age
openly to avow infidelity, save mayhap in some modified rationalistic or
pantheistic form; but in no age did the thing itself exist more
extensively; and the number of individuals is very great who, while they
profess an outward respect for revelation, have no serious quarrel with
the class who, in their blind zeal in its behalf, are in reality
undermining its foundations. Nor are there avowed infidels awanting who
also make common cause with the party so far as to assert that the
results of geologic discovery conflict irreconcilably with the Mosaic
account of creation. But there is yet another class, composed of
respectable and able men, who, from the natural influence of their
acquirements and talents, are perhaps more dangerous allies still, and
whom we find represented by writers such as Mr. Babbage and the Rev.
Baden Powell. It is held by both these accomplished men, that it is in
vain to attempt reconciling the Mosaic writings with the geologic
discoveries: both are intimately acquainted with the evidence adduced by
the geologist, and entertain no doubt whatever regarding what it
establishes; but though in the main friendly to at least the moral
sanctions of the New Testament, both virtually set aside the Mosaic
cosmogony; the one (Mr. Babbage) on the professed grounds that we really
cannot arrive with any certainty at the meaning of that old Hebrew
introduction to the Scriptures in which the genesis of things is
described; and the other (Mr. Powell) on the assumption that that
introduction is but a mere picturesque myth or parable, as little
scientifically true as the parables of our Saviour or of Nathan the seer
are historically so. Now, I cannot think that the anti-geologists are
quite in the place in which they either ought or intend to be when
engaged virtually in making common cause with either of these latter
classes.[35]

Be this as it may, however, it may be not uninstructive, and perhaps not
wholly unamusing, to examine what the claims really are of some of our
later anti-geologists to be recognized as the legitimate and qualified
censors of geologic fact or inference. It will be seen, that in the
passage which I have quoted from Turrettine, the theologian, in three of
his five divisions, restricts himself to the theologic province, and
that when in his own proper sphere even his errors are respectable; but
that in the two concluding divisions he passes into the province of the
natural philosopher,