j 862 64 ON HOLY SCRIPTURE i53 
and reverence as teaching us the things essential 
to eternal life ! 
‘ Those who contend that such vital truths rest 
essentially on the basis of the literal and verbal 
accuracy and acceptability of every physical pro- 
position in the Pentateuch, hazard much, and 
incur grave responsibilities. 
‘ When the canonical statement and the scien- 
tific demonstration do concur, who rejoices more 
than the Christian philosopher ? When they do 
not, and the opposing statements are irreconcilable, 
who is more bound than the Christian philosopher 
to deliver the truth and declare the error, and 
fling from him the sophism by which the error is 
salved or veiled, that it may still be reverently 
cherished, notwithstanding the admitted demon- 
stration of its erroneous nature ? P'or such 
demonstrations are not to be confounded, as they 
have been by those against whose prepossessions 
they jar, with the speculative philosophies con- 
demned by the Apostle. Nothing can be further 
from the uniform experience of the temperament 
and character of great inductive discoverers than 
to ascribe the results of their patient and laborious 
research to arrogant and wilful intellect soaring to 
regions of forbidden mysteries. For the most 
part the discoverer has been so placed by circum- 
stances as to have his work of investigation allotted 
to him as his daily duty, in the fulfilment of which 
fle is brought face to face with phenomena into 
