LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. Presented BY"K-eV. LcWlsW. M tAcl^e. , "^ -"B BS 651 .N5 1881 >0 -^it-.^ ? '.f 1921 GENESIS. W„ .^,v^^ BY y E. NISBET, D.D., AUTHOR or " RKSCRRECTION OF THE BODY : DOES THE BIBLE TEACH IT?" ETC. Prove all thingB. — Paul. Science must consist of precise knowledge. — Huxley. NEW YORK: W. B. SMITH & CO., Bond Strekt. COPTBIGHT, 1881, Br -W. B. SMITH & CO. INSCRIBED TO MY SISTER, E. F. NISBET. «« We 've clamb the hill thegither.** (5) COKTEKTS. Chapter Page I. Whence the Earth? 11 II. The Aim of the Bible 23 III. The Antiquity of the Earth .... 98 IV. "Day" in Genesis 1 32 V. The Creation of Sun, Moon, Stars . 38 VI. Death among Animals 43 VII. Darwinism 40 VIII. Antiquity of Man (Evidences of) . . 81 IX. Antiquity of Man (continued). (Year Measure in Geology) 92 X. Antiquity of Man {continued). (Biblical Chronology) 09 XI. Antiquity of Man (concluded). (Present Condition of the Problem) 104 XII. Unity of Origin of the Human Species, 115 XIII. Final Destiny of the Earth. . . . 123 (O PEEFACE. This treatise has a unique aim : it deals witli all points of rontTct between science and the Bible history of creation. A l^?etintth^rm^^^ of the latest teachings of science in thisentire fiekl is presented and reviewed. A large amount of matter elsewhere only to be gathered by extensive read- ?n- it here fS The volume will be of service to persons w& would be abreast with current thought, pastors, and ^''^li:rTatLZTZle are not always Bible; hypotheses in science at not always science. This volume ^^-^-^ to render human interpretation more ^^%%%'X £mved thou-ht and aid in the distinguishing of Natuie s assuiea utterances from the chatterings of pseudo-science. ninian interpretations of the Bible and science pseudo- scSnce and the Bible, may conflict, - science and the Bible never It is no less false than unjust to both scientists and Scsts to denominate scientists "sceptics, opponents of the B ble infidels." It belies many scientists, and gives the impSssion tS biblicists are clinging desperately to some- tSns wWch thinking has outgrown ; that there is a fight going Se not to?gn?re tiiif and th^'ow the weight of these men and Sir facts into the enemy's camp. Says President Chad- bonrne ''The difficulty in reconciling the geologic with the MosaTc record is found by students of the Bible who know .^t,f.r m^rrticallv of seology, and by students of geology MhS KSant of thf Sff or hate its plain requirements, To^at they wSh to discredit the book for their own peace so t^^^^'i^yj^^^^jt men, eminent both as practical geologists Snd Bible students, like Hugh Miller, Dawson Ban., do not seem to find any real difficulty in the case. If tlieie aie any two livino- men who are better able to give an opinion in this Slittei-tteirrrofs. Dana and ^-vson I for o^ie should be glad to go far to take lessons from them. ^^^f^.^'^,;;, ume wilf help to confirm this position of President Chad- bourne, is believed by ^^^ Author. LBAtBKWORTH, Kak'sas, Jude 1, 1831. (9) THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. CHAPTER I. WHENCE THE EARTH? Modern science has offered us solutions of "Whence the earth?" Descartes, two centuries ago, suggested the hypothesis of vortices. In the Cartesian system, a vortex is a collection of mat- ter forming an ether or fluid endowed with a rapid rotary motion around an axis. From such vortices Descartes constructs the universe. A second hypothesis, the nebular, was first pro- posed by Kant, developed somewhat by Herschel, thoroughly systematized by Laplace (obiit 1827). He supposes that the space of our solar system was once filled by matter of high temperature, and rarefied much more than our most rarefied ffases. This was the primary nebula. This nebula moved (11) 1 2 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. on its axis, cooled by throwing offbeat into space, and as it cooled, condensed. The circling mass, becoming flattened at the poles and bulged out at the equator, assumed gradually the form of a disk. The attraction of cohesion of the matter at the circumference of the disk was finally overcome by the centrifugal force ; this outer matter was separated from the central condensing mass, and became a revolving ring. Ring after ring was thus formed, constituting by their condensation our now planets. The rings earliest liberated were of matter less condensed than those thrown off later from the ever-consolidating mass ; and so we find the planets Uranus and Neptune, for dis- tant from the solar central mass, have the specific gravity of cork, while the other planets increase in specific gravity as they near the sun. The pale rings of Saturn to-day may give some conception of the disintegration of the primary nebula. After the ring containing the matter of our earth broke and fell into itself, the globe thus consti- tuted had an immense dilatation, embracing our moon. The matter finally constituting our earth, revolving and condensing, became a globe of melted WHENCE THE EARTH? 13 lava. Then, after indefinite centuries, a scoria formed here and there on the surface of the cooling mass. By and hy, the scattered scoriae unite. A crust is formed enclosing a sea of fire. From time to time, by contraction of the ever-cooling core, the crust breaks, and lava belches forth ; or the crust is corrugated, and incipient mountains are formed. The surface of the earth ever cooling more and more, finally the vapors, gases, etc., of the atmosphere begin to fall ; seas, lakes, rivers are formed ; by their attritions soils appear, then vegetation, then creature life of lowest forms. The interval during which the terrestrial crust would be lowered from 2,000" to 200° has been estimated by Helmholtz at three and one half millions of centuries. Such is the nebular theory of Laplace. He claimed that certain spots of light in the heavens, of duller lustre than the stars, were examples of matter even now existing in a nebulous state ; but when later, Lord Rosse's immense telescope was applied to these supposed nebula, Laplace's entire brilliant fabric tottered. It was found that some of the spots of light supiwsed to be nebulous matter 14 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. were resolvable into distinct stars. It was now claimed that it only needed a telescope of suffi- cient power to resolve all the so-called nebulae into stars. The hypothesis fell into disrepute. But the recent revelations of the spectroscope declare that there are in the heavens genuine nebulae ; and the nebular origin of our solar system has again come into favor. It is now generally maintained by scientists. Previous to the time of Laplace, Sir Isaac Newton had said, "The admirable arrangement of the solar system cannot but be the work of an intelligent and most powerful Being." Laplace claimed that Newton in this statement " had de- viated from the method of true philosophy " ; and it has been thought that Laplace, in pro- pounding the nebular hypothesis, had an atheistic purpose in view, seeking by his theory to indicate how our solar system might have originated with- out the aid of "an intelh'gent and powerful Being." While granting to Laplace the eternity of matter, we may yet ask him. Whence the laws impressed on that matter, causing to spring forth our solar system in such beauty, harmony of movements, WHENCE THE EARTH? I5 adaptations, stability? Does not all this speak of more than a mere eternal sovereign force ? Does not all this speak of a preconceiving, prear- ranging, powerful, sovereign Intelligence?" Further, grant Descartes his vortices, Laplace his nebula: these had motion, they tell us, a rotary motion. That motion could not have been from eternity ; had it been from eternity, the vor- tices must have remained vortices, the nebula a nebula, to eternity ; eternal uniformity of motion past must have ever retained matter in eternal uni- formity of condition. That these vortices, that that nebula could have taken new shape in time, some force not impressing them from eternity must have wrought on them in a new beo-innino- : there must have existed some force outside of \ themselves. Was not that new outside force, touching them in time, what Genesis calls " God "? So the heat of the nebula could not be from eternity, else it would have remained uniform to eternity. Was not the new power outside of the nebula, throwing in heat upon it in time, what Genesis calls " God " ? Grant to Laplace the nebular origin of the 16 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. earth, this nowise conflicts with Genesis. Says the nebular hypothesis, " Our globe was once a formless, unfurnished, chaotic mass, brooded over by darkness." Says Genesis, " The earth was once emptiness and voidness ; darkness was the swaddHng band thereof." Later (so-called) science is but an echo of earlier Genesis. Genesis not only claims that a force, power, outside of matter has given our world and its present furnishing their shaping, but it also claims that that power is an Intelligence, a per- s(mal Being, — God ; and science to-day, in its most authentic expounders, reiterates the Mosaic assertion. Will, Intelligence, a Person, gave this universe birth. Says Agassiz (speaking of the life furnishing of the earth), "The combination in time and space of these thoughtful conceptions, exhibits not only thought, — it shows premedita- tion, power, wisdom, greatness, prescience, omnis- cience, providence ; in one woi d, these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the one God, whom man may know, adore, and love : and natural history must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the WHENCE THE EARTH? 17 universe, as manifested in the animal and vegeta- ble kingdoms." Dr. W. B. Carpenter, one of the foremost scientists of Great Britain, regards " Nature, or the material universe," as " the embodiment of the divine thought," and " the scientific study of nature" as "the endeavor to discover and apprehend that thought" (to have "thought the thoughts of God " was the privilege most highly esteemed by Kepler) ; and Carpenter quotes approvingly Mr. Martineau : " What, indeed, have we found [in scientific research] by moving out along: radii into the infinite ? That the whole is woven toofether in one sublime tissue of intel- lectual relations, geometric and physical, — the realized origfinal, of which all our science is but the partial copy ; that science is the crowning product and supreme expression of human rea- son. . . . Unless, therefore, it takes more mental faculty to construe a universe than to cause it, to read the book of Nature than to write it, we must more than ever [in the late revelations of science] look upon its divine face as the living appeal of thought to thought." Carpenter, as IS THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. Agassiz, regards the universe as ''a revelation of the mind and will of Deity," and that that Deity is a person. So Alfred Wallace, the co-propounder with Darwin of the present prevailing phase of the evolution hypothesis, says, "It does not seem imi)robable that all force may be will force, and thus that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is the will of higher intelligences, or of One Supreme Intelligence. It has been often said that the true poet is a seer; and in the noble verse of an American poetess we find expressed what may prove to be the highest fact of science, the noblest truth of philosophy : — ' God of the granite and the rose ! Lord of the sparrow and the bee ! The mighty tide of being flows Through countless channels, Lord, from thee ; It leaps to life in grass and flowers, Through every grade of being runs, While from creation's radiant towers Its glory flames in stars and suns.' " Thus do science and Genesis harmoniously dechire : This earth and its fiuMiishinof have arisen o from the will of an Intelligence, from God. WHENCE THE EARTH? 