and its inhabitants. To students of
the Bible it will afford the means of determining the precise import
of the biblical references to creation, and of their relation to what
is known from other sources. To geologists and biologists it is
intended to give some intelligible explanation of the connection of
the doctrines of revealed religion with the results of their
respective sciences.

A still higher end to which the author would gladly contribute is that
of aiding thoughtful men perplexed with the apparent antagonisms of
science and religion, and of indicating how they may best harmonize
our great and growing knowledge of nature with our old and cherished
beliefs as to the origin and destiny of man.

In aiming at these results, it has not been thought necessary to
assume a controversial attitude or to stand on the defensive, either
with regard to religion or science, but rather to attempt to arrive at
broad and comprehensive views which may exhibit those higher harmonies
of the spiritual and the natural which they derive from their common
Author, and which reach beyond the petty difficulties arising from
narrow or imperfect views of either or both. Such an aim is too high
to be fully attained, but in so far as it can be reached we may hope
to rescue science from a dry and barren infidelity, and religion from
mere fruitless sentiment or enfeebling superstition.

Since the publication of "Archaia," the subject of which it treats has
passed through several phases, but the author has seen no reason to
abandon in the least degree the principles of interpretation on which
he then insisted, and he takes a hopeful view as to their ultimate
prevalence. It is true that the wide acceptance of hypotheses of
"evolution" has led to a more decided antagonism than heretofore
between some of the utterances of scientific men and the religious
ideas of mankind, and to a contemptuous disregard of revealed religion
in the more shallow literature of the time; but, on the other hand, a
barrier of scientific fact and induction has been slowly rising to
stem this current of crude and rash hypothesis. Of this nature are the
great discoveries as to the physical constitution and probable origin
of the universe, the doctrine of the correlation and conservation of
forces, the new estimates of the age of the earth, the overthrow of
the doctrine of spontaneous generation, the high bodily and mental
type of the earliest known men, the light which