LECT. I.

The error and

That such a state of opinion is injurious to the

danger of re- cause of Christianity, can admit of no doubt. It

presenting

variance with

religion.

science as at is a fearful thing to array science and religion against each other; for, however unnatural and unjust this antagonist position certainly is, the fact of its existence is pregnant with evil on both sides. Men who have well studied the questions at issue, and who know the evidence of those geological facts to which such strong exception is taken, cannot by any possibility be brought to

maintain, that a minute acquaintance with the principles of Surgery and Morbid Anatomy was requisite, before a man was qualified to say whether a leg of mutton was tainted, and ought to be sent from the table; or that an honest countryman was unfit to sit in the jury-box, because he was ignorant of the English Law-Reports, or Coke upon Lyttleton. In the controversy between geologists and the Sacred Scriptures, nothing more is required but an acquaintance with the common laws of evidence, and a knowledge of the distinction between Divine and human testimony." (Reflections on Geology, suggested by the Perusal of Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise; with Remarks on a Letter by J. P. S. on the Study of Geology: by the Rev. J. Mellor Brown, B.A. &c. p. 52.) This Letter will be reprinted in the Appendix; so that the reader may see whether Mr. Brown has not, undesignedly I am willing to believe, exaggerated the description of prerequisites to Geological study. It is hardly needful to remind him that comparisons are not arguments; and that, when they are intended to be illustrations, they ought to be just. Upon his first comparison I make no remark, for its propriety is equal to its elegance but, to invest his second with any semblance of analogy, he ought to have made his "honest countryman" very ill informed upon the facts connected with the cause which he was called to try, yet imagining himself to know all about it, and determined to shut his ears against the evidence.

BABBAGE'S PARALLEL.

13

tions of the

renounce their convictions. Were they treated _LECT. I. as Galileo was, were they, like him, unwilling to be the martyrs of conscience, were they to profess a change of sentiment which they could not feel; they would act the part of hypocrites. The The convicnature of the impression which is actually made best informupon such minds, may be judged of from the language of a mathematician and philosopher of the highest order, distinguished by the originality and independence of his mind, and a professed friend of Christianity.

"Let us consider what would be the conclusion of any reasonable being in a parallel case. Let us imagine a manuscript written three thousand years ago, and professing to be a revelation from the Deity, in which it was stated that the colour of the paper of the very book now in the reader's hands is black, and that the colour of the ink in the characters which he is now reading is white. With that reasonable doubt of his own individual faculties which would become the inquirer into the truth of a statement said to be derived from so high an origin, he would ask of all those around him, whether to their senses the paper appeared to be black and the ink to be white. If he found the senses of other individuals agree with his own, then he would undoubtedly pronounce the alleged revelation a forgery, and those who propounded it to be either deceived or deceivers. He would rightly impute the attempted deceit to moral turpitude, to gross ignorance, or to interested motives in the supporters of it; but he certainly would not commit the impiety of supposing the Deity to have wrought a miraculous change upon the senses of our whole species, and then to demand their belief in a fact directly opposed to those senses; thus

ed.

LECT. 1. throwing doubt upon every conclusion of reason in regard to external objects; and, amongst others, upon the very evidence by which the authenticity of that very questionable manuscript was itself supported, and even upon the fact of its existence when before their eyes." *

Should any of those who honour me with their attention, be not at all, or only as the result of cursory reading, acquainted with geological science, they are intreated to consider the case before them very seriously. Here is a mind of high order, versed in philosophical knowledge, whose acquirements in the exact sciences, their highest branches, and their most astonishing applications are acknowledged with admiration through the world; who has deeply studied the nature and rules of evidence; and who is not an enemy, but a professed friend to Revealed Religion he marches up to the front of the imagined discrepance,—and we see the strength of his conviction. He is indeed satisfied, for himself, that Geology and Revelation are not at variance; and his method of resolving the difficulty will be mentioned in a future lecture. But, we may ask in the mean time, What is the conclusion which the uninstructed observer ought in fairness to draw? Can he satisfy himself with the assertion, that the most eminent geologists are, in general, secret or open infidels; that their doctrines upon the constitution and antiquity of the

* Mr. Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise; pp. 69, 70.

UPON THIS.

15

earth are fond fancies, changeable as the wind, LECT. I. or irreligious hypotheses of men "ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth;" and that he runs no risk of being mistaken, or of becoming the instrument of moral injury to others, perhaps his own children, by making it an article of religion to maintain that all dependent nature came from the creative power of the Supreme Being, only about six thousand years ago? Will he say that all solicitude upon the question may be safely dismissed, and that he gains firm footing for his faith on this subject by reposing upon an interpretation of the Mosaic records, which though extensively received, has been seriously doubted of by sound expositors in ancient and in modern times, and by some absolutely disallowed: yea, independently of geological knowledge?

An inquiry thus opens before us which cannot but appear, to every reflecting person, to be of the first importance. “RELIGION is the highest style of man." But religion, the internal and practical principle of all piety, virtue, and morality, rests upon Theology. And what is theology, but the knowledge of that which is in itself true and in its relations to us infinitely important, concerning the SUPREME BEING, his perfections and works and purposes, the duty which we owe to him, and the hopes which we are permitted to entertain of the greatest blessings by his bestowment?

LECT. I.

The capacity and the means of knowledge, gifts of God.

Positive revelation.

We have the most satisfactory proofs, that this all-perfect Being has not only given us mental faculties, by which we are capable of making ever progressive improvement in the study of the dependent universe of which we are a part, and in which so bright rays shine forth of his "eternal power and godhead;" but that he has further dignified our present condition of existence, by the communication of positive information concerning our relations to himself and to each other, and the results of those relations in the eternal state to which we are hastening.

Christianity rests upon the explicit acknowledgment of a succession of such communications,. commencing with the earliest epoch of the human history, and growing in comprehension and clearness, till the series is completed in the doctrine of Jesus "the Saviour of the world." Of these communications we have written monuments, proved to be genuine and authentic; presenting the truths, laws, promises, warnings, and threatenings, of the Divine Government; and containing the history of the persons and the circumstances connected with those successive revelations. The earlier of those records are far more ancient than any monuments in alphabetical writing known to exist: and the most early of them affirm the fact of both the universal creation of the world, and the preparation and adaptation of that part of it which was designed to be the habitation of man.