38 
CONCLUSION OF PROFESSOR BIRKS’ REPLY (Communicated). 
My second paper, like my first ; in which I have sought to repel the 
charge that the Bible is inaccurate, and opposed to the certain and proved 
conclusions of science, has brought upon me a strong censure from Dr. Currey. 
He thinks my defence mischievous and unsound, though he does not pro- 
fess to understand it as a scientific argument. He thinks it lost labour 
to show that five or six different theories, upon which the dogma of man’s 
high antiquity has been based, are erroneous, and exclude each other, 
unless I can prove the same, in this one paper, of every possible hypothesis 
or presumption of the same kind. I am astonished at such a test of valid 
argument in defence of the thorough truth of the Bible being laid down by 
any one. I must strive to clear away the mist which would make my 
labour almost fruitless unless it be removed. The basis of my argument 
is that the Bible does not merely contain the “Word of God” somewhere 
within it, but is itself “ God’s word written,” or a series of messages which 
the Holy Spirit spake by the prophets ; that it is truth, “ the true sayings 
of God,” and not an imperfect mixture, in unknown proportions, of God’s 
truth with numerous errors ; that hence it is not lawful for any Christian 
“ so to expound one part of Scripture as to be repugnant to another ” : 
this could only be true if it contains no real self-contradiction. If the 
Scripture, then, is God’s word, and all self-consistent, it camiot contradict 
genuine science. Two kinds of contradiction are possible, and very fre- 
quent. False constructions of Scripture may be opposed to true and sound 
conclusions of science ; and false conjectures, hypotheses, and inferences of 
students of science may contradict alike the real truths of science and 
unambiguous statements of the word of God. Wherever there is a seeming 
collision, the duty of every honest Christian is to inquire, first, what is its 
real source, — a false interpretation of the Bible, or of the works of God, and 
the facts of science. Now, I cannot defend the Bible from infidel assaults 
under these two unfair conditions — unlimited scientific credulity, and an 
unlimited license of non-natural interpretation of the Bible, so as to impute 
to it the almost entire absence of any definite meaning. In the present 
paper I am said to have charged all with being infidels who do not accept 
“Ussher’s” chronology, and to have made this one essential part of Christian 
orthodoxy. I am astonished at the charge, when I have done the 
exact reverse. I named a limit for the Bible date of man’s entrance 
on the earth, which includes the highest estimates of those who do 
not altogether discard the Scriptural testimony concerning it. There 
may be Christians who, in ueferenco to the inferences or guesses of 
modern geologists, can accept some such paraphrase as this of the earliest 
link in St. Luke’s genealogy of Christ. Having climbed some four or five 
thousand years to Seth in seventy ascents, then, in order to complete a 
hundred thousand years, they must proceed : Who was the son of Adam ; 
