32 
at the great broad facts of the Mississippi again. You say that the 
Mississippi deposits did not occupy vast numbers of years ; but I would ask, 
where is the theory which will account for these deposits, except by the 
assumption of a great number of years ? I do not say any particular number 
of hundreds of thousands, but certainly a very large number. Let any one 
bring forward a counter theory if he can. I do not want to express the 
least disrespect to Professor Birks. He forms his own conclusions, and 
everybody knows that he is a great master of mathematics, and a vast accu- 
mulator of knowledge, but I would point out the importance, in a society of 
this kind, of refraining from putting forward such an argument as that no 
one is to hold a particular view on such a question as the antiquity of man , 
without being liable to the suspicion of denying the doctrines of redemption, 
and giving up the possibility of maintaining the truths of Christianity. 
Rev. A. G. Pemberton. — I have listened with great interest to the 
reading of this paper, but I have drawn conclusions very opposite to those 
expressed by Dr. Currey. I thought it most valuable that so great an 
authority as Professor Birks, with great scientific knowledge, should grapple 
with these scientific questions. I did not gather from the paper that he 
contended for the accuracy of Archbishop Ussher’s chronology, and I quite 
agree that we need not defend any such calculations. My Hebrew Bible has 
no chronological calculations at all. Hales’s valuable work is simply a com- 
pilation of various systems of chronology. There can be no question that 
the range of knowledge which is knowable is, as that great intellect Newton 
pointed out, extremely limited, and man’s ignorance is immense when 
compared with his knowledge. As J eremy Taylor has said, the most learned 
pundit would find, if he came to compare his ignorance with his knowledge, 
that the ignorance immensely outweighed the knowledge. Then we must 
also remember that geology at present is only in its infancy, and I feel sure 
that as it grows and increases, our knowledge of the past, we shall find that 
there is no real antagonism between science and the Bible.* Now so far as 
natural religion goes, we know that it does not reveal a single syllable about 
redemption through Christ. The whole of that sublime economy, which is 
as beautiful as it is sublime, entirely depends on the authenticity, genuine- 
ness, and inspiration of the Scriptures. Every man, therefore, who would 
grapple with the subject fairly, should inquire whether the Bible be an 
authentic document, whether it be genuine, and whether it be inspired, 
and if he do this, he will come to the conclusion which the great Grotius, a 
man as illustrious for the splendour of his genius as for the extent of his 
attainments, came to, when he wrote his remarkable book Dc Veritatc. 
The acute-minded Le Clerc too, who, from being an unbeliever, became a 
believer, made objections to the Pentateuch : he was answered, and, being an 
honest man, he went and studied the subject more deeply, and then wrote a 
refutation of his own objections ; but Voltaire has copied the objections 
* See Professor Dawson’s remarks, Preface to Vol. XI. — Ed. 
