even amongst the most scientific of astronomers. For the man of science,
equally with the populace, talks of the sun as rising and setting, as
having finished half his day's journey, &c., and, without pedantry, could
not in many cases talk otherwise. 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 stronger.
_Here_ there is no opening for a compliance even with a _language_ that is
erroneous; for no language at all is current upon subjects that have never
engaged the popular attention. _Here_, where there is no such stream of
apparent phenomena running counter (as in astronomy there is) to the real
phenomena, neither is there any popular language opposed to the
scientific. The whole are abtruse speculations, even as regards their
objects, nor 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 as taking the shape of histories, applied
to processes current and in movement, or as taking the shape of theories
applied to processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic cosmogony, indeed,
gives the succession of natural births; and probably the general outline
of such a succession will be more and more confirmed as geology advances.
But as to the time, the duration, of this successive evolution, it is the
idlest of notions that the Scriptures either have, or could have,
condescended to human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the drama of
this world. Genesis would no more have indulged so mean a passion with
respect to the mysterious inauguration of the world, than the Apocalypse
with respect to its mysterious close. 'Yet the six _days_ of Moses!' Days!
But is it possible that human folly should go the length of understanding
by the Mosaical _day_, the mysterious _day_ of that awful agency which