Rough Notes on the controversy against Geologists. 471 



to do his work in misleading mankind. Is this because 

 men have been for ages familiar with even the most startling 

 points abounding in religious controversy ; while geology is 

 the offspring of the present age ? 



The pressing of Scripture into the service of any particu- 

 lar hypothesis in physical science, which men, according 

 to their interpretation of its very concise and general lan- 

 guage on such subjects, imagine to be maintained in it, is thus 

 n proceeding on many grounds much to be regretted. Its 

 most obvious effect is to place most unwillingly men of great 

 powers of mind in the observation of nature, and in close and 

 consequent reasoning upon the facts observed, in a position 

 of supposed hostility to the Scripture. This is a sequence 

 of the vague and inconclusive manner in which certain pas- 

 sages of it have been for centuries understood, chiefly, 

 however, through the medium of a translation of these 

 passages, biassed towards the preconceived opinions of 

 the translators, which were in accordance with the phi- 

 losophical notions of the times in which they lived. In 

 this position the Christian geologist is surprized to find 

 himself; and though it is too true that there are infidels 

 among geologists, as well as in every other walk of life, yet 

 such infidelity, he avers, does not necessarily flow from 

 the study of that science, or the reception of what he must 

 consider to be its demonstrated truths; and the stigma 

 of unbelief in such a strongly accredited revelation as the 

 Christian possesses he casts from him with indignation. If 

 he has at all studied the Bible, he may even be able to give 

 more and better reasons for the hope that is in him, than 

 many of those who thus attempt to fix upon him such a 

 stigma, for, in addition to the evidences usually detailed in 

 every book on the subject, he may, with the grasp of a phi- 

 losophical mind, see, proceeding on from the beginning 

 downwards through a series of many centuries of years, the 

 great plan devised by God for the restoration to purity of 



