science of astronomy, but they equally apply to all the present and all the future discoveries of geology. They are pregnant with anticipation and foresight. They foreclose all possible difficulty from any amount of future discoveries. It seems to us that one may venture to say that no future discovery in astronomy, unless it should prove a flat contradiction to some essential postulate in revelation, can ever meet an objection which is not obviated in these remarks. The great force of Calvin consists in his knowing when to stop. He is not too articulate for his future strength. He takes eternal ground, never to be abandoned until the word of God perishes.

Now let us copy him in meeting the objection of another science. It is equally wise to say that Moses did not intend to teach geology any more than astronomy. There is as little positive in the Bible of one of these sciences as of the other; and we may say in both cases: "Si de rebus vulgo ignotis loquutus foret, causari poterant idiotae altiora haec esse captu suo."

Now it seems to me that most of our pious geologists transcend this safe line. They are not governed by Calvin's caution. They attempt to extort from science a positive testimony to revelation, which science by no means fairly gives; and, secondly, they attempt to extort from revelation an accommodation to science which a philologist never would have found. There is a double violence done in each department, and the two rows of trees, forced by violence over our path, form only an ominous and transient shade. When you have once said that Moses ignores every particle of the scientific, you ought not to turn round and magnify every accidental resemblance into a scientific indication.

Let us verify these general remarks. Thus, when it is said that the Bible represents the creation as the special result of Jehovah's efficiency, to the exclusion of every other cause, and yet that God employs instrumentalities in the work of creation; that the creation was a gradual work; the emergency of the land from the water before the crea

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tion of animals and plants; that the earth had an early revolution on its axis in twenty-four hours, all this may seem obvious to the sharpened eye of the learned reconciler, but we fear a plain reader (Calvin's idiotae) would complain, that these things were altiora esse captu suo; that they had never found them either in science or the Bible. They present to the common mind too forced a conformity, and are far from being necessary to the satisfaction of our science or our faith. We had better stop sooner.

Some of the interpretations of the Bible are equally defective: "Ever since I began to read the Mosaic account," says Dr. Hitchcock, "with reference to geology more than forty years ago, two facts have been more and more strongly impressed on my mind in respect to the days. One is, that Moses understood them, and meant his hearers to understand them, as literal days. The other is, that they are in reality, or stand for the representatives of, something quite different. The earth's submergency during the first day and emergence on the third, if we can judge from geological changes of analogous character, could have been no twentyfour or even seventy-two hours process, but rather requiring untold ages. So geology teaches us that all the great classes of plants were introduced only after immense intervals, whereas Moses brings them all in upon a single day." Again, "I cannot believe that any man of unbiased judg ment can read the account, and not feel that Moses is writing a literal history. The objects about which he writes are all of them real existences, which were before him and he seems to be giving an account of their creation in the simplest possible language. Now to be told, that he understood the word day to be a period of indefinite length, and meant his readers so to understand it, seems so discrepant to the whole character of the record, that it greatly troubles an honest inquirer. But the symbolic theory allows us to understand the account literally; at least as much so as many prophecies. That is, we may take the terms in a lit

1 See Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1860, p. 688.

eral sense until science shows us that they are insufficient, and then we may be allowed to expand them as far as is necessary. It may be doubtful whether Moses had any idea. beyond the literal sense, just as was probably sometimes the case with the prophets. Yet subsequent discoveries make a wide expansion of the term day. Moreover by regarding the account as a literal one, and the days natural ones, the sanction of the Sabbath is preserved in all its force to those unacquainted with geology, and retained symbolically to those acquainted with it." Now we yield to no man in veneration for the world-wide reputation of this writer; we have the highest conviction of his piety and good intentions towards revelation; and we have no thought of writing him a letter, exhorting him to save his ruined and ruining soul by a retraction of his impious mistakes. But we cannot refrain from asking, how much he gains in his harmonizing scheme by substituting an emblematic in the place of a literal meaning? Has he considered? Has he looked ahead? Does he not know, that by adopting such an expedient he sanctions a general principle. Suppose I march out among my people and meet a universalist, and press him with the passage in Matthew xxv. 46. "These shall go away into eternal punishment." "Why yes," he says "I have no doubt the word eternal means never-ending; and that it is as strong when applied to the pains of hell as the joys of heaven; I have no doubt our Saviour meant so, and meant that we should understand it so; but then I have got an emblem here, which comes in to alter the whole signification. The words eternal punishment present a most expressive emblem of the sorrows of life, which certainly never end till life ends; and, as it is utterly impossible that a benevolent Deity should ever make any of his creatures forever miserable (geology can present no exigency greater than this), I must conclude that eternal punishment is only a sad emblem of the protracted suffering of our

