40 The discoveries of Geology, &c. 
the cosmogony of Moses assigns to the different epochs of creation, 
is precisely the same as that which has been deduced from geologi- 
cal considerations.” We have been guilty of no improper mixing up 
of divine and human things. We have examined the meaning of 
the terms in the first chapter of Genesis, in consistency with the ac- 
knowledged rules of criticism, and only by the light contained within 
itself, or that thrown upon it by the other books, in the same lan- 
guage with which it is associated. ‘The human science we have not 
extracted from any part of the Holy Scriptures; we have taken it 
simply as we find it in the works of eminent geologists. As the 
latter is not a philosophia-phantastica, but a deeply interesting science, 
constructed by that method of careful observation and cautious in- 
duction, which Bacon was himself the first to recommend; so nei- 
ther can the sense of the Scriptures present to us a religio heretica. 
If our science, thus constructed, and our religion speak so ue, 
the same language, as we have seen they do on one important poin 
what else in the strictest application of Bacon’s philosophy, can é 
deduce from the circumstance, but that both are certainly true? 
It does not come under our present subject to discuss the histori- 
cal and moral evidences of the divine revelation of the Scriptures ; 
but both are so full, even to everflowing, and impose upon us so many 
insuperable difficulties, in the way of our being able to account for 
the quality and consistency of these remarkable books, excepting on 
the ground which has been all along assumed by themselves, that 
they are of more than human origin, that in estimating the accuracy 
of any part of the matters contained in them, the fastidiousness of 
human science appears to be carried to an unreasonable extent, not 
to take these evidences into calculation. In this country, where for 
a long period we have had the scriptures in our hands as a popular 
book, they among us who have been the most eminent for human 
learning and science, and whose fame has been in every view the 
most unsullied, have been so convinced by the force of these evi- 
dences, that they have in general been the most strenuous defenders 
of revelation. 
Will not human science, then, condescend to borrow some light, 
to direct the steps of its own inquiries, from a record, the accuracy 
of which it has itself proved, and which is supported by other proofs 
of the highest order? or, what should we say to the illustrator of the 
relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum, who should reject the light 
thrown on them by the letters of Pliny, authenticated as these are 
