THE IRRECONCILABLE RECORDS; 29348 OR, GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. BY WILLIAM DENTON. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM DENTON. FOR SALE BY WILLIAM WHITE AND COMPANY, 158 WASHINGTON STREET. 1871. We live in the nineteenth century, when science is abroad knocking at every door, not excepting the church door; flashing light into the dark corners of superstition and bigotry, regardless of the hooting of the owls and the screaming of the bats that inhabit them. It is useless to lock and bolt the door; for science carries the club that can demolish every barrier. In vain you hide in the dark; for her lamp makes day of the blackest night. Build to the skies, she will soar and scan the very top stone; dig centre deep, she will dive to the foundation. Heaven is not too high for her fetterless wing, nor the fires of hell hot enough to prevent her most searching examination. Stimulated by her example, we are no longer con tent to crawl at a snail's pace, but have put on the "seven-leagued boots," and are striding with the pace of a giant. We have left slavery behind us, with its terrible curses, old notions of the earth and heavens, which lie like bowlders by the wayside, as we still go marching on. It is vain for the cynic to sneer 3 : at, the conservative to lament over, or the sceptic to deny, the progressive tendency of the age. It is true as the sun, and resistless as the motion of the planets. Go, bid the ocean cease to heave, The rivers cease to flow; Bid smiling spring retrace her steps, Go, drive the wild winds to their home, Then bid the car of Progress stay, This progressive spirit now manifests itself in theological investigations which can be no longer postponed. We boldly take up to-day what yesterday refused to touch. The Bible can no longer say, "You must not look at me save to. bless. I am too sacred to be investigated." For we now say, "What better are you than others till you are tested?. All pretended sacred books will claim exemption from criticism on the same grounds." "The Bible," we are told, " is from God. It is all true, all divine; given to man to be his unerring guide. He who made the universe made this book; he who wrote his name in blazing suns upon the sky wrote this Bible, or inspired men to write it, who infallibly recorded what he desired that man should know." What might we not expect from it, if put in our hands for the first time? What grand revelations of truth, as much superior to any thing that man can write as the solar system is superior to our clumsy machinery for representing it; surpassing man's highest unassisted efforts as a living landscape does a picture, or a |