Then I studied geology--not much, just a little--just enough to find in a general way the principal facts that had been discovered, and some of the conclusions that had been reached. I learned something of the action of fire--of water--of the formation of islands and continents--of the sedimentary and igneous rocks--of the coal measures--of the chalk cliffs, something about coral reefs--about the deposits made by rivers, the effect of volcanoes, of glaciers, and of the all surrounding sea--just enough to know that the Laurentian rocks were millions of ages older than the grass beneath my feet--just enough to feel certain that this world had been pursuing its flight about the sun, wheeling in light and shade, for hundreds of millions of years--just enough to know that the "inspired" writer knew nothing of the history of the earth--nothing of the great forces of nature--of wind and wave and fire--forces that have destroyed and built, wrecked and wrought through all the countless years. And let me tell the ministers again that they should not waste their time in answering me. They should attack the geologists. They should deny the facts that have been discovered. They should launch their curses at the blaspheming seas, and dash their heads against the infidel rocks. Then I studied biology--not much--just enough to know something of animal forms, enough to know that life existed when the Laurentian rocks were made--just enough to know that implements of stone, implements that had been formed by human hands, had been found mingled with the bones of extinct animals, bones that had been split with these implements, and that these animals had ceased to exist hundreds of thousands of years before the manufacture of Adam and Eve. Then I felt sure that the "inspired" record was false--that many millions of people had been deceived and that all I had been taught about the origin of worlds and men was utterly untrue. I felt that I knew that the Old Testament was the work of ignorant men--that it was a mingling of truth and mistake, of wisdom and foolishness, of cruelty and kindness, of philosophy and absurdity--that it contained some elevated thoughts, some poetry,---a good deal of the solemn and commonplace,--some hysterical, some tender, some wicked prayers, some insane predictions, some delusions, and some chaotic dreams. Of course the theologians fought the facts found by the geologists, the scientists, and sought to sustain the sacred Scriptures. They mistook the bones of the mastodon for those of human beings, and by them proudly proved that "there were giants in those days." They accounted for the fossils by saying that God had made them to try our faith, or that the Devil had imitated the works of the Creator.