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not twenty years old on tlie supposed state of the earth or sun 
myriads of years ago, and believe in hundreds of thousands 
of years of man’s existence on the sole evidence of a few coies 
or scrapers or flakes of flint, assumed to bear marks of human 
work, and found in strata of indeterminate age ; because this 
opinion is now current, for a few years past, in some scientific 
circles. They are part of that unthinking multitude, whom 
Cowper has described — 
Too weak to bear 
The insupportable fatigue of thought ; 
And therefore swallowing, without pause or choice, 
The total grist unsifted, husks and all. 
Thus not only uncertain guesses, but, in more cases than one, 
palpable errors and self-contradictions have been enshimcd 
in their new Pantheon as certain and axiomatic truths. 
« Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be in- 
creased.’’ This voice of God to Daniel, spoken two thousand 
four hundred years ago, was chosen by Lord Bacon foi the 
motto of his great work, and has been signally verified in our 
own days. Railways, steamboats, electric telegiaphs, beai 
witness to the new powers man has acquired, the swift lunning 
to and fro of multitudes, and his mastery over the earth on 
which he dwells. Mountains have been tunnelled, the depths 
of ocean sounded, the rays of sunlight and starlight analyzed, 
and isthmuses traversed by the fleets of the world. Eclipses 
and transits, predicted to a second, show the perfect knowledge 
he has gained of the heavenly motions. I he spectroscope is 
bringing hourly within our reach, in the depths ot the firma- 
ment, much that until of late was thought inaccessible. 1 he 
change is in progress still. And what is the revealed purpose 
and issue of this growth of natural science ? God is enlarging^ 
the base and pedestal, on which to rear a glorious building ot 
moral and spiritual truth. The knowledge of nature is linked 
inseparably with the knowledge of man. Man cannot be 
known aright without the knowledge of his Creator and 
Sovereign. This threefold cord can be neither untwisted nor 
broken.^ It is of God’s own framing, and cannot be sundered 
by the hands of men. 
It has been said poetically of the ocean, that “ his great 
bright eye most silently up to the moon is cast.” With 
stilt more truth it may be affirmed — all Nature looks upward 
and points upward to the throne of God. Creation is a vast 
storehouse of types of heavenly truth, and is full of secret 
