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We have already said that these modern spiritualists considered the revelation of language to be a truth involved by the narrative of Genesis. In this they were the slaves of a false and narrow exegesis, which had not even the poor excuse of being literal. What is the true meaning of the sacred writer we shall endeavour to show further on; but we cannot here abstain from again uttering a strong protest against the barrier placed in the way of all honest scientific inquiry by the timid prejudices of that class which tyrannises over public opinion. When shall we learn to acquiesce practically in the belief which theoretically the most orthodox have long expressed, that it is a needless incongruity to look in the Bible for scientific truths which it does not profess to reveal? “Such[43] an attempt,” it has been well said, “has been a perversion of the purpose of a divine revelation, and cannot lead to any physical truth.”

Honesty all the more imperiously demands this remark, because here, as in a thousand other places, perverted by system and ignorance, we believe that the Bible rightly understood contains (not precise dogmas, but) the general indications of a sublime truth; and because it may be shown that in this particular instance its records accurately agree with the results of careful and laborious inquiry. Here, as often, the Bible does not clash with the conclusions of science, if taken to imply no more than what it categorically asserts. But the Bible is not the only source of information open to us, and if we are ever in any way to fill up “the vast lacunas which characterise that gigantic and mysterious epitaph of humanity engraved in the first chapters of Genesis,” we must do so not by ignorant and dogmatic assertions, but by humble sincerity and patient research.