1862-64 ON HOLY SCRIPTURE 153 



and reverence as teaching us the things essential 

 to eternal life ! 



' Those who contend that such vital truths rest 

 essentially on the basis of the literal and verbal 

 accuracy and acceptability of every physical pro- 

 position in the Pentateuch, hazard much, and 

 incur grave responsibilities. 



' When the canonical statement and the scien- 

 tific demonstration do concur, who rejoices more 

 than the Christian philosopher ? When they do 

 not, and the opposing statements are irreconcilable, 

 who is more bound than the Christian philosopher 

 to deliver the truth and declare the error, and 

 fling from him the sophism by which the error is 

 salved or veiled, that it may still be reverently 

 cherished, notwithstanding the admitted demon- 

 stration of its erroneous nature ? For such 

 demonstrations are not to be confounded, as they 

 have been by those against whose prepossessions 

 they jar, with the speculative philosophies con- 

 demned by the Apostle. Nothing can be further 

 from the uniform experience of the temperament 

 and character of great inductive discoverers than 

 to ascribe the results of their patient and laborious 

 research to arrogant and wilful intellect soaring to 

 regions of forbidden mysteries. For the most 

 part the discoverer has been so placed by circum- 

 stances as to have his work of investigation allotted 

 to him as his daily duty, in the fulfilment of which 

 he is brought face to face with phenomena into 



