if there are ears, and air if there are lungs.

And as the bodily organs are furnished with that on which they can best thrive, so the faculties of mind and heart can best be developed by the religion of him who came "that men might have life, and might have it more abundantly." For the deepest and most important intuitions man possesses are seized upon by religion and are made clear and influential. The germ of these truths is developed by the scriptural doctrine, and they are made potent for man's good. All the difficulties are at least as great without as with the Bible; as great in the germ-truth, as in its form of growth and bud and blossom. And then there is the added difficulty of accounting for this fact; how it is that if Christianity is false it can so singularly, powerfully, beautifully, take up and develop these germtruths in the mind and these most blessed hopes in the heart, and thus purify, elevate, and ennoble the man who believes and practises it.

Difficulties from Geology.

CHAPTER V.

DIFFICULTIES FROM GEOLOGY.

T has come to be believed by many persons

and Geology; that the scriptural account of the creation of the world and of man is entirely at variance with the results of the best modern scientific study. And there has been not a little doubt awakened in the minds of many young men as to the accuracy of the Scriptures on this particular subject. It is believed that these difficulties, stated so often in newspaper and magazine, in popular lecture and scientific volume, are the result of the ignorance of some scientists as to the actual teachings of revelation; and also of the equal ignorance of some biblical scholars as to the actual teachings of science. There is undue haste on the part of some men of large, but exclusive acquaintance with science, to denounce the Scripture story; and equal haste on the part of some

friends of the Bible to denounce science as atheistic. Crude theories in the interpretation of the book of nature or of the book of revelation are often at blame for the apparent antagonism of things in which, rightly understood, there must be unity.

Our best biblical scholars who have a fair knowledge of scientific facts gladly welcome any light that science gives to religion, acknowledge gratefully their indebtedness for the past, and express their fervent hope and belief that more light is to come from every department of human knowledge in aid of the study of that book which they hold more and more firmly to be the attested Word of God. "All knowledge," said Cicero, "is of use to the orator." And every student of the Scriptures will say the same about the interpretation of that volume. And, on the other hand, the geologists are indebted, as some of them gladly and reverently own, to the biblical story for the wonderful help it furnishes toward the explanation of the facts which they cull from the natural world. Truths never disagree when you get at them and bring them together. The outer court of nature and the inner court of revelation were built by one hand; and the architect and builder is divine.