19 Further, in the expression of Genesis, "G^ocZ created the heavens and the earth," there is declared the unity of the power pervading all space and all time ; and precisely this is the utter- ance of science to-day, whether we look at the uniformity and harmony of the operations of the universe in the present, — the evident concate- nated development of an original one plan in the readings of the geological rock record of the past, —or the recent doctrine of the correlation of forces, that the sum of force in the universe, potential and actual, is always one and the same, a unit. " The men who did most to prepare the way for this doctrine, the correlation of forces, such as Newton, Davy, Oersted, Herschel, and Faraday, all delighted to see God in his works ; and the philosopher who was the main agent in discovering it, Dr. Mayer, has a mind filled Avith the presence of God, and looks on force as the expression of the divine power." Says Dr. Car- penter, "The culminating point of man's intel- lectual interpretation of nature may be said to be his recognition of the wiily of the power, of which her phenomena are the diversified maui- 20 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. festations. Towards this point all scientific in- quiry now tends." Science to-day, in one of its most recent funda- mental advances, the correlation of forces, is just beginning to grasp in its full significance, in its sublime height and all-encompassing breadth, the grand idea enunciated in the first verse of the Bible cosmogoiiiy, " One power pervades all things." And we have recently offered us by Saigey a volume whose object is to demonstrate the " Unity of Physical Forces," in which vital activity itself is made simply transformed motion. Of the "atom and motion" he would construct the universe. Says Prof. Tyndall, "I have noticed, during years of self-observation, that it is not in hours of clearness and vigor that this doctrine [material- istic atheism] commends itself to my njind ; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in which avc dwell and of which we form a part." A confession, this, that the most advanced scientific thinking of the day, which unifies all the forces producing the WHENCE THE EARTH? 21 varied phenomena of the universe, cannot, in its "stronger and healthier" hours, persuade itself that the all-pervasive Power, the ultimate Pro- ducer, is non- intellectual force ; demands some- thing higher, finds rest only in the acceptance of the Genesis utterance, "An Intelligence, God, created the heavens and the earth." Says Dr. Carpenter, " In the admirable words of the great master, Sir John Herschel, 'In the only case in which we are admitted any personal knowledge of the origin of force, we find it con- nected (possibly by intermediate links untrace- able by our faculties, yet indisputably connected) with volition, and by inevitable consequence with motive, with intellect, and with all those attri- butes of mind in which personality consists.' As a physiologist," continues Carpenter, " I most fully recognize the fact that the physical force exerted by the body of the man is not generated de novo by his will, but is derived from the oxidation of the constituents of his food. But holding it as equally certain, because the fact is capable of verification by every one as often as he chooses to make the experiment, that in the performance of every voli- 22 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. tional movement, that physical force is put in action, directed and controlled by the individual personality or ego^ I deem it just as absurd and illogical to affirm that there is no place for a God in nature, originating, directing, and controlling its forces by his will, as it Avould be to assert that there is no place in man's body for his conscious mind." " Sun, fire-mist, molecules," says Car- penter, "but what is back of the molecules? A personality." Genesis names that personality "God." THE AIM OF THE BIBLE. 23 CHAPTER II. THE AIM OF THE BIBLE. To interpret the Bible correctly in its connec- tions with science, it is imperative that we under- stand and keep in mind the mission of the Bible, and its method of dealing with man in his primi- tive scientific status. The mission of the Bible is distinctively and absolutely spiritual. The Bible is written simply to save man from sin and its consequences. Teaching physical science is thus wholly foreign to the Bible. It comes to man, not to interfere with his ideas of physical science, but, meeting him on his own peculiar plane of knowledge phys- ical, adapts itself in infinite condescension to his child-like, inadequate ideas of the mysterious universe of matter in which he finds himself, and takes hold of the hand of the wandering child with simply one thought; to lead him back to 24 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA V AND GENESIS. the Father he seeks; leaving the correction of his ideas of the physical universe, and of all other human sciences, to the growing light of the child's developing reason, and the unfoldings of time. Accepting this as the correct view of the case, we are not to expect that the Bible, given to man in his infancy, is to address that man as if he were acquainted with the Copernican system of the universe, had weighed with Torricelli the firmament, and explored with Lyell the rocks. These fields are left gymnasia for the play of man's God-bestowed intellect. If the divine wis- dom, come to teach man moral truth, find him in his infancy in physical knowledge, holding the idea that the expanse of the earth's atmos- phere is a solid crystalline vault in which the stars are set, and in which are " windows of heaven," if he thinks the earth stands still and the sun moves, — the language is adapted to such views. It has, in opposition to this view, been urged that a divine teacher, without descending to the office of teaching science, might yet have kept his own language free from all collusion with THE AIM OF THE BIBLE. 25 humtm error. In reply to this, De Quincey well says: "Meantime, if a man sets himself steadily to contemplate the consequences which must inevitably have followed any deviation from the customary erroneous phraseology of the people, he will see the utter impossibility that a teacher (pleading a heavenly mission) could allow him- self to deviate one hair's-breadth (and why should he wish to deviate ?) from the ordinary language of the times. To have uttered one syllable, for instance, that implied motion in the earth, would have issued into the following ruins : Firsts it would have tainted the teacher with the reputa- tion of lunacy ; secondly, it would have placed him in this inextricable dilemma : on the one hand, to answer the questions prompted by his own perplexing language would have opened upon him, of necessity, one stage after another of scientific cross-examination, until his spiritual mission would have been forcibly swallowed up in the mission of natural philosopher; but on the other hand, to pause resolutely at one stage of this public examination, and to refuse all further advance, would be, in the popular opinion, to 26 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. retreat as a baffled disputant from insane para- doxes which it had not been found possible to support. One step taken in that direction was fatal, whether the great envoy retreated from his own words, to leave behind the impression that he was defeated as a rash speculator, or stood to his words, and thus fatally entangled himself in the inexhaustible succession of expla- nations and justifications. In either event the spiritual mission was at an end ; it would have perished in shouts of derision, from which there could have been no retreat and no retrievance of character. The greatest astronomers to-day, rather than seem ostentatiously learned, will stoop to the popular phrase of the sun's rising and setting; but God, for a purpose commen- surate with man's eternal welfare, is by some critics thought incapable of the same petty abstinence." Accept this view as to the method of the Bible's dealing with man, in reference to the facts of nature, there is at once removed all scientific objection to the inspiration of the Bible from its incidental expressions touching nature, incorrect THE AIM OF THE BIBLE. £7 in fact; e. ^., the constitution of the firma- ment, "windows in heaven," immovability of the earth, etc. And if we find the grand volunteer utterances of its opening page — the creation of all by the One w^hose book the Bible claims to be, and creation in a certain order in the creatures and time — confirmed by later science, we have here evidence that a wisdom higher than the human wisdom of that early day wrote. The Book will thus on its first page declare its divine Author, and give a reason for a respectful hear- ins:. 28 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. CHAPTER III. THE ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH. Geology, as an inductive science, had its ori- gin as late as 1807, in the formation of "The London Geological Society." In some matters it is only yet seeking its tiov orco ; in others it has reached solid standing. It has disabused the mind of the idea that the earth as it is now con- stituted was spoken instantaneously into exist- ence by immediate divine fiat. That not divine fiat immediately and instantaneously, but natural agencies mediately and by long process have built up the earth's crust in its present form, is proven by what we find in that crust, collated with what we see taking place continually about us. The geologist sees on the sea-beach, delta, lake shore, or bottom to-day, layer after layer of saud gently laid down ; he sees now forming calcareous rocks embedding implements of man's art and man him- THE ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH. 29 self, the fossils of the future ; he sees wood buried becoming lignite in its process of transformation into coal ; he sees the bones of existing species of animals buried in sediment; he sees volcanoes thrusting forth their melted rock ; he sees corals forming their islands, reefs, atolls, and shells agglutinating; he sees the workings of chemical atiinity and voltaic action. He now passes from the surface of the earth down into its depths ; he turns over leaf after leaf of the stone book. On each leaf he sees distinctly traced the impress and seal of the very agents he finds to day in action at their incessantly modifying work on the crust of the earth all round about him. The rocks of the earth's crust are now to him a new revelation. As he turns over their stone leaves, he recognizes the earth's own handwriting ; he reads there its autobiography, — a writing that can be no for- gery. Says the geologist, " I find verified in the records of nature what I find written in the records of the Bible, ' I change not ! ' As to-day the wind and the wave and the cloud, the sunshine, heat, cold, winter's snow, summer's rain, autumnal sleet, vernal shower, belching volcano, the little 30 >^^-^ SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. unseen, silent-working coral insect, are all min- isters in the hand of the one universal intelligent Worker, modifying the crust of the earth and for- warding his world-idea ; so down deep in the earth's crust I find traces of these same ministers accomplishing mediately, and by process of dura- tion incalculable, the behests, in earth-crust mod- ification, of the one sovereign Intelligence, and from out the rocky deeps I hear a voice I have heard before, — 'I am the same yesterday, to- day, and forever.' " But if natural agencies have fashioned the earth's crust as we now find it, a duration of indefinite length is needed : needed for the dep- osition of the twenty miles of stratified rocks in that crust ; needed for the deposition of the im- mense accumulations of shells in these rocks, nearly one seventh of their entire bulk ; needed for the rise, life, and dying out (slow processes) of nearly fifty different worlds (Agassiz) of crea- tures, which have successively peopled our glolie, leaving their traces in its crust ; needed for the growth and deposition