t ' ".V*' - - • . • •• •• « - DIVINE REVELATION OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE ? LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND AND CO., NEW-STREET PARLIAMENT STREET SQUARE DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE ? 'THE mosaic cosmogony, a literal translation of the first chapter OF GENESIS, WITH ANNOTATIONS AND RATIONALIA.’ : onriK Dnrrn nn^ nzt parr^D I * T — : (. T ; fj V -1 T T » VVT T T )• v Gen. xi. 1. 1874. All rights reserved. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/divinerevelationOObrow TO THE HEADER. The following Essay, our form of resisting the hypo¬ thesis of Evolution and kindred pseudo-sciences, has been written for some months. It has been re-written, modi¬ fied, and as far as possible mollified. We have, with such patience as we could command, endured our thirst for redress, and abstained from the type-fount. We have cherished the hope that some abler, yet stern and uncompromising, pen would be wielded in defence of Divine Revelation. And abler pens 1 have shed know¬ ledge, reason, argument, and censure. But they have not been welcomed with the relish with which Herbert Spencer, ( our great philosopher ,’ 2 has been distinguished. This, our missile, may quiver in our aged hand, like Priam’s spear. It is yet poised in truth and hurled in justice. It must prevail, if it reach the mark. If it be truth-sharp and reason-barbed, it is the licit weapon of a 'ust indignation. J o Torquay: March 1871- 1 See The Darwinian Theory of the Transmutation of Species examined by a Graduate of the University of Cambridge. London : Nisbet & Co. 1867. The Fallacies of Darwinism, by Dr. Bree. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1872. 2 So called by Mr. Darwin. See the Quarterly Review, October, 1873. CONTENTS -——•Of - — CHAPTER I. Introductory Chapter Protein CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. The Eugenesis and Improvability of the Human Creature CHAPTER IV. Evolution . CHAPTER V. The Darwinian Argument from * Disuse ’ . CHAPTER VI. The Hypothesis of Evolution Proved and Confirmed: An Example : A New Species ....... CHAPTER VII. PAGE 1 20 33 43 54 61 The Distinction between Science and Pseudo-Science 73 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. PAGE Nature’s Testimony . 76 CHAPTER IX. The Impassable Law . 81 CHAPTER X. Divine Revelation, or Pseudo-Science ?..... 89 Conclusion CHAPTER XI. . 98 APPENDICES. APPENDIX A . . 103 „ B 1 1 *3 • • • • • • • • « A 1 U 55 C 114 DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE ? INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. We have written, and contemplate the publication of, an Essay on f The Origin of Language.’ And therein we have referred with confidence to the f one lip and one utterance,’ asserted in the Book of the Genesis.1 The phrase, devarim ekhadim, employed in the first verse of the eleventh chapter of that sacred writing, and which we have rather interpreted than translated utterance , might be regarded as signifying one form of words , one vocabulary , one language. And it is obvious that unless at some time there was f one lip and one utterance,’ and one only, to speak of the origin of language would be an assumption. In truth, the f one lip and one utterance ’ 1 ‘DHIIK Dnni-1 nn.S nsb> 'iTI/ ‘Vayeki kol-liaarrets saphak akhatk ndevarim akhadim.’ And there is in existence — by this time — to the whole earth one lip and one utterance. Tke latter member reads literally one words , words kaving tke qualifying epitket in tke plural. Tke sense is, one form of words, one vocabulary. Tke invention of lan¬ guage by Adam and bis descendants kad by this time formed one language for the whole family. B 2 DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE? would be simply a myth, unless there had been one only primal pair of human creatures, or voice-dividers. To this important verity we shall be continually reverting in the course, for this is the main point, of our argument. And this recurrence will be indispensable, seeing that there has gone abroad a murmur, loud and deep, and that murmur pregnant with danger to truth, indicating a plurality of primal pairs and other inadmissible sources of the one human kingdom, or family. We descry, however, so vast an array of hostile and enthusiastic writers already on the wing and hovering around us, as we proceed on our Avay, that we are, whether we prefer it or not, compelled to stay our course and to do battle with them. And as our argument, as must be the case with all efforts to establish early, and especially earliest truths, must depend upon and stand or fall with the authority of Holy Writ, we necessarily descend into the arena and contend for that authority and the truths that authority