NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME.
CHRISTIANITY AND POSITIVISM. A Series of
Lectures to the Times on Natural Theology and Apologetics.
By JAMES  McCosu,  D.D., LL.D., President  of Princeton
College. 12mo. $1.75.
"In the present as in preceding defences of her divine origin, Christianity finds in her ranks the men demanded by the time. Among those who
have been foremost in her service, Dr. McCosh holds an honorable place. A
large part of his life has been devoted to the study and the discussion of the
main questions involved in the debate between the Positivists and Materialism on the one side and spiritual Christianity on the other.
"This book grapples directly with the vital questions.  Every reader
minust admire its fairness. It is all the better adapted to popular reading
from having been written to be delivered to an audience. Indeed, the
thinking is generally so clear, and the style so animated and luminous, that
any person of average intelligence and culture may understand and enjoy
the discussion; and no such person who has begun to read the work will be
likely to rest satisfied till he has finished it. It is in some parts eloquent
and beautiful, and is throughout forcible and effective for its end. Would
that thousands of the young people of our country, and of all classes whose
faith may be in peril, might read it with the attention it deserves." -
Independent.
CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE.  A Series of
Lectures.  By Rev. A. P. PEABODY, D.D., of Ilarvard College.
$1.75.
"One of the best books we have read in a long time, - a manly, candid,
noble, reasonable defence of the Christian faith. WVe do not see how any
thlloughtful person can read it in vain. Dr. Peabody plants himself fairly on
the very postulates of scientific men, and proceeds to show how all that they
claim for true science is fulfilled in the religion of Jesus. The three sources
of proof from which scientific men draw - testimony, experiment (or experience), and intuition - are made to render their tribute to Christianity, and
in a way which, while necessarily brief, is nevertheless so compact and clear
and fo)rcible as to be thoroughlily conclusive. A warm heart as well as a
clear head shines through these pages, and occasionally lighlits up the calm
reasoning with a gem of brilliant beauty." -Illustrated Clhristia  WFeekly.
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS.  
Eozoon UCanadense, the oldest known of the Sheretzim of the waters.-Portions of
the Skeleton, from a nature-print, taken from a specimen etched with acid.
The laminated portion shows the calcareous skeleton in white. The upper
right hand corner shows inorganic limestone and serpentine, with frag    ments of Eozoon. The lower figure is a part of one of the laminase en    larged, showing the t,ubulated cell-wall at (a), and the Supplemental
Skeleton, with canals, at (b).
PLATE I.
FRONTISPIECE.
~ _  ~       ~.;P.:,'  -..a V, ~'         *      ~i
I
p. 121.
Nature and the Bible. 
/  (-, "
NATURE AND THE BIBLE.
Cour i of  etatures
DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, IN DECEMBER, 1874,
ON THE
MORSE FOUNDATION OF THE UNION
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
J; w. DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S.,
PRINCIPAL AND VICE-CHANCELLOR  OF MCGILL UNIVERSITY, AUTIIOR OP
"ARCHAIA," "ACADIAN GEOLOGY," "THEI STORY OF
THg EARTH," PEC
NEW YORK:
ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS,
530 BROADWAY.
i875.
BY 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
IROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Canzbridge:
Press of _7ohn Wilson O  Son.
I 
PREFACE.
THE subject assigned to the Lectureship
founded by the late Professor SAMUEL F. B.
MORSE, LL.D., -" The Relations of the Bible
to the Sciences,"-is one of so wide scope
that any full or exhaustive treatment of it in
a course of six lectures would be impossible.
I have therefore restricted myself to the consideration of some of those points of contact
of Natural and Physical Science with the
Bible, which are now of the greatest importance and interest, with reference more especially to present controversies.
Some of these subjects I have already
treated in greater detail in my work entitled
"Archaia, or Studies of the Cosmogony and
Natural History of the Hebrew Scriptures;" "
but in these Lectures, though less fully discussed, they are brought up to the present
state of knowledge.
* London and Montreal. 1860.
i 
PREFA CE.
It should be understood that the standpoint of the writer is not that of a theologian or a metaphysician, but of a student
of Nature, who, while he has been chiefly
occupied with investigations and teaching in
Natural Science, has been a careful and reverent student of Holy Scripture, not with the
view of supporting therefrom any particular
school of theology, but of learning for his own
spiritual guidance the mind of God. He can
sympathize alike with those scientific students
who are repelled from the Scriptures by current misapprehensions as to their teachings,
and with those Christians who regard the advance of Science with some degree of dread,
as possibly hostile to religion; and will be
thankful if he can, to any extent, guide either
to a better position in relation to the word
and works of God, and to a better use of both
with reference to their own higher welfare.
J. W. DAWSON.
JANrUARY, 1875.
6 
CO N T E N T S.
5AGU
PREFACE................
LECTURE I.
GENERAL RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
Nature of the Subject........
Relations to Revelation in General.....
Monotheism and the Unity of Nature...
Law, Order, Use, and Plan.......
LECTURE II.
BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
The Heavens............
