Our readers will not have failed to notice 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 assurance, and rejoices in the gift of light without a misgiving as to what it may discover:—­

“A man of deep thought and great practical wisdom,” says Sedgwick,[2] “one whose piety and benevolence have for many years been shining before the world, and of whose sincerity no scoffer (of whatever school) will dare to start a doubt, recorded his opinion in the great assembly of the men of science who during the past year were gathered from every corner of the Empire within