the more deeply it is revolved;
and only those legislative pedants will refuse weight to it, who would
venturously propose to give New Zealanders and Hottentots, in the
starkness of their savage ignorance, the complex forms of the British
constitution. In similar manner, many of the old objections of our
deistical writers have ceased to be heard of in our day, unless it be
from the lips of the veriest sciolism; the objections, for instance,
of that truly pedantic philosophy which once argued that ethical and
religious truth are not given in the Scripture in a system such as a
schoolman might have digested it into; as if the brief iteration and
varied illustration of pregnant truth, intermingled with narrative,
parable, and example, were not infinitely better adapted to the
condition of the human intellect in general! For similar reasons, the
old objection, that statements of Christian morality are given without
the requisite limitations, and cannot be literally acted upon, has
been long since abandoned as an absurdity. It is granted that a hundred
folios could not contain the hundredth part of all the limitations of
human actions, and all the possible cases of a contentious casuistry;
and it is also granted that human nature is not so inept as to be
incapable of interpreting and limiting for itself such rules as
'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.'

In the same manner have many of the objections suggested at different
periods by the progress of science been dissolved; and, amongst the
rest, those alleged from the remote historic antiquity of certain
nations on which infidels, like Volney and Voltaire, once so confidently
relied. And it is worthy of remark, that some of the old objections
of philosophers have disappeared by the aid of that very
science--geology--which has led, as every new branch of science probably
will, to new ones. Geology has, however, in our judgment, done at least
as much already to remove difficulties as to occasion them; and it is
not illogical, or perhaps unfair, to surmise that, we will only have
patience, its own difficulties, as those of so many other branches of
science, will be eventually solved. One thing is clear,--that, if the
Bible be true and geology be true, that cannot be geologically true
which is scripturally false, or vice versa; and we may therefore
laugh at the polite compromise which is sometimes affected by learned
professors of theology and