APPENDIX, N° I.

THAT THE MOSAIC HISTORY IS NOT INCONSISTENT WITH GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIes.

Ir may be said, that an argument founded

on the internal evidence of the Mosaic history, cannot be complete without some notice, or convincing without some refutation, or attempt at refutation, of the principal objections which have been urged against it. But if the positive evidence of the whole is incontrovertibly strong, it cannot be invalidated by occasional difficulties respecting the minuter details of the history, still less by hypothetical difficulties, of which nature are those usually alleged against the Pentateuch. The object of this Treatise certainly does not admit of a particular examination of the various attacks which have been aimed, from time to time, against specific portions of the Mosaic law, and of the history appended to it: and even if such an examination would not lead me too far from my main subject,

the inquiry might well seem superfluous : the most fertile ingenuity, or the bitterest acrimony, can scarcely invent an allegation which has not been refuted a hundred times already; and the valuable work of Dr. Graves has recently brought the answers again to public notice.

I shall, therefore, confine this Appendix to the brief consideration of two subjects which are sometimes popularly urged as affecting the truth of the Hebrew cosmogony. The first of these is its supposed inconsistency with recent geological discoveries. This vague idea (for it is little more) has been in some measure cherished by a certain jealousy of geological theories on the part of some friends of Revelation: a jealousy, however, which may well be excused, since it arose from an apparent tendency, on the other side, to attribute the various catastrophes or revolutions, probable or recorded, which can be traced in our globe, to a sort of mechanical agency of its own; in other words, to natural causes arising out of its constitution. The effect of such a philosophy is, of course, to keep out of sight the interfer

ence of the Creator; and would be more consistent in the advocates of the eternity of the world, than in those who admit the fact of its creation by an Intelligent Power.

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In order to form any judgment upon this question, we must begin by distinguishing what is mere theory from what is actual discovery. No doubt there have been speculations on the formation, appearances, and revolutions of the earth, which are either irreconcilable with any fair interpretation of the Mosaic history, or have left it altogether out of the question. These, however, are not facts, but hypotheses: framed in general with the intention of explaining some one of the numerous phænomena of the globe, which appeared peculiarly prominent in the view of the author, and enforced with little consideration of the rest. These theories have, therefore, fallen to the ground successively, as legitimate science advanced.

Next to the consideration as to what is ascertained in geology, must follow the inquiry as to what is declared on the face of the history. The account of the creation

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given by Moses, does not profess to furnish any thing like a systematic or elaborate detail of the mode in which the materials of the earth were brought to their actual form and situation. The warmest lover of geology would scarcely expect to find this in the record; the very terms in which such an account could be expressed requiring an advanced state of science; and the information, when conveyed, being altogether unprofitable as to those uses which are the proper objects of Revelation. To know his connexion with the Creator and moral Governor of the world, is necessary to the virtue and happiness of man. To investigate the regular laws to which the created world conforms, or the process by which it was reduced to that obedience, is a delightful exercise of the reason he possesses; but is totally unconnected with those higher interests which a revelation has in view.

But any curious information as to the structure of the earth ought still less to be expected, by any one acquainted with the general character of the Mosaic records. There is nothing in them either to gratify

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the curiosity, or repress the researches of mankind, when brought, in the progress of cultivation, to calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, or speculate on the formation of the globe. The expressions of Moses are evidently accommodated to the first and familiar notions derived from the sensible appearances of the earth and heavens and the absurdity of supposing, that the literal interpretation of terms in Scripture ought to interfere with the advancement of philosophical inquiry, would have been as generally forgotten as renounced, if the oppressors of Galileo had not found a place in history. The concessions, if they may be so called, of the believers in Revelation on this point, have been amply remunerated by the sublime discoveries as to the prospective wisdom of the Creator, which have been gradually unfolded by the progressive improvements in astronomical knowledge. We may trust with the same confidence as to any future results from geology, if that science should ever find its Newton, and break through the various obstacles peculiar to that study, which have hitherto precluded any general