to be made in all the sciences; discoveries
which will doubtless render our fancied perfection as utterly childish
to the philosophers of a thousand years hence as the astronomy of the
Greeks seems to us; and demand the use of technical language, which
would be as unintelligible to us as our scientific nomenclature would
have been to Aristotle. If God may not use popular speech in speaking to
the people of any given period, but must needs speak the technical
language of perfect science, and if science is now, and always will be,
of necessity, imperfect, we are led to the sage conclusion, that every
revelation from God to man must always be unintelligible!

Does it necessarily follow, that because the Author of the Bible uses
the common phrases, "sun rising," and "sun setting," in a popular
treatise upon religion, that therefore he was ignorant of the rotation
of the earth, and intended to teach that the sun revolved around it? He
is certainly under no more obligation to depart from the common language
of mankind, and introduce the technicalities of science into such a
discourse, than mankind in general, and our objectors in particular, are
to do the like in their common conversation. Now, I demand to know
whether they are aware that the earth's rotation on its axis is the
cause of day and night? But do you ever hear any of them use such
phrases as "earth rising," and "earth setting?" But if an Infidel's
daily use of the phrases, "_sun rising_," "_sun setting_," and the like,
does not prove, either that he is ignorant of the earth's rotation as
the cause of that appearance, or that he intends to deceive the world by
those phrases, why may not Almighty God be as well informed and as
honest as the Infidel, though he also condescends to use the common
language of mankind?

Do you ever hear astronomers, in common discourse, use any other
language? I suppose Lieut. Maury, and Herschel, and Le Verrier, and
Mitchell, know a little of the earth's rotation; but they, too, use the
English tongue very much like other people, and speak of sunrise and
sunset; yet nobody accuses them of believing in the Ptolemaic astronomy.
Hear the immortal Kepler, the discoverer of the laws of planetary
revolution: "We astronomers do not pursue this science with the view of
altering common language; but we wish to open the gates of truth,
without affecting the vulgar modes of speech. We say with the common
people, 'The planets stand still, or go d