133 
of analogy, — I mention this case by way of illustration. One must therefore 
be cautious in reference to this second proposition ; to establish it will re- 
quire more investigation, and more facts to be brought together, than we 
have now before us. Mr. Titcomb will at once reply, and very justly, that 
in a short paper like this, he rather intended to suggest, than to establish 
the truth. But though I have frequently seen such suggestions, I have 
not yet seen the assertion supported with sufficient force to bring con- 
viction to my mind, and I do not myself see why we should, a priori, 
expect to find in Scripture traces of scientific accuracy. We know for 
what purpose God has been pleased to reveal His will to man ; how 
He has employed certain writers, to whom He gave power to make known 
the great principles of moral and spiritual truth ; to show beforehand, 
as far as He was pleased to reveal, those things which were to come 
to pass. All these ends were certainly quite independent of any accu- 
rate scientific investigation or statements of scientific law. Therefore I 
must fairly say that I should not have, a priori, expected that God, for the 
purposes which His revelation was intended to serve, would have thrown 
into the revelation such hints of definite scientific laws ; and if, after grave 
consideration and inquiry, it were to be found necessary to admit, that the 
suggestion of these hints was due to the ingenuity of human conjecture, and 
was not borne out by more exhaustive investigations, it need not shake in 
the slightest degree our belief in the Divine authority of the Scriptures. 
We should be very careful, in statements of this kind, to guard against 
making the truth of Scripture seem to depend upon the establishment of an 
hypothesis. If there be in Scripture real hints of scientific discovery it is 
an interesting fact, but it is by no means necessary to make them out. 
Revelation would be no less Divine, as regards its authority and origin, if 
this second proposition of Mr. Titcomb were incapable of being main- 
tained. We must all be much obliged to Mr. Titcomb for the paper which 
has just been read. A great deal of what is stated in it is especially valu- 
able at this time, in order to guard us against that unscientific mode of 
treating Scripture, according to which men sometimes endeavour to force it 
to speak a language which it never pretends to speak. For it must never be 
forgotten, that the purpose of Scripture is not to teach science, nor to 
lay down scientific laws, and that when it treats and describes phenomena 
in the form in which they appear to the senses, it does all that can be 
intended in relation to the great ends of creation. All this is well ex- 
pressed in the present paper. There cannot be too much put forward 
in the present day to prevent misapprehension on the part of persons 
who, after studying the Bible without Science, are shocked when Science 
throws a new light upon some object which they have been accustomed 
to regard from a different point of view ; and, also to correct the mis- 
apprehensions of scientific men, who fancy that those who are maintaining 
the authority of the Scriptures are maintaining and insisting upon adherence 
to exploded errors which no thoughtful student of Scripture ought to or need 
maintain. The paper of Mr. Titcomb is in this way very valuable, but his 
