23 
and tlie wonderful discoveries arrived at by those who prose- 
cuted researches in the various branches of physics, produced 
another set of weapons to use against those writings on which 
the Christian faith is based. So numerous were these dis- 
coveries, and so rapidly did they succeed one another, that the 
whole of Nature seemed to have been ransacked, when but a 
beginning had been made ; and consequently men began to 
draw conclusions, as if the period of search and investigation 
were ended, when in truth it had scarcely commenced. Thus 
a hasty and imperfect generalization from inadequate facts 
produced conclusions which seemed to be, and indeed to a 
great extent were, inconsistent with certain statements of 
Scripture, as popularly understood. Geology especially was 
held to reveal a state of things absolutely incompatible with 
the Mosaic account of the Creation and maintenance of the 
universe. In short, there appeared upon the stage a new type 
of sceptic, the scientific unbeliever. “ I must believe my 
eyes,” was his argument ; “ I cannot deny the truth of what 
I hear and see and feel : and induction is infallible ; law rules 
all phenomena, and the human mind is free from the possibility 
of error, when it elicits, by a rigorous logic, the eternal truth 
which underlies each group of varied facts presented to the 
senses. You, on the other hand, offer for my acceptance 
certain books, whose authority rests on testimony alone ; and 
these books I find to contain propositions irreconcilable with 
those conclusions to which I have been led. I am bound, by 
the necessity of human intellect, to reject your books, and to 
adhere to my own opinions.” 
Such I take to be a general statement of the arguments of 
the scientific unbelievers. And, indeed, there was every 
reason why they should be induced to employ them ; the 
wider opening of the field of science seemed in the first 
instance naturally to lead to a review, if not a curtailment, of 
the domain of faith. Nor must it be forgotten that, — just as 
the study of mathematics disposes the mind of the student to 
be dissatisfied with anything like mere probability, anything, 
in fact, short of actual demonstration, and the intellectual 
digestion which is habituated to the syllogism nauseates and 
rejects the enthymeme, — so the mind which is accustomed to 
the inductive process, to experiment and interrogation of 
Nature, becomes singularly averse to the reception of testi- 
mony, and the discussion of that which is unseen and invisible. 
Scripture, a testimony received on testimony, Scripture, which 
deals with the visible and sensible only in reference to the 
Eternal, Immeasurable, and Invisible, was not likely to approve 
itself, ci priori, to the purely positive understanding. 
