156 Mr Babbage on the Account of the Creation 



of the present time, it was not the intention of the writer of the 

 book of Genesis to assign this date to the creation of our globe, 

 but only to that of its most favoured inhabitants. 



Now, it is obvious that additional observations, and another 

 advance in science, may at no distant period render necessary 

 another interpretation of the Mosaic narrative ; and this again, 

 at a more remote time, may be superseded by one more in ac- 

 cordance with the existing knowledge of that day. And thus the 

 authority of Scripture will be gradually undermined by the weak, 

 though well intentioned efforts of its friends in its support. For 

 it is clear that when a work, translated by persons most highly 

 instructed in its language, and seeking in plainness and sincerity 

 to understand its true meaning, admits of such discordant in- 

 terpretations, it can have little authority as a history of the past, 

 or a guide to the future. 



It is time, therefore, to examine this question by another light, 

 and to point out to those who support what is called the literal 

 interpretation of Scripture, the precipice to which their doctrines, 

 if true, would inevitably lead, and to shew, not by the glimmer- 

 ings of elaborate criticism,but by the plainest principles of common 

 sense, that there exists no such fatal collision between the words 

 of Scripture and the facts of Nature. 



And first, let us examine what must of necessity be the con- 

 clusion of any candid mind from the mass of evidence presented 

 to it. Looking solely at the facts in which all capable of investi- 

 gation agree — facts which it is needless to recite, they having 

 been so fully and ably stated in the works of Mr Lyel! and Dr 

 Buckland — we there see, and with no theoretic eye, the remains of 

 animated things, more and more differing from existing races, 

 as we descend in the series of strata. Not merely are the petri- 

 fied bones preserved, displaying marks of the insertion of every 

 muscle necessary for the movement of the living animl, but in 

 some cases we discover even the secretions of their organs, pre- 

 pared either for nourishment or for defence. Almost every stra- 

 tum we pause to examine, affords indubitable evidence of ha- 

 ving, at some former period, existed for ages at the bottom of 

 some lake or estuary, some inland sea, or some extensive ocean 

 teeming with animal existence, or of having been the surface o^ 



