is no reason for putting it back to that remote period. Now if this Ice Age 
was of the character supposed by Agassiz and its effect so widely felt, and 
if it had passed away just before the time of man’s creation, it would have 
left the world in the condition supposed by Mr. Savile’s interpretation of the 
“ Tho hu and Bo hu ” which preceeded the six yorns of creation, and would be 
an important and an unexpected note of harmony between geological science 
and Bible teaching. 
Rev. J. J. Coxhead.— It appears to me, that both in the paper and in 
the debate, one line of argument has been followed, which I think is scarcely 
fair under the circumstances. It is this, the ideas of one age have been 
compared with, or attributed to, those of another, when such a proceeding was 
not warranted. And are we not arguing on two distinct lines of thought, 
and is it possible to institute a fair comparison between the two 1 With 
regard to the question of fossils, and periods, and strata, and glacial epochs, 
when we come to compare them with the sublime declaration of the Word of 
God, it appears to me that we are bringing into our argument two sets of 
ideas which are not at all to be compared with each other. I do not suppose 
that Moses ever heard of the glacial epoch, or that the Egyptians, or the Jews, 
ever conceived the idea pf fossils or geological periods. In fact, we are 
bringing in modern ideas and attempting to compare them witli Scriptural 
ideas, with which they have nothing in common. The point is, whether 
we have a right to consider the Mosaic account of the Creation at all in the 
light of a cosmogony. The only cosmogony which we can consider to be 
scientific is that cosmogony which we are led to infer from the truths of 
geology ; and if we are bold enough to carry our speculation further, as to 
the power of the nebular hypothesis, and still further as to the nature of the 
primordial atoms, of which you consider the universe to consist, I think we 
get ourselves into a range of ideas totally different from those which we obtain 
from the account of Moses. We shall make a great mistake, in my opinion, 
if we attempt in any way to compare these things with Scriptural teaching, 
or to make the one support the other. In six days, we are told, Creation 
took place, and that is confirmed by the fourth commandment. When we 
hear of the periods of time between the days, we find that is contradicted by 
the fourth commandment, which tells us distinctly in so many words that 
in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth. If we want to know 
whether those days were periods of 7,000 or 14,000 years each, we have only 
to consider the words “the evening and the morning.” We do not talk in 
that way of periods of 7,000 years. There is a simplicity about that language. 
It is language addressed to children, intended to impress upon our minds 
t he idea of the omnipotence of God ; and that as man works six days and rests 
on the seventh, so God, the great Creator, made all things, working in a 
fixed time, in regular method, and by rule. If v T e go into any speculation and 
attempt to apply geology to Genesis, we shall fall into a very great mistake. 
The object of Genesis is to teach us religion ; the object of geology is to teach 
us the science of creation. If we go back to the question of atoms, we ask, who 
made the atoms ? and science cannot answer that. When we fall back on 