of the immense vegetable accumulations in the coal measures, in Nova Sco- THE ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH. 31 till, with their interstratified soils, nearly three miles in thickness (Lyell). Six million years have been claimed for the coal measm'es alone. The heavens above us declare that the physical universe is created on a errand scale as to time. Light travels nearly 200,000 miles a second. It takes light from nine to twelve years to reach us from the nearest fixed star. Herschel discovered stars whose light must travel 9,000 years before reaching our world, and nebulte whose light would only reach us after 3,000,000 years. Indication here of the grandeur of the time scale of our universe ; one part becoming aware of the crea- tion of the other part only after the expiration of 3,000,000 years. This voice from the stars may lessen our as- tonishment at the voice froui the rocks demand- ing for our earth an antiquity of millions of years. The point in time of the creation of our world is not given us in the Bible, nor any data by "svhich it may be approximately determined. The only Biblical statement is, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 32 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. CHAPTER IV. " DAY " IN GENESIS I. Long before the rise of geology, " day " in Genesis i. was judged difficult to interpret. Josephus declared " day " metaphorical ; Origen thought it an indefinite period ; Augustine de- clares it not only difficult to understand, but even to conceive what sort of day is here meant. In more modern times, " day" has been regarded a figurative expression for an indefinite period ; others regard it the ordinary day ; others still think it was understood by the writer as an ordi- nary day, but stood in the Divine mind as symbol of a vast period. Any interpretation of "day," to be accepted, must harmonize with both of God's volumes, — Nature, the Bible. (a. ) Those who hold that the " day " of the narra- "DAY" IN GENESIS I. 33 tive of creation is an ordinary day maintain that an indefinitely long period intervenes between the creation spoken of in the first verse, and the crea- tions recounted in the verses immediately follow- ing, — these latter verses recounting simply the creations which took place a few thousand years ago at the introduction of man. The gap thus left, it is claimed, between the first verse and the verses following gives ample time for all the tvorlds of geology. This view assumes that in twenty-four hours our continents rose from an unbroken ocean and took their present form ; that in forty-eight hours all the now existing species of animals came into be- ing. Science, on the contrary, declares that such processes demand immense duration. This inter- pretation is now generally rejected. Dr. Conant, in rejecting it, declares the assumption of a long lapse of time between the creative act of the first verse and the creative acts of the verses which follow to be wholly unwarranted by anything in the sacred writer's statement ; and claims that the extension of the creative work through six successive periods, of whatever duration, can be 34 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. explained only by the fact that the work was not accomplished by a sudden exertion of supernatural power, but " by the operation of those secondary causes which the structure of the earth proves to have been active in its formation, requiring ages for their accomplishment." (5.) The figurative interpretation, making "day" an indefinitely long duration, agrees with science ; but the narrative, by the exact limita- tion " evening " and " morning," impresses us with the idea that the writer conceived of " day " as an ordinary day. The same impresses us at the insti- tution of the Sabbath (Ex. xx. 10, 11). (c.) The symbolical interpretation of "day" — " day " understood by the loriter as an ordinary day, but standing in the Divine mind as a symbol of a higher duration — solves all difficulties. Some of the foremost Biblical scholars maintain that the creation history was communicated to man in successive visions, — tableaux. The six tableaux of creation rose before the eyes of the seer, im- pressed him as six successive periods of work, — as six ordinary days, and their rise and fading away as morning and evening. But in the Divine "DAY" IN GENESIS I. 35 mind these six tableaux were symbols of periods of past working of indefinite length. Kevelation of God's works past holds the same relation to the human and the Divine thought as revelation of God's works future. The same method of interpretation is applicable to both. One is prophecy teaching backward, the other prophecy teaching forward. We find the "day," "week," "year," of prophecy forward stood some- times in the Divine mind — the event infallibly interpreting — as symbols of higher periods (Dan. ix. 24-27, and xii. 11, 12 ; Ez. iv. 6). So if the unfoldings of God's works in the past by physical science teach that in the symbol " day " there lay in the Divine mind an outlook and conception infinitely more grand than the human lansfuacfe would indicate, or the human mind then was fitted to receive, we are to accept these unfoldings of science as giving us God's own interpretation of the miniature symbol "day." As the child-man advances in physical knowledge, the height and grandeur of the full content of the miniature symbol open up to him, just as the unfoldings of historical events lead man to the height and 36 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. grandeur of the Divine thought in their miniature symbols. And here are perfectly harmonized the ordinary day conception of the writer of the narrative, and the indefinitely long periods required by science. JEach of the six tableaux of the creative week ; impressed the seer as an ordinary day, while in I the Divine mind each tableau was symbol of an indefinitely long period. And the facts of the rock record correspond precisely with the Mosaic tableaux in the kind of creations, and in the num.- her and order of the creation periods. Traces of the first, second, and third day's work — light, firmament, the heavenly bodies — must be only incidental in the rocks ; full traces of only the third, fifth, and sixth days' work — vegetation, creeping creatures, beasts, and man — can we expect the rocks to give us. Full traces of these latter three days' work we find in the rocks, and in the precise order given us in Genesis. The geologic scale divides itself into three grand parts : Palteozoic, Secondary, and Tertiary. The Palfeozoic — corresponding to Genesis' third day — was emphatically the plant period, "herbs "DAY" IN GENESIS I. 37 yielding seed after their kind." In no other age was such vegetation ; this is the period of vast vegetable accumulations constituting our coal. On the fifth creative day appear the sea monsters, creeping creatures, birds. Corresponding with this, the Secondary period of geolog}' abounded above all other periods in enormous monsters of tlic deep, creeping creatures, and birds of wonder- ful size ; and coincident with the beasts, cattle, man of the sixth creative day, the Tertiary is spe- cially the epoch of great beasts, of cattle, and the only epoch in which traces of man are found. The great divisions of the geologic scale thus correspond in number and in kind of creatures and order of creation with the three sj'mbolic tableaux of Genesis — the third, fifth, and sixth days ; and the " morning " and " evening " of the Biblical narrative find their antitypes in the gradual introduction and gradual fading out of the peculiar existences of each of the great periods. 38 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. CHAPTER V. '^*«<]^-*-4>N tiles, greatly earlier than Adam, their stomachs *T*" '^^are still found, containinor the more solid relics of ^^^^1^ the food on which they had lived. Among these 4JUaX*0 relics of food are the bones and scales of fishes, j^jkS^ showing the marks of the teeth of the reptile which devoured them." A carnivorous animal cannot live on herbage, nor an herbivorous animal on flesh. Are we, then, to suppose tliat before Adam sinned, lions, tigers, eagles, vultures fed, like oxen, sheep, and spar- rows, on herbage, fruits, and seeds? They could not, with their present anatomy. Are we to sup- pose a miraculous change in their anatomy, at the moment of Adam's sin? We have no evidence of such change, but evidence to the contrary. But ^had all animals previous to Adam's sin been her- bivorous, in the herbage they eat and in the water hey drank, unnumbered lives must have perished. The Bible does not hint that the death of ani- mals is in any way connected with Adam's sin. The Genesis narrative makes no reference to death among animals. But we may fairly infer from it DEATH AMONG ANIMALS. 45 that death was, from the beginning, by the very constitution of things, the law of all earthly life, man included. That man might escape this law, God planted a tree in the garden — " the tree of life" — with power to preserve against death. This unique provision for the preservation of man from death forces upon us the inference that death was the original law of all earthly life, man included; and to man, only through the expedient of "the tree of life" was escape pos- sible from the universal law, death, even had he abode in holiness. cvA- V-^^-*^ -* "W^' O-wif^' ^-^'^^"-''VO,'^-**-*^-^-^ * ^.t-A^f..,.-*^ C_^-*>-i-<^ ,,.^^<^f,jk^^^>tr-^ (K VtS'-'b-*-*-*^- rv^ 46 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. CHAPTER VII. DARWINISM. The evolution hypothesis is ancient and of many forms. The Egyptian sage maintained that our globe was originally a ball of wet cla}'. The clay dry- ing in the sun, little blisters arose. These, be- coming impregnated with some subtile spiritual influence, became the embryos of all future ter- restrial organisms. Upon the bursting of the clayey shells, the earth became peopled by crea- tures of low grade, which in time were developed into the beauty and perfection of the living forms, man included, now inhabiting the earth. The Greek Epicureans held a similar theory of the rise of terrestrial organisms. Since the middle of the last century, evolution theories have been rife. The one which obtained DARWINISM. 47 most notice previous to Darwinism was that of the French naturalist La Marck, propounded at the })eo-inning of the present century. He claimed that spontaneous generation from the ocean produced all organisms, man included. At first appeared animal life in its lowest forms ; and from that, all we now see has been developed. He held that effort to act and habit of action are the great developing force. For instance, some fowls, by continually making an effort to swim, so stretched the skin on their feet that they became web-footed ; the heron, on the contrary, disliking the water, and drawing itself up to keep dry, has become long-legged ; the giraffe, by the habit of reaching up among the tree limbs for its food, so stretched its neck that it became permanently lonff-necked. Science now declares spontaneous generation unproven, and La Marck's theory of development is now laughed at. The prevailing phase of the evolution theory at present is Darwinism, propounded about twenty- / five years ago by Charles Darwin of England, in c^ his "Origin of Species." He makes "natural selection" the main develop 48 THE i]CIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. ing force. By natural selection Darwin means simply this ; In the struggle for life going ever on among animals, those individuals having any inju- rious variation of form perish ; those having any advantageous variation of form survive and prop- agate their peculiarity ; and the advantageously formed individuals being ever thus selected by nature from each generation, the animal creation ever develops into new and higher forms. Here we have the origin of species, genera, classes, man, — one or more primal monads only having been created by God. (a.) Does Darwinism conflict with the Bible? Not in demanding a great age for the earth : the Bible tells us nothinor about the ao^e of the earth. Not in its theory of the origin of life on the earth : Darwin ascribes that directly to God ("Origin of Species," 1st ed. 419). Not in claiming that species and genera, man's body in- cluded, have arisen -by a process of natural selec- tion : the Bible gives us no information as to the I process by which God produced these. The sep- aration of the light from the darkness, causing the alternation of day and night ; the formation of DARWINISM. 