ical measurements--the
earth's distance from the sun. Have you personally measured the earth's
radius, observed the transit of Venus in 1769, from Lapland to Tahiti at
the same time, calculated the sun's parallax, and the eccentricity of
the earth's orbit? Would you profess yourself competent to take even the
preliminary observation for fixing the instruments for such a reckoning?
Were you ever within a thousand miles of the proper positions for making
such observations? Or have you been necessitated to accept this primary
measure, upon the accuracy of which all subsequent astronomical
measurers depend, merely upon hearsay and testimony, and subject to all
those contingencies of error and prejudice, and mistakes of copyists,
which, in your opinion, render the Bible so unreliable in matters of
religion?

Or to come down to earth. You are a student of the stone book, with its
enduring records graven in the rock forever; and perhaps have satisfied
yourself that "under the ponderous strata of geological science the
traditionary mythology and cosmogony of the Hebrew poet has found an
everlasting tomb." But how many volumes of this stone book have you
perused personally? You are quite indignant perhaps that theologians and
divines, who have no practical or personal knowledge of geology, should
presume to investigate its claims. Have you personally visited the
various localities in South America, Siberia, Australia, India,
Britain, Italy, and the South Seas, where the various formations are
exhibited; and have you personally excavated from their matrices the
various fossils which form the hieroglyphics of the science? Have you,
in fact, ever seen one in a thousand of these minerals and fossils _in
situ_? Or are you dependent on the tales of travelers, the specimens of
collectors, the veracity of authors, the accuracy of lecturers, aided by
maps of ideal stratifications, in rose-pink, brimstone-yellow, and
indigo-blue, for your profound and glowing convictions of the
irresistible force of experimental science, and of the shadowy vagueness
of a religion dependent upon human testimony?

To come down considerably in our demands, and confine ourselves to the
narrow limits of the laboratory. You are a chemist perhaps, and proud,
as most chemists justly are, of the accuracy attainable in that most
palpable and demonstrative science. But how much of it is experimental
science _to you_? How many of the nine hundred and forty-two subst