establishes. But in this conflict topics will have to be discussed and weapons handled, that are far removed from the serious tenor and treatment of our primary subject, the origin of language, and therefore we despatch this our treatise upon the evaporations of biology and evolution, as a pilot balloon is sometimes cut loose, in order to ascertain the volume and the direction of the popular breath, and, if it may be done, to influence that popular breath and to direct it. To do this we very clearly, and nothing daunted, per¬ ceive that it will be our unavoidable task, not only to reason with and to soothe the serious, but to wrestle with the tenacious and the reckless, and to unflinchingly and unsparingly brandish the aryumentum ad absurdum in the face of the persistently absurd and the incorrigibly unreasonable. In sober truth, we see that we must be all things to all men, if we would win some to the per- INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 3 ception and the acknowledgment of holy truth. We feel that it will be a department of our labour of love to con¬ ciliate the assent of earnest and ingenuous literal1 readers of the Sacred Writings. And to effect this we shall look upon it as our bounden service, as far as in us lies, to exhibit the true meaning, which underlies the figura¬ tive, that being the favoured and usual, style of the inspired penmen. Yet even this department of our undertaking will not be entirely free from difficulty. That difficulty will be inversely as our readers’ prepared¬ ness and intelligence. Far greater difficulty shall we find in our attempt to deal with the half-educated and the half-enlightened. For these half-broken and un¬ bitted thinkers are extremely free and even wild in their mode, span, and direction of thinking ; and they are utterly impatient of the curb of reason. Moreover, they 1 To many literalists the English version is the sole authority. They are unacquainted with, and own no homage to, the sacred Originals. To give the reader an example of the danger of this trust in our English ver¬ sion we adduce a question, which should never have had a moment’s existence. This was, Whether Yob ever alludes to the egress of the Israelites from Egypt? Now that eminent scholar and controversialist, the author of The Divine Legation, held the opinion that Yrob did make this allusion. And he supported his opinion by a reference to the book of Yrob, xxvi. 12, where the expression lie divideth the sea by His power occurs. And so far is he justified, that our English version not only renders the verb m ragagn, by divideth, but volunteers a marginal reference to Exod. xiv. 21, where the actual division of the Red Sea by the hand of Moses is historically recorded. Rut, as we have shown elsewhere, our English version is in error. The Hebrew verb signifies to dominate, to- quell. And the Septuagint version correctly renders it by Kardiravae : ’Io^ui Kardiravcre ryv OaXacraw, Dy His 'power He stilled the sea. Y'ob’s constant allusions to and quotations of the Genesis prove him to be- acquainted with that earliest book extant. His abstinence from all allu¬ sions to the Exodus shows him to have lived and written before that, so called, ‘ Second Book of Moses ’ was written. Eor so intent was the pious Yob upon the divine attributes of Yehovah, that his book would have been as redolent of the glories of the Egress as of the Genesis, had they come under his notice. b 2 4 DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE? are beyond measure enthusiastic and reckless in the dis¬ semination of their refracted and distorted views and inferences. A still more impracticable phase of opposi¬ tion and resistance shall we have in the highly-educated, who presume upon their juvenile acquirements to treat of matters which they have not studied, and, upon a very slender acquaintance with profound and solemn subjects, to form and to disseminate their opinions upon them. These men think ; they view superficially and de¬ cide unadvisedly ; they register their thoughts as facts ; and then they contemplate these facta infecta as they have registered them, and give them to the world as things that have in the world taken place, or as truths that have in the world been accepted and established. And all the while they are merely the fantasies of their own sickly and hasty, the same being exceedingly self- complacent, imaginations. This last most impracticable phase of thought has been suggested to us by the recent appearance of a neat little volume on f Christian Theo¬ logy and Modern Scepticism.’ So full is this little book of the usual errors concerning theology, theologians, and the condition of the popular mind with respect to the re¬ ligion of the Cross generally, that we find it impossible to let it pass without some, we wish it could be compli¬ mentary, or even respectful, notice. The noble author of the book indicated has very frequently dropping from his pen the phrase, c educated society,’ and once at least that of ‘ the moral sense of educated men.’ Does this noble author imagine that society, to be educated, or to manifest its possession of the advantage of education, has no more to do than to gather and string together baseless objections? Does he consider that ‘the moral sense of educated men ’ is justified in its disregard, its contemp¬ tuous disregard, of the thousand answers that have a thousand times put these baseless objections to shame and INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 5 silence? Did it by some inscrutable means escape this noble author’s observation that there flickers about cer¬ tain writings a sparkling, that attracts and possibly takes strong hold of lialf-f educated society ’ ? — and that this would be the case in an especial degree if these writings should have proceeded from the pen of a person of high rank and distinction ? As far as we are enabled to come to any judgment upon the matter, ‘the moral sense of’ a really educated and efficient mind, a mind well read and informed upon the very serious and even momentous subjects, which are in this little volume remorselessly handled, would have forborne to touch upon * these thorny questions ; ’ would have hesitated to tread where alone breadth and depth of theological learning could by any possibility arrive, as pious and learned students have arrived, at sacred and eternal truth. We could have heartily desired that this noble author had manifested just so much of * the moral sense of educated men ’ as would have induced him to spare * half-educated society ’ the publication, and thereby the peril, of this superficial little volume, seeing that * half-educated society ’ may re¬ ceive spiritual wounds, or contract spiritual disease and even undergo spiritual death, from its perusal ; although it be, as we feel bound to pronounce it to be, as shallow and as specious as it is attractive and objectionable. But we cannot stop here. This noble author has condescended to favour us with his motives to the publi¬ cation of this volume. It appears to have been intended for the delectation of what he considers to be * educated society.’ And the motives to its publication that are put forth are of a nature that invite and even demand attention. In the discussion of these motives we are, whether it be to our taste or not, thrust into the via lactea of so-called liberal politics. For we are informed by this noble politician that he would never have touched 6 DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE P these thorny questions, but would gladly have avoided them, if he did not observe that f the religious teachers never cease from intermeddling with politics.’ By ‘ the religious teachers ’ are plainly meant the canonically ordained Ministers of the Church of Christ, in England for the present happily established. For schismatic teachers are on this noble author’s so-denominated liberal side1 in politics. And these men’s tf intermeddling in politics ’ is commendable and most acceptable. For their sweet voices, and their expressive combinations, and their tumultuous gatherings are the lovely fruit-buds of liberal promise. Yet, notwithstanding all these solid reasons for a liberal Government’s worship and indulgence of schismatic obliquities, are the ministers of the Church of Christ, men of education and of more or less learning, men of substance,2 of position, and of family interests, because they are clergymen, no longer English gentlemen and English subjects ? Are they demanded to preserve a supine inaction, while a true and high-minded minority are swamped by a most unnatural coalition of waiters upon liberal improvidence ? Is it expected that the clergy keep silence before a political concrete of hostile elements, that are only held together by a thirst for change or a lust for power ? Above all, are the clergy, without effort or remonstrance, to permit tenacious place- 1 We have seen good reason to modify this opinion. There are Non¬ conformists who are so conscientiously. All are not political Dissenters. For Dissenters, whose dissent arises from what they hold to be serious dif¬ ferences in forms, or doctrine, we can only feel respect and commiseration. 2 Dr. Blomfield, Bishop of London, in a speech on the revenues of the Church of England, declared that those revenues would be entirely inade¬ quate to their purpose, were they not supplemented by the private revenues of the reverend the clergy. He reckoned that two-thirds of the means by wrhich that Ministry was made efficient were the private resources of the clergy themselves. We cannot call to mind the occasion on which this was said, and we quote from memory. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. men, the leaders of 6 half-educated society,’ to unchurch England, as they have, as far as in them lay, unchurched and so far de- christianised Ireland? Is this the black¬ mail demanded of the clergy as the price of their quiet exercise of their sacred ministry, and as the condition for a peaceable passage through their Christian life ? Is it the clergy’s bounden duty and also their worldly wisdom to sit still and to fold their arms, and by their supineness and their guilty silence to give their consent — a consent that invites the inference of their approval — while half- c educated society ’ denude and degrade the Church of England as they have denuded and degraded the sister Church of Christ in Ireland ? Is all this abnegation of their holy interests expected of the self-denying English clergy if they would work hard and live hardly, as the great majority of them do work and live, in peace and quiet ? W e have no more at present to observe upon e Chris¬ tian Theology and Modern Scepticism.’ 1 We have, moreover, to meet and to oppose those students who cast themselves upon Vedas, upa- Vedas, Angas, and up-Angas, and thence imbibe their philo¬ logical faith and doctrines. And these scholars are wont to regard the Sanskrit as not only what it plainly is, the channel of language — that is, the venerable vehicle of the dialects of the most ancient, the primordial language, to many if not all Oriental, and in a more or less degree to almost all European peoples, but as the venerable mother of universal language. These linguists it will be, in our second part of our work, ‘ The Progress of Language,’ 2 1 See Appendix A. 'l Our former part, ‘The Origin of Language,’ is written, and can be early prepared for the press. But our second series, ‘The Progress of Language,’ is arrested, and may be finally prohibited by increased defect of sight. 8 DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE? our ill-relishecl business to divest of their pleasant hallu¬ cinations, and to awaken from their dreamy self-com¬ placency. We have, furthermore, to meet, wielding such wea¬ pons as suit the warfare, those, who regard all animate creations as the outcome of a fortuitous concurrence of life-creating particles ; those, who, having analysed living tissues, promise themselves and ardently desire to mislead mankind by their pretensions, to assemble and to com¬ pound the chemical constituents, that are discovered in living substances, and to demand of this compound, the work of their scientific manipulation, that it c begin] and feel and exhibit their vexation, that it fails to c begin] i to live in an organic form? We have, still further, to meet the votaries of as¬ cending, or in their diction descending Evolution, trans¬ mutation, or development ; students in science, who by a superhuman intuition discern the chain of gradations by which a monad or an askidion descends to a monkey, and a monkey descends to man. And these liberal and modest examples of homo sapiens are capable of the greatest imaginable forbearance, the issue of a noble humility, towards each other ; their indulgent humour permitting those, who in any measure or manner sympathise with them in their scientific obliquities, to elect for their venerable fore-elder either a monad or an askidion. They are also, we believe, equally magnanimous, for humility is genuine magnanimity, and equally indifferent, whether the gradations of ascent or c descent 5 towards the human imago be through the gorilla, the ape, or the equus as inns. But we have not done. For we ignore not the utterances of science by the pen of so distinguished a physiologist as Mr. Owen is on all hands considered to be. That man of science has in a paper in * Fraser’s INTRODUCTORY CHARTER, 9 Magazine’ for February, 1872, delivered himself of much accurate and very interesting physiological speculation, much ingenious and ingenuous argument, and some, not a little, specious though learned lucubration upon longevity; that being the subject of his discussion. It must seem to others, as indeed it appears to ourselves, somewhat presumptuous that we should venture to meet so celebrated a physiologist on the arena of science. W e essay not to do this unarmed. We have our smooth pebble and our sling. We assume a panoply to which we pay all homage, and from which we fully anticipate success. We contend for truth, with the aid and under the protection and guidance of Divine Revelation. We do not strive against scientific truth, but against mental illusion. And, as this subject also affects our general argument 1 and