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only to disconnect geological discoveries with 

 the truths of revelation, but even to place the 

 former in contrast with the latter, and thus in- 

 sidiously to undermine the great principles of 

 our holy faith. Against this unhappy tendency I 

 must enter my strongest protest. The evidence 

 of revealed religion rests, indeed, on a separate 

 ground altogether, but its foundations are im- 

 moveable, and, whatever it has clearly propound- 

 ed as an article of faith, cannot but be true. Its 

 dicta are facts on which we may securely reason, 

 and which it is as unphilosophical as it is im- 

 pious to reject. In saying this, however, it is 

 not to be understood that we ought to overlook 

 the obvious accommodations in the language of 

 scripture to ordinary forms of speech as when 

 it is said that the sun and the moon stood still; 

 but the account of the creation, and of the flood, 

 contained in the book of Genesis, is of a different 

 kind, and as it cannot be renounced by the be- 

 liever, neither can it be explained away. We may 

 therefore rest assured, that no fact in the appear- 

 ances of nature can really contradict that ac- 

 count ; and it is highly satisfactory to think, that 

 the more deeply the subject is investigated, the 

 more remarkably do the discoveries of geology 

 confirm the Mosaic record, when rightly under- 

 stood, both with regard to time and to circum- 

 stances. 



The real state of the question, however, seems 

 to be but imperfectly appreciated, and it may be 

 proper to say a very few words with the view of 



