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tated by the facts, — but then, cheerfully admit them both. 
There can be nothing more injurious to the cause of Truth 
than an obstinate and prejudiced refusal to assent to what is 
fairly proved. In religious morality our pious rule is “ Do 
your duty, whatever it costs, and trust in God, Who will bring 
all right.” In religious dealing with science let our rule be 
the same, “ Assent, as a matter of duty, to what your opponent 
demonstrates by legitimate proof ; the God of Truth will show 
von its connection with His own Truth. It may be that in 
resisting a logical conclusion you may be destroying a weapon 
which would ultimately be of the greatest value, not to your 
adversary, but to yourself.” 
But especially I would urge this temper of doubt in the 
matter of alleged contradictions. There are many propositions, 
hypotheses, theories, which have been vaunted by one side and 
branded by the other as opposed to Revealed Religion, which 
after all are not inconsistent with it. I remember an occasion on 
which, at a large scientific meeting, the subject of spontaneous 
generation was discussed, and one or two speakers gave an 
account of experiments made by themselves in which bacteria, 
and vibrions appeared in liquors which, after boiling, had been 
enclosed in hermetically-sealed tubes. The obvious answer to 
this would have been for some one to state — as was afterwards 
done, I believe, though not at that time — that lie had per- 
formed the same experiment exactly, and that the bacteria 
and vibrions were not produced. In fact, several speakers 
expressed their doubt of the accuracy of the experiment. 
But one individual rose, and with somewhat unnecessary 
empressement, declared that no one should rob him of his 
Bible ; that the Bible told him that God made all things, and 
that he would die before he surrendered his faith. Now none 
of the speakers had even suggested that God did not make 
those bacteria ; the experiments only went to show that the 
Creator did not always employ the same method in producing 
living creatures ; and the opponent's declamation was shown 
to amount to this, that he would not be robbed of his own 
notion of what the Bible told him, the explanatory addition, 
in fact, which he had made to the word “ created ” in the 
sacred volume. There was no necessary contradiction between 
the teaching of the Bible and the doubtful proposition that 
animated life of the lowest type sometimes shows itself without 
the ordinary conditions of generation. 
Again ; many, both believers and unbelievers, imagine that 
if the supposed discoveiy of traces of pre- Adamite man were 
confirmed, it would go very far to invalidate the authority of 
the Scriptures, and would, at all events, be inconsistent with 
