revelation, by endowing them with all the natural powers for doing so.

Even as regards astronomy, a science so nearly allying itself to
religion by the loftiness and by the purity of its contemplations,
Scripture is nowhere the _parent_ of any doctrine, nor so much as
the silent sanctioner of any doctrine. Scripture cannot become the
author of falsehood,--though it were as to a trifle, cannot become a
party to falsehood. And it is made impossible for Scripture to teach
falsely, by the simple fact that Scripture, on such subjects, will not
condescend to teach at all. The Bible adopts the erroneous language of
men, (which at any rate it must do, in order to make itself
understood,) not by way of sanctioning a theory, but by way of using a
fact. The Bible _uses_ (postulates) the phenomena of day and
night, of summer and winter, and expresses them, in relation to their
causes, as _men_ express them, men, even, that are scientific
astronomers. But the results, which are all that concern Scripture, are
equally true, whether accounted for by one hypothesis which is
philosophically just, or by another which is popular and erring.

Now, on the other hand, in geology and cosmology, the case is still
stronger. _Here_ there is no opening for a compliance even with
popular language. _Here_, where there is no such stream of
apparent phenomena running counter (as in astronomy) to the real
phenomena, neither is there any popular language opposed to the
scientific. The whole are abstruse speculations, even as regards their
objects, not dreamed of as possibilities, either in their true aspects
or their false aspects, till modern times. The Scriptures, therefore,
nowhere allude to such sciences, either under the shape of histories,
applied to processes current and in movement, or under the shape of
theories applied to processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic