make them conformable to human fancies; 'from which,' says Lord Bacon,
'arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewise
heretical religions.' If the Scriptures are to be literally interpreted
and systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his
persecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun turns round the
earth."

_Amb_.--You mistake my view, Onuphrio, if you imagine I am desirous of
raising a system of geology on the Book of Genesis. It cannot be doubted
that the first man was created with a great variety of instinctive or
inspired knowledge, which must have been likewise enjoyed by his
descendants; and some of this knowledge could hardly fail to have related
to the globe which he inhabited, and to the objects which surrounded him.
It would have been impossible for the human mind to have embraced the
mysteries of creation, or to have followed the history of the moving
atoms from their chaotic disorder into their arrangement in the visible
universe, to have seen dead matter assuming the forms of life and
animation, and light and power arising out of death and sleep. The ideas
therefore transmitted to or presented by Moses respecting the origin of
the world and of man were of the most simple kind, and such as suited the
early state of society; but, though general and simple truths, they were
divine truths, yet clothed in a language and suited to the ideas of a
rude and uninstructed people. And, when I state my satisfaction in
finding that they are not contradicted by the refined researches of
modern geologists, I do not mean to deduce from them a system of science.
I believe that light was the creation of an act of the Divine will; but I
do not mean to say that the words, "Let there be light, and there was
light," were orally spoken by the Deity, nor do I mean to imply that the
modern discoveries respecting light are at all connected with this
sublime and magnificent passage.