purpose, we address ourselves at once to the consideration of it, and thenceforth dismiss it from our thought. Mr. Owen, in the first place, adjusts the term of life upon estimates of puberty, of maturity, and of unifica¬ tion, or the complete ossification, of the limb-bones. His second measure of life is assumed from the ratio of tooth-supply. This scientific man’s argument takes the rigid form O O that everything is impossible, that involves a suspension or a contravention of physical law, and, much more, a succession of these miraculous interpositions. We do not acknowledge, and much less sympathise with, this antipathy to miracles. If man can change or suspend his laws, alter his works, rearrange his designs, and re¬ consider his purposes, we are unable to deny to the Creator of the universe and of man similar powers. We 1 It is an argument that is antagonistic to Divine revelation, and there¬ fore antagonistic to the assertion of the ‘one lip and utterance,’ or one primordial language. 10 DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE P not only have faith in this power of Omnipotence, bnt have full persuasion of His exercise of it. But our intention goes to affirm that in the matter before us there is no exercise of miraculous power, except we see ancl acknowledge miraculous power in breathing vitality into previously organised matter. Man derives his endowments, intellectual and physical, from his Creator. If man had been created with the design that he should live threescore and ten, or a hundred and twenty, or even a thousand years, he must and would have been provided, his omnipotent Creator could and would have provided him, with apparatus of life, com¬ mensurate in efficiency and in durability with any one of those periods. The growth of the frame, of the bones, of the human subject would have been in the ratio of the time, during which they were intended to be available. But Mr. Chven affirms that the process of the formation and unification of human bones is just such, and that the tooth he exhibits is just such, as are adapted to the present span of human life ; that their, the bones’, progress to complete ossification is one of three indices of the term of human life. But what does Mr. Owen herein say more, than that man, reduced by a self-earned and judicial degeneracy, possesses within his frame the indices of a shortened endurance of the processes and the functions of vitality ? Or, to put this matter in other and plainer terms, man primarily was capable of enjoying something like a thousand years of life. Through human inven¬ tions, however, in the construction of debilitating abodes, through enfeebling attire and effeminate couches, through or by means of excessive indulgence in natural and arti¬ ficial enjoyments, together with the unrestrained use of stimulating condiments and fermented liquors, mankind incurred the displeasure and forfeited the favour and superintending love of their Maker, and degenerated INTRODUCTORY CHARTER. 11 rapidly. And man’s physical degeneracy was apparent in his physical decay. His bodily substances, his bones amongst the rest, that had been the fulcra of his strength and of his endurance, became the positive media of his degeneracy and decay. At what time in his early ex¬ istence the patriarch’s frame attained its complete ossifi¬ cation, that is, at what period of life Methushelakh’s limb-bones perfected the coalescence of the epiphyses with their shafts ; at what age puberty, at what ma¬ turity, at what time of life all these structural depart¬ ments were completed, we have no data, no historical or physical data, upon which to theorise, except that, for the uses and purposes of a protracted endurance, we naturally and rationally imagine a slower, more finishing and hardening process of ripening to a perfect maturity. And this rate of procedure we cannot be inhibited to • accept as a possibility ; and may, therefore, as essential and indispensable, hold and consider to be available as a probability. Our ardent physiologist himself produces, and at the same time neglects to notice and to appreciate and profit by a positive example in Lemek (Lamech). Nor is Lemek the only instance of a sera juventus that the studious will come upon in his Biblical reading. What, then, is the tendency of the evidence and the reasoning upon it ? These grounds of truth do not, indeed, go to prove that all antediluvians, or post- diluvians, attained polycentennial ages, but that some of them, who did so attain, were probably and even neces¬ sarily slow of juvenescence, slow of maturity, and there¬ fore upon reasonable grounds, and in accordance with Mr. Owen’s own hypothesis, enjoyed a protracted maturity, and became subject to a slow and a gradual decay. We hence