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but at the same time he does not disdain to consult the facts of Geology. For 
our own part, we uncompromisingly profess to appertain to a fiftlfiand very small 
class, namely, that which rests its belief on the test of reason and experience 
conjoined. Seeing that it is next to impossible implicitly to believe every thing 
advanced in the Bible—considering the metaphorical language in which much of 
the Sacred Volume is written, and, above all, the notorious errors of the trans¬ 
lators, we would ask, whether it is more rational to place unconditional reliance 
on every passage of the Bible, or to submit the whole to the severe test of reason ? 
Doubtless mistakes may occur even in this manner—nay more, they must happen, 
since on almost every point there will, in the first instance, be difference of 
opinion. But the most powerful intellects will, of course, in the long run, “ carry 
the day,” and convince their inferiors in intellect—not by dogmatism but by 
argument—of the rectitude of their views. Men who make it an affair of con¬ 
science to believe all that they read in the Bible, because their clerical instructors 
have ordered them to do so, are either little gifted with reasoning powers, or their 
education must have lamentably depressed their intellects. Such individuals 
cannot truly be said to have any belief of their own—since their “ articles of 
faith ”—for the holding of which they can assign no sufficient reason—are forced 
upon them, and this inforcement is not the less arbitrary because it falls insensi¬ 
bly upon an individual unconscious of its baneful effects. 
Further, although the New Testament forms an inestimable code of morality, 
assuredly the Old Testament was never intended to teach science to this or any 
other age. Moses did not write to impart Physics, and the Bible is not the 
book to which any sensible man would repair for even the rudiments of science. 
Let geologists, if they will, form geological theories from the facts collected by 
themselves and their brethren; no book can so well assist them in their inquiries 
as the Book of Nature—the fountain, the pure, inexhaustible source, which can 
never be consulted without advantage, because it interprets—so far as we can at 
present understand them—the laws of God as applied to Creation. 
Even supposing Mr. Gisborne to have shown the falsity of some of the 
theories propounded by geologists of eminence—and in some cases we think he 
has succeeded—that is no reason why we should not indulge in geological specu¬ 
lation in some degree and in a certain manner. If we make no use of the mass 
of facts collected by observers, we inevitably remain ignorant of some of the most 
interesting and important circumstances. Rash speculators in Geology ar eas mis¬ 
chievous and as numerous as rash speculators in any other science; but rational 
theories, deduced from a sufficient number of well-attested facts, in process of 
time become to be considered undeniable truths; and if, when a mass of testimony 
so convincing and overwhelming that it converts the veriest sceptic that ever 
was born, can be adduced to substantiate what was once considered, perhaps not 