The Atmnosphere or Expanse.........
The Planetary and Starry Heaven.....
The Third Heaven...............
LECTURE III.
THE SCIENCE OF THE EARTH IN RELATION TO THE
BIBLE.........................
Generalizations of Geology.........
Creative Eons of Genesis...........
Order of Creation as compared with Geology.
11
11
20
27
30
47
47
51
64
69
77
79
84
88 
CONTENTS.
LECTURE IV.
PAGE
THE  ORIGIN  AND  HISTORY  OF ANIMAL LIFE  IN
NATURE  AND THE BIBLE........
Origin and History of Life in Genesis...
Origin and History according to Geology..
Physical Theories of Life........
Theories of Derivation of Species.....
LECTURE V.
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF MAN, ACCORD   ING TO SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.......
Testimony of Geology..........
Antiquity of Man..........
Relation of Pre-Historic Man to Modern Races.
Comparison with Biblical History.
LECTURE VI.
REVIEW OF SCHOOLS OF TIIOUGHT.
Sceptical Philosophies.....
Mlaterialistic Science....
Evolutionist Archaeology...
Modified Christianity....
APPENDIX.........
A.  Animal Nature of Eozoon.
B. Testimony of Paleontology with regard to
Derivation of Species.......
C.  Additional Facts relating to Primitive Man
D.  The Biblical Deluge........
E.  Prof. Pritchard's Views.......
INDEX................
8
113
114
117
126
132
149
149
159
163
.... 175
..... 185
..... 186
..... 191
..... 201
..... 210
..... 223
225
241
250
251
255 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
(FRONTISPIECE) Eozoon Canadense.
MICROSCOPIC STRUCTURE OF LIMESTONES
CRUMPLED LAURENTIAN ROCKS....
PSILOPHYTON, A SILURIAN PLANT...
PRIMORDIAL ANIMALS........
MESOZOIC REPTILES.........
SIVATHERIUM, A MAMMAL OF THE MIOCENE
THE MAMMOTH AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.
PREHISTORIC SKULLS........
MAMMOTH CARVED ON IVORY......
PLATE
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
vii.
Vill.
ix.
X.
PAGE
89
0 ii
107
118
12
146
1 5'-$
164
170  
NATURIE AND THE BIBLE.
LECTURE I.
GENERAL RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO THE
BIBLE.
NATURE OF THE SUBJECT. - RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO
REVELATION IN GENERAL. - MONOTI-IEISMJ AND THE
UNITY OF NATURE.- LAW, OPDER, USE, AND PLAN IN
NATURE AND IN THE BIBLE.
SCIENCE, it has been said, "discloses the
method of the world, but not its cause;
religion, its cause, but not its method." ~
There is much truth in the distinction, but it
does not contain the whole truth, else it would
be comparatively easy to draw a line between
the domains of religion and science, which reasonable men would have no desire to transgress. The truth is, however, that science
does, through its ideas of unity and correla
* Mlartineau. 
12    GENERPAL RELATIONS OF
tion of forces, and the evidence of design in
organic structures, not obscurely point to a
First-Cause, and that religion as embodied in
Holy Scripture does affirm method in nature.
On the other hand, the uniformity of nature
has a tendency to create a prejudice in the
minds of scientific men against what they
term divine intervention; and narrow views
of religion tend to attribute to God an arbitrary and capricious action, not in harmony
with either science or the Bible.
Again, the Bible states a fixed and distinct
dogma as to creation, while science in its contemplLtion of the method of nature is progressive, and continually changing its point of
view. The Bible stands like some great hoar
cliff, which to the theologian, accustomed to
view it always from one point, presents no
change except that which results from the
vicissitudes of sun and shade, winter and summer; but to the scientific thinker, drifting on
the current of discovery, its outline may perpetually chanrge. It is natural to the one
observer to believe that there is only one
aspect which can be true; while it is equally
natural to the other to think that the form of
the cliff is liable to many mutations, or that 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
it may even be a mere bank of cloud, which
some strong wind of discussion may dissipate
altogether. In contradistinction to both these
extreme views, it is the duty of the Christian
student of nature to endeavor to ascertain for
any given position in the study of the method
of the world, what are its actual points of contact withl revelation, and to expose such misconceptions as may have arisen from partial
and imperfect notions of either.
It must be admitted that our subject, when
viewed in this way, does not lie in the central
or essential spheres of either Natural Science
or Theology, but rather on the frontier or
debatable land between them.  The naturalist may, and indeed ought, to regard nature as
independent of the religious beliefs of men.
It is his object by his own proper methods to
ascertain facts and principles, and this without
being turned from his course by any apparent
antagonisms with doctrines held to be true on
other grounds.  Without granting him this
freedom, his testimony even in favor of religion would be valueless; and, by attempting
to deny it to him, he is placed in an attitude
of opposition to religion.  So the Christian,
reverencing the word of God as something
13 
GENERAL RELATIONS OF
standing altogether above and apart from human science, and dealing with the most momentous interests in a way to which science cannot
attain, -may hold himself altogether independent of either its aids or oppositions. He may
either take the simple position of the hymn
which says, -
"I am not skilled to understand
Wlhat God hath willed, what God hath planned:
I only know at his right hand
Stands one who is my Saviour."
