But the surprise would grow considerably when the conditions of the problem came to be a little more fully stated. Has then the actual history of the World's Creation been ascertained from some other independent and infallible source? No! Are Geologists as yet so much as agreed even about a theory of the Creation? No! Can it be proved that any part of the Mosaic account is false? Certainly not! Then why all this hostile dogmatism?--To witness the violence of the partisans of Geological discovery, and the arrogance of their pretensions, one would suppose that some Divine Creed of theirs had been impugned: that a revelation had been made to _them_ from Heaven, which the profane and unbelieving world was reluctant to accept. Whereas, these are Christian men, impatient, as it seems, to tear the first leaf out of their Bible: or rather, to throw discredit on the entire volume, by establishing the untrustworthiness of the earliest page! One single additional consideration completes the strangeness of the picture. If our account of the Six Days of Creation were a sybilline leaf of unknown origin, it would not be unreasonable to treat its revelations as little worth. But since the author of it is confessedly Moses,--the great Hebrew prophet, who lived from B.C. 1571 to 1451, who enjoyed the vision of the Most High; nay, who conversed with GOD face to face, was with Him in the Mount for thrice forty days, and received from Him the whole details of the Sacred Law;--since this first chapter of Genesis is known to have formed a part of the Church's unbroken heritage from that time onward, and therefore must be acknowledged to be an integral part of the volume of Scripture which, (as our LORD says,) οὐ δύναται λυθῆναι,--"cannot be broken, diluted, loosened, explained away;"--since, further, this account of Creation is observed to occur in the most conspicuous place of the most conspicuous of those books which are designated by an Apostle by the epithet θέοπνευστος, or, "given by inspiration," "filled with the breath," or "Spirit of GOD;" and when it is considered that our SAVIOUR and His Apostles refer to the primæval history contained in the first two chapters about thirty times[102]:--when, (I say,) all this is duly weighed, surely too strong a _primâ facie_ case has been made out on behalf of the first chapter of Genesis, that its authority should be imperilled by the random statements of every fresh individual who sees fit to master the elements of Geology; and on the strength of that qualification presumes to sit in judgment on the Hebrew Scriptures,--of which, confessedly, he does not understand so much as the alphabet!