not be resisted, and he not
only escaped a prosecution for heresy, but lived to see the doctrine he
had broached almost universally accepted by the religious world.

If now some divine of acknowledged power and position in any branch of
the Christian Church were to put forth the statement that 'the writings
of Moses do not fix the antiquity of man,' he would startle the ear of
orthodoxy quite as much, but no more than did Chalmers in the early
years of the present century. And if he would fare more hardly than the
Scottish divine, and fall under the ban of church censure, which is not
unlikely, it would be because the evidence for the fact is still
inchoate and resistible by the force of established opinion. But it is
quite within the range of possible things that before the close of the
present century two things may happen: first, that the evidence for a
high antiquity of the human race may accumulate to such an extent as to
carry with it involuntarily the consent of mankind; and second, that the
sacred writings may be found to adjust themselves as easily to this new
finding in the sphere of induction, as they have already done, in the
general mind of the Church, to the doctrine of the great age of the
earth. The two statements are indeed very much akin in several respects.
They both traverse the accepted meaning of the sacred writings at the
time of their announcement. Both are considered, when first promulged,
as irreconcilable with the plain teaching and consequent inspiration of
the Scriptures. Both rest solely, as to their evidence, in the sphere of
inductive science, and are determinable wholly by the finding of facts
accumulated and compared by the processes of inductive reasoning. And
both, if thus established, are destined to be accepted by the general
mind of the age, without actual harm to the real interests of
civilization and religion. No _fact_, which is a fact and not an
illusion, can do harm to any of the vital interests of mankind. No truth
can stand in hopeless antagonism to any other truth. To suppose
otherwise would be to resolve the moral government of God into a
hopeless enigma, or enthrone a perpetual and hostile dualism, resigning
the universe to the rival and contending sway of Ormuzd and Ahriman.

Before proceeding to the merits of Sir Charles Lyell's discussion, we
wish to glance at some preliminary matters touching the great debate now
pending between science and theology. We wish to review