M M. Frayssinous's Defence of Christianity. 



the perfidious and calumnious insinuations which a disordered 

 mind would endeavour to propagate against men of science in 

 general, and geologists in particular. All that the learned now 

 request, is, that they may be allowed to enjoy in peace the fruit 

 of their labours, and that the cause of religion may not be in- 

 considerately blended with the results of their inquiries. 



We must observe, that, with respect to ourselves, we only 

 consider the Book of Genesis here as an historical monument of 

 the highest antiquity ; in other words, simply in a scientific 

 point of view : any other mode would be out of place in the 

 bulletin *. BufFon, De Luc, Buckland, Webster, &c. have given 

 great interest to this examination ; and it is time that the con- 

 ventional ridicule which some learned men attach to the study 

 of this valuable monument should be done away with, when so 

 much labour is every day applied to the scrutiny of the cosmo- 

 gonies of the Chinese, Hindoos, and Egyptians ; when history 

 does not even disdain to interrogate the dumb monuments of 

 the remotest dates, or the most extravagant allegories of the na- 

 tions of antiquity. Without seeking to support an opinion or 

 particular mode of thinking, one may take cognizance of a fact, 

 and intolerance would be as blameable on the one side as on the 

 other. 



The Bishop of Hermopolis, resting on St Augustine's opinion 

 with regard to the meaning of the word day, expresses himself 

 in the following manner, on this fundamental question. " The 

 chronology of Moses dates less from the moment of the creation 

 of matter than from that of the creation of man, which only took 

 place on the sixth day. The sacred writer computes the num- 

 ber of years of the first man and his descendants, and the chro- 

 nology of the Holy Books, therefore, is made up by the com- 

 putation of the years of the successive patriarchs ; so that it ex- 

 tends less to the origin of the globe itself, than to the origin of 

 the human species. Henceforward we can say to geologists, 

 dig as much as you please into the bowels of the earth, if 

 your observations do not require that the days of creation 

 should have been longer than our ordinary days, we shall con- 

 tinue to follow the common opinion respecting the extent of 

 these days ; but if, on the contrary^ you discover that the ter- 



• Bulletin des Sciences Naturelles. 