infer that the growth of these very ancient men’s bones was slow ; the coalescence of the epiphyses of their limb- bones with their shafts slow ; puberty late ; maturity very 12 DIVINE REVELATION, OR rSEUD O-SCIENCE ? late; and further, in due proportion to the time occupied in all these processes to completion was the perfection of the structural material and arrangement of their bodily frames. And hence their endurance was extreme, and their subjec¬ tion to the inroads of marked decay indefinitely deferred. The youthful Itskhaq (Isaac1) was about nineteen years of age when he accompanied his pious father to c the land of Moriah.’2 He had attained the measure, and that a considerable measure, of strength, that made it easy for him to bear the burden of the wood for a burnt sacrifice. Yet did he, with childlike meekness, submit himself to be bound by his father, and to be laid on the wood on the altar as a sacrifice. Now, have we herein an example of filial obedience to parental authority ? or was this passive submission a case of actual subjection to superior bodily powers? Or, once more, was this in¬ fantine meekness the product of a compound of filial awe and of submission to the inevitable ? Neither Itskhaq nor his father attained3 to the age of two hundred years. But the youth was necessarily of incomplete vigour and of unknit bodily structure at the early age of nineteen, while the father was in the full development of maturity. He had scarcely passed the apex of the parabola of human life. In Isaac we clearly see an example of the sera juventus. And this is in exact keeping, as far as it 1 Itskhaq, the correct transliteration of the original pHV?, is an ono- matopoetic name, that echoes the chuckle or suppressed laugh with which the promise of a son was received by the aged parents. The ’Itraa/c of the Septuagint is answerable for Isaac in all versions. 2 ‘The land of Moriah’ is that which is chosen or provided by Jeho¬ vah. mb, moriah, i.e. H' i“l£OD, morah iali, mora yah: rt. flN*), raah, T»5 7 TTJT* 7 V * TT* looked out, 'provided, chose. 3 Abraham reached the age of one hundred threescore and fifteen years. Gen. xxv. 7- Isaac attained to one hundred and fourscore years. Gen. xxv. 28. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 13 goes, with the account given by Tacitus of the Germans. For, although they sympathised with universal human nature in the restricted duration of life, they were, never¬ theless, in comparatively inartificial ages, eminently con¬ spicuous in the circumstances of a slow maturity, and of a sustained constitutional vigour. *' Sera juvenum venus , edque inexhausta pubertas .’ 1 But Mr. Owen steps forth with a tooth in his hand, for which he demands a hearing. From the evidence, imagined to be supplied by this tooth, he argues the impossibility of the extended human life, attested by holy Scripture. He invites attention to the tooth supply of the horse, the ass, the ox, the sheep, and the extra¬ ordinary supply of a succession of large masses of com¬ plete grinder- teeth to the long-lived elephant. And from the formation and the qualities of these teeth he accounts for their term of life. Indeed, Mr. Owen perceives, as who does not perceive ? that the smaller animals, which are herbivorous, and were intended to be the food of man, should early arrive at an available maturity ; and that the animals that were destined to be subservient to man should be of gentle culture and of docile temperament, and, therefore, herbivorous or graminivorous, albeit that sustenance involved an early term to their usefulness. He perceives and truly represents the huge elephant to be provided with a tooth supply for an extended life and service. He then returns to the human kingdom, and he feels persuaded that he has proved the term of human life from the supply and the quality of man’s dental organs. Yet, if we may proffer a rationale to a Goliath of science, may not the dentition of those long-lived patriarchs have partaken, together with their general ossification, of the advantages of a slow development and 1 C. C. Taciti Germania , c. xx. 14 DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE P of a deferred completion ? May not cement, dentine, and even enamel, through this intentness of Nature, have become beyond measure refined, hardened, and resistant of decay? May they not, although of similar form, similar materials, and of similar development, have been more perfectly constructed, and their material substances, assimilated within and evolved from frames of extra¬ ordinary vigour, have become more concentrated, and so more enduring ? Or, if this rationale meet not the requi¬ sitions of this accomplished physiologist, may not these patriarchs of polycentennial ages have passed many of those years, and even some of those centuries, and they very happy ones, in toothlessness? We read, that when Isaac was old c his eyes were dim, so that he could not see.’ Now how long this aged patriarch had been dim of sight we are not told. Neither are we made acquainted with his dental condition. He may have been entirely toothless when he desired f savoury meat ; ’ and how long toothless, Ave have no means of information. But Ave rest content and satisfied Avith either of these, or these conjoined, conditions — that dentition Avas more enduring, or that toothlessness Avas endurable — for that Ave deem both more than possible, and have the fullest confidence in the often-tried, and always proved, veracity of our sacred Records. Our accomplished physiologist gives his confidence to the Chronology of Manetho, and to the hieroglyphic monuments of Egypt. We must confess that we are someAvhat Avanting faith in the deductions he makes from physiological evidence, and infinitely diffident in his dis¬ cernment of pretensions to historical credibility. And in the case before us we conceive that cement, dentine, and enamel, Avhen the products of a robust subject, possess a degree of indestructibility beyond calculation, and yet, from the circumstance of their dependence upon the INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 15 sanitary condition of the body that produces them, too variable and uncertain to be relied upon as chronological evidence. We cannot admit the evidence of any number of teeth as to the life endurance of their owner or owners. And much less that of one tooth, which may have been the best of a good set, or the worst tooth of a bad set, in the mouth of a man in the fortieth, eightieth, or eight hundredth year of his life. But besides the physical growth and condition of the dental apparatus itself, we have to introduce yet another test of the durability of these organs, and so a further proof of their inefficiency as chronological evidence. And this new test is the nature and condition of the site, or the ground, in which they had been deposited. For while in some localities rapid decay may be looked for, in others conservation may be expected. We adduce a case in point. Somewhere about the year of grace 1820, the old church at Walton-on-the-Hill, in Surrey,' was taken down, and a new one was erected on its site. In the year 1822 we saw the new church, and received intelligence concerning the old one. It had been built, we were informed, 800 years. Its founder, John of Walton, had been interred in a niche constructed within the line of the outer wall, but external to the church. The body had to be disinterred in order to lay the foundation for the new edifice. And we were on all hands given to understand that John of Walton’s hair was in the highest preservation, and his teeth as per¬ fect and as white, as they could have been on the day of his interment. W e saw for ourselves a further proof of the conservative tendencies of the soil in the beautiful preservation of the slabs of Spanish chesnut wood, upon which the foundations had been laid, and of which wood useful and ornamental articles had been, and were in course of being, made by the village artisan. The soil 1G DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE? was of a chalky description; and chalk, the intelligent reader has no need to be informed, is a substance into which carbonic acid, a conservative principle, largely enters. This case, introducing a consideration of the conservative nature or otherwise of sites, forms another element of the uncertainty of the chronological evidence relied upon by the writer of the paper on 4 Longevity,’ inserted in the magazine referred to. The only direct historical testimony as to the term of human life — we mean the testimony supplied in our sacred books — is on the side of, indeed has suggested, our rationale concerning the degeneracy of the human race. For Jehovah saith, 4 My breath’ — that spirit or breath which the Creator willed to be breathed into man’s nostrils at his creation — 4 shall not remain in man indefi¬ nitely,’ or for so indefinite a time, 4 for that he is flesh ;’ 1 and therefore 4 his days ’ — his lifetime — 4 shall be ’ — are hereby ordained to be — 4 a hundred and twenty years.’ Herein we perceive an actual and positive limit, and that, compared with preceding narrations, a shortening of human life. And this took place shortly before the narrative of the universal deluge, and when man’s career had vastly and sadly declined from its pristine innocence and simplicity. But after the deluge the enervating excesses and luxuries of mankind produced a still further diminution of bodily vigour and a further curtailment of human endurance. And we read in the psalm ascribed to Moses 2 that 4 the days of our years, as respects them,3 seventy years ; and although through strength eighty years, yet the pride of their strength (is) trouble and vanity, 1 D|t?3, Beshaggam, be-asher-gam. Eo quod ccrte. Noldius. Or, perhaps 3, in, transgression, £>, their : ‘ in their transgression ’ — man collectively — ‘ he is flesh.’ 