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what then ? — is the matter wholly settled ? By no means ; 
we have a case of conflicting conclusions — one branch of 
inquiry has led to the conclusion that the Bible is untrue. 
But it is not to be forgotten, that another branch of inquiry 
has led equally decisively to the conclusion that it is true — - 
the man of science and the theologian both starting from 
facts — facts widely different in their material,, but equally 
cogent in their proofs ; both using the same common instru- 
ment of the reason; both using it according to the same 
processes ; both testing their conclusions by experiment, flatly 
contradict one another in their conclusions. How is it to be 
settled ? The man of science demands that the theologian 
should give way, and applies to him some hard words if he 
refuses, and bases his demand on the specific ground that his 
own process is a process of science, and that science cannot 
be wrong. But in the first place he omits to notice that he 
may be right in his observations, and yet wrong in his 
reasoning from them, and that errors in reasoning, whatever 
their exact character, are not scientific, but eminently un- 
scientific. These mistakes are not the mistakes of science, 
but the mistakes of an unscientific mode of pursuing science. 
Moreover, in the highest and strictest sense of the word, all 
processes of inquiry, if they are properly and accurately con- 
ducted, are scientific. Science is only a body of organized 
knowledge, whose phenomena are arranged so as to exhibit 
the reasons and causes by which they are influenced in their 
legitimate connection and interdependence. Abstract science 
possesses as true an inheritance of the common name as natural 
and physical science. There are ultimate principles and causes 
at the basis of all the forms of mind, as well as of all the forms 
of matter. To claim special privileges or a peculiar in- 
fallibility for physical inquiry over mental or metaphysical 
inquiry, is not a fallacy of popular ignorance, but another 
illustration of the very fact I am seeking to establish, the 
dependence, namely, of the observer upon the reasoner. But 
if this be true, and if an induction from historical facts be just 
as scientific as an induction from physical facts, and depends 
on exactly the same conditions, there can be no imaginable 
reason why the conclusion of the theologian should be sub- 
mitted to the conclusion of the geologist, more than the con- 
clusion of the geologist to the conclusion of the theologian. 
The theologian may rather claim the higher degree of cer- 
tainty than the lower, inasmuch as his conclusion is ratified 
by the experience of moral and spiritual instincts and events, 
of which the conclusions of natural science are necessarily 
devoid. 
