use of agnostics against religion; though there is reason to think that many do believe that to be its chief end and aim. The object of science is knowledge, the increased number of those truths which are capable of verification and proof. If here and there its conclusions conflict with the current theology, the fact is of secondary importance, and of no permanent interest at all to science as such, which is concerned with positive, not negative, results. Every statement and proposition in the most elementary scientific primer probably conflicts with some theology or other. Yet it often seems to be assumed that the sole or the chief object of the labours of scientific men was to find means and arguments to damage the Bible. Scientific men, a most hardworked and industrious class, have a better appreciation of the value of time, and of the wisdom of minding their own business. They, no doubt, come upon results which are fatal to the currently received opinions about the Bible. But these results interest them much less than they do those who are assured that the Bible is the Word of God. The tables have been turned since the days when Science timidly sued for leave to examine nature, and to draw a few conclusions of her own. and made her power felt. so to speak, with a halter

Then Theology was queen, Inquirers worked then, about their necks, and

were anxious, above all things, to appease their mighty enemy by every mark of deference and docility. Now the old sovereign has become the suppliant a rather importunate and intrusive suppliant -but still by her demeanour, if not her words, admitting that she has been discrowned. She no longer, with haughty bearing, issues her anathemas on the progress of the human mind, but she is in great anxiety to show that, appearances notwithstanding, this progress is not incompatible with her pretensions. Geology seems to

contradict Genesis "That is all your

in a very direct and final way. mistake," says Theology; "Geology and Genesis are in most perfect union; in fact, the science confirms the Scripture so wonderfully, that each reflects light on the other." The fact that the geology thus warmly accepted now, was once resisted with energy and anger as an impious and futile science, is passed over. New light as to its harmony with Scripture was not noticed, until it had attained a position of power which made it more desirable as a friend than as a foe. The fact is suggestive.

A convenient mode of showing the way in which science has cut the ground from under the feet of theology, will be a quotation from a once famous and remarkable book, which, in its day, and for a long time after, was regarded, with justice, as a powerful

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piece of argument in favour of the current religion. Dr. Samuel Clarke was a man of considerable ability, and of very great attainments; he was also a man of high and honourable character, and his Boyle lectures, commonly known as his two Discourses "On the Being and the Attributes of God," and on "The Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation," enjoyed an immense popularity, not only at home but abroad, all through the eighteenth century. The book is now read only by the curious in religious archæology. In an elaborate argument, intended to show that although the Christian doctrines may not be discoverable by bare Reason unassisted by Revelation, yet when they are discovered by Revelation they are found most agreeable to sound, unprejudiced Reason," Clarke proceeds to prove that the account in Genesis of the formation of the earth is entirely credible, in the following passage:

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That, about the space of six thousand years since, the earth was without form and void, that is, a confused chaos, out of which God formed this beautiful and useful fabrick we now inhabit, and stocked it with the seeds of all kinds of plants, and formed upon it man, and all other specimens of animals it is now furnished with-is very agreeable to right reason. For though the precise time, indeed, when all this was done, could not now have been known exactly

without Revelation; yet, even at this day, there are remaining many considerable and very strong rational proofs which make it exceedingly probable (separate from the authority of Revelation) that this present frame and constitution of the earth cannot have been of a very much longer date. The universal tradition delivered down from all the most ancient nations of the world, both learned and barbarous; the constant and agreeing doctrine of all ancient philosophers and poets concerning the earth's being formed within such a period of time out of water and chaos; the manifest absurdities and contradictions of those few accounts which pretend to a much greater antiquity; the numbers of men with which the earth is at present inhabited; the late original of learning and all useful arts and sciences; the changes that must necessarily fall out naturally in the earth in vast length of time, as by the sinking and washing down of mountains, the consumption of water by plants, and innumerable other such like accidents, these, I say, and many more arguments drawn from Nature, Reason, and Observation, make that account of the earth's formation exceedingly probable in itself, which, from the revelation delivered in Scripturehistory, we believe to be certain.” *

"Truth and Certainty of Christian Revelation," p. 187; edition 1724.

This passage shows what a comparatively easy matter the defence of the Bible was in Dr. Clarke's day. He could, without fear of serious contradiction, make assumptions which no one would venture to make now. The "strong rational proofs," which show that the earth cannot be much more than six thousand years old, would be hard to find. Why the shrinking and washing down of mountains was evidence of the recent date of the earth is difficult to see; and the "consumption of water by plants," implying that the water of the globe was being rapidly used up and annihilated, is an interesting example of old notions on chemistry. In the earlier discourse on the existence of God, Clarke had been enthusiastic over the support given to his thesis by the discoveries of his day:

"If Galen, so many ages since, could find in the construction and constitution of the parts of the human body such undeniable marks of contrivance and design as forced him then to acknowledge and admire the wisdom of its Author, what would he have said if he had known the late discoveries in anatomy and physic, the circulation of the blood, the exact structure of the heart and brain, the uses of numberless glands and valves for the secretion and motion of the juices in the body; besides several veins and other vessels and receptacles not at all