is a reasonable 

 man, in whose lucubrations the anti-geologians are bound to place 

 implicit credit. 



Bishop Sumner has been so unadvised, it seems, in his admirable 

 work on the Records of Creation, as " to speak of a process," as Mr. F. 

 points out, " by which our system was brought from confusion into 

 a regular and habitable state." Now we really thought we might 

 believe his Lordship — not because he asserts it, but because Revela- 

 tion itself tells us so, and experience proves it beyond all controversy ; 



" The court awards it, and the law doth give it ;" 



but no such thing : Mr. Fennell contradicts the Bishop in toto, and 

 roundly asserts that " it never was in confusion — that all was form- 

 ed smooth and perfect without change or gradation," and that 

 " lofty trees arose from the earth in all their magnificence in a mo- 

 ment of time," &c. 



In the next page we find a still more extraordinary declaration, in 

 which we quite agree with him in his definition of himself. The 

 Bishop gives it as his belief, in his above-mentioned work, ll that no 



