can be anything else than truth; that
fact can never be anything else than fact; and that no two truths or two
facts in God's universe can be in hopeless and irreconcilable
contradiction.

In this spirit the genuine sons of science have exhibited, what has
seemed to some, a heartless indifference whether their discoveries or
theories harmonized with the Scriptures or not, or affected the received
opinions of Christendom on subjects pertaining to religion or morals.
They have been sublimely unconcerned as to results in any such
direction. They have investigated, examined, compared, collated, with
long-continued and patient toil, to gather from the buried past the
actual story of its departed cycles; they have not been troubled lest
they should impinge on the creeds of the religious world, or compel
important modifications in the lectures of learned Professors. This was
no care of theirs. They discovered facts, they did not make them.

Now with all due respect for the opinions and feelings of religious
people, we hesitate not to affirm that this spirit is the only true one
in scientific men. Conceding, as we must, the supremacy of facts in
their own sphere, and granting that, as mundane and human affairs now
stand, the evidence of the senses, purged from fraud and illusion, must
be held to be conclusive, we cheerfully award to scientific men the
largest liberty to pursue their inquiries in matters of fact, utterly
regardless of the havoc which may be thereby wrought among the
traditional, beliefs of men. In no other way can science be true to
herself. She is the child of induction. She can acknowledge no authority
but what has been enthroned by inductive reasoning; and were she to
adjust her conclusions, and garble her facts, to suit the faiths,
beliefs, prejudices, or traditions of men, she would thereby falsify her
inmost life, and stultify herself before the world. And in this
connection we may premise that we regard as worthy of all commendation
the straightforward and unembarrassed manner in which Sir Charles Lyell
pursues his inquiries into the geological evidences of the antiquity of
man. He could not have been unaware that he was striking a ponderous
blow at one of the main traditions of Christendom; nay, that if
successful in establishing his conclusions, he must revolutionize, to a
large extent, the religious thinking of the civilization amid which he
moves; and yet he moves steadily and quietly forward, calm a