tead of Divine truth, what is neither sense nor fact.
And on this very general, and certainly most perilous ground, he goes on
to argue, unsupported by a single ancient manuscript, and solely on what
he terms internal evidence, that the verses in Genesis which conflict
with his hypothesis must be regarded as mere idle glosses, ignorantly or
surreptitiously introduced into the text by the ancient copyists. "In
the second chapter of Genesis," we find him saying, "_there appears an
internal critical evidence_ of an insertion of the 11th, 12th, 13th, and
14th verses, similar to that of the 4th verse of the 5th chapter of St.
John, and constituting, in a similar manner, a _parenthesis_
intersecting the thread of the narrative, and introduced solely for a
similar purpose of illustration. It does not wear the character of the
simple narrative in which it appears, but _of the surcharge of the gloss
or note of a later age, founded upon the fanciful traditions then
prevailing with respect to the situation of the ancient Paradise_." This
certainly is cutting the knot; and, if erected into a precedent by the
geologist, would no doubt greatly facilitate the labor of
reconciliation. It would, however, be perilous work for _him_. "A wolf,"
says Plutarch, "peeping into a hut where a company of shepherds were
assembled, saw them regaling themselves with a joint of mutton. 'Ye
gods!' he exclaimed, 'what a clamor these men would have raised if they
had caught _me_ at such a banquet.'" I need scarcely add, that the
hypothesis in whose behalf Scripture is thus divested of its authority,
and recklessly cast aside, is entirely a worthless one; and that the
various continents of the globe, instead of all dating from one period
little more than four thousand years back, are of very various
ages,--some of them comparatively modern, though absolutely old in
relation to human history; and some of so hoar an antiquity, that the
term since man appeared upon earth might be employed as a mere unit to
measure it by.

It need not surprise us that a writer who takes such strange liberties
with a book which he professes to respect, and which he must have had
many opportunities of knowing, should take still greater liberties with
a science for which he entertains no respect whatever, and of whose
first principles he is palpably ignorant. And yet the wild recklessness
of some of his explanations of geological phenomena must somewhat
astonish all sufficientl