375 
hypotheses. I think the most satisfactory thing with regard to Mr. Waring- 
ton’s paper is this, that to any candid inquirer it must go forth that there is 
no reason why men should twist and turn the interpretations of the book 
of Genesis on account of any evidence science would afford with regard 
to it. I say that science has its difficulties as well as revelation. I re- 
member a passage in Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus in which he treats with 
scorn the proud pretensions of man with regard to human knowledge and 
science. He says, in substance, for I do not remember his exact words, — 
“ You talk of your learning and science, but what do you know ? You 
know the when and the where of a few small balls revolving, as you suppose, 
round one big ball, and of a few secondary planets revolving round the 
larger planets. But how many of those do you know, and what do you know of 
the millions of others which pass in one hour over the field of a single instru- 
ment fixed in an observatory ? What do you know of the laws ruling and 
guiding them ? You talk, with your puny knowledge, of that which is, after 
all, as compared with the great mass of the stars, but a grain of dust com- 
pared with the sand of the desert.” If that is the fact with regard to 
science, it should teach men of science to be humble, and show them that 
the work of the scientific man is not to profess to be a God to himself, and to 
interpret everything according to his own understanding and judgment, but 
to be the interpreter of God’s works. Let the scientific man do that and he 
will always find his reward. What do we know of electricity and magnetism ? 
A few years ago we used to talk of an electric fluid — of vitreous and resinous 
currents. We have got rid of that now ; but do we yet know what elec- 
tricity is, or magnetism, or gravity? "We are as ignorant of gravity as 
Newton professed himself to be after he had discovered the law. But we 
may look at the facts of nature, and use them for ourselves. We know that 
a magnet points in a certain direction, and that if a current of voltaic elec- 
tricity be applied at right angles to the magnet, the direction of the magnet 
will be turned. That is a fact that does not depend upon any theories of 
electricity. Whether you speak of it as molecular vibration, or as a fluid, is 
purely a matter of theory. But the fact itself enables you to annihilate time 
and space, and to speak from the old world to the new in a couple of seconds. 
That is the proper interpretation of the facts of nature, and that is the work 
which geologists have to do — to go on accumulating facts and not manufac- 
turing theories concerning them, or if they do, desiring convenient formulae, 
to hold lightly by them, feeling that next day something may upset them. 
And here I would give a word of warning to those gentlemen who insist so 
strongly upon long periods in the work of creation. All the evidence of 
geology which we now possess is admitted to be negative evidence, which 
might be upset any day by a positive fact. Suppose you say that man is the 
most recent creature on God’s earth. That was the theory a little while ago, — 
that man was not co-existent with the mastodon. But suppose you found 
human bones in the red sandstone, and decided human remains in some 
other stratum supposed to be far more ancient than sandstone, lying side by 
side with the remains of the most ancient inhabitants of the world. Where 
