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but at the same time he does not disdain to consult the facts of Geology. For 

 our own part, we uncompromisingly profess to appertain to a fifth and very small 

 class, namely, that which rests its belief on the test of reason and experience 

 conjoined. Seeing that it is next to impossible implicitly to believe every thing 

 advanced in the Bible — considering the metaphorical language in which much of 

 the Sacred Volume is written, and, above all, the notorious errors of the trans- 

 lators, we would ask, whether it is more rational to place unconditional reliance 

 on every passage of the Bible, or to submit the whole to the severe test of reason ? 

 Doubtless mistakes may occur even in this manner — nay more, they must happen, 

 since on almost every point there will, in the first instance, be difference of 

 opinion. But the most powerful intellects will, of course, in the long run, "carry 

 the day," and convince their inferiors in intellect — not by dogmatism but by 

 argument — of the rectitude of their views. Men who make it an affair of con- 

 science to believe all that they read in the Bible, because their clerical instructors 

 have ordered them to do so, are either little gifted with reasoning powers, or their 

 education must have lamentably depressed their intellects. Such individuals 

 cannot truly be said to have any belief of their own — since their " articles of 

 faith" — for the holding of which they can assign no sufficient reason — are forced 

 upon them, and this inforcement is not the less arbitrary because it falls insensi- 

 bly upon an individual unconscious of its baneful effects. 



Further, although the New Testament forms an inestimable code of morality, 

 assuredly the Old Testament was never intended to teach science to this or any 

 other age. Moses did not write to impart Physics, and the Bible is not the 

 book to which any sensible man would repair for even the rudiments of science. 

 Let geologists, if they will, form geological theories from the facts collected by 

 themselves and their brethren ; no book can so well assist them in their inquiries 

 as the Book of Nature — the fountain, the pure, inexhaustible source, which can 

 never be consulted without advantage, because it interprets — so far as we can at 

 present understand them — the laws of God as applied to Creation. 



Even supposing Mr. Gisborne to have shown the falsity of some of the 

 theories propounded by geologists of eminence — and in some cases we think he 

 has succeeded — that is no reason why we should not indulge in geological specu- 

 lation in some degree and in a certain manner. If we make no use of the mass 

 of facts collected by observers, we inevitably remain ignorant of some of the most 

 interesting and important circumstances. Rash speculators in Geology ar eas mis- 

 chievous and as numerous as rash speculators in any other science ; but rational 

 theories, deduced from a sufficient number of well-attested facts, in process of 

 time become to be considered undeniable truths ; and if, when a mass of testimony 

 so convincing and overwhelming that it converts the veriest^sceptic that ever 

 was born, can be adduced to substantiate what was once considered, perhaps not 



