In the same manner have many of the objections suggested at different periods by the progress of science been dissolved; and, amongst the rest, those alleged from the remote historic antiquity of certain nations on which infidels, like Volney and Voltaire, once so confidently relied.  And it is worthy of remark, that some of the old objections of philosophers have disappeared by the aid of that very science—­geology—­which has led, as every new branch of science probably will, to new ones.  Geology has, however, in our judgment, done at least as much already to remove difficulties as to occasion them; and it is not illogical, or perhaps unfair, to surmise that, we will only have patience, its own difficulties, as those of so many other branches of science, will be eventually solved.  One thing is clear,—­that, if the Bible be true and geology be true, that cannot be geologically true which is scripturally false, or vice versa; and we may therefore laugh at the polite compromise which is sometimes affected by learned professors of theology and geology respectively.  All we demand of either—­all that is needed—­is, that they refrain from a too hasty conclusion of absolute contradictions between their respective sciences, and retain quiet remembrance of the imperfection of our present knowledge both of geology and, as Butler says, of the Bible.  The recent interpretation of the commencement of Genesis—­by which the first verse is simply supposed to affirm the original creation of all things, while the second immediately refers to the commencement of the human economy; passing by those prodigious cycles which geology demands, with a silence worthy of a true revelation, which does not pretend to gratify our curiosity as to the previous condition of our globe any more than our curiosity as to the history of other worlds—­was first suggested by geology, though suspected and indeed anticipated by some of the early church Fathers.  But it is now felt by multitudes to be the more reasonable interpretation,—­the second verse certainly more naturally suggesting previous revolutions in the history of the earth than its then instant creation:  and though we frankly concede that we have not yet seen any account of the whole first chapter of Genesis which quadrates with the doctrines of geology, it does not become us hastily to conclude that there can be none.  If a further adjustment of those doctrines, and a more diligent investigation of the Scripture together, should hereafter suggest any possible harmony,—­though not the true one but one ever so gratuitously assumed,—­it will be sufficient to neutralise the objection.  This, it will be observed, is in accordance with what has been already shown,—­that wherever an objection is founded on an apparent contradiction between two statements, it is sufficient to show any possible way in which the statements may be reconciled, whether the true one or not.  The objection, in that case, to the supposition that the facts are gratuitously