452 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



precisely the same as that which has been deduced from geological 

 considerations." We have been guilty of no improper mixing up of 

 divine and human things. We have examined the meaning of the 

 terms in the first chapter of Genesis, in consistency with the acknowl- 

 edged rules of criticism, and only by the light contained within itself, 

 or that thrown upon it by the other books, in the same language with 

 which it is associated. The human science we have not extracted 

 from any part of the Holy Scriptures ; we have taken it simply as 

 we find it in the works of eminent geologists. As the latter is not a 

 philosophia phantastica, but a deeply interesting science, constructed 

 by t?iat method of careful observation and cautious induction, which 

 Bacon was himself the first to reccomraend ; so neither can the sense 

 of the Scriptures present to us a religio ha3retica. If our science, 

 thus constructed, and our religion speak so obviously the same lan- 

 guage, as we see they do on one important point, what else in the 

 strictest application of Bacon's philosophy, can we deduce from the 

 circumstance, but that both are certainly true ? 



It does not come under our present subject to discuss the historical 

 and moral evidences of the divine revelation of the Scriptures ; but 

 both are so full, even to overflowing, and impose upon us so many 

 insuperable difficulties, in the way of our being able to account for 

 the quality and consistency of these remarkable books, excepting on 

 the ground w^hich has been all along assumed by themselves, that they 

 are of more than human origin, that in estimating the accuracy of 

 any part of the matters contained in them, the fastidiousness of hu- 

 man science appears to be carried to an unreasonable extent, not to 

 take these evidences into calculation. In this country, where for a 

 long period, we have had the scriptures in our hands as a popular 

 book, they among us who have been the most eminent for human 

 learning and science, and whose fame has been in every view the most 

 unsullied, have been so convinced by the force of these evidences, 

 that they have in general been the most strenuous defenders of reve- 

 lation. 



Will not human science, then, condescend to borrow some light to 

 direct the steps of its own inquiries, from a record, the accuracy of 

 which it has itself proved, and which is supported by other proofs of 

 the highest order? Or,* what should we say to the illustrator of the 

 relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum, who should reject the light 



* The other part of this argument, we attempted to illustrate, in the first pages 

 ©f the present discussion.— ^^i^. 



