PROCEEDINGS 1839 — 1840. 
69 
of facts. Gentlemen with whom persons who fear lest the study of 
geology shall be detrimental to the cause of religion, however excellent 
they may be, I profess to have no sympathy. My faith in the 
inspiration of Holy Scripture is such that I am certain the discoveries 
of science will only tend to the confirmation of its unassailable 
veracity. To the theories of many geologists I may be opposed, and 
I may be so on scientific principles, because I find that in the year 
1806, the French Institute counted not fewer than eighty theories, 
supposed to be hostile to scripture history, of all which theories 
scarcely a vestige is now to be traced, scarcely a record has been 
preserved. To show, however, that there is nothing in the cosmogony 
of the bible repugnant to the real discoveries of geology, I would 
refer you to the commencement of Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater 
Treatise, and especially to Dr. Pusey's valuable note appended to it. 
The very learned Professor of Hebrew there states it as his opinion 
that the first two verses of Genesis contains merely a summary- 
statement of what is related in detail in the rest of the chapter, and 
that the time of the creation is not defined. We are told only of 
what we are concerned to know, that all things were created by God. 
The rest may have been left indefinite, as so many other things have 
been, that there may be free scope for the exercise of those high 
endowments with which our Maker has blessed our species, namely, 
our reason and our imagination. But were the interpretations to 
which I have alluded merely the conjecture of Dr. Pusey or Dr, 
Buckland to meet an apparent difficulty, after the discoveries of 
geology, I for my part, should attach to it no importance whatever : 
nay, I should be the foremost to contend against it. But I find it 
to have been a very general opinion among the fathers or early writers 
of the christian church. The learned Professor of Hebrew refers to 
some of these writers. I may add that I find Justin Martyr in the 
second century, and Gregory Nazianzen in the fourth, expressing 
their belief that an indefinite period elapsed between the original crea- 
tion, and that disposition of things of which we have the narrative in 
the book of Genesis. Their judgment was, of course, on that point 
unprejudiced and independent, and therefore all must admit that in 
such a case their authority is great. We may indeed conclude, that 
