Should we then not study the letters of the Stone Book? I did not say so; "God has made everything beautiful in its time," and His handiwork in the past as well as the present is indeed worthy of our attention. But in reading books about geology, more perhaps than in any other study, you need to ask God to teach you to hold fast by His Word.
Then, if you read that many geologists now believe that there has been no special creation of fish or bird or beast of the earth, but that "all the many forms of plant and animal life have been unfolded out of a few simple forms, just as the stem, the leaf, and the flower are evolved out of a simple seed"—you will say at once, "That cannot be; for God has plainly told us of both plants and animals that they were made each 'after its kind,' and therefore there can never have been such a thing as a fish developing into a bird, or a bird into a lizard: nor, so far as I have seen, is any such creature to be found in a fossil state."
I heard some time ago that a young man who was studying to become a doctor, said to his father, "When I go to some of my lectures on biology" (that is the study of life), "the only thing that I can do when I hear things said that are quite contrary to the Bible, is to keep saying to myself, 'It's not true, it's not true.'"
I think this young man was right: he had settled it in his heart that whatever he might hear, he must think as God thinks. He was like one who when just starting in life, wrote these words on the flyleaf of his little Bible—"Man has faith in his compass, yet he cannot understand it. He takes it as his guide across the trackless ocean. He relies implicitly upon it, and well he may trust it. This Book is my compass. I have faith in it, thanks to God: it explains itself; I take it for my guide across the ocean of life—I rely upon it. Man may jeer at my faith, but my compass is vastly more reliable than his—still better may I trust mine."
"HIDDEN TREASURES.
"The gems of earth are still within
Her silent unwrought mines;
There hide they, all unknown, unseen,
No sparkle upward shines.
"The stars of heaven, how few and wan
Are all we see below
Compared with what remain unseen
Beyond all vision now!
"Who knows the untold brilliance there,
The wealth, the beauty hid?
Like sparkle of a lustrous eye
Beneath its veiling lid.
"So with the heaven of better stars
Of which these are but signs:
So with the stores of wisdom hid
In everlasting mines."