Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/893

Rh by inquiry, what arc the contents of the crust of the earth, than it could square the circle, or annihilate a fact.

So stands the plea for a revelation of truth from God, a plea only to be met by questioning it possibility; that is, as Dr. Salmon has observed with great force in a recent work, by suggesting that a Being, able to make man, is unable to communicate with the creature He has made. If, on the other hand, the objector confine himself to a merely negative position, and cast the burden of proof on those who believe in revelation, it is obvious to reply by a reference to the actual constitution of things. Had that constitution been normal or morally undisturbed, it might have been held that revelation as an adminiculum, an addition to our natural faculties, would itself have been a disturbance. But the disturbance has in truth been created in the other scale of the balance by departure from the Supreme Will, by the introduction of sin: and revelation, as a special remedy for a special evil, is a contribution toward symmetry, and toward restoration of the original equilibrium.

Thus far only the fourfold succession of living orders has been noticed. But among the persons of very high authority in natural science quoted by Dr. Reusch, who held the general accordance of the Mosaic cosmogony with the results of modern inquiry, are Cuvier and Sir John Herschel. The words of Cuvier show he conceived that "every day" fresh confirmation from the purely human source accrued to the credit of Scripture. And since his day, for he can not now be called a recent authority, this opinion appears to have received some remarkable illustrations.

Half a century ago. Dr. Whewell discussed, under the name of the nebular hypothesis, that theory of rotation which had been indicated by Herschel, and more largely taught by Laplace, as the probable method through which the solar system has taken its form. Carefully abstaining, at that early date, from a formal judgment on the hypothesis, he appears to discuss it with favor; and he shows that this hypothesis, which assumes "a beginning of the present state of things," is in no way adverse to the Mosaic cosmogony. The theory has received marked support from opposite quarters. In the "Vestiges of Creation" it is frankly adopted; the very curious experiment of Professor Plateau is detailed at length on its behalf; and the author considers, with Laplace, that the zodiacal light, on which Humboldt in his "Kosmos" has dwelt at large, may be a remnant of the luminous atmosphere originally diffused around the sun. Dr. McCaul, in his very able argument on the Mosaic record, quotes Humboldt, Pfaff, and Mädler—a famous German astronomer—as adhering to it. It appears on the whole to be in possession of the field; and McCaul observes that, "had it been devised for the express purpose of removing the supposed difficulties of the Mosaic record, it could hardly have been more to the purpose." Even if we conceive, with Dr. Réville, that the "creation," the first gift of separate existences to the planets, is declared to have been subsequent to that of the earth, there seems to be no known law which excludes such a supposition, especially with respect to the larger and more distant of their number. These, it is to be noticed, are of great rarity as compared with the earth. Why should it be declared impossible that they should have taken a longer time in condensation, like in this point to the comets, which still continue in a state of excessive rarity? Want of space forbids me to enter into further explanation; but it requires much more serious efforts and objections than those of Dr. Réville to confute the statement that the extension of knowledge and of inquiry has confirmed the Mosaic record.