166 DR. Clarke's address. 



facts which stood in opposition to the former theory. The Mosaic 

 account of the creation was simply intended to lift the grovelling 

 imaginations of the early inhabitants of the earth, from the vain objects 

 of their idolatry, to one God — the great Pirst Cause and author of all 

 things. It was necessary, in this representation, not to contradict the 

 prevailing notions of the time, else the revelations would have been 

 rejected as monstrous and incredible. The Deity is described through- 

 out as man, though with infinitely superior powers, as being occupied 

 in the work of creation for a certain definite period of time — 6 days, 

 as if the thought and act of an omnipotent Deity were not simultaneous 

 and coincident ; and as if the term of a day, by which we measure a 

 revolution of our planet, could have any relation to Him, of whose 

 will the law which governs the motions of our system is but a single 

 expression. He is represented as accessible to human feelings, and 

 swayed by human passions. We know that, in reference to Him, 

 time can have no meaning — that a thousand years are but as one day, 

 and one day but as a thousand years — that He is incapable of change, 

 ■the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever, and without any variableness 

 or shadow of turning. But so thought not the simple Fathers of our 

 race ; and all these particulars which imply a limited, and, therefore, 

 incorrect idea of the Godhead, are evident accommodation to the state 

 of knowledge at the time, and, accordingly, as we proceed, we find 

 juster and more exalted notions of the nature and perfections of the 

 Deity begin to oi^en upon the sacred writers. 



Again : if the revelation of Moses had included all the physical 

 truths which now obtain universal credence, from the infallible evidence 

 on which they rest, one of two results must have taken place — either, 

 that Man must have been endued with an intuitive power of appre- 

 hending these truths, and have been a passive recipient of the know- 

 ledge communicated, the use of his reason precluded, and every 

 discovery in science forestalled — or, belief in such sublime disclosures 

 must have been impossible ; and so must it have been at any period 

 of the world's history, for science changes its character as it advances, 

 and, oven now, the extent of our survey only discloses to us a horizon 

 of proportionate magnitude beyond, over which hang clouds and 

 darkness. If, for example, the quiescence of the Sun in the centre of 

 system, and the mobility of the Earth, had then been enunciated, the 

 dogma would at once have been rejected as a manifest falsehood. 

 But this grand truth, resting on infallible demonstration, is now 

 recognised throughout the civilized world, and the authority and 

 integrity of Scripture, as to its essential truths, remains intact and 

 unassailable. Yet the same spirit which would have kept back the 

 truth in the case of Galileo, and deterred him from announcing or 

 following up his discoveries, is now arrayed to decry and impugn the 

 truths revealed by geology — a science which has opened up a new 

 field for the display of the beneficent providence of the Deity. It is 



