ven to us as revelations of
scientific truth, seeing that a single scientific truth they never yet
revealed, and the geologist that it must be in vain to seek in science
those truths which lead to salvation, seeing that in science these
truths were never yet found, there would be little danger even of
difference among them, and none of collision. Nay, there is, I doubt
not, a time coming in which the Butlers and Chalmerses of the future
will be content to recognize the geologic field as that of their richest
and most pregnant analogies. It is with the history of the pre-Adamic
ages that geology sets itself to deal; and by carefully conning the
ancient characters graven in the rocks, and by deciphering the strange
inscriptions which they compose, it greatly extends the record of God's
doings upon the earth. And what more natural to expect, or rational to
hold, than that the Unchangeable One should have wrought in all time
after one general type and pattern, or than that we may seek, in the
hope of finding, meet correspondences and striking analogies between his
revealed workings during the human period, and his previous workings of
old during the geologic periods,--correspondences and analogies suited
to establish the identity of the worker, and, of course, from that
identity to demonstrate the authenticity of the revelation? Permit me to
bring out, in conclusion, what I have often thought on this subject, but
have not been able so tersely to express, in a brief quotation from one
of the most instructive works of the present age, the "Method of the
Divine Government," by the Rev. Dr. M'Cosh:--"Science has a foundation,"
says this solid thinker and accomplished writer, "and so has religion.
Let them unite their foundations, and the basis will be broader, and
they will be two compartments of one great fabric reared to the glory of
God. Let the one be the outer and the other the inner court. In the one
let all look, and admire, and adore; and in the other let those who have
faith kneel, and pray, and praise. Let the one be the sanctuary where
human learning may present its richest incense as an offering to God,
and the other, the holiest of all, separated from it by a veil now rent
in twain, and in which, on a blood-sprinkled mercy seat, we pour out the
love of a reconciled heart, and hear the oracles of the living God."

LECTURE SEVENTH.

THE NOACHIAN DELUGE.

PART I.

There are events so striking in themselves