"After all," (as Dr. Buckland remarked, long since,) "it should be recollected that the question is not respecting the correctness of the Mosaic narrative, but of our interpretation of it:" (p. 231:)--"a proposition," (proceeds Mr. Goodwin,) "which can hardly be sufficiently reprobated." But I make no question which of these two writers is most entitled to reprobation. For the view which will be found advocated in Sermon II., (which is substantially Dr. Buckland's,) (p. 24 to p. 32,) it shall but be said that it recommends itself to our acceptance by the strong fact that it takes _no_ liberty with the sacred narrative, whatever; and receives the Revelation of GOD in all its strangeness, (which it _cannot_ be a great mistake to do;) without trying to reconcile it with supposed discoveries, (wherein we _may_ fail altogether.) I defy anybody to shew that it is _impossible_ that GOD may have disposed of the actual order of the Universe, as in the first chapter of Genesis He is related to have done; and _probability_ can clearly have no place in such a speculation. I would only just remind the thoughtful student of Scripture, and indeed of Nature also, that the singular _analogy_ which Geologists think they discover between successive periods of Creation, and the Mosaic record of the first Six Days, is no difficulty to those who hesitate to identify those Days with the irregular Periods of indefinite extent. Rather was it to have been expected, I think, that such an analogy would be found to subsist between His past and His present working, when, 6,000 years ago, GOD arranged the actual system of things in Six Days.--Neither need we feel perplexed if Hugh Miller was right in the conclusion at which, he says, he had been "compelled to arrive;" viz. that "not a few" of the extant species of animals "enjoyed life in their present haunts" "for many long ages ere Man was ushered into being;" "and that for thousands of years anterior to even _their_ appearance many of the existing molluscs lived in our seas." (p. 229.) I find it nowhere asserted _by Moses_ that the severance was so complete, and decisively marked, between previous cycles of Creation and that cycle which culminated in the creation of Man, _that_ no single species of the præ-Adamic period was reproduced by the Omnipotent, to serve as a connecting link, as it were, between the Old world and the New,--an identifying note of the Intelligence which was equally at work on this last, as on all those former occasions. On the other hand, I _do_ find it asserted _by Geologists_ that between the successive præ-Adamic cycles such connecting links are discoverable; and this fact makes me behold in the circumstance supposed fatal to the view here advocated, the strongest possible confirmation of its accuracy. At the same time, it is admitted that in every department of animated and vegetable life, the severance between the last (or Mosaic) cycle of