Reviews — Savile's Truth of the Bible. 77 



impression that the Bible was given to teach us Natural Science, 

 which is (we should have thought) capable of refutation by the 

 merest tyro. 



Secondly, if the Bible was given us (as we believe it was) not to 

 teach us natural science, but our moral and religious duties, we 

 cannot see the necessity of a concordance being arrived at where no 

 connection exists. 



Eeligion is based upon matters of Faith, and deals with man's 

 moral and spiritual nature, and is incapable of being reduced to 

 proof. 



Natural Science is a systematic record of facts derived from a 

 study of the phenomena of nature, U23on which its deductions are 

 based, and it only claims so far to be indisputable as it is capable of 

 being reduced to proof. 



Eeligion and Natural Science may be compared to two parallel 

 lines which, prolonged to infinity, can never touch, but there is no 

 discord between them, save such as is due to the obliquity of 

 vision on the part of the authors of these very useless and ill- 

 conceived books. 



To arrive at the truth is doubtless the object of most of these 

 writers, as it is of all thoughtful men ; but as a rule they display a 

 most lamentable ignorance of science, and are remarkably devoid of 

 judgment in the selection of the authors to whom they refer for in- 

 formation. 



In one of the chapters of his book, the Eev. B. W. Savile invites 

 attention " to some of the Variations in Science (under the respective 

 heads of Astronomy, Geology, Anthropology, Egyptology, and 

 Theology), which are known to exist amongst the learned of the 

 present day, and which seem sufficient to prove the truth of the 

 saying, that the science of one age is the nonsense of the next, on 

 account of its endless changes." In illustration of this, he points 

 out the diversity of opinion regarding the nature of the earth's 

 interior, the period of its existence, and of geological clironology in 

 general ; questions which, from the nature of the evidence, we can 

 scarcely hope ever to see definitely settled. Mr. Savile's ideas of 

 physical geology seem to be of a decidedly TIniformitarian character. 



Lyell considers that the earth's crust is known to a depth of perhaps 

 ten miles, '' but how he obtains this knowledge is [to the Eeverend 

 author] a mystery, for the deepest mine on record is less than half a 

 mile in depth." ! ! ! Can he have read any of Lyell's books ? 



Again, on the question of the length of time required for the 

 formation of different deposits, he seems to wonder that estimates of 

 the rate of formation of peat and of alluvial deposits made in 

 different areas should vary. 



Further on he affirms that "altliough five in every seven genera 

 are the same in the Human as in the Tertiary period, there is not a 

 single species common to the two periods." (!) 



One more quotation will probably suffice to show what little 

 reliance can be placed upon Mr. Savile's conclusions, at any rate so 