2 Psalm xc. 10. 3 DH3, bahem: quod ad illos attinet. Noldius. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 17 for the cutting off (7s) imminent and evanescent.’ Now, herein we possess, at the least, good historical testimony to a further shortening of man’s life. This curtailment we see accomplished ; and in the occasional extension of life to a hundred years and upwards we perceive and must acknowledge the previous term of human life, f an hundred and twenty years,’ to be possible.1 We ascribe no great importance to the account given by Josephus,2 nor to the popular opinion of the Jews in his time respecting it, because, whatever brilliant scin¬ tillations of scientific knowledge, such as were the in¬ formation, and that in the absence of telescopes and microscopes, of the globular form of the stars and the vesicular schesis of the atmosphere, may have been obiter vouchsafed in our sacred literature, we see and acknow¬ ledge no direct science, or communication of science, therein. That knowledge, nevertheless, if we should feel disposed to build theories, or even hypotheses, thereon, would go far to exhibit the object, and in some degree the utility, and so the reasonableness of the extended patriarchal lifetimes. For the Jewish historian not only animadverts upon the love entertained by the Creator for these rational creatures newly created in His Image, that being man’s progressive improvability, but also upon their restricted and temperate use of the sustenance that most conduced to health and to length of life.3 He 1 ‘ Out of a population of twenty-three millions .... as many as 160 are entered at a century old and upwards.’ — Census of England. From the Standard, February 9, 1874. 2 Jewish Antiquities, lib. I. c. ii. § 9. 3 There can rest no doubt upon :he correct representation by all trans¬ lations of the Hebrew word shanah, year, that is, the time occupied by the earth’s revolution around the sun. This word’s primary significa¬ tion is a return, a change, a repetition. And it is employed to signify that repetition, or return to the same position or place, in a given or the same time. Some enquirers desire to represent this word shanah as meaning some more early return or repetition than 365 days. But this notion is C 18 DIVINE REVELATION, OR PSEUDO-SCIENCE ? further gives it as his own and the general opinion that this length of life was intended as a course of advance¬ ment in virtue, and an opportunity of improvement in the sciences of astrology1 and geometry. He further asserts in the same passage that it was of importance that the lives of these patriarchs should extend to, at the least, 600 years, in order that they might become acquainted with the grand solar year — a period at which the sun and the moon returned to the same situation which they occupied at the beginning. O O Now, with respect to Science as a matter of interest to the sacred penmen, it is a notion in which we fail to realise, or to which we attach, any importance whatever. We too often see so entire a disregard of these matters, such perfect abandonment of science to the tastes and the pursuit of the creature, that we can recognise no studied appreciation of it as a subject of recommendation to the human race by its Divine Creator. And whatso¬ ever men of science may think of these objects of a longevity, conceded to man when fresh from the creative Will of an omniscient and omnipotent Creator, they cannot but perceive and acknowledge that the Jews and their accomplished historian had full confidence in it ; that is, in the length of life accorded to the early patriarchs. And not the J ews and their historian alone, impracticable. Shanah cannot mean days, or months, the return of light, or the change of the moon, when the age of Methushelakh is spoken of, because that measure would be incongruous when applied to the age of other persons, Abraham or his son Itskhaq, for instance. Eor 969 moons would indeed be 8 Of years, bringing the age of Methushelakh to that of an aged man of the present day. But 175, the sum of the changes of Abraham’s life, counted as moons, would bring the father of the faithful to the youthful age of 13 years and 6 moons. 1 We do not accept the word ‘ dtTTpoXoyla ’ as the ancient pseudo-science astrology, but, as the word well expresses, the ratio of the heavenly bod es, astronomy. Indeed in some MSS. the reading is not darpoXoyia but a.