Rough Notes on the controversy against Geologists. 473 



selves, or from the hand either of Christian or of infidel. 

 Yet, irresistible by every thinking mind as such evidence is, 

 had some, who call themselves geologists according to 

 Scripture views, the power, which they have not, to stake 

 and peril the credibility of Scripture upon the meaning they 

 give it, such is the weight of the physical evidence against 

 these imputed meanings, written in the solid rocks from 

 long by gone ages with a pen, the traces of which are in- 

 delible, that the authority of the Scriptures, high though 

 it be, must have fallen before it. 



If such men, then, by the promulgation of their peculiar 

 views, make infidels of those who, though knowing some- 

 what of geological evidences, know but little of the Scrip- 

 tures, never having studied them, and never having been 

 grounded in the faith, and who otherwise might have found 

 that peace which is in Jesus, of whom is such a result to be 

 required? Is it not rather then, a gratifying thing for the 

 Christian to find, that such views as their's are baseless and 

 unsupported by any thing like evidence^ and to reflect that 

 when Scripture is thus wrested to an illegitimate use in at- 

 tacking the deductions of science on subjects on which 

 Scripture was not intended to give information, that such 

 an attack recoils on its authors only, without affecting either 

 the authority of Scripture, or the evidence upon which that 

 department of science may rest ; provided always, that the 

 theorists in science studiously avoid, which it is not difficult 

 to do, collision with the very general language in which all 

 such subjects are touched on in the Bible. Should any infidel 

 savant attack Scripture through science, he also errs, fear- 

 fully errs ; for he cannot, like the other, plead purity of motive ; 

 and then, but not till then, it becomes the duty of the Chris- 

 tian geologist to bring Scripture into the field, into the discus- 

 sions of science, and as he can do, if he knows the high 

 position he occupies, strenuously and triumphantly repel 

 the assailant. Yet still it does not become any Christian to 



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