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lines of knowledge, certain points of accordance, and certain points of 

 disagreement ; we have seen that Scripture furnishes us with no per- 

 fect chronology of history, and with no chronology of creation except 

 the creation of man ; but we find, also, that it does provide for us, and 

 has evidently aimed at providing for \is, from the earliest times to the 

 present hour, the knowledge of two facts : that all men are the children 

 of one human father, and the handiwork of one Almighty God. Here 

 the coincidence is perfect of every line within and without ; here the 

 philosophy of Job and Moses, of every prophet and evangelist, agree ; 

 here all the inductions of every branch of science mark the same cor- 

 responding points. 



And what, Gentlemen, is the common quality of these two facts ? 

 Are they not the very facts on which the system of human duty sub- 

 sists, on which humanity and piety depend ? 



These truths, nursed for a thousand years in the ancient Scrip- 

 tures of the Jews, led forth into new day, and with new accessions 

 of the same kind of knowledge by our holy religion, have walked 

 through the world, and been believed alike by the ignorant and the 

 wise, before our sciences were born : and here observe the methods 

 and the course of Providence ; — how, as in process of years, the current 

 of traditionary belief runs weaker, — how, as the advance of human in- 

 tellect looks for other kinds of proof, the arts and sciences come in to 

 support these essential truths : printing gives them stability and ex- 

 tension ; optics and astronomy pour in an infinity of evidence ; compa- 

 rative anatomy brings up its convictions, and geology subdues the 

 sceptical mind with hitherto unimagined demonstrations. 



And now, Gentlemen, I think we are in a condition to draw an in- 

 ductive conclusion, and even to hazard a prediction. We may safely 

 predict, that truths thus firmly established by evidence, will never 

 be shaken by the researches of that reason which has hitherto lent 

 them all its support ; we may clearly point to that sacred ground 

 on which no unhallowed hypothesis should tread ; we are entitled, by 

 the rules of our art, to say to the misnomered philosopher who rashly 

 invades this territory, — These are settled points, settled by every con- 

 clusion of the intellect, as well as by every intuition of the heart : 

 stand aloof! disgrace not the name of Science by throwing stones at 

 the Temple of Truth. But for this assembled body of real work- 

 men, amidst their labours of intellectual industry, — the quarrier of 

 the stone, and the fine carvers thereof; the miner that digs the ore, 

 and the smith that fashions it in the fire — for all who are employed 

 on this sacred building, we are justly entitled to claim, that they shall 

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