49 tlie firmament ; the elevation of the land from out the waters, — were all effected by slow process of natural forces, and why should not God proceed in the same method in the production of the crea- tures? Darwin, as the Bible, claims that "All the races of man are descended from a sin«:le primitive stock" ("Descent of Man," I. 220). Genesis impresses us that man is a unique being on earth : " God breathed into him the breath of life," he "became a living soul," he w^as made the "image and likeness" of God. Darwin also de- clares man unique, the only "moral being" on enrth ("Descent of Man," I. 85, and II. 370). Darwin claims that man derived in germ all in him from " a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, and an inhabitant of the Old World"; and this creature is descended, " in the dim obscurity of the past, from an aquatic animal provided with branchise,_ with the two sexes united in the same individual." .Genesis impresses us that man did not receive his unique, high nature, set- ting him over all other terrestrial creatures, from any of these subject creatures, but directly at his a[jpearance from God. This matter for the pres- 50 THE SC/EA'CE OF THE DA V AND GENESIS. ent thrown out, we muy come to the examination of the other dogmas of Darwinism without reli- gious prejudice, regarding these dogmas as having simply a scientific interest. (6.) Does Darwinism present sufficient proof to make it probable, and warrant us to accept it provisionally ? I answer negatively. Fundamental to Darwinism is transmutation of species. It is very doubtful whether any vege- table or animal species has ever been observed to put on the characteristics of another species, by either natural or artificial selection. So Herbert Spencer concedes. Huxley says, " It is our clear conviction that, as the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characteristics of a species in nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural." Quatrefages ("Human Species") claims this transmutation for a kind of wheat ; but says great care in its cultivation must be exercised, or it perishes, — which is a confession that it is not a "good" species. This non-observation of the transmutation of species is a serious objection to Darwinism ; this Huxley confesses, and says. DARWINISM. 51 "As the case now stands, this 'little rift within the lute ' is not to be disguised nor overlooked." 'J he rocks give no evidence of transmutation of species ; their voice is against it. In the earliest geological epochs, indeed, the lower types of organisms predominate ; in the later, the higher types. But we do not find, iSrst the low, gelatinous, homogeueous individual, then the partially developed, yet aborted organism, and this, in concatenated progression of forms, passing into the perfectly developed individual of the species, and this species passing by similar process into a new species, genus, family, class. Not a trace of this is found. But just such pro- cess must geology exhibit before it becomes aux- iliary to the dogma of transmutation of species by natural selection. On the contrary, at the very first appearance of any form of life in the rock record, it is always perfect ; often the earlier species are of higher type than the later. For instance, the marine fucoids — sea- weeds — are the earliest plants known. When later the laud vegetation appears, it bears no evidence of being a gradual development of the marine 52 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. fucoids, but it appears all at once perfect, and a higher development in some cases is found than now : the primeval ferns and club-mosses attained the height of forest trees, now they are pygmies. Similarly speaks the geological record of ani- mal life. Eozoon Canadense, of the lower Lau- rentian rocks, is its earliest trace, — mere animrtted jelly. Now notice, between the first appearance of Eozoon and the lower zone of Silurian life above, there intervene about 100,000 feet of rock, rep- resenting, pro])ab!y, millions of years. Were the Darwinian natural-selection development the- ory true in nature, should we not expect to find Eozoon, as it mounts up through hundreds of thousands of years towards Silurian life, devel- oping into something higher than mere homo- geneous undifferentiated jelly? Should we not expect to find it branching out into species, gen- era, families, until, by an almost imperceptible bridge, we are carried over into higher Silurian life? But all this, demanded by Darwin's hypoth- esis, fails in nature : the latest Eozoon differs not from the earliest ; it abides in one species, and dies out in the earlier Laurentian. For about DARWINISM. 53 30,000 feet above the latest Eozoon there is no trace of life, the upper Laurentian and Iluronian being azoic. Passing on upwards over the 45,000 feet of the Cambrian and its obscure life, which can in no sense be regarded as a development from Eozoon, what do we find in Silurian life? Instead of one species, as Eozoon, and that a mere bit of jelly, we find in the lower Silurian more than three hundred and seventy species. The trilobite is the characteristic type. One hundred and sixty-eight species of trilobites, more than forty genera, spring at once into exist- ence, "having no trilobitic forerunners, and no nearly related preceding organism." And this unheralded trilobite is of great perfection, with an eye of wonderful complexity, and as thoroughly adapted to its method of life as the eagle's eye to-day. All this strongly militates against Dar- winism. And among these trilobites, instead of development, degradation in the later Silurian is found : some had lost their eyes, and were other- wise degraded. Barrande, of Europe, Principal Dawson calls "the first palaeozoic palaeontologist of our age." 54 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA V AND GENESIS. He has made the study of the fossils of the ancient systems of rocks a specialty. He declares that the facts he there finds decidedly contradict Dar- win's theorij of evolution by natural selection ; and he stands to-day an uncompromising opponent of that h3^pothesis. Says Dawson, "In connection with his great and classical work on the Silurian fossils of Bohemia, it has been necessary for him to study the similar remains of every other coun- try ; and he has used this immense mass of mate- rial in preparing statistics of the population of the palteozoic world more perfect than any other nat- uralist has been able to produce. In previous publications he has applied these statistical results to the elucidation of the history of the oldest group of crustaceans, the trilobites, and the highest group of moUusks, the cephalopods. In his latest memoir of this kind he takes up the brachiopods, or lamp-shells, a gro.up of bivalve shell-fishes, very ancient and very abundantly represented in all the older formations of every part of the w^orld, and which thus affords the most ample material for tracing its evolution, with the least possible difficulty in the nature of DARWINISM. 55 ' imperfection of the record.' He claims that the facts of his wide induction prove that variation is not a progressive influence, and that specific dis- tinctions are not dependent on it, but, to use Barrande's words, 'on the sovereign action of one and tlie same creative cause.' " These conclu- , sions, it is to be observed, are not arrived at by '^^^'''Mif*''*^ that slap-dasli method of mere assertion so often ^^'**^ foHowcd by Darwinists, but by the most severe and painstaking induction. After examinino; the distribution in time of the genera and species of the brachiopods, Barrande proceeds to consider the animal population of fourteen successive formations included in the Silurian of Bohemia, with reference to the follow- ing questions : — 1st. How many species arc continued from the previous formation unchanged? 2d. How many may be regarded as modifica- tions of previous species ? 3d. How many are migrants from other re- gions, where they have been known to exist pre- viously ? 4th. How many are absolutely new species ? 56 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. The total number of species of brachiopods in these fourteen formations is 640, efivins: an aver- age of 45.71 to each; and the results of accu- rate study of each species in its characters, its varieties, its geographical and geological range, are expressed in the following short statement, which should somewhat astonish those gentlemen who are so fond of asserting that derivation is demonstrated by geological facts : — First, species coutiiuied unchauged 28 per cent. Second, species migrated from abroad 7 " " Third, species continued with modification " " Fourth, new species Avithout known ancestors.. .65 " '• This of the brachiopods, Barrande shows holds nearly of the cephalopods and the trilobites ; and in fact, that the proportion of species in the successive Silurian faunre Avhich can be attributed to descent with modification (^. e., to natural selection) is absolutely nil — nothing. Barrande may well remark that in the face of such facts, the origin of species is not to be explained by what he terms "the poetic leap of the imagination." Not only do the early fauna of Silurian times negative Darwinism, but also the fauna of the DARWINISM. 57 more recent formations. The elephants and their allies, the deinotheres and mastodons, e. g., appear all at once in the Miocene period and in many countries. The edentates, the rodents, the bats, the manatees, are equally mysterious ; and so are the cetaceans, those great mammalian monsters of the deep, which leap into existence in grand and highly developed forms in the Eocene, and which — were Darwinism true — surely should have left in marine deposits some trace of the forms through which, naturally selected, they passed. But even Gaudry, an evolutionist, confesses, "We have questioned these strange and gigantic sovereigns of the Tertiary oceans as to their progenitors, but they leave us without a reply." And all through the rock record we fail to find those intermediate fossil forms of life, connecting the dying-out and the new-rising creatures, which we should expect to find had all life in a concat- enated chain of development arisen out of one primordial form. All the most highly organized groups appear at once and unheralded upon the stage. Darwin recognizes here a difficulty. "Why," says Darwin, "is not every geological 58 TffE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. formation and every stratum full of such interme- diate links? Geology," he continues, "assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain. And this, perhaps, is the most ol)vious objection to my theory." And if Darwinism is true in nature, why do we not find the noiu living creature world a com- plete jumble of confusion, no Avell-marked lines separating the different kinds of animals and vege- tables, all running into each other in form, habits, instincts? Our present nature utterly negatives such a condition of things. Scientists claim that nature has ever abode the same ; nature is uni- form , Nature, then, has never exhibited such a jumbling into each other as Darwinism claims ; nature, then, has always negatived Darwinism. Some evolutionists make much of the grada- tional forms connecting the reptile and the bird. But Huxley in his New York lectures confesses failure here. He says, "If these transitional forms, which are claimed to link the reptile with the