CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 451 



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 particulars, the coin- 

 cidences here shown between the order of the epochs of creation as- 

 signed in Genesis, and that discovered by geology, are calculated to 

 excite 'the deepest attention. Human science, in the probabilty of 

 chances, as illustrated by La Place, has put us in possession of an 

 instrument for estimating their value ; and we feel amply entitled to 

 take advantage of it for that purpose, for no case could well be point- 

 ed out, where it would be more correctly applicable than in this, 

 where the coincidences assume a definitely successive numerical form. 

 We are entitled to adopt even the very language of La Place, and to 

 say, " By subjecting the probability of these coincidences to compu- 

 tation, it is found that there is more than sixty thousand 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 ha^c vanitas inhibenda venit, et coer- 

 cenda, quia ex divinorum et humanorum, male sana admixtione, non 

 solum educitur, philosophia phantastica, sed etiam religio haeretica." 

 We have only endeavored to illustrate and point out the consequen- 

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

 cosmogony of Moses assigns to the diflferent epochs of creation, is 



* Syst. du Monde, book v. chap. 5. 



