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as others ? He invokes the aid of geological science ; is 
there anything fixed as yet in that branch of philosophy ? Is 
it not true that for years those who were sceptics on geological 
grounds opposed to the Biblical cosmogony a scientific system, 
three-fourths of which at least has been repudiated ? They 
assented to propositions proved by imperfect testimony, rest- 
ing on insufficient experience, arrived at by incomplete induc- 
tion. The probability of these propositions was nothing near 
so high as that of the correctness of the Bible account. Both 
cosmogonies, we will grant (for argument's sake) were equally 
probable, or equally improbable a 'priori ; but either the one 
or the other had to be adopted ; and the sceptical school did 
adopt the one which had the smallest amount of testimony and 
probable argument in its favour. This is credulity. But now 
that geologists are relinquishing their old position, and taking 
up a new one, the sceptical school will still believe ; for, as I 
have said, men must believe something; they will believe still 
what comes to them on the testimony of science already proved 
fallible, and reject still what comes to them with the witness, 
the “ prestige," if you choose to use the word, of ages, and 
without any more intrinsic improbability — indeed, with less — 
than their new scheme. I am not endeavouring now to prove 
that geology is worthless : I am far from thinking, and much 
farther from wishing to make out, that all the careful, patient 
investigations of its votaries, all the magnificent analysis which 
has been brought to bear upon the facts brought out by those 
investigations, are utterly useless. A humble student and 
admirer of physical science, I should be one of the last 
to utter such an absurdity. I know that sceptics have this 
accusation always in their mouths ready to utter against the 
believer. But we do not reject science as they reject revela- 
tion. We do not carry that scepticism into science which 
they do into religion. Nature is true, and grace is true ; the 
truth of God is in all that He, the Truth, has made. No 
science is worthless — nay, rather, all are precious ; but 
sceptics are credulous, more credulous than believers, because 
they accept the less probable, on weaker testimony, and reject 
the more probable, which has a stronger testimony in its 
favour. They would rather acquiesce in the amazing miracle 
of nine-tenths of the thinking world for ten centuries being 
deceived by a transparent forgery than allow, what is by no 
means miraculous, that they and theirs may be in error. And 
as with science, so it is with other things. The sceptic will 
believe in the authenticity of an Egyptian hieroglyph, and in 
the correctness of the translation of it with which he is 
furnished; he will believe the ./Egyptologist and the Egyptian 
