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PREFACE.

The origin of these Lectures on the Harmony of Learning and Revelation may be seen in the following correspondence.

New-York, 7th Feb. 1843.

Rev. DR. MATHEWS,

DEAR SIR, During your administration of the affairs of the University, and when maturing the enlarg ed system of instruction designed for the Institution, you introduced a Professorship of Sacred Literature. One object of the proposed Professorship was to vindicate the Sacred Scriptures from the objections often supposed to arise from various discoveries in Science and Letters. That part of the design has not yet been carried into effect; but we believe that it has become peculiarly desirable at the present time, to afford increased opportunities of gaining information on these important questions; and as you have now released yourself from some of your former multiplied labors, we would inquire whether you would not undertake to prepare a course of public Lectures on the prominent subjects which such a department of instruction should embrace.

In your hands they might be made to assume a form which would render them interesting and instructive to your various hearers; while they would demonstrate the practicability and importance of rendering Sacred Literature more generally a prominent branch of instruction.

Several of us, and others whom we represent in this request, have enjoyed the pleasure of being associated with you in the important services you have already rendered to the cause of Learning in our city; and should you see fit to accede to the proposal we now make, it will give us much satisfaction to co-operate with you in any way which might render your labors most agreeable to yourself and most useful to the interests of Truth and Knowledge.

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New-York, 14th February, 1843.

To Messrs. JAMES TALLMADGE, THOMAS J. OAKLEY, GEORGE WOOD, JOHN JOHNSTON, THEODORE FRELINGHUYSEN, VALENTINE MOTT WILLIAM KENT, Esquires, &c. &c.

GENTLEMEN,

I have received your kind communication of the 7th instant, and have given it the more careful attention, as it comes from friends to whom my memory will al ways recur with sentiments of grateful regard.

It is very true that I have long been desirous to see the Branch of Learning, to which you refer, introduced more fully into our Literary Institutions. The aspect of the times, and opinions recently promulgated, have also greatly strengthened my convictions of its importance. An impetus has been given to the minds of men within the last thirty or forty years, which has rendered progress in Science rapid beyond example. Nature, in her whole. varied extent, is fast yielding up her secrets. But the harmony and connection of these discoveries with the leading truths of the Scriptures do not yet seem to be rightly understood, or fully appreciated.

To use the words of an able reasoner on this subject: "Some men in their writings, and many in their discoveries, go so far as to suppose that they may enjoy a dualism of opinions; holding one set, which they may believe as Christians, and another whereof they are convinced as Philosophers. One does not see how it is possible to make accordance between the Mosaic Creation and Cuvier's

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