of evangelical, unscientific clergymen of his day. They held that the writings of Moses fixed the antiquity of the globe as surely as they fixed anything else. And it required no little boldness in the lecturer to announce a doctrine which was likely to raise about his ears the hue and cry of heresy. But fortunately for the rising Boanerges of the Scottish pulpit, whatever questions might arise in philology and criticism as to the meaning of the writings of Moses, the evidence adduced in behalf of the fact of the earth's antiquity was of such a nature that it could not be resisted, and he not only escaped a prosecution for heresy, but lived to see the doctrine he had broached almost universally accepted by the religious world.

If now some divine of acknowledged power and position in any branch of the Christian Church were to put forth the statement that 'the writings of Moses do not fix the antiquity of man,' he would startle the ear of orthodoxy quite as much, but no more than did Chalmers in the early years of the present century. And if he would fare more hardly than the Scottish divine, and fall under the ban of church censure, which is not unlikely, it would be because the evidence for the fact is still inchoate and resistible by the force of established opinion. But it is quite within the range of possible things that before the close of the present century two things may happen: first, that the evidence for a high antiquity of the human race may accumulate to such an extent as to carry with it involuntarily the consent of mankind; and second, that the sacred writings may be found to adjust themselves as easily to this new finding in the sphere of induction, as they have already done, in the general mind of the Church, to the doctrine of the great age of the earth. The two statements are indeed very much akin in several respects. They both traverse the accepted meaning of the sacred writings at the time of their announcement. Both are considered, when first promulged, as irreconcilable with the plain teaching and consequent inspiration of the Scriptures. Both rest solely, as to their evidence, in the sphere of inductive science, and are determinable wholly by the finding of facts accumulated and compared by the processes of inductive reasoning. And both, if thus established, are destined to be accepted by the general mind of the age, without actual harm to the real interests of civilization and religion. No fact, which is a fact and not an illusion, can do harm to any of the vital interests of mankind. No truth can stand in hopeless antagonism to any other truth. To suppose otherwise would be to resolve the moral government of God into a hopeless enigma, or enthrone a perpetual and hostile dualism, resigning the universe to the rival and contending sway of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Before proceeding to the merits of Sir Charles Lyell's discussion, we wish to glance at some preliminary matters touching the great debate now pending between science and theology. We wish to review the posture and temper of the parties; and particularly to refer to the tone and spirit of the religious press and the pulpit, respecting the alleged discoveries and claims of science, and their bearing upon the religious opinion of the time.

Moreover, in passing, the present writer begs permission to say that he speaks from the orthodox side of this question; he hails from the orthodox camp; he wears the clerical vesture of the Scottish worthies; and is affiliated theologically with Knox and Chalmers, with Edwards and Alexander, with the New York Observer and the Princeton Review. This much we beg to say, that what follows in these pages may be fully understood.

No one who has been attending to the subject with any degree of interest can have failed to observe that science, in her investigations upon the grand and momentous themes which have absorbed her attention in these latter years, has exhibited, and does still exhibit, a steady and well-defined purpose, and has pursued it with a singularly calm, sober, unimpassioned, yet resolute temper. Its posture is firm, steady, self-poised, conscious of rectitude, and anticipative of veritable and valuable results. Its spirit, though eager, is quiet; though enthusiastic, is cautious; though ardent, is sceptical; though flushed with success, is trained to the discipline of disappointment. Its object is to interrogate nature. It stands at the shrine and awaits the response of the oracle. It would fain interpret and make intelligible the wondrous hieroglyphics of this universe, and specially the mystic characters traced by the long-revolving ages upon the stony tablets of this planet Earth. It has in the first instance no creed to support, no dogmas to verify, no meaning to foist upon nature; its sole and single query is, What does nature teach? What is fact? What is truth? What has occurred in the past annals of this planet? What is the actual and true history of its bygone ages, and of the dwellers therein? These are its questions, addressed to nature by such methods as experience has taught will reach her ear, and it does not hesitate to take nature's answer. It does not shrink, and quake, and grow pale lest the response should overturn some ancient notion. It does not dread to hear the response, lest morals or religion should be thereby imperilled. It boldly and resolutely takes the teaching of nature, whatever it may be. Its conviction is that truth never can be anything else than truth; that fact can never be anything else than fact; and that no two truths or two facts in God's universe can be in hopeless and irreconcilable contradiction.

In this spirit the genuine sons of science have exhibited, what has seemed to some, a heartless indifference whether their discoveries or theories harmonized with the Scriptures or not, or affected the received opinions of Christendom on subjects pertaining to religion or morals. They have been sublimely unconcerned as to results in any such direction. They have investigated, examined, compared, collated, with long-continued and patient toil, to gather from the buried past the actual story of its departed cycles; they have not been troubled lest they should impinge on the creeds of the religious world, or compel important modifications in the lectures of learned Professors. This was no care of theirs. They discovered facts, they did not make them.

Now with all due respect for the opinions and feelings of religious people, we hesitate not to affirm that this spirit is the only true one in scientific men. Conceding, as we must, the supremacy of facts in their own sphere, and granting that, as mundane and human affairs now stand, the evidence of the senses, purged from fraud and illusion, must be held to be conclusive, we cheerfully award to scientific men the largest liberty to pursue their inquiries in matters of fact, utterly regardless of the havoc which may be thereby wrought among the traditional, beliefs of men. In no other way can science be true to herself. She is the child of induction. She can acknowledge no authority but what has been enthroned by inductive reasoning; and were she to adjust her conclusions, and garble her facts, to suit the faiths, beliefs, prejudices, or traditions of men, she would thereby falsify her inmost life, and stultify herself before the world. And in this connection we may premise that we regard as worthy of all commendation the straightforward and unembarrassed manner in which Sir Charles Lyell pursues his inquiries into the geological evidences of the antiquity of man. He could not have been unaware that he was striking a ponderous blow at one of the main traditions of Christendom; nay, that if successful in establishing his conclusions, he must revolutionize, to a large extent, the religious thinking of the civilization amid which he moves; and yet he moves steadily and quietly forward, calm as Marius amid the ruins of