ow that it possesses either?"

Just as you would discover the truth of any other history, or the
authority of any other law. You do not say, "The tale of the successive
swellings of the Catawba, the Yadkin, and the Dan--three times in a
fortnight, in February, 1781, immediately after the American army had
retreated across these rivers, preventing Cornwallis and the British
forces from crossing till the little handful of weary and famished
patriots had escaped--savors of the marvelous and leans so much toward
the superstition of a special providence, that it must be rejected as
not historical." You inquire if there be sufficient testimony to the
fact. You do not say, "The Revised Statutes present internal evidence of
being a collection of political tracts by various authors, written at
different times, differing also in style, and of various degrees of
merit, many of them contrary to my inmost personal convictions;
therefore I can not acknowledge them as true and valid." You simply ask
if this be a true copy of the laws passed by the legislature and signed
by the governor? Our inquiry about the truth of the history, and the
authority of the laws of the Bible, must be of the same kind--an inquiry
after testimony. Is this Book genuine or a forgery? Is it a true history
or a lying romance? Have we any testimony on the subject?

But it is alleged that the Book contains in itself evidence of having
been written in an unscientific age, and in an unhistorical manner; and,
particularly, that its statements of the creation of the world, and of
mankind, only six thousand years ago, are refuted by the discoveries of
geology; which show us, that the world is many millions of years old,
and that man has been on this world at least one hundred thousand years.
In support of this last assertion, geologists refer to the remains of
the lake dwellings in Switzerland; to skeletons of men found in caves,
with bones of animals now extinct; to flint tools and weapons found in
gravel beds, said to be of remote antiquity; to bones found deep in the
Mississippi bottom; and to the monuments of Egypt.

In replying to this objection, we have first to say that we have
elsewhere, in this volume, shown that the Bible nowhere alleges that
God created the earth only six thousand years ago, but in many places
emphatically affirms the contrary.

In the second place, as to the antiquity of man, the Bible nowhere says,
that Adam was the first human being