condolence than of congratulation. And though, of course, men should
pursue the truth simply for its own sake, and independently either of
the consequences which it may be found to involve, or of the company
with which it may bring them acquainted, the anti-geologists might be
worse employed than in scanning the character and aims of the
associates with whom they virtually league themselves when they declare
war against the Christian geologist.

There are three different parties in the field, either directly opposed,
or at least little friendly, to the men who honestly attempt reconciling
the Mosaic with the geologic record. First, there are the
anti-geologists,--men who hold that geological questions are to be
settled now as the Franciscans contemporary with Galileo held that
astronomical questions were to be settled in the seventeenth century, or
as the doctors of Salamanca contemporary with Columbus held that
geographic questions were to be settled in the fifteenth. And _they_
believe that geology, as interpreted by the geologists, is entirely
false, because, as they think, irreconcilable with Scripture; further,
that our planet had no existence some seven or eight thousand years
ago,--that the apparent antiquity of the various sedimentary systems and
organic groups of the earth's crust is wholly illusive,--and that the
very oldest of them cannot be more than a few days older than the human
period. In fine, just as it was held two centuries ago by Turrettine and
the Franciscans, that the Bible as interpreted by _them_ was the only
legitimate authority in astronomic questions, so this class now hold
that the Bible as interpreted by _them_ is the only legitimate authority
in geologic questions; and further, that the Bible being, as they
contend, wholly opposed to the deductions of the geologist, these
deductions must of necessity be erroneous. Next, there is a class, more
largely represented in society than in literature, who, looking at the
general bearings of the question, the character and standing of the
geologists, and the sublime nature of their discoveries, believe that
geology ranks as certainly among the sciences as astronomy itself; but
who, little in earnest in their religion, are quite ready enough, when
they find theologians asserting the irreconcilability of the geologic
doctrines with those of Scripture, to believe them; nay, not only so,
but to repeat the assertion. It is not fashionable in the present