bird, were the result of development of the reptile to the bird by natural selection, they ought to stretch over several geological periods. But DARWINISM, 59 all these gradational forms, and the genuine bird itself, are found in one rock period, are geoloo-i- eal contemporaries." Much has also been made of the horse-like footed animals, found by Prof. Marsh in our own far West, as indicatini^ whence our horse ; one of JT^ • these horse progenitors being only about the size k/V^,^^ of a fox ! The fnct that no horses were found ou^^^'Sl this continent when discovered by Europeans, aud^^^T^ no fossil horse bones are found in the rocks, utterIy\^'V^\; negatives the theory of the creatures discovered by 'S^^^n Prof. ]Marsh being the progenitors of our horse. ' The objections just indicated to the acceptance of Darwinism arise when we seek simply to link animal with animal. When we seek to link man with the animals, difficulties intensify. The forms among brutes which most resemble the human are those of the apes ; and of these, that of the African gorilla. That there are anatomical re- semblances between the gorilla and man is doubtless true ; but no less is it true, that the differences are so marked that no anatomist claims the gorilla to be the connecting link between the man and the brute. Summing up 60 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA V AND GENESIS. his comparison of man with the gorilla, Huxley says, " I find that those who attempt to teach what nature so clearly shows in this matter are liable to have their opinions misrepresented and their phraseology garbled, imtil they seem to say that the structural difierences between man and the highest apes are small and insignificant. Let me take this opportunity, then," continues Huxley, " of distinctly asserting, on the contrary, that they are great and significant ; that every bone of the gorilla bears marks by which it might be distinguished from the corresponding bone of a man ; and that in the present creation at any rate [i. e., among existing creatures], no intermediate link bridges over the gap between man and the apes. It would be no less ^vrong than absurd to deny the existence of this chasm." And Haeckel, an extreme evolutionist, says (" Cre- ation," H. 277), "I must here point out — what, in fact, is self-evident — that not one of all the still living apes, and consequently not one of the so-called man-like apes, can be the progenitor of the human race. This opinion [of linking man lineally with any of the now living apes], in fact. DARWINISM. 61 has never been maintained by thoughtful adher- ents of the theory of descent ; but it has been assigned to them by their thoughtless opponents. The ape-like progenitors of the human race," con- tinues Haeckel, " are long since extinct ; we may possibly find their fossil bones in the Tertiary rocks of Southern Asia or Africa." The answer of Darwinists to the question "Whence man?" is different from that supposed by many. Darwinists do not hold that man has descended lineally from the apes. They say that away very far back in geological time — probably the Tertiary — existed an animal whence sprang two lines of descent ; one of these lines terminates in our now apes, the other in man. This makes the difficulty of deriving man from the brute at all very great ; for query, " Where is man's long line of ancestors, reaching from the time of first branch- ing off to perfect man?" — "We cannot tell," answer the evolutionists. Haeckel says he thinks it possible that these ever-developing pithecoid ancestors of ours may be lying buried in the Ter- tiary rocks of Southern Asia or Africa, or may be in " Lemuria," now under the Indium Ocean ! 62 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. One of the most repulsive characteristics, to a thoughtful man, in Darwinists is their overween- ing pride and self-conceit. "We men of science," said Huxley in his New York lectures, "get an awkward habit — no, I will not call it that, for it is a valuable habit — of reasoning, so that we believe nothing unless there be evidence for it ; and we have a way of looking upon belief which is not based on evidence as not only illogical but im- moral." And with this braggadocio yet on their lips, these same men come to you and me, and say, "The present apes are not our grandfathers. We had grandfathers in a different line of apes, — we guess. These apish grandfathers and grand- mothers of ours existed in Tertiary times, — we guess. We have never seen anything that looks like the slightest trace of them, but we guess they existed. The fossil bones of these grandfathers and grandmothers of ours lie deep doAvn in the rocks of Southern Asia, — we guess ; if not there, maybe in the rocks of Africa ; and if not there, maybe in the old soil of 'Lemuria,' very deep down in the rocks under the Indian Ocean, — we guess. Now, if from us ' men of science,' so DARWINISM. 63 exacting in all matters of evidence, yon do not accept this as science, you are fogies, — are not up with 'advanced thought.'" Some seek to link man to ape-like ancestors by means of ancient human skeletons, specially by the crania. They claim that these ancient relics are marked with pithecoid characteristics, and thus help to grade men down to the brute. Probably the most ancient human cranium yet found is the Engis. But of it Huxley says, "Assuredly there is no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, — which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have con- tained the thoughtless brains of a savage." Quatrefages maintains that no human crania yet found bring us in type nearer the brute, and says, "Believers in pithecoid man must be con- tent to seek him elsewhere than in the only fossil human races with which we are acquainted, and to have recourse to the unknown." Prof. Virchow, of Berlin, one of the most dis- tinguished living biologists, and an evolutionist, in summing up what has been done in this direc- 64 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. tion, says, " I should not be surprised if the proof were produced that man had ancestors among th(i other vertebrates. You are aware that I ara now specially engaged in the study of anthropology ; but I am bound to declare that every positive ad- vance [^. €., facts] which we have made in the province of prehistoric anthropology has actually removed us farther from the proof of such con- nection. . . . When we study," continues Vir- chow, "the most ancient fossil man, who must of course have stood comparatively near our primi- tive ancestors in the series of ascent, we always find a man just as men are now. On the whole, we must acknowledge that there is a complete absence of any fossil type of the lower stage in the development of man. Nay, if we gather tosfether the whole sum of the fossil men hith- erto known, and put them parallel with those of the present time, we can assuredly pronounce that there are among living men a much greater niunber of individuals who show a relatively infe- rior type than there are among the fossils known up to this time." Prof. Virchow thus decLu'es not only that facts to-day do not sustain evolu- DARWINISM. 65 lion of man from some lower form, ))iit that the voice of facts is ao-ainst it. And in his statement that the fossil human crania are on an average higher in grade than those of men living to-day, he accords with the Bible, that the hnnian species has become degraded. Prof. Asa Gray, in his recent Yale lectures, says, " When the naturalist is asked, 'What and Avhence the origin of man?' he can onlj^ answer in the words of Quatrefages and Virchow, ' We do not know at all.' We have traces of his existence up to, and even anterior to the latest marked cli- matic change in our temperate zone, but he was then perfected man ; and no vestige of an earlier form is known. The believer in direct or special creation is entitled to the advantaije which this negative evidence gives." Thus at present the great chasm separating man anatomically from the brute stimds all nnbridged. Not only does man present us new beginnings anatomically, but we find in him other new begin- nings : in language, law, social reJations, capability of intellectual progression, governance by reason instead of by instinct, moral nature, religious CA\ THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. nature. Here even Huxley acknowledges, " The divergence of the human and simian stirps is im- measurable and practically infinite." Another line of thought : — Some creatures there arc of very complex adap- tations to their peculiar conditions of existence and modes of life ; if any one of these adaptations of instinct, organ, function, is missing, the indi- vidual and species must have perished. These adaptations must have all appeared coetaneously with the individuals of the species. In the honey- bee, for example, " There is an instinct for getting honey ; and answering to this instinct, an instru- ment just suited for drawing up the honey from the nectaries of the flowers. There is also a sack for holding it and for producing certain changes in it. There is an instinct for storing this honey, and a substance secreted, by a peculiar function of the body, that can be moulded into cells to hold it. There are instruments o^iven for usin^: the sub- stance to the best possible advantage, and instincts to guide in the best use, both of the instruments and the substance. Instinct comes in at the proper place to link all these agencies together. DARWINISM. 67 Let a single link be wanting, and all other parts of the chain are useless as a means of preserving the species ; and complicated as this whole process is, it is only a part of the connected series of func- tional and instinctive adjustments absolutely neces- sary to honey-bee life, as the species now exists." A difficulty seemingly insurmountable, here, to the hypothesis that the bee — organs, functions, instincts — arose by the slow process of natural selection ! "Some years ago," says Prof. Schlieden, "one morning I entered, in the lunatic asylum, the room of a madman. I found him crouching down by the stove, watching with close attention a saucepan, the contents of which he was carefully stirring. At the noise of my entrance he turned round, and with a face of the greatest importance, whispered, 'Hush, hush! don't disturb my little pigs; they will be ready directly.' Full of curi- osity to know whither his diseased imagination had now led him, I approached nearer. 'You see,' said he, with the curious expression of an alchemist, 'here I have black puddings, pigs' bones, and bristles in the saucepan, — everything that is 68 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. necessary; we only lack the vital warmth, and the young pig will be ready made again.' " In connection with this saucepan man, with his "ijlack puddings, pigs' bones, nnd bristles," look- ing for his piggy to appear, declaring we have everything that is necessary, — we only lack the "vital warmth,"— we may call to mind the Dar- winists, who sing in chorus to ns, "Hush, hush! don't disturb my little protoplasm, my little monad, my little ascidian, my little monkey ; man will be ready directly ! You see we have here in the saucepan the primeval tire-mist, the promise and potency of life — organic, intellectual, moral — in a cooled lava ball, spontaneous generation, protoplasm, monad, ascidian, monkey ; we season these with large hypotheses, and many hirge chasms, and frequent large jumping, hu-ge cre- dulity, and bold unproven theses, — we only hn k quite a variety of indispensables ! " Darwinism is forever like the lunatic, looking for his pig to appear ; is all right if it only had something it has j^ot got, — something wanting here, something wanting there, something wanting almost every- where. DARWINISM. 