OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. iJ 



able, owing to the pertinacity and acrimony with 

 which it was urged, and still occasionally brought 

 forward to the distress and disgust of every well 

 constituted mind, we must take care that the testi- 

 mony afforded by science to religion, be its extent or 

 value what it may, shall be at least independent, 

 unbiassed, and spontaneous. We do not here allude 

 to such reasoners as would make all nature bend to 

 their narrow interpretations of obscure and difficult 

 passages in the sacred writings : such a course might 

 well become the persecutors of Galileo and the other 

 bigots of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but 

 can only be adopted by dreamers in the present age. 

 But, without going these lengths, it is no uncommon 

 thing to find persons, earnestly attached to science 

 and anxious for its promotion, who yet manifest a mor- 

 bid sensibility on points of this kind, who exult and 

 applaud when any fact starts up explanatory (as they 

 suppose) of some scriptural allusion, and who feel 

 pained and disappointed when the general course 

 of discovery in any department of science runs wide 

 of the notions with which particular passages in the 

 Bible may have impressed themselves. To per- 

 sons of such a frame of mind it ought to suffice to 

 remark, on the one hand, that truth can never be op- 

 posed to truth, and, on the other, that error is only 

 to be effectually confounded by searching deep and 

 tracing it to its source. Nevertheless, it were much 

 to be wished that such persons, estimable and ex- 

 cellent as many of them are, before they throw 

 the weight of their applause or discredit into 

 the scale of scientific opinion on such grounds, 

 would reflect, first, that the credit and respect- 



