my the fact of
authorship, just as Turrettine had failed in finding in all Scripture
the fact of astronomic construction. And here lies, I am inclined to
think, the true line between revelation and science,--a line drawn of
old with a God-derived precision, which can be rightly appreciated
neither by mere theologians like Turrettine, nor by mere men of science
like La Place, but which is notwithstanding fraught with an evidence
direct in its bearing on the truth of Scripture. That great fact, moral
in its influence, of the authorship of the heavens and earth, which the
science of La Place failed of itself to discover, and which was equally
unknown to the ancient philosophers, God has revealed. It is "through
faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God, so
that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
And, on the other hand, the great truths, physical in their bearing, to
the discovery of which science is fully competent, God did not reveal,
but left them to be developed piecemeal by the unassisted human
faculties. And that ability of nicely drawing the line between the two
classes of truths in a very remote age of the world, which we find
manifested in the oldest of the Scriptural books, I must regard as an
ability which could have been derived only through inspiration, and from
God alone.

Let us, however, pursue our argument. Questions of geography, such as
those entertained by the theologians of Salamanca, must be tested, we
conclude, not by a revelation never intended by its Divine Author to
teach geography, but by the findings of geographic science. Questions in
astronomy, such as those which Turrettine and the opponents of Galileo
entertained, must be tried, we hold, not by a revelation never intended
to teach astronomy, but by the findings of astronomic science. But how
deal, I next ask, with the theologian who holds that geologic fact has
been revealed to him? Geology is as thoroughly a physical science as
either geography or astronomy. Its facts are equally capable of being
educed and established by the unassisted human intellect. It seems quite
as unlikely that it should have been made a special subject of
revelation, in its character as a science, as either of these sciences;
or that the line so nicely maintained with respect to _them_ should have
been transgressed with regard to _it_. In short, in order satisfactorily
to answer our query, it seems but necessary s