69 Says Tyndall (''Fragments," 154), "In more senses than one, Mr. Darwin has drawn heavily upon the scientific tolerance of his age " So the French Academy of Science, declining to elect Dar- win as one of its meml)ers, gave as its reason that Darwin is not scientific ; that "he has too far sacri- ficed reason to imagination to deserve a place in the front rank of scientists." "Science," says Huxley, "must consist of pre- cise knowledge." We have just seen that Dar- winism utterly fails to come up to this requisition. " The proper scientific mood is the indicative mood. Science tells what has been, what is, and what shall be. But Mr. Darwin's argument is a con- tinual conjugation of the potential mood. It rings the changes on ' can have been,' ' might have been,' 'would have been,' 'should have been,' until it leaps with a bound into 'must have been.' "VYe are reminded, in fact, by Darwin's method of deriving man from the ape b}^ natural selection, of the famous story which Corporal Trim endeavored in vain to recite to Uncle Toby. 'There was a certain king of Bohemia,' said Trim, 'but in whose reign except his own, I am not able to inform 70 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. your Honor.' Uncle Toby was more accommo- datins: than we are able to be from a scieiititic point of view. But we recommend the gracious permission accorded the corporal as a most appro- priate motto for Darwinian speculations: '"Leave out the date entirely," said my Uncle Toby.' In almost similar language, ' There w^as a certain monkey,' says Mr. Darwin, — of that he is quite sure, and he frequently reiterates his assurance, — 'there was a certain monke}' ; but of what period, or in what country, or of what shape, except his own, I am not able to inform my reader.'" Says Tyndall (probably in one of his " hours of clearness and vigor"), "What are the core and essence of this development hypothesis? Strip it naked, you stand face to face with the theory that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalculte or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of horfee and lion, not alone the wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself, intellect, will, and all their phenomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud [the primitive nebula]. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation. But the hypothesis as held by DARWINISM. 71 many would probably even assert that at the present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and all our art, — Plato, Kaphael, Shakespeare, Newton, — are potential in the tires of the sun ; and that even the unsatis- fied yearnings in us to know our oriii^in must have come to us across the ages which separate the unconscious primeval fiery mist from the consciousness of to-day. Surely," adds Tyndail, "these notions represent an absurdity too mon- strous to be entertained by any sane mind." This '' development hypothesis," of which Tyn- dail thus speaks, is Darwinism with its Huxleyan prolongation backward, — the "expectation" that all terrestrial organisms have arisen from "not living matter." Gray, in his recent Yale lectures, although an evolutionist, declares that the Darwinan natural- selection hypothesis fails to explain what we rind in nature. He says, " While I see how variations of a given organ or structure can be led on to greater modification, 1 cannot conceive how non- existing organs come thus to be, how Avholly new parts are initiated, how anything can be ltd 72 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. on which is not there to be taken hold of. . . . All appears to have come to pass in the course of nature, and therefore under second causes ; but what these causes are, or how connected and interfused with the first cause, we know not now, perhaps shall never know. And I cannot help thinking," continues Gray, " that Darwin would agree with me, that the principle of natural selec- tion does not account for it." And Alfred Russell Wallace, co-propounder with Darwin of the natural-selection hypothesis, after enumerating a large number of facts in nature which this hypothesis cannot account for, dec 'ares it insufficient ; and says specially of man, "The inference that I would draw from this class of phenomena is, that a superior intel- ligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, by means of more subtile agencies than we are ac- quainted with. My theory," continues AVallace, "requiies the intervention of some distinct indi- vidual intelligence, to aid in the production of what we can hardly avoid considering as the ulti- mate aim and outcome of all organized existence, — intellectual, ever-advancing, spiritual man." DARWINISM. 73 Darwinism requires so many unproven hypoth- eses for its support, and so completely fails to ex- plain what we find in nature, that it is not worthy even of provisional acceptance as the key for the solution of the mystery of the modus operandi of the rise of terrestrial organisms. Says President Porter, of Yale College, "Juniors frequently are evolutionists, but Seniors usually get over it. I predict that in ten years the theory will be fully exploded." Said Agassiz, just before his death, "I think that careful observers, in view of pres- ent facts, will have to acknowledge that our sci- ence is not yet ripe for a fair discussion of the origin of organized beings. I hold that this world of ours is not the result of unconscious organic forces, but is the work of an intelligent, conscious power." So speaks science to-day, and so spoke Moses long centuries ago : " In the beginning, an intelligent, conscious power — God — made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and all that therein are." As to the methods of this intelligent power's working, men are still groping in darkness. Egyptian, Epicurean, Lamarckian, Darwinian 74 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. hypotheses of evolution thrown out, what shall be the next phase of this Protean theory, which shall spring up, say its say, flourish its little day, and die, with the epitaph, "Our Ancestors' Folly"? Two mental drifts thrust modern thinking towards Darwin's conception of the rise of terres- trial life and species. One of these drifts is indi- cated by Herbert Spencer; viz., a striving to pic- ture clearly to the mind's eye the modus operandi of the rise of life and species. " The special crea- tion of plants and animals," says Spencer, "seems a satisfactory hypothesis, until you try and picture to yourself definitely the process by which one of them is brought into existence." This difficulty, some seem to think, is lessened by lessening the size of the plant or animal originated. This is utterly fallacious. Seek, e. g., to picture Huxley's hypothetical animated " protoplasm " originating from "not living matter," that " not living matter" being operated upon by " physical and chemical conditions " we in this as^e of the world know nothing about ; and I doubt whether a person can " picture " to himself the process of the rise of life on the earth, any more clearly than by the DARWINISM. 75 special-creation hypothesis ; we are thrown into a denser fog. Or seek to "picture" to the mind's eye clearl}^ the coming together of the atoms of Darwin's one little primordial monad, and the " breathing of life into it by the Creator" : we are just as much at a loss here for a well-defined men- tal "picture" as if we should seek ideally to rep- resent the modus operandi of the creation of a full-sized horse. Not in the bulk of the life ap- pearing, but in the simple appearance of life at all on the earth, coming out from its lava womb, is where the knot of the problem lies. Lessening the bulk of the embodied life appearing does not one iota lessen the difficulty of forming a clear mental picture of its method of rise. Darwinism has no claim to favor here. The second mental drift thrusting the to-day thinker towards Darwinism is that so stronij at present, and intensified by the recent doctrine of correlation of forces, — viz., the spirit of gen- eralization ; the desire to refer all phenomena to uniformly operating, irrational, immanent force in matter, to unify, under law. But whether we should accept this dogma, — all force working in 76 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. the universe of matter is irrational, immanent force, — and carry this back even to that excep- tional manifestation of power, the rise of terres- trial life and species, as a prejudging element of our scientific formulating, may justly 1)e ques- tioned. If tliei-e is more in the universe than mere matter and immanent, irrational force, gen- uine science will not without reason eliminate or ignore that " more," in its investigation of the origin of phenomena. Both the original pro- pounders of Darwinism, Darwin and Wallace, concede the existence of this " more " ; and Hux- ley, in his '' Lay Sermons," says, " When the materialists stray beyond the borders of their path, and beo-in to talk about there bcinof nothin<2r else in the universe but matter and force, and neces- sary laws, and all the rest of their 'grenadiers,' I decline to follow them." Says Spencer, " The hypotheses of special creation and development alike recognize an inscrutable cause of phe- nomena." -As genuine scientists, then, we are not to blink this "more" in formulating of the phenomena of the universe; this "more" may have significance for our formulatino:. We are to DARWINISM. 11 rid our mind of prejudice against its activity in originating phenomena; we are not to prejudge, — it may have been active here, a producing force here. Nor must we prejudge the methods nor extent of its activity ; an intelligent force, per- haps, this " more," and it may have operated through some general law in the introduction and evolution of the creatures of the earth, other than by that of "natural selection," — by some law not yet discovered by us, its discovery waiting a Newton in biology. It is a mistake to think that if the phenomena of the universe are referred to a free intelligence as cause, this removes uniformity of action as now seen in nature, and makes science an im- possibility. This intelligent causal power, ever in itself abiding the same, would, in its ordinary operations, be as thoroughly uniform as mere immanent, irrational force. On special occasions, indeed, this free-working intelligence may exhibit more of its contents than previously manifested, and this wholly unannounced ; and just this we lind in the rise of life and species in fact : vege- table life, a new, unique thing, rises on our 78 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. earth ; animal life, a new, unique thing, rises on our earth ; species rise suddenly ; and human life, a new, unique thing, rises suddenly on our earth. I see not how we can explain the facts of terrestrial life as exhibited in the rock record so well as by conceiving of Spencer's " inscrutable " power (by all conceded as working on our globe) as an intelligent, free power. This conception of the all-working force unlocks most satisfactorily the mysteries in the history of terrestrial life. Prof. Le Conte, of California (a scientist), accepts, as the basis of the explanation of the past rise of terrestrial life and species, this intelligent, free power. He claims that if Ave admit the existence of a Deity at all, the only possible philosophical conception is this : God ever abides in the uni- verse of matter, the sustaining and ultimate force of its continuance and phenomena. This in- dwelling, all-working, intelligent, free power acts ever uniformly, except in special cases when it acts in higher manifestations. First appears mere matter, then a higher manifestation of the within working power appears in crystallization, a yet higher in vegetable life, higher yet in ani- DARWINISM. 79 iiKil life ; and onward now along the line of its operations, rise new species ; in man is seen its climax of terrestrial working. Prof. Le Conte illustrates his conception of this intelligent power's working by a line.