392 NATURE AND MAN. 



daring to teach that the earth moves round the sun. And Pro- 

 testant divines in this country, equally taking their stand upon 

 infallible authority, but shifting its basis from the Church to the 

 Bible, have no less vehemently opposed any scientific inquiry 

 which might throw a doubt upon the literal accuracy of the Book 

 of Genesis. Thus it is within the remembrance of many of us, 

 how the conclusions of Geologists as to the long succession of 

 changes which had taken place in the crust of the earth, and in 

 the races of plants and animals which had peopled its surface, 

 before the advent of Man, were denounced as destructive of all 

 religious faith ; how, when obliged by the logic of facts to admit 

 that the beginning of the world must be antedated indefinitely, 

 theologians took a fresh stand upon the modern origin of Man, 

 and did their utmost to discredit the evidence crowding in from 

 all quarters as to his remote antiquity and the low condition of 

 our primeval ancestors ; and how, when this evidence could no 

 longer be gainsaid, they tried to uphold the universality of the 

 Noachian Deluge, — with the miserable result of an ignominious 

 surrender. 



But I rejoice in the conviction that the true genius of Protes- 

 tantism is now coming to be generally recognized as consisting, 

 not in its opposition to the claims of the Church of Rome to 

 infallible authority, but in its protest against any infallible authority 

 whatever ; in its readiness to submit the basis of its religious 

 system to the most searching criticism ; in its cordial welcome to 

 every truth of science or criticism which has been accepted by 

 the general voice of those most competent to decide upon its 

 claims ; and in the freedom with which it surrenders such parts 

 of its dogmatic systems, as prove to be inconsistent with tliose 

 great fundamental verities of moral and physical science, whose 

 domination over the educated thought of mankind constitutes the 

 basis on which alone the religion of the future can securely rest. 

 It is not, in my view, by their reassertion, with any amount of 

 positiveness, of doctrines from which the educated thought of the 

 age is drifting away, that the teachers of religion will best combat 

 what they designate as the " prevalent unbelief j " but by showing 

 themselves ready to profit by the lessons of the past, in regard to 

 the futility of all attempts either to check the progress of inquiry 



