geology respectively. All we demand of
either--all that is needed--is, that they refrain from a too hasty
conclusion of absolute contradictions between their respective sciences,
and retain quiet remembrance of the imperfection of our present
knowledge both of geology and, as Butler says, of the Bible. The recent
interpretation of the commencement of Genesis--by which the first verse
is simply supposed to affirm the original creation of all things, while
the second immediately refers to the commencement of the human economy;
passing by those prodigious cycles which geology demands, with a silence
worthy of a true revelation, which does not pretend to gratify our
curiosity as to the previous condition of our globe any more than our
curiosity as to the history of other worlds--was first suggested by
geology, though suspected and indeed anticipated by some of the
early church Fathers. But it is now felt by multitudes to be the more
reasonable interpretation,--the second verse certainly more naturally
suggesting previous revolutions in the history of the earth than its
then instant creation: and though we frankly concede that we have
not yet seen any account of the whole first chapter of Genesis which
quadrates with the doctrines of geology, it does not become us hastily
to conclude that there can be none. If a further adjustment of those
doctrines, and a more diligent investigation of the Scripture together,
should hereafter suggest any possible harmony,--though not the true
one but one ever so gratuitously assumed,--it will be sufficient to
neutralise the objection. This, it will be observed, is in accordance
with what has been already shown,--that wherever an objection is founded
on an apparent contradiction between two statements, it is sufficient to
show any possible way in which the statements may be reconciled, whether
the true one or not. The objection, in that case, to the supposition
that the facts are gratuitously assumed, though often urged, is, in
reality, nothing to the purpose.* If it should ever be shown, for
example, that supposing as many geological eras as the philosopher
requires to have passed in the chasm between the first verse, which
asserts the original dependence of all things on the fiat of the
Creator, and the second, which is supposed to commence the human era,
any imaginable condition of our system--at the close, so to speak, of a
given geological period--would harmonise with a fair interpretati