I/N 1785, Mr.Burnett, a merchant in Aberdeen, bequeathed certain sums to be expended at intervals of forty years in the shape of two premiums for the best works furnishing "evidence that there is a Being, all powerful, wise, and good, by whom every thing exists: and particularly to obviate difficulties regarding the wisdom and goodness of the Deity; and this, in the first place, from considerations independent of written revelation, and.in the second place, from the revelation of the Lord Jesus, and from the whole to point out inferences most necessary for and useful to mankind." This endowment has not called forth any one great work; but, on each of the two occasions on which it has been competed for, it has been the means of publishing two excellent treatises.On the first competition, the first prize was awarded to Principal Brown of Aberdeen, and the second to the Rev.John Bird Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dr.Brown was born at Utrecht, 1755, and became minister of the Scotch church there.He removed to Scotland in 1795, became professor of divinity in Aberdeen, and afterwards principal of Marischal College.He lived till 1830.When in Holland he wrote an " Essay on the Folly of Scepticism." His Burnett Prize Essay, "On the Existence of a Supreme Creator," was given to the world in 1816.The work did not produce much impression in its own age, and is now all but forgotten.People wonder that so large a sum (upwards of l 1,200) did not call forth a more brilliant production; but the truth is, that money cannot produce an original work, which can come only from the spontaneous thoughts of the man of genius, that prize essays are commonly respectably good and nothing more.and, while they may serve a good purpose in their own day, are seldom valued as a legacy by posterity.The book is in many respects the perfection of a prize essay.It conforms rigidly to the conditions imposed by the donor; it is supremely judicious;it did not startle the judges by any eccentricity or even novelty, and certainly not by any profundity; and altogether is a clear and able defence of natural and revealed religion.It interests us to notice that the principles of the Scottish philosophy are here employed to support the great truths relating to the being of God and the destiny of man.{308}