262 Of the Belation of Tradition to Talcetiology, 



researches lead us to believe) that such occurrences were very 

 different from anything which now takes place ;- — different to 

 an extent and in a manner which we cannot estimate. Now 

 the narrative must speak of objects and occurrences in the 

 words and phrases which have derived their meaning from 

 their application to the existing natural state of things. When 

 applied to an initial supernatural state, therefore, these words 

 and phrases cannot help being to us obscure and mysterious, 

 perhaps ambiguous and seemingly contradictory. 

 . 5. Difficulties in interpreting the Sacred Narrati'ce, — The 

 moral and providential relations of man's condition are so 

 much more important to him than mere natural relations, that 

 at first we may well suppose he will accept the Sacred Narra- 

 tive, as not only unquestionable in its true import, but also as 

 a guide in his views even of mere natural relations. He will 

 try to modify the conceptions which he entertains of objects 

 and their properties, so that the Sacred Narrative of the su- 

 pernatural condition shall retain the first meaning which he 

 had put upon it, in virtue of his own habits in the usage of 

 language. 



But man is so constituted that he cannot persist in this pro- 

 cedure. The powers and tendencies of his intellect are such 

 that he cannot help trying to attain true conceptions of objects 

 and their properties by the study of things themselves. For 

 instance, when he at first read of a firmament dividing the 

 waters above from the waters below, he perhaps conceived a 

 transparent floor in the skies, on which the superior waters 

 rested which descend in rain ; but as his observations and his 

 reasonings satisfied him that such a floor could not exist, he 

 became willing to allow (as St Augustine allowed) that the 

 waters above the firmament are in a state of vapour. And 

 in like manner in other subjects, men, as their views of nature 

 became more distinct and precise, modified, so far as it was 

 necessary for consistency's sake, their first rude interpretations 

 of the Sacred Narrative ; so that, without in any degree losing 

 its import as a view of the providential course of the world, it 

 should be so conceived as not to contradict what they knew of 

 the natural order of things. 



But this accommodation was not always made without pain- 

 ful struggles and angry controversies. When men had con- 



