Competent Judges. 43 



who have only read books and looked upon the 

 same unvarying surface all their lives, or to the 

 naturalist, who has been walking within the great 

 cabinets of nature all his life, each day opening 

 some alcove filled with new beauties and adapta- 

 tions? Shall we inquire respecting the landscape 

 in the distance, of him who has always walked upon 



lain at the base of the mountain, or of him who 



daily ascends that mountain and views that land- 



from every possible point ? The common 



observer is like Aristotle's fancied beings in the 



centre of the earth remaining- there for ever, hear- 



Of the gods and their works, but seeing the 



whole array of nature only as delineated in pictures 



of la: and tlu IS invented by men to 



represent the movements of the heavenly bodies. 



But the naturalist, with his trained senses for observ- 



1 from the centre to the surface 



to look off upon a new world. 



And when the question is raised respecting the 

 Bible, as to its claim to being a part of the great 



it ion, shall we accept the dicta of those men 

 who are so ignorant of the Bible as hardly to know 

 the Old Testament from the New ? Any man who 

 should pretend to give a scientific opinion with the 

 same ignorance of nature that most of those men 



of the Bible who undertake to decide upon its 

 claims, would be driven from all intelligent society 

 as charlatans and impostors. Theologians declaim- 



igainst the deductions of sciences of which 

 they know nothing, and scientific men who have so 



