wills, substituted the worship of
the beautiful for the worship of the holy, and authorized, by the false
ideal which it presents to us, a factitious religious sentiment, which
demands no sacrifice, no manly act, covers up the cross under flowers,
and at last only gives back to humanity its old idol, newly carved and
painted. This idol is no other than humanity itself. This mixture of
atheism and sensibility was particularly dangerous, because it met
preexistent tendencies, and colored them with a fallacious poesy. The
art of the historian, or rather of the romance-writer [Renan], consisted
in his hiding the entire absence of all belief under graceful metaphors
and an unctuous style, just as the brilliant snow of the Alps covers up
the abyss and deprives the traveler of the salutary horror which would
save him. You see, my friends, I do not diminish the perils of a book
which has had in its two editions a sale of two hundred thousand copies.
And yet, I persist in believing that the advantages are greater than its
disadvantages."

Neither do we apprehend any ultimate disaster from the Skeptical
Scientific School. Darwin, Buckle, and others have striven diligently to
impress upon the public mind the opinion that there is an antagonism
between science and revelation, and that it is of such character as to
render Christianity a useless appendage to human society.

Now, in order to counteract the influence of their sentiments, the
evangelical theologian should take no partial or prejudicial views of
science, or of its necessity for the defense of Scriptural truth. The
course adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in reference to the
discoveries of some of the noblest of her sons was suicidal. When
Galileo was forced to recant his theory of the earth's revolution, the
advance of papacy was arrested. To all outward appearance there is an
incompatibility between the claims of geology and the Mosaic cosmogony.
Shall we say that geology is false, and the six days of the Mosaic
narrative must be understood in their literal sense? This presents the
dilemma either to reject geology as a spurious science, or to discard
revelation. We will not accept such an alternative, and rather say,
"Geology is a noble science, but it is yet an infant. When it reaches
its majority we shall see a harmony,--inexpressibly beautiful and
proportionate,--between its discoveries and the inspired word of God."

We must not charge the errors of scientific