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matical reasoning, the purpose being to ascertain the elements and laws on 
which Nature’s operations depend, and to find out what may be called the 
unseen machinery of the Universe. The effect of knowledge so acquired is 
to augment our comprehension of the power and wisdom of the great Archi- 
tect of Heaven and Earth, but goes no farther. 
For the solution of social, moral, and religious questions, ■whether as 
between man and man, or between man and his Maker, Scripture alone sup- 
plies in perfection the necessary elements and principles. For this purpose 
it has no need to refer to the class of facts which are known only by means 
of physical research, but only to those that are commonly understood from 
information given by the senses. Accordingly, it is found that the former 
kind are entirely excluded from the Scriptures, being left to be gathered 
from indications and data derivable from God’s Book of Nature. 
Still, there are parts of Scripture which have a direct relation to physical 
science, as, especially, the account of the Creation in the first chapter of 
Genesis, and that of the Deluge in chapters vii. and viii. These accounts, how- 
ever, consist exclusively of statements of such facts as might have presented 
themselves to the senses of an unscientific observer on the earth’s surface at 
the time of their occurrence. This character of the account of the Creation 
given in Genesis i. being taken for granted, it will follow that the facts 
stated are to be put under the class of facts of observation ; and, excepting 
that they are peculiar in having taken place antecedently to all human 
experience, they are susceptible of philosophic inquiry as to their causation 
just as the geological facts observed in the present day. I have, in fact, 
entered upon such inquiries in the before-mentioned work, and, in particular, 
I have argued that, according to the Scripture narrative, there was a pro- 
gression as regards the elaboration of the earth for its inhabitants, and the 
order of the creations of plants, fishes, fowl, beasts, and man, of the very 
same kind as that which has been scientifically inferred from the facts of 
geology. This very noteworthy agreement is well insisted on, so far as 
relates to the progressive origination of structural organisms, in sections 
18-20 of Mr. Titcoinb’s Paper. 
(Respecting the Deluge, I shall limit myself to expressing the opinion that 
the operating causes described in the Scriptural account, when interpreted 
by the aid of modern physical science, were adequate to the production of 
the phenomena ascribed to them.) 
But there are, it must be admitted, parts of the accounts in Gen. i. which 
appear to be self-contradictory ; as where it is said that the divisions of 
time into day and night and seasons were effected by the luminaries of 
heaven on the fourth day, although the term “day” had already been used 
relative to three antecedent intervals. As far as regards the use of the term, 
the discrepancy would be got rid of by showing (as I have endeavoured to 
do in the work on Gen. i.), that the days of Creation are not intervals o 
twenty-four hours marked out by the sun’s visible course, but ages of long 
duration, the limits of which were determined by definite steps in the process 
of the creation, and by alternations of darkness and light produced imlc- 
