DR CLARKE'S ADDRESS. 167 



once have been rejected as a manifest falsehood. But this grand truth, 

 resting on infallible demonstration, is now recognised throughout Un- 

 civilized world, and the authority and integrity of Scripture, as to its 

 essential truths, remains intact and unassailable. Yet the same spirit 

 which would have kept back the truth in the case of Galileo, and de- 

 terred him from announcing or following up his discoveries, is now ar- 

 rayed to decry and impugn the truths revealed by geology a science 

 which has opened up a new field for the display of the beneficent provi- 

 dence of the Deity. It is lamentable to think that the same delusion, 

 how often soever refuted and exposed, shows itself ever and anon in un- 

 diminished vigour, as if the lessons of experience, and the monitions of 

 history, included within them no voice of warning. 



We can only hope that this unhappy spirit of dogmatism which would 

 lay prostrate our reason, and reject the evidence of sense which would 

 erect a spiritual despotism within the realms of thought, will gradually 

 fade and disappear before the increasing light of truth and knowledge. 

 The sura of our argument, then, is, that revelation and science are totally 

 different in their nature essentially distinct and dissimilar in the sub- 

 jects of which they treat and must each be studied without reference 

 to, and independently of, the other. Indeed, after the ordinance of 

 Virtue, there is nothing so repeatedly and urgently enjoined in the Divine 

 writings as a spirit of inquiry and the acquisition of knowledge ; and it 

 hath pleased Him who adapted our mental constitution to the visible 

 world around, to annex pleasure both to its pursuit and acquisition, and, 

 it is certain, that, next to purity of life, knowledge is its own great and 

 self-sufficing reward. 



It would be superfluous to show how much our enjoyment of the ex- 

 ternal world is enhanced by the study of Natural Science. A thousand 

 avenues of enjoyment lie patent to the cultivated man, from which the 

 ignorant is shut out. He comes in contact, as it were, with Nature, at 

 a thousand points. He sees her under an infinitude of aspects, and, in- 

 stead of stupid wonder or superstitious dread, the magnificent pheno- 

 mena of the material world offer to him only a theme of enlightened ad- 

 miration and love. " Nature," to adopt the language of the great Poet 

 of our age, 



" Nature never did betray 



The heart that loved her ; for she can so inform 



The mind that is within us, so impress 



With quietness and beauty, and so feed 



With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues. 



Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 



Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 



The cheerful faith, that all which we behold 



Is full of blessings."* 



Let me, in conclusion, be permitted to observe, that to collect facts 



Wordsworth. 