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1 Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1860, p. 694.

present life; and in this interpretation I am sanctioned by the example of some of our most pious and learned men.

It is well remarked by Colridge, that "in arguing with infidels or the weak in faith, it is the part of religious prudence, no less than of religious morality to avoid whatever looks like an evasion. To retain the literal sense, whereever the harmony of scripture permits and reason does not forbid, is ever the honester, and, nine times in ten, the more rational and pregnant interpretation. The contrary plan is an easy and approved way of getting rid of a difficulty; but nine times in ten a bad way of solving it." Now let this writer imagine himself in the presence of three classes of people; infidel geologists, mere biblical philologers, and plain Christians (Calvin's idiotae), will not his canon of interpretation (though not so to him) to them to all of them, appear like an evasion? Would they not say, he would not have thought of it if not pressed with a difficulty; and still worse, if they should become his converts and adopt his rule, will they not thrust in his emblems in some literal spot where he would be horrified to find them. The wise builders in the temple of orthodoxy should remember, they seldom lay a stone but another builder must lay another stone over it. Let us remember the old proverb, ideiv Tò TéλOS.

One is surprised often at the great rapture which the experti in a science feel at some alleged similitude, seeming very remote to every other man. The idea that pre-Adamite perished races of animals, fishes, etc., that this has anything to do with the gospel, as is alleged by the eloquent author of the "Cross in Nature," is surely a conviction which will not strike every mind as forcibly and beautifully as it does his own; for only think what it demands of us: First, that the signification came ages and ages before the thing signified; the symbol is not the shadow of the idea, but the idea is the shadow of the symbol. Secondly, the suffering of these primitive creatures, though it prefigures

1 Aids to Reflection, Intro. Aph. XIV.

sin, is not properly a punishment of sin. Thirdly, sufferings not penal in beings not sinful, are an appropriate emblem of beings that will have penal sufferings because they are sinful. Fourthly, this strange signal stood for ages for nobody that could possibly understand it. Fifthly, when God made the world and gave man a revelation he preserved a mysterious silence as to this symbol. Sixthly, six thousand years roll away, and all the evidences of this signification lie buried up in the depths of the earth; and, lastly, in modern times, when by our learned excavations we have brought the proofs to light, the resemblances are so remote that not one man in ten can trace them, even when they are elaborately pointed out by the most scientific finger; for we most solemnly declare, we cannot see how an effect should go. before its cause; how sin should blast creation millions of years before it existed; how a signal should be held out so long before any could understand it; and finally, when men do come on the earth to admire this harmony, how they can see any harmony between the natural sufferings of creatures not sinful and the lost condition of mankind to be released by Jesus Christ; the sufferings are different, the beings are different, and the one happens millions of years before the other is known; and what analogy can bind them together?

It is my turn if I see a spider dart on a fly, and

"The fluttering wing

And shriller sound declare extreme distress,

And ask the helping, hospitable hand;

I may think of Satan seizing a miserable soul, and I may use it as a striking comparison; but it is quite another thing to say such was the intention of nature when flies and spiders were made; and still. more remote is it to imagine that a groaning creation gives forth didactic sounds when there is no being to hear them. Besides, what do the other things in the primitive world signify: the granite rocks, the slates, the ferns, the coals, the molluscs, the trilobites? How VOL. XXI. No. 81.

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