62 Anniversary Address. 



names or descriptions to animals. From Adam, therefore, and 

 the antediluvian patriarchs, we may believe that the elements of 

 many of those sciences, which have since been more profoundly 

 cultivated, were transmitted to after-ages, through the traditions 

 which the survivors of the Flood handed down to their posterity. 

 Job is supposed to have been contemporary with Abraham, 

 Abraham conversed with Shem, Shem with Methuselah, and 

 Methuselah with Adam. Astronomical science in particular 

 was a tradition from the antediluvians ; and if astronomical, why 

 not other sciences ? This is certain, that Aristotle received as- 

 tronomical observations from Babylon, through those who ac- 

 companied Alexander on his eastern expedition, and most likely 

 by order of Alexander. Those observations were said to have 

 been made 1903 years before Alexander, i. e. about 2234 years 

 before Christ. The Flood was 23 i9 years before Christ ; con- 

 sequently observations made 2234 years, or thereabouts, before 

 Christ, were made 115 years after the Flood, while Noah and his 

 three sons were yet alive. 



With such facts as these, — tracing vestiges of the study of 

 natural history to Solomon, Moses and Job, on the testimony of 

 Holy Scripture, and tracing vestiges of the study of astronomical 

 science to a period little more than a century after the Flood, on 

 the evidence of profane writers, may we not delight ourselves, 

 and improve ourselves, and solemnize our minds with the belief, 

 that man was first directed to the contemplation of the mysteries 

 of nature and aided therein by the Creator Himself, the Fountain 

 of all wisdom and knowledge ? 



I have thus endeavoured to trace the study of Natural History 

 to an impulsion, which I believe came directly from on High ; 

 and I have supported my arguments on the authority of that 

 Book of Revelation, which becomes the more venerable in our 

 eyes the more closely it is compared with the Book of Nature. 

 There was a time in the last century, when smatterers in phi- 

 losophy thought they found contradictions between statements 

 in our holy volume and the investigations of science. The wiser 

 inquirers of our day have declared, that the sacred text is con- 

 firmed by the discoveries of science. As science has been ad- 

 vancing, each new step has brought us back to the conviction, 

 that the Word of God contains the elements of all knowledge, 

 historical and philosophical as well as divine. 



