134 Dr Fye Smith. 



College at Homerton, where he was also teacher of Divinity. 

 In this influential posiiion he had an opportunity of impart- 

 ing to a wide circle of pupils and admirers the interest which 

 he felt in the new views brought to light from time to time 

 by Geology. His work on " The Connection of Scripture 

 arid Geology,*' comprised a series of lectures delivered at 

 Homerton College, in which he endeavoured to compensate 

 for want of practical knowledge of the science by ample cita- 

 tions from the works of the best contemporary writers. He 

 gaVe a description, in their own words, of many newly dis- 

 covered facts, and a statement of the theories legitimately 

 deduced from them, especially those most opposed to popular 



^notions derived from a literal interpretation of the Hebrew 

 cosmogony. He dwelt especially on the earth's high anti- 

 quity, the many changes which took place in the animate 



^World antecedent to the creation of man, and the divergence 

 bbth of animals and plants from many original centres instead 

 of their multiplication from a single point. He also considered 

 'how* far geological facts are reconcilable with the commonly 

 received notions respecting a universal deluge, assumed to 

 have happened only 4000 years before our time. He reminds 

 his readers of the many texts of Scripture formerly adduced as 

 hostile to established astronomical doctrines respecting the 

 structure of the universe. With much good feeling, he de- 

 clares it to be the duty of theologians to sympathise with scien- 



' tific men in the doubts they entertain respecting many dogmas 

 closely interwoven with the popular faith, and he insists on the 

 inseparable relation of scientific and religious truth. All at- 



' iifempts' to tamper with the evidence of physical facts, or to 

 evade or set them aside, are denounced ; and he exposes the 

 repeated failure of various schemes for torturing the Hebrew 

 text, so ias to naake it speak the language of modern philo- 



^ Bophy. He also alludes to the final abandonment, by every 



"'^competent authority, of those theories which aimed at esta- 

 blishing a coincidence between geological epochs and the six 

 days of creation. I am bound to confess that some of Dr Pye 

 Smith's own efforts to remove difficulties, by modifying the 

 ordinary interpretations of the Hebrew text, are to my mind as 

 unsuccessful as those of the greater number of his predeces- 



