consistent with the Mosaic History. 39 



In the above table, we have not taken advantage of the distinction 

 which, we conceive, we have gone far to prove, is expressed in the 

 Hebrew text between the cryptogamous and the other classes of 

 plants, but have set down the whole vegetable kingdom as forming 

 only one element in the table. We shall also allow that the 4th, 5th, 

 and 6th Nos. may be liable to be interchanged among themselves, -in 

 respect of place, and shall hinge no argument upon them, farther 

 than what arises from the circumstance that they are all placed in 

 one group. Yet, after these abatements from the number of par- 

 ticulars, the coincidences here shown between the order of the epochs 

 of creation assigned in Genesis, and that discovered by geology, are 

 calculated to excite the deepest attention. Human science, in the 

 probability of chances, as illustrated by La Place, has put us in pos- 

 session of an instrument for estimating their value ; and we feel am- 

 ply entitled to take advantage of it for that purpose, for no case could 

 well be pointed out, where it would be more correctly applicable than 

 in this, where the coincidences assume a definitely successive numer- 

 ical form. We are entitled to adopt even the very language of La 

 Place, and to say, " By subjecting the probability of these coinci- 

 dences to computation, it is found that there is more than sixty thou- 

 sand to one against the hypothesis that they are the effect of chance."* 



It is thus, then, that the discoveries of geology, when more ma- 

 tured instead of throwing suspicion on the truths of revelation, as the 

 first steps in them led some persons to maintain, have furnished the 

 most overpowering evidence in behalf of one branch of these truths. 

 The result of these discoveries has been in this respect similar to 

 those of the Chinese and Egyptian histories, and the Indian astrono- 

 my, but much more striking. Eminent men had pledged their fame 

 in setting up these histories, and that astronomy, in opposition to the 

 chronology of Genesis ; but further and more careful inquiry into 

 their true characters, discovered that, when rightly understood, they 

 only tend to confirm it. 



We are not afraid that we shall have here quoted against us the 

 words of Bacon, " Tanto magis hssc vanitas inhibenda venit, et co- 

 ercenda, quia ex divinorum et humanorum, male sana admixlione, 

 non solum educitur, philosophia phantastica, sed etiam religio hcereti- 

 ca." We have only endeavored to illustrate and point out the con- 

 sequences of the statement of Baron Cuvier, " that the order which 



* Syst. du Monde, book v, chap. 6. 



