Short Notices [pp. 554-564]

Short Notices.
journal a repository of science, or an arena-of scientific discussion. It has a totally different sphere; and could not if it
would, and would not if it could, enter largely.upon this. We
believe it to be in the last degree injudicious for the friends of
religion to commit themselves hastily against scientific generalization on theological grounds; first, because objections from
this quarter are powerless against science, and mischievous to
religion: and secondly, because we are perfectly sure of ultimate
agreement between the inductions of true science, and the
truths of revelation; and we are content to allow the devotees
of the former, to prosecute their researches' and correct their
deductions till this agreement is reached. If science is hasty
and erroneous, it will soon be set right, not by theologianis and
literateurs, but by its own disciples; and instead of throwing
the ban of the Church over its free prosecution, it were wiser
to encourage her gifted sons, especially if they should happen
to be such men as Hugh Miller, to enter upon the task, as the
surest and shortest way of reaching truth, and forestalling mischief. Christianity has sufficient prejudice to encounter already,
without arraying it in unauthorized hostility against the free
researches of science, so long as they are confined within scientific limits. It is only when it transcends those limits, and sets
its crude and hasty generalizations against the formal, deliberate, and fundamental facts of the Scriptures, on points which
fall within their proper domain, when the deductions of a
remote and often fanciful scientific analogy are applied to questions which do not belong to science at all, when, e. g.; it undertakes to put forth a contradictory history or a contradictory
morality, to that which we know on incontrovertible and undisputed evidence, to be the clear utterance of God, that the
friends of religion may wisely rebuke its intrusion on the
grounds of revelation, for precisely the same reasons that scientific men protest against the encroachments of theologians on
the domains of science. We should remember that the theories
of geology are questions of opinion, about which professional
testimony is demanded, just like questions in medicine or
engineering; and about which, so long as they remain so, none
other is worth a rush, except to the person that gives it. We
had rather not encounter the smile with which Mr. Miller, the
warm friend and admirer of Cowper, "bethought him of the
modest poet's philippic on the earlier geologists," as he picked
up a well-marked Plagiostoma and a characteristic fragment of
a Pecten, from a heap of stones lying under the windows of
Cowper's mansion. "Genius" adds the author in his characteristic style, "when in earnest, can do a great deal; but it
556
[JULY