knowledge is ever changing, because continually expanding. This condition of society precludes religion from giving either a perfect or imperfect disclosure of science. A full revelation of science would be unintelligible to the persons to whom it was immediately addressed, and would supersede, as soon as it was understood, the natural use of our faculties. An imperfect revelation of science could only be fitted to the circumstances of the generation to which it was first communicated, while its partial discoveries would appear like antiquated errors to the succeeding ages, which were ascending to higher eminences of truth. Thus, while human science is in its nature progressive and changing, and revelation is absolute and determined; while the one is intended as the exercise of our faculties, and the other as the assistant of our weakness, it is necessary that each be kept distinct from the other, and that religion should employ the universal and permanent language of natural appearances, and not the mutable phraseology of scientific theories. When religion, therefore, describes the creation, it describes it as it is pictured to the eye of sense, not as it is conceived by the changing systems of philosophy. The expressions of the Bible are thus equally intelligible to men in every period of time, provided they do not perplex themselves by endeavouring to accommodate the terms of Scripture to their own theories. This difference, however, between science and revelation, is perhaps the greatest source of infidel objections. While the rude systems of early astronomy were conformable to the appearance of the heavens, the language of the Bible and of science was nearly the same; but the language of Copernicus, which was conformable to the real, and not the apparent movement of the heavens, sounded harsh to many who looked for philosophie accuracy, instead of universal intelligibility, as the characteristic of the language of divine inspiration. Hence many divines opposed the system of Copernicus, and many infidels adopted it, for the same reason that it was supposed to be inimical to the Bible. How much zeal on both sides was expended in idle discussion, while all will now allow, that the sun may rise and set in popular and Scriptural language, without any question of the fact that he remains for ever in the centre of his system! It is greatly to be lamented that any pretended defenders of Christianity should be ignorant of this popular use of language in the Scriptures; it is they who give its venom to the opposition of infidelity. The Bible may easily be defended from the open attacks of its enemies, but not so easily from the fallacious support of its mistaken friends. It would be well that all divines had upon similar subjects the observation of Calvin "Moses populariter ever present with them: - scripsit, nos potius respexit quam sidera." Geology, in our times, has revived the same disputes that astronomy excited in former times, and from the same cause. Geology has discovered new worlds upon earth, as astronomy revealed new worlds beyond our earth, and the bounds of time are as much enlarged by geology as the bounds of space were by astronomy. Many of the facts of geology were brought forward by men who expected by them to have overturned the authority of Moses; and several writers who came forward, as they would have it, in favour of revelation, instead of showing that these facts are not incompatible with the inspiration of Genesis, have thought it the easiest method boldly to deny them. A lover of truth will join neither party. Without doubting the facts of geology, he will still less doubt the evidences of Christianity. Finding evidence for both, he will admit the truth of both. If they should appear incompatible with each other, he will attribute that appearance to the scantiness of his information; he will not reject either the one or the other on that account, but will earnestly seek and patiently wait for additional information, certain in his own mind that truth must ever be harmonious, and at unity with itself. In this case, however, the difficulty is not great; the same explanation which served to reconcile the account of Moses with the philosophy of Copernicus, will equally reconcile it with the discoveries of geology. The first verse of Genesis which, as we have before observed, carries along with it the stamp of its own divine origin, refers to the original creation of the heavens and the earth. The second verse refers to a subsequent state of chaos and disorder, without marking the interval, or the occurrences which had taken place between the ruined state of the earth and the first creation of the world. Thus an interval in time is passed over unnoticed, as an interval in space is disregarded in the mention made by Moses of the stars. The new formation of the earth is alone insisted upon, and its preparation for the abode of man. But we may observe in the new formation of the present earth a striking analogy to what geology unfolds respecting former worlds, and we see that objections only arise from the imperfection of our knowledge, and disappear on its progressive advancement; and that the difficulties which arise from a narrow view of things are changed into arguments and proofs, whenever information becomes more complete, and whenever our survey is extended upon all sides. XIV. While the proofs for Christianity are ever the same, admitting of no change, but of a perpetual addition, the objections of infidels are ever varying. The first writings against Christianity are totally different from those of later authors. The positions of Celsus and Porphyry are no longer tenable in our days, while the philosophy assumed by later infidels, and their mode of reasoning, would have been treated with contempt by the earlier antagonists of Christianity; but it is the less surprising that infidels should differ from each other, since they differ no less from themselves. The opinions which they maintain at one moment they reject the next. They extol in one passage the authority of reason, and its power to judge in all things that pertain either to this world or to the next; in another sentence or work they depreciate its value as much below its real worth as they formerly exalted it, and pronounce it totally incapable of ever reaching the sure discovery of truth. Sometimes they plead with apparent zeal for the being of a God, and contend that his existence is so clearly discernible that a man must be deprived of reason if he does not discern the legible traces of a Deity in the works of creation; shortly afterwards they are in utter doubt and darkness, unable to pronounce whether a Deity exists or not; then they are equally confident on the opposite side that the notion of a Deity is a mere chimera, for which no resemblance exists in the reality of things. Now, they contend for the eternal and unchangeable obligations of morality, and now they maintain that morality is only a useful fiction, invented for the benefit of society, and has no other existence than that it |