472 Archaia. 



tliey can bo satisfactorily interpreted and determined, will afford 

 a key for unlocking the difficulties connected with other physical 

 phenomena to which allusions are made in the Bible. The narra- 

 tive of the creation is besides so complete in itself, so definite and 

 precise, that it invites a special and individualized treatment. It 

 has the advantage of being brief and yet profoundly comprehensive. 

 Its sentences are themes which involve at once the highest objects 

 of faith and science. It cannot but be regarded as an incidental 

 evidence of inspiration that a subject of such vastness and subli- 

 mity should have been so fully delineated in a few bold and 

 graphic sketches. 



It augurs well for the science of the present day that in its rapid 

 advances towards the conquest of nature, it is not content to 

 detach itself from the revealed writings. There seems to be an 

 underlying conviction in the minds of almost all scientific men 

 that somehow the Book of Nature, whose characters it is their 

 business to decipher, is the counterpart of that manifestation of 

 the Creator which is contained in the Bible. The very general 

 conclusion is therefore, that there can be no contradiction between 

 the righty understood facts of the one and the statements of the 

 other.. This conviction has led men of science to give an un- 

 lal attention to biblical interpretation. We can remember 

 scarcely a name of any note in the several departments of science, 

 which is not also associated with speculations concerning the rela- 

 tions of science to the records of revelation. When further we 

 look at the religio-scientific labour's of men whose training has 

 been purely or chiefly scientific we notice two tendencies in their 

 i ws of the Divine Record. One is that which would make 

 it mean less than has been generally supposed by the christian 

 world, and another which would make it mean more. That 

 this is the fact any one acquainted with the literature 

 of science during the past twenty five years will at once 

 admit. We know of no one eminent in science, (excepting it may 

 be Mr. Grosse, and he is a zoologist) who has retained the old 

 faith concerning the Cosmogony of Genesis. These opposite and 

 contradictory tendencies among the interpreters of nature in the 

 application of their own discoveries to the elucidation of Scripture 

 have greatly confused and perplexed many devout and unscientific 

 Christians. Holding, as most good men do, the facts of science in 

 great respect, they know not what to make of the very confident 

 statements of the scientific regarding that Beeord on which they 



