In the preceding pages I have, as far as possible, avoided that mode of treating my subject which was wont to be expressed as the "reconciliation" of Scripture and Natural Science, and have followed the direct guidance of the Mosaic record, only turning aside where some apt illustration or coincidence could be perceived. In the present chapter I propose to inquire what the science of the earth teaches on these same subjects, and to point out certain manifest and remarkable correspondences between these teachings and those of revelation. Here I know that I enter on dangerous ground, and that if I have been so fortunate as to carry the intelligent reader with me thus far, I may chance to lose him now. The Hebrew Scriptures are common property; no one can fairly deny me the right to study them, even though I do so in no clerical or theological capacity; and even if I should appear extreme in some of my views, or venture to be almost as enthusiastic as the commentators of Homer, Shakespeare, or Dante, I can not be very severely blamed. But the direct comparison of these ancient records with results of modern science is obnoxious to many minds on different grounds; and all the more so that so few men are at once students both of nature and revelation. There are, as yet, but few even of educated men whose range of study has included any thing that is practical or useful either in Hebrew literature or geological science. That slipshod Christianity which contents itself with supposing that conclusions which are false in nature may be true in theology is mere superstition or professional priestcraft, and has nothing in common with the Bible; but there are still multitudes of good men, trained in the verbal and abstract learning which at one time constituted nearly the whole of education, who regard geology as a mass of crude hypotheses destitute of coherence, a perpetual battle-ground of conflicting opinions, all destined in time to be swept away. It must be admitted, too, that from the nature of geological evidence, and from the liability to error in details, the solidity of its conclusions is not likely soon to be appreciated as fully as is desirable by the common mind; while it is unfortunately true that the outskirts of science are infested with hosts of half-informed and superficial writers, who state these conclusions incorrectly, or apply them in an unreasonable manner to matters on which they have no bearing. On the other hand, the geologist, fully aware of the substantial nature of the foundations of the science of the earth, regards it as little less than absurd to find parallels to its principles in an ancient theological work. Still there are possible meeting-points of things so dissimilar as Bible lore and geological exploration. If man is a being connected on the one hand with material nature, and on the other with the spiritual essence of the Creator; if that Creator has given to man powers of exploring and