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truth. We bow before these ancient writings, because they 
speak to our hearts of faith in God, of duty towards our fellow 
men, and of the final triumph of righteousness. Those who claim 
for them a miraculous inspiration in matters of chronology, of his- 
tory, and of physical science, advance pretensions never claimed by 
the books themselves, by no means uniformly asserted by theolo- 
gians, and certainly repudiated by many of the more intelligent 
believers of the age. 
It is difficult to understand, why the history of the long conflict 
between religion and science has not taught those theologians who 
are still fighting in the same cause, the danger of their position. 
They have no right to forget, on the one hand, that science has 
never been driven from one position which it has won from 
theology, or on the other, that the damage which the interests of 
religion have sustained in the conflict have been incalculable. In 
this controversy — which will most assuredly be eventually decided 
on purely scientific grounds, and without reference to the position 
of theologians — to argue that the truth of religion depends upon, 
or is in the slightest degree connected with the results of such 
controversy, seems to me in the highest degree unwise and dan- 
gerous, especially as the position may, according to the admission 
of those who so argue, be any day rendered untenable. 
Science and Theology may be compared to two companies of 
engineers, who are engaged in constructing a tunnel starting from 
opposite sides of a mountain. If such work be correctly performed, 
it must inevitably meet in the middle, and the fact that it did not 
so meet could only be attributed to one cause, namely, some error 
on the part, possibly of both companies, which had led them 
wrong. Theology working from the verities of religion, and science 
starting from the facts of nature ought to have met, if the processes 
which they had followed had been correct. Whether we look at 
the past or contemplate the present, we must, I think, confess that 
such has not been the case. Instead of the light which should by 
this time have been apparent through the tunnel, both portions 
have passed each other, and both arc as it seems to iuo getting 
