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was imperative that the language should be that of popular phraseology. 
Professor Birks says with justice that it is not Newton who complains of 
the statement that the sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into 
Zoar. What would you have ? You must accept such a statement in 
popular phraseology, and I maintain that it is not unscientific because 
it is given in popular language. There is, however, one remark in this paper, 
which, notwithstanding my great reluctance to differ from Mr. Titcomb, 
I am obliged to dissent from. I find that I have put no less than three 
notes of interrogation to a single section of his paper. It is § 27, and 
the notes refer to what Mr. Titcomb says in regard to the “ vision ” of 
Moses, which, to say the least of it, seems to me somewhat visionary. 
I certainly do not see my way out of the difficulty in that direction, 
and as far as the general argument is concerned, I agree with Dr. McCaul 
and Professor Birks in rejecting the visionary idea. Mr. Titcomb says, 
“ In the same way when scientific men object to the statement of God’s 
having rested from His work on the seventh day, because certain processes 
of creation are still going forward in the deposition of deep chalk-beds, and 
in a variety of other methods ; it is enough for us to reply, that Moses made 
this statement only as a result of the vision which had been granted to him. 
Beholding a cessation of the various phenomenal changes which had been 
brought before his eye, he simply described what he had seen, and registered 
it accordingly ; the strictly scientific truth of the case being thus subordinated 
to its merely phenomenal appearance, for the sake of a moral and religious 
purpose.” Now after what I have said, the meeting may not be prepared to 
hear me add, that I dissent from this statement, because I have told you that 
I justify the language of phenomena ; but I must say that instead of writing 
the passage as it appears here, I should have written just the contrary. 
Without taking up any other points in the paper, I may state generally 
that I find that the language of the Bible exhibits a marvellous instance 
of scientific accuracy ; for instance : the Hebrew writer says that God, as God, 
“ hangeth the earth upon nothing.” Again, we read, “ Only be sure that 
thou eat not the blood ; for the blood is the life ; and thou mayest not eat 
the life with the flesh.” In these passages the writer could not have come 
nearer to the fact, if he had been acquainted with all the minuteness 
of modem science. In uninspired cosmogonies you find the writers talking 
of God having balanced the earth with mountains on each side in order to 
keep it steady. Suppose that the Bible, in any single line, had done this, or 
had subscribed to the astrological doctrines of the Jews, the Greeks, and the 
Latins, its scientific accuracy might with justice be disputed ; but now we 
have a right to point out how marvellously the finger of God has kept the 
inspired writers of the Scriptures to statements which have commanded the 
adhesion of such minds as those of Chalmers, Sedgwick, and Whewell. 
These ai’e men who knew all the discoveries -of modern science, and yet they 
accepted the Bible as we have it. Then, I contend, these are more than 
hints ; they are direct affirmations of the scientific truth of the Bible. 
Surely the existence of these scientific allusions in records so old, when the 
