152 GEOLOGY AND MOSES. 



hand. This consideration forces the conclusion, however re- 

 luctant we may be to admit it, that that system of theology 

 which can be thrown into a trepidation by the unfolding of a 

 fact in nature, and which, in any case, treats with hostility, or 

 even with disrespect, the positive deductions of science, can 

 not, thus far, have any counterpart in the mind of that Being 

 who is the Author alike of nature and of heaven, and of the 

 one harmonious system of truth which, in various and cor- 

 responding degrees, pervades and constitutes the life and 

 law of all things. 



True theology, therefore, has no more favors to ask of true 

 science, than the latter has to ask of the former. Neither one 

 of these, in any case, is alarmed by, but always rejoices in, 

 any additional development in the other, because the two are 

 brothers in affectionate unity, and each one contributes to the 

 other of its own riches and strength, and neither can languish 

 without weakening the other in a corresponding degree. 



Some theologians, desirous of maintaining their preconceiv- 

 ed interpretations of the first chapter in Genesis, have argued, 

 that since it is possible for God to do all things, it was 

 possible for him, with a single stroke of his omnipotent 

 power, to create the myriads of sea-shells, the impressions of 

 plants, and the skeletons of the higher animals, in their pro- 

 gressive order of superposition, in the rocks, just as we now 

 find them ! This might be admitted, if it could first be con- 

 ceived as possible for God to have had a previous will and 

 purpose in the generation of forms which, in such a case, 

 would have been, to human conceptions, so evidently useless ; 

 and so, with the same qualification, it may be admitted 

 that God might have created Herculaneum under the beds of 

 lava, and the Egyptian mummies in their tombs, just as we 

 now find them : but to consider it in the least degree probable 