* A straight line, continuous for some time, represents the duration of the existence of mere primal undifferentiated matter ; a little protuberance — elevation — the beginnings of chemical affinity ; then follows a higher for crj^stallization, — " the first gropings of the so-called 'vital principle,'" as Tyndall designates it ; later, and a higher appears for vegetable life; a still higher for ani- mal life ; farther on a circle rises above the line, distinct from it, a separate thing lifted out of the mere cause-and-eflect region of materialism and instinct. This is personal man, — a new, unique product of the all-producing, intelligent Worker, the highest manifestation of himself, his own like- ness and image in domination over the earth and its creatures, in conscious, free, personal individu- ality, moral nature, knowledge, — the goal tow- ards which, from the first rise above dead matter, *Cut. 80 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA V AND GENESIS. each successive upward movement tended all along the geologic geons. The goal reached, there is nothing beyond ; the creating power rested, rests to-day, the creative days are closed, — it is Sab- bath now. ANTIQUITY OF MAN. %\ CHAPTER VIII. ANTIQUITY OF MAN (EVIDENCES OF) . What says the Bible, what says science, as to the time of man's appearance on the earth ? Only the first chapter of Genesis gives any hint on the matter; viz., this, — man appeared on the last creative day. Science is at one with this; says man geologically is very recent, — appears among the latest, perhaps is the latest, of earth's creatures. The Bible and science so accordant, whence so much dust about the era of man's appearance on the earth ? From two sources : — Firsts The unfounded assumption of scientists. Second^ The unfounded assumptions of Bibli- cists. I shall first examine some of the statements of scientists. 82 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. Until within thirty j^ears, geologists generally maintiiined that traces of man were found only in the very latest deposits; e. ^., superficial soil, deltas, rock now forming. The finding of arti- cles of his manufacture in cavern deposits, min- gling with the bones of the (so-called) extincts, — e. g., the mammoth, cave-bear, cave-lion, — incited suspicion that man had lived longer on the earth than had generally been supposed. The period of these extincts was regarded as much earlier than that usually allotted man ; the mui- gling of his remains and theirs in the same depos- its was thought indicative that he had lived in their period, and thus man's period was thrown back. A second class of facts indicating (as claimed) a high antiquity for man was the finding of isolated human bones in peculiar positions : for instance, the Guadaloupe rock-embedded skele- tons ; the pelvic bone found at Natchez, on the Mississippi, at the foot of a cliff, loosely mingling with bones of extincts ; the bone mentioned by Affassiz as having been found in a Florida coral reef; the skeleton found buried deeply under sue- ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 83 cessive forests at New Orleans : the Abbeville jaw- bone ; the skull found in California deeply embed- ded in gold drift, under basalt rock. Again, "Stretching along the sides of many river valleys, both in this country and in Europe, are certain deposits of sand, clay, and gravel, sometimes more than a hundred feet, seldom less than forty feet above the level of existing streams. These terraces have been long known to contain relics of man. In the gravels of the Ouse and Waveney, England, of the Seine, France, but specially of the Somme, Picardy, have been found flint chips, arrow heads, hatchets, in the same layers with bones of the mammoth and other extincts." All these river terraces belong to one period, a period claimed to be much prior to that formerly allotted man. These three classes of data — viz , cavern de- posits, isolated human bones, river terraces — are the main grounds upon which geologists base their claim for man's high antiquity. Let us interrogate these three witnesses. First, Isolated bones. The isolated-bone proof of man's great antiq- 8'i THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. uity is by geologists regarded the least reliable. It is now on all hands conceded that unwarranted antiquity has been claimed for some of these bones. For instance, the fossil Gaudaloupe man, referred to a great antiquity by Nott and Gliddon, is now, by Prof. Dana, declared to be a Carib Indian, and not more than two or three centuries old. So completely is the claim of great antiquity for these skeletons abandoned now, that they are never in our day even mentioned in treatises on the antiquity of man. Agassiz, by estimates from the present rates of deposition of coral, claimed for the Florida bone an antiquity of 14,000 years. But Count Por- tales, its finder, now declares the bone was not found in coral rock at all, " but in a fresh-water sandstone, on the shores of Lake Monroe, Florida, associated with fresh-water shells of species still livino- in the lake ; and no date can ])e assiirned for the formation of that deposit." The Natchez bone, Lyell, in his second visit to America, pronounced of little value. Says Winchell, " From being the relic of a preglacial man, it suddenly became the bone of a red Indian, perhaps one hundred and fifty years old." ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 85 The Abbeville jaw-bone is a bone of contention to scientists themselves, and we may therefore count it out. The New Orleans skeleton, buried under six- teen feet of river mud and four successive cypress forests, Dr. Dowler estimated was 57,- 000 years old ; Lyell approves the estimate. On the other hand, the United States army engineers, Humphreys and Abbot, claim that the ground on which New Orleans stands, down to the depth of forty feet, instead of sixteen feet, has been deposited within 4,400 years ; and Dr. Foster says that the superimposed wood, regarded by Dr. Dowler as four successive cypress forests, " may be nothing more than drift-wood brought down by the river, which became embedded in the sediments." Says the geologist Fountaine, "The Mississippi sixty years ago used to flow where now Tchoupitoulas Street is, in the heart of the business part of the city, a quarter of a mile from the present shore. The river at New Orleans is from one hundred and sixty-two to one hundred and eighty-seven feet deep. By under- mining and engulfing its banks, with everything 86 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. upon them, logs tangled in vines and bedded in mud, cypress stumps, Indian graves, and modern works of art are suddenly swallowed up and buried, at all depths from ten to one hundred and eighty-seven feet." In view of all this, a recent writer on the New Orleans skeleton says, "To claim 50,000 years for it is provocative of lauo-hter." Some Californian workmen a few years ago presented Prof. Whitney, State geologist, with a skull claimed to have been found one hundred and thirty feet below the surface, covered by basalt rock. The skull was heralded in this country and in Europe as a veritable preadamite skull, lying geologically periods lower than any other yet discovered human relic. It appears now that the workmen hoaxed the professor as to where they found the skull. Even Quatrefages says, "The most serious doubts exist as to the antiquity of the specimen, which seems to have been found in disturbed ground." The isolated-bone proof of man's great antiq- uity thus utterly breaks down. Geologists speak now little of it. ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 87 Second, Cavern deposits. We can tell nothing from the caverns them- selves, nor from their deposits, as to their geologic period. The special argument urged for the great antiquity of their human relics is the mingling of these relics with the bones of the extincts ; and here, I claim, is one of the unwarranted assump- tions of scientists. Instead of makinj? this min- gling and coexistence of man and the mammoth a reason for immediately thrusting man back a geological period earlier than previously allotted him, into the mammoth period, why is not this just as good cause, this mingling of relics, for bringing the mammoth and his congeners forward a jreo- logical period into the period of man, and thus make the epoch of the mammoth greatly less* distant from our day than we had previously supposed it? The key to the problem of antiquity of the human relics of the caverns lies in the answer to the query. When did the mammoth and his fellows live ? Third, And as the terrace problem now stands, its only proof of man's great antiquity, is this 88 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS. same mingling in these terrace deposits of human relics with the bones of the extincts. For the solution, therefore, of both the cavern and the terrace problems, I shall now address myself to the solution of the query, When did the mam- moth and his fellows live? The old tenet of the great antiquity of the mammoth epoch is being examined in these later years, and a great reaction is taking place ; geol- ogists now brinof down the mammoth to a com- paratively recent date. Messrs. Prestwich and Falconer, of England, began this work twelve years ago. They brought forward the cavern deposits containing bones of the extincts an entire geological period, from the Bowlder Clay to the post-Pliocene ; and the justness of this is now by geologists conceded. The remains of the mammoth in America are found in superficial deposits, in situation and con- dition of preservation indicative of their compar- atively recent extinction. " Almost any swampy bit of ground," says Prof. Shaler, " in Ohio or Kentucky contains traces of the mammoth. At Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, the remains are so ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 89 well preserved, as to seem not much more ancient than the buffiilo bones which are found above them." Prof. Winchell says he has "seen the bones of the mammoth embedded in peat, at depths so shallow that he could readily believe the animals to have occupied the country during its possession by the Indians." Says Lyell, " That the mammoth was exterminated l)y the arrows of the Indian hunters is the first idea presented to the mind of almost every natural- ist." In accordance with this view of Winchell and Lyell, we find an Indian tradition of the existence of the mastodon, seemingly earlier ex- tinct than the mammoth: "that they were often seen, that they fed on the boughs of a species of lime-tree, and that to sleep, they did not lie down, but leaned against a tree." In Europe, also, bones of the mammoth have been found in peat deposits, — one of the most recent of all superficial accumulations, and even now forming. For instance, two perfect heads of the mammoth were brought to light by excava- tions made for a railway in 1847, at Holyhead, England. They were found in a bed of peat three 90 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. feet thick. Lyell thinks that these individuals must have perished at a comparatively recent date. And the tendency at present is to bring down much nearer our own time than formerly all the (so-called) extincts of the cavern and terrace epochs ; some are even identified with species now living. Having thoroughly canvassed the evi- dence, and summing up on this matter, Southall says, "The cave-horse, the cave-bear, the cave- lion, the cave-hyffina, are still living ; the cave- lion is mentioned historically even in Europe a few centuries before our era ; wild horses scoured the plains of Russia a few centuries ago ; the urus survived to the sixteenth century, the aur- ochs still survives in Russia ; the reindeer is traced down in Europe to the twelfth century ; the great elk survived equally as late ; the masto- don, mammoth, and woolly rhinoceros are found under circumstances that imply their existence only a few thousand years ago." Such is the present condition of the problem of the epoch of the (so-called) extincts of the caverns and terraces, with whose bones human relics rain- ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 91 gle, and which mingling is the grand stock argu- ment, in these latter years, for man's great an- tiquity. In the light of recent discoveries and readjustments of data, this claimed great antiquity dwindles down to a few thousand years. No need to thrust man back tens of thousands of years, from any data given us in cavern or terrace de- posits, — only a very few thousand years answers every demand. At the meeting of the British Association for the Promotion of Science, last year, 1879, Daw- kins, a very high authority in these matters, said, "There is no proof that the animals with whose remains man's relics are commingled are of ex- treme antiquity." Prof. Dawson ("Earth and Man," 295) claims that the St. Acheul gravels of the Sommf can " scarcely exceed 4,000 years." 