emporary,
like the darkness described by Pliny as occasioned by a cloud of
volcanic ashes; and so, altogether inadequate to meet the demands of a
hypothesis such as that of Dr. Smith. And yet further, I am disposed, I
must add, to look for a broader and more general meaning in that grand
description of the creation of all things with which the Divine record
so appropriately opens, than I could recognize it as forming, were I
assured it referred to but one of many existing creations,--a creation
restricted to mayhap a few hundred square miles of country, and to
mayhap a few scores of animals and plants. What, then, is the scheme of
reconciliation which I would venture to propound?

Let me first remark, in reply, that I come before you this evening, not
as a philologist, but simply as a student of geological fact, who,
believing his Bible, believes also, that though theologians have at
various times striven hard to pledge it to false science, geographical,
astronomical, and geological, it has been pledged by its Divine Author
to no falsehood whatever. I occupy exactly the position now, with
respect to geology, that the mere Christian geographer would have
occupied with respect to geography in the days of those doctors of
Salamanca who deemed it unscriptural to hold with Columbus that the
world is round,--not flat; or exactly the position which the mere
Christian astronomer would have occupied with respect to astronomy in
the days of that Francis Turrettine who deemed it unscriptural to hold
with Newton and Galileo, that it is the earth which moves in the
heavens, and the sun which stands still. The mere geographer or
astronomer might have been wholly unable to discuss with Turrettine or
the doctors the niceties of Chaldaic punctuation, or the various
meanings of the Hebrew verbs. But this much, notwithstanding, he would
be perfectly qualified to say:--However great your skill as linguists,
your reading of what you term the scriptural geography or scriptural
astronomy must of necessity be a false reading, seeing that it commits
Scripture to what, in my character as a geographer or astronomer, I know
to be a monstrously false geography or astronomy. Premising, then, that
I make no pretensions to even the slightest skill in philology, I remark
further, that it has been held by accomplished philologists, that the
days of the Mosaic creation may be regarded, without doing violence to
the genius of the Hebrew language, as succe