DISCOVERIES WITH SACRED HISTORY. 23 



such a revelation might have stopped, without imperfections 

 of omission, less in degree, but similar in kind, to that which 

 they impute to the existing narrative of Moses 1 A reve- 

 lation of so much only of astronomy, as was known to 

 Copernicus, would have seemed imperfect after the dis- 

 coveries of Newton; and a revelation of the science of 

 Newton would have appeared defective to La Place : a 

 revelation of all the chemical knowledge of the eighteenth 

 century would have been as deficient in comparison with 

 the information of the present day, as what is now known 

 in this science will probably appear before the termination 

 of another age ; in the whole circle of sciences, there is not 

 one to which this argument may not be extended, until we 

 should require from revelation a full development of all 

 the mysterious agencies that uphold the mechanism of the 

 material world. Such a revelation might indeed be suited 

 to beings of a more exalted order than mankind, and the 

 attainment of such knowledge of the v/orks as well as of 

 the ways of God, may perhaps form some part of our hap- 

 piness in a future state ; but unless human nature had been 

 constituted otherwise than it is, the above supposed com- 

 munication of Omniscience would have been imparted to 

 creatures, utterly incapable of receiving it, under any past 

 or present moral or physical condition of the human race; 

 and would have been also at variance with the design of 

 all God's other disclosures of himself, the end of which has 

 uniformly been, not to impart intellectual but moral know- 

 ledge. 



Several hypotheses have been proposed, with a view of 

 reconciling the phenomena of Geology, with the brief 

 account of creation which we find in the Mosaic narrative. 

 Some have attempted to ascribe the formation of all the 

 stratified rocks to the effects of the Mosaic Deluge ; an 

 opinion which is irreconcileable with the enormous thick- 

 ness and almost infinite subdivisions of these- strata, and 

 with the numerous and regular successions which they con- 



