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minds of such people it seems to be considered sufficient to compel our assent 
to a proposition, that a certain number of leading scientific men have agreed to 
adopt a certain view ; and therefore that we are to receive it as though it were 
Gospel. I demur to that kind of authority ; because, whatever weight it 
may bear when a judgment is formed, those of us who have been accus- 
tomed to the meetings of this Society know how many of these notions have 
been exploded within the short period of time within which we have existed 
as an Institute. I will recall a remark which was made by Lord Shaftesbury 
at one of our meetings , — “ he remembered no less than eighty different 
theories, all current, in science — all opposed to the Word of God, and all set 
up as reasons for doubting the Word of God, — yet that those eighty theories 
had all vanished and clean gone out of sight ; while the Word of God, which 
they were supposed to upset, still remained in all its stability.” I hope that, 
as regards any other writings but the word of God, we shall read them as 
Lord Bacon advised us to read , — “ not to take for granted, or to confute, but 
to weigh and consider.” 
Rev. Professor McAll. — S hall I be travelling out of the record if I 
suggest a few considerations that seem to deserve attention in con- 
nection with this subject ? Without presuming for a moment to put 
aside what Mr. McCaul has given us, or pretending a competition with his 
views, there are some thoughts which have occurred to me which go very 
near the ground taken by some of the gentlemen who have spoken. In. the 
first place, without undermining the authority of the Pentateuch, may we 
not regard the earlier part of Genesis as a compilation from pre-Mosaic 
records ? Such records must, of course, be sacred in themselves, and they 
are sufficiently authenticated for us by the use which is here made of them. 
Then, when God is said to have created the heavens and the earth, may we 
not understand an act differing in its very nature, and widely distant in point 
of time, from that series of acts afterwards described, — the first act being the 
origination, and the others the mere arrangement and disposal of things 
already existing ? My third point is, — may not the, first act of creation 
refer to a period which would leave scope for many alterations and develop- 
ments, through which the world has passed, — a period possibly comprising 
myriads and even millions of years ? Fourthly, I would ask, is it difficult 
to believe that in the earlier conditions of the globe death existed not merely 
by natural decay, but because the different orders of creatures preyed upon 
each other ? Fifthly, does a proper faith in Revelation forbid the notion that 
among the various pre- Adamite tenants of the earth in the unrecorded past, 
there may have been creatures nearly resembling man in form, and endowed 
with intelligence ? The question need not be viewed with any alarm, as a 
doctrine of natural religion. Revelation being silent on the subject, it might 
perhaps be inferred that some such connecting link always existed between 
the Creator and the various irrational tribes. These inquiries point to a 
consideration of great importance, viz., that the Mosaic account is largely 
poetic, rhetorical, and figurative. The key to that account seems to be 
found in the fact that the writer describes things not as they were, but as 