92 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. CHAPTER IX. THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN (CONTINUED). YEAR MEASURE IN GEOLOGY. In the attempt to measure in years the interval between us and the terrace epoch, by geological data, appear some of the ungrounded assumptions of scientists. Says Lyell, "The terraces are post-Pliocene; intervening between us and that is the Recent, — the epoch of the deltas, peat, Swiss lake vil- lages. Determine how many years have been occupied in the formation of the deltas or peat, or the era of the Swiss lake villages, — then, 3'et back of that lived the terrace man." Further, '' Some post-Tertiary deposits, on the coast of Norway, of marine formation, are now " (Lyell claims) "elevated above the sea six hun- dred feet. To attain such elevation, allowins: THE ANTIQUITY OF MAX. 93 two and a half feet rise per century'' (which Lyell regards large), "requires 24,000 years." He claims this rise has mostly taken place since the terrace period. I shall examine Lyell's data. Firsts Deltas. The Mississippi delta is the one of which most use has been made in estimating time. Lyell demands for the formation of this delta " proba- bly more than 100,000 years." On the contrary, Messrs. Humphreys and Abbot, of the government survey, have thoroughly explored it, and demand for its formation only 4,400 years; and it is doubtful if even this diminished time is required. Singular elevations at the bottom of the orulf near the delta, perhaps in the delta itself, known as "mud lumps," occur with frequency, by means of which acres in extent are sometimes raised, often above the surface of the water. Allowance must be made, shortening indefinitely the estimate of 4,400 years, for the material added to the delta by these "mud lumps." The eminent French naturalists, Dolomieu, Cuvier, and Beaumont, claim that a few thousand 94 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA V AND GENESIS. years suifice to form all the deltas in the world. Beaumont estimates the Mississippi delta at 1,300 years. These discrepancies of estimates among sci- entists declare very emphatically that they are themselves utterly afloat, and their estimates in years of the antiquity of man from delta data wholly unreliable. Second, Swiss lake villages. Geologists have sought to determine approxi- mately, in years, from estimates on present lake depositions, the era of the submerged villages. These estimates are as little reliable as those of the deltas. But the extreme antiquit}'^ claimed for these villages is not above 3,000 or 4,000 years ; we may therefore pass them. Third, Peat formations. The French naturalist, Perthes, estimates the rate of the growth of peat anciently in the Somme Valley at one inch a century. The de- posit is thirty feet deep, and at Perthes's estimate demands 30,000 years. But l^efore this peat began to be laid down, the flint-knife men of the terraces were fishino^ in the river. This lonor THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 1)5 outlook into the past, forced upon us by Perthes's estimate, even Lyell hesitates to acce[)t. Facts utterly refute it. In the peat are trunks of trees standing erect where they grew, birches and alders three feet high, also prostrate trunks of oaks four feet in diameter. According to Per- thes's estimate, it required a century to cover up these stumps and prostrate trunks one inch ; but at the end of the century, where would have been all the uncovered thirty-five inches of the stumps, the forty-seven inches of the trunks? liotted off. The estimate is absurd. It would have required 3, GOO years to cover the stumps, 4,800 years to cover the trunks : neither stumps nor trunks would have waited so long. On the contrary, in Irish bogs an increase of peat of two inches a year has been observed, — sixteen feet instead of an inch a century. Two centuries would thus lay down all the peat in the Somme Valley. And the Frenchman D'Archiac tells us that it is estimated that in the upper valley of the Somme, peat to-day grows at the rate of eleven and one half feet a century ; this rate of deposition would require only three centuries for 96 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AND GENESIS, the work for which Perthes demanded 36,000 years. But the fact is, the peat growth depends so much on attending conditions — the kind of peat, its place of growth, the climate — that peat deiDositions give us no reliable data for year-meas- ure estimates ; it is absolutely of no value as datum in estimating in years man's antiquity. A boat containing bricks was found under the lowest layer of the Somme peat, but there were no bricks in Gaul till the. Roman era. Fourth, Elevated Norway formations. Lyell makes an attempt to measure in years the recent period by estimates on the coast of Nor- way ; he claims a present rate of rise of two and one half feet a century. He finds shells of the post-Tertiary period six hundred feet above the level of the sea, requiring to raise them to such elevation, at the present rate of rise, 24,000 years. But at the beginning of this period the terrace man lived. Since LyelFs statement. Prof. Kjerulf, of Christiana, has made the government geological survey of the N(;rway coast, and carefully exam- ined the raised beaches and terraces, and declares THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 97 Lyell's statement to be utterly without founda- tion. First, he says the uppermost limit of post- Tertiary rise is only sixty instead of six hun- dred feet, reducing Lyell's 24,000 to 2,400 3'^ears. Second, the abrupt edges of the terraces, sepa- rated by level areas, indicate sudden elevations, succeeded by periods of rest, utterly destroying all data for computation of time. Third, he declares that the coast is not now rising, but that this is a stationary period ; Lyell's two and one half feet rise per century, the basis of his entire calculation, is a myth. Thus bursts, at the touch of the finger of a more exact science, Lyell's 24,000-years Norway bubble ! By this hasty glance at the most trusted data by which men of science have attempted to estimate in years the era of man's introduc- tion upon the earth, we see that all is simply guess: there is nothing assured, reliable; it is not science, — precise knowledge. And we be- hold again on the plains of guess what was 98 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. anciently seen on the plains of Shinar, — a Babel of confusion, men using a gibberish which to each other conveys no knowledge, and from which nobody else can gather anything but con- fusion. THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 99 CHAPTER X. THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN (CONTINUED). BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY. Theologians have customarily claimed that the Bible gives us data by which we may determine with close approximation, in years, the era of man's appearance on the earth; also, that Usher's date is the Bible date. I deny both. That the Bible gives us no data for estimating man's era with certitude of a close approximation, and that Usher's date is a mere human estimate, wholly unreliable, a statement of the " Oxford Chronological Tables " indicates. Say these tables, " Chronologers have piled system upon system, Avithout adding much to our stock of knowledge respecting the remote ages of antiq- uity. Thus, for example, there are not less than three hundred diflerent dates assigned as the era 100 THE SCIENCE OF THE DA Y AND GENESIS. of creation, varying, in their extremes, not less than 3,000 years." I have examined a list of one hundred and twenty different estimates from Bible data of man's era, by as many diH'erent scholars, each estimate different from all the others ; the extremes, 6,984 B. C. and 3,483 B. C.,— one estimate more than double that of the other ; and intervening between these were the one hun- dred and eighteen other estimates. This clearly declares, as also the " Oxford Tables," that the Bible o-ives us no data for estimatino- with close approximation, in years, man's era. Query, then, what becomes of the Biblical gen- ealogical tables carrying us back to Adam ? There comes of them all that ever was intended to come of them, all that ever legitimately can come of them, viz., ability to trace family descent. Thus far they are reliable ; but use them as exact data for chronological estimates, they are used for a purpose for which they \vere never intended — are wholly unfit. Says Pritchard, "The omission of some gen- erations in Oriental genealogies is a very ordi- THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. IQl naiy thing, the object of the genealogy being sufficiently answered by inserting only the con- spicuous and celebrated names which connect the individual Avith his remote ancestry." Eichhorn and Michael is note the same. This sets us utterly afloat ! Who will tell us where the omissions are in the long genealogical lists of Genesis, and how many centuries these omissions represent ? Further, " The Samaritan Bible has a difterent set of dates from the Hebrew copies, and both from the Septuagint, and all these from the Ethi- opic version ; and this not merely in one text, but the discrepancy runs through nearly the entire genealogy. The Hebrew, Samaritan, and Sep- tuagint versions, in giving the ages of the patri- archs before Abraham, vary in the ao:ijre2:ate about 1,500 years " On the whole matter of Bible chronology, Pritchard says, "The Hebrew chronology may be computed with accuracy to the era of the building of the Temple, or at least to the division of the tribes, — tenth century B, C. In the interval between that date and the arrival of Abraham in Palestine, Hebrew chronology cannot be ascer- 102 THE SCIENCE OF THE DAY AAD GENESIS. tiiiued with exactness, but ina}'' be computed with near approximation to the truth. Beyond Abra- ham, we can never know how many centuries, nor even how many chiliads of years, may have ehipsed since the first man of clay received the image of God and the breath of life. Still, as the thread of genealogy has been traced, though probably with many and great intervals, the whole duration of time from the beginning must apparently have been within moderate bounds, and by no means so wide and vast as the Indian and Egyptian fabu- lists assert." Pritchard might now have added, " some geological fabulists assert." Says Bunsen, " The study of the Scriptures has long convinced me that there is no connected chronology prior to Solomon." Says Conant, " I do not think we have exact and full data for determining with absolute certainty the numl)er of years from Adam to Abraham." I regard these statements of Pritchard, Bunsen, and Conant the correct view of early Bible chro- nology ; viz., the Bible does not give us data from which with certainty we can determine the length of the period intervening between Adam and Abraham . Pritchard's other statement I rejjard THE ANTIQUITY OF MAM. 103 also correct ; viz. , the Bible genealogies impress us with the idea that the whole duration of man's existence upon the earth is contained within moderate limits. That this is so, the recentness of the rise of the arts and sciences in their fulness indicates ; as al: