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majority of ideas that have prevailed in the geological mind 
have not passed already through all these four stages. 
What, then; are the relations of geological science; as popu- 
larly understood; to the Sacred Scriptures? They are the 
relations of that which in its fundamental principles has been 
changing; we might almost say; every hour of its history; to that 
which has passed down through thousands of years; running 
the gauntlet between the ranks of ten thousand times ten 
thousand assailants, remaining unchanged and even untouched 
to the present moment. So far as the facts and certain infer- 
ences of geology are concerned, they do not in any degree 
affect the Sacred Scriptures. The vast ages that have been 
made to occupy the minds of men when thinking of the 
world’s history, and are now multiplied into endless millions 
of years, belong all to that conjectural thought which, as we 
have seen, is so perpetually changing. Few things are so 
fitted to humble us as an honest admission of our weakness 
under the influence of this. Men have thought that they 
were forced to remodel their ideas of the word of God, and 
even to abandon the belief of its Divine inspiration, by 
the force of that which turns out to be only a shifting 
dream ! So we see the wisdom of those who have said to us, 
as they held back themselves, <c Allow your Bibles to remain 
as they are ; wait awhile, till it is seen what these speculations 
are worth. We have been too often misled by such conjec- 
turings to be in any hurry to acknowledge their weight.” 
And we see now our own well-meant folly, mingling with that 
of many others, in labouring to construct Scriptural theories 
that might harmonize with the passing visions of the scientific 
mind. As the men of science and the men of Scripture — the 
geologists and the theologians — awake together from their 
reveries, it seems as if it were to find, as we have already 
hinted, that the teachings of Moses regarding the world's up- 
rearing are, after all, the grandly comprehensive truth — in 
very deed the Word of the Living God. 
The Chairman. — It would be a mere idle form for me to ask you for a vote 
of thanks to Professor Kirk for the interesting and valuable paper he has just 
read. I am sure no one who has heard it foimd it too long ; our only regret 
must be, that we had not the time to listen to, and Professor Kirk the 
physical power to have delivered, one double the length. There are few out- 
siders of Geology (as Professor Kirk has characterized himself) who have 
paid any attention to the subject, who will not feel that the Professor’s 
greatest difficulty in writing his paper, must have been in selecting the few 
baseless theories he has spoken of this evening from among the manv whose 
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