tice that we have objected to the
views with which we have been dealing solely on scientific grounds. We
have done so from our fixed conviction that it is thus that the truth or
falsehood of such arguments should be tried. We have no sympathy with
those who object to any facts or alleged facts in nature, or to any
inference logically deduced from them, because they believe them to
contradict what it appears to them is taught by Revelation. We think
that all such objections savour of a timidity which is really
inconsistent with a firm and well-instructed faith:--

"Let us for a moment," profoundly remarks Professor Sedgwick, "suppose
that there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions of
geology. How, then, are we to solve them? Not by making a world after
a pattern of our own--not by shifting and shuffling the solid strata
of the earth, and then dealing them out in such a way as to play the
game of an ignorant or dishonest hypothesis--not by shutting our eyes
to facts, or denying the evidence of our senses--but by patient
investigation, carried on in the sincere love of truth, and by
learning to reject every consequence not warranted by physical
evidence."[1]

He who is as sure as he is of his own existence that the God of Truth is
at once the God of Nature and the God of Revelation, cannot believe it
to be possible that His voice in either, rightly understood, can differ,
or deceive His creatures. To oppose facts in the natural world because
they seem to oppose Revelation, or to humour them so as to compel them
to speak its voice, is, he knows, but another form of the ever-ready
feebleminded dishonesty of lying for God, and trying by fraud or
falsehood to do the work of the God of truth. It is with another and a
nobler spirit that the true believer walks amongst the works of nature.
The words graven on the everlasting rocks are the words of God, and they
are graven by His hand. No more can they contradict His Word written in
His book, than could the words of the old covenant graven by His hand on
the stony tables contradict the writings of His hand in the volume of
the new dispensation. There may be to man difficulty in reconciling all
the utterances of the two voices. But what of that? He has learned
already that here he knows only in part, and that the day of reconciling
all apparent contradictions between what must agree is nigh at hand. He
rests his mind in perfect quietness on this a