part of man's nature, which in no circumstances he can be called to forego? Does not the Most High himself make his appeal to this principle when he says, "Come, let us reason together"? And how far does any man's religion differ from enthusiasm that is not regulated by the balancewheel of a sound and enlightened reason?

The truth is, as the human mind is constituted, it is utterly impossible to refrain from asking the questions to which we have referred, and which bear upon the apparent conflict between the revelations of Scripture and the revelations of science. If, for instance, the obvious literal and grammatical sense of the sacred record leads me to believe that the material globe, with the various orders of its inhabitants, was first spoken into existence six thousand years ago, and geology at the same time brings to my mind absolute demonstrations, which I cannot possibly resist without doing violence to the fundamental laws of belief, that it has existed thousands and myriads of years before that time, what am I to think? I am brought to a stand at once. I must pause and ponder on this discrepancy. I must cast about for some adequate mode of harmonizing these various views. What will it avail to tell me, when I am assured to the contrary, that, as geology is merely in its infancy, its asserted results are not to be depended upon, and that it is altogether too early to build such sweeping conclusions upon such a slender induction of facts. I know that this is what no one will affirm who is acquainted with the facts. And what should we think of the asseverations of a stage-driver who should affirm, in opposition to Lyell, or Silliman, or Hitchcock, that he had travelled for years over a particular section of country, and had never seen the least evidence of such strata and formations as the geologists affirmed to exist there?

But, if the facts are such as the science maintains, then I am necessarily driven upon some mode of accounting for them in accordance with the statements of holy writ; for,

as the same God is the author of creation and of revelation, it is impossible that the teachings of the one, rightly understood, should conflict with those of the other. In this attempt to reconcile the two I may not perhaps be at once successful. I may possibly at first adopt a theory which I may be subsequently compelled to abandon. But I will still hold with tenacious grasp upon the intrinsic truth of the two records, assured that in some way or other the desired light will shine upon the subject, and effectually remove all its uncertainties and difficulties.

We may well tremble for the citadel of our faith if the issues and conclusions of physical philosophy are to be ar rayed against the letter of revelation and no effort is made to bring them to a tally. It is undeniable that the inductions of a true science carry with them an irresistible, an overwhelming, authority to the human mind. We cannot gainsay them; and if the apprehended sense of holy writ appears to the man of science to be opposed to these conclusions-if he finds the statements of the sacred writers on physical subjects so utterly impracticable and unyielding that by no process can he bring them to agree with the plain facts and the inevitable inferences of his philosophy-let no one be surprised to find the authority of revelation giving way before the authority of reason. We do not say that this ought to be the case, but we do say that it will be; and minds of the first order will be thrown off into the dreary regions of blank theism. The pickaxe and the spade of the geologist will undermine the substructions of his own faith, and the records of revelation will be to him merely the superficial inscription, like that on the pillar of Pharos, which will disappear under the crumbling touch of time, while the irrefragable and eternal truth will loom out to his view in the relics of beasts, birds, fishes, and plants, which medallion. the rocky strata of the earth, and chronicle the lapse of untold ages before the era of Genesis.

As it would seem, then, that the moral exigencies of the

human mind at this day demand a fuller development of the character of revelation in its relations to general truth, so we cannot doubt that the progress of scientific discovery is destined to afford the means of clearly defining the principles on which the inspired oracles are to be interpreted, in those portions of them which relate to scientific subjects. The grand desideratum has hitherto been in fixing the precise boundaries of the region which revelation claims to occupy as appropriately its own-the limits within which it professes to speak with a voice supremely authoritative and absolutely infallible. It has been deemed in former ages that the plain and literal averments of holy writ, on any and every subject, were to be considered as an infallible criterion of truth, and that it was a culpable presumption to think of appealing to any other. The natural consequence of this has been, that the progress of physical science has had to encounter, at almost every stage, the opposition of those who have feared that the credit of the Scriptures might be endangered if the claims of philosophy should be conceded. While we must honor the loyalty to revelation that has been evinced in this pious sensitiveness to every thing that seemed to come in conflict with its statements, we cannot at the same time but be pained and surprised at the tardy process by which the conclusion has been arrived at, that the grand scope of the Bible is moral, and not scientific, and that no important interest of revelation is jeoparded by admitting that, on a multitude of subjects which come within the range of man's unassisted powers, the Spirit of inspiration professes nothing more than to speak according to visible appearances and popular notions. This fact is now beginning to be very generally recognized, and no enlightened mind dreams that what is gained to science is necessarily lost to Scripture. Still we have no idea that the extent to which this principle is to be applied is at this day at all adequately appreciated, and therefore we shall not be in the least surprised if the present attempt to make the ascertained results of physi

ology a test by which to try many of the literal declarations of the sacred writers, should be regarded as a bold and hazardous coming in collision with its sacred verities. But, as we have well pondered the ground on which we adventure to tread, we advance with great confidence to our conclusions, and shall tranquilly abide the issue. It is possible, indeed, that we may have erred in the specific results which we announce, and if so, this may be shown on satisfactory grounds; but we have no fear of being convicted, before an enlightened tribunal, of having periled the weal of the sacred oracles by the advocacy of a false principle of interpretation. We cannot conceive that the homage due to a revelation from God requires us to forego the inevitable deductions of that reason with which he has endowed us, nor do we think it possible that that word will ever achieve its predicted triumphs over the human mind till its teachings, on all points that come within the sphere of a true philosophy, shall be seen to harmonize with its legitimate deductions. This, however, will still leave a hallowed province of purely moral announcements, in which revelation utters its oracles as speaking out of an eternal silence which no voice of reason could ever break.