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xxvi INTRODUCTION. which human science could never have discovered or devised; it is not short of ludicrous to observe the per plexities of those who search, in vain, in all the store houses of theory and invention, for water enough to cover the earth, and who entirely overlook Him who only " calleth “ for the waters of the Sea, and poureth them out upon “ the face of the Earth 1." Who shall say, that it was not reasonable for God to impart these great events to His reasonable creature, Man? And yet, they would never have entered into man’s most reasonable expectations of what God might impart by revelation. These vast data, supplied from without by irrefragable testimony, constitute a basis for geological and mineralogical superstructure, infinitely surpassing in solidity and security any thing that has been or can be drawn, by theoretical invention, from within the precincts of any human mind ; and, far from giving any cause of " dread to the delightful study " of geology, or rendering its very name ridiculous^,” it is these that can alone relieve it, both from all dread of error, and from the ridicule which must eventually attend all attempts to raise an edifice on vacuity, or on a foundation utterly and essentially incapable of sustaining it. 12. I come now to our learned author’s second pro position ; that, to have made " physical truth gene- “ rally,”—or, as he explains his meaning more clearly six lines before, “ a SYSTEM of physical truth,” the sub ject of Revelation, would have been to destroy its (physical truth’s) great use. This able writer, like all others who have too hastily embraced the same opinions, argues, as if no physical facts could be imparted toman by revelation 1 Amos, ix. 6. 2 Edin. Review, No. Ixxvii. p. 196.
