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subjects only which we have no faculty to understand. It is thus, 
really, a simple and effectual expedient for getting rid of all revela- 
tion, by leaving it nothing within the range of the human faculties 
which it is permitted to reveal. The Divine Record of creation, 
I have said, to which the Son of God appealed with such holy 
reverence, is to resume the dignity and value which it had lost, 
while esteemed to be the word of God, by ranking as the specula- 
tion of some Hebrew sciolist, who had never learned the modesty 
of modern science, and made a bold but mistaken guess at the 
origin of the world. Men have regarded it, for ages, as the 
inspired word of God. It is cheering to be assured that their 
respect for it need not be in the least diminished, when they come 
to regard it as the blind conjecture of some unknown pretender to 
Divine communications. 
3. The view of the relation between Scripture and modern science, 
strongly maintained by my friend Ganon Titcomb in his paper read 
to this Institute three years ago, seems to me to differ only by a 
slight shade from that advanced in Mr. Goodwin’s essay. As I 
think his premises mainly erroneous, and the conclusions drawn 
from them adverse and not helpful to the cause of Christian truth, 
it is needful briefly to examine his statements. This will clear 
the way for a further expansion of my views, indicated in pp. 
309-315 of The Bible and Modern Thought, which have since 
ripened further in my own mind, and seem to me a topic deserving 
the careful attention and thought of Christian men. 
4. The doctrine to be examined is briefly this. Scripture is 
indifferent to the duty of expressing itself with exactness on 
scientific questions. This is proved, it is thought, by contrasting 
the statements in Genesis i. with the teaching of modern geology 
and astronomy as to the distances of the stars and the age of the 
world. Still, some statements of Scripture are so exactly scientific 
as to be perfectly consistent with the latest modern discoveries. 
This is instanced in three things : the place of man as coming last 
in the order of creation ; the physiological affinity of birds and 
fishes, as shown by the blood-globules ; and the mention of the 
sweet influences of the Pleiades, which are explained by Madler’s 
hypothesis, that Alcyone is the centre of the whole stellar universe. 
The inference is drawn, that “ the inspiration of the Bible in questions 
involving science was subordinated to the single purpose of making 
moral and religious truth intelligible ” ; that “ the writing of 
Moses is justly to be regarded as inspired, though the form into 
which his language was thrown is now found to be at variance 
with scientific accuracy.” In fine, that “ Science and Revelation 
occupy two distinot and separate spheres, and any attempt to make 
one interfere with the other will only bring them into open and 
ruinous conflict.” The purposes of God in Revelation are moral 
