Genre:

Short Fiction

Subjects:

Biblical Authority, Geology, Scientific Practitioners

    Pious Robert Barham's father gives him a Bible for his fourteenth birthday. Robert asks his father to detail for him the proofs of its divine origin. Among other proofs, his father observes that the 'Holy Scriptures reveal those things which no human writings could have developed, such as the origin of the universe' and 'the destruction of the old world', and that the 'principal facts therein stated, have been confirmed', for instance 'by the discovery of various antediluvian remains' (83). He reports that the 'truly wise and good' have always venerated the Bible, observing: 'The Hon. Robert Boyle calls it "a matchless volume, that cannot be studied too much, or esteemed too highly" (84).