Or, with more full appreciation of the coniplexity of the questions involved, he may adopt
the confession of Guizot  -
"I believe in God and adore him, without attempting to comprehend bim. I see him present
and acting not only in the permanent government
of the universe and in the innermost life of men's
souls, but in the history of humaLn societies, especially in the Old and New Testaments,- monuments
of the Divine Revelation and action by the mediation and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ for the
salvation of the human races. I bow before the
mysteries of the Bible and the gospel, and I hold
aloof from scientific discussion and solutions by
which men have attempted to explain them. I
trust that God permits me to call myself a Christian, and I am convinced that in the light which I
14 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
am about to enter we shall fully discern the purely
human origin and vanity of most of our dissensions
here belowv on divine things."
The man of science must thus be left unfettered by religious dogma; and, on the other
hand, the Christian has too sure evidence of
his faith and hope, to be shaken by any apparent inconsistencies with science. Practically, however, we must not forget that the
votary of science cannot as a man dispense
with religion, and that the Christian may impair his own influence, or injure the cause he
desires to promote, by want of acquaintance
with the position of scientific inquiry in his
day. It is also true that a large mass of persons who are neither men of science nor Christians may be perplexed or seriously injured
by misunderstandings on this subject.
Above all, those who aim to be Christian
teachers should be fully armed to contend for
the truth, and should have a clear and intelligent appreciation of the weapons and tactics
which may be employed against it. They should
also comprehend  the habits of thought of
specialists in science and their followers, and
the aspects in which religious truth may present itself to their minds.  Further, they should
15 
GENERAL RELA TiONS OF
be prepared to take broad views of the relations between spiritual and natural things,
and should have their minds attuned to the
harmonies which exist in God's revelations of
himself in nature and in his word. Otherwise they must fail to attain to the highest
usefulness, or to be worthy expounders of a
revelation from him who is at once the God
of nature and of grace.
There is thus in this debatable ground
between science and religion a large field of
profitable study; and this more especially at
a time when our literature is filled with crude
and shallow references to such subjects; and
when the utterance of views at variance with
both natural and revealed religion is more
bold and open than perhaps at any previous
time.
As an example of what I mean, I may take
an illustration from an address recently delivered on a public occasion ill a Scottish university, and by a man of some scientific standing.
He is reported to have said:  "Clergymen and most religious teachers  are
totally insensible to the errors and discrepancies
of language they use in the pulpit; so that, when
the scientific man takes his place in church, be is
16 
SCIEANCE TO TIIE BIBLE.
surprised at the manifest ignorance of established
truths constantly preached to the people. As a
simple illustration of this, let me remind you of a
beautiful hymn  with which all of us have been
acquainted fromn childhood, and wlvichl is still -ungr
in    our churches.  It is the one which commences,
'The spacious firmament on highh;' and after referring in separate verses to the sun, moon, stars,
and planets, says, in the fifth verse,
'What though in solemn silence, all
MIove round the dark terrestrial ball,' &c.
"But there is no one among this audience whose
knowledge has not convinced him that, so far from
the sun and the heavenly bodies moving round the
earth, or' terrestrial ball,' the earth and planets in
fact move round the sun. If Addison, the author
of this hymn, had consulted a scientific friend, and,
instead of the' dark terrestrial,' had sul)stitutecl
the'splendid solar' ball, the hymn would have
sung just as well, and would have had the advantage of being right instead of wrong, would not
have shocked our convictions of truth, and tended
to destroy the respect that really educated men
ought to have for religious instruction."
At first sight this is trifling enough, but it
mas not a mere random thrust.   Addison's
hymn  is one which has been much esteemed
by Christians.  It is one of five hymns selected
2
1T 
18      GENAERAL RELATIONrS OF
by the Presbyterian Church of Scotland to be
appended to the Psalter, and it is a paraphrase
or free translation of the 19th Psalm. I take
it, therefore, as an example of a species of
attack on Christianity which is to be found
everywhere in our current literature, and as
an illustration of points of contact between
science and the Bible, and of false and true
ways of treating them.
It is not to be denied that there is some
truth in the accusation of deficient scientific
accuracy in the pulpit. Illustrations derived
fromn science, and references to scientific discoveries and opinions, are often so wide of the
mark as to provoke a smile or to excite indignation, according to the disposition of the
hearer; and it should be borne in mind that
the progress of science is so rapid that what
seemed the most profound learning a few years
ago, may to-day be merely an exploded fallacy
or an obsolete theory.
Nor is the hymn free from ground of criticism, in its assertion that all the heavenly
orbs move round this " dark terrestrial ball;"
but it is curious and instructive that the
emendation of the scientific critic is equally
faulty, for, though the planets move round 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
the " splendid solar ball," the stars do not,a singuliar exemplification of the difficulty of
avoiding error even in the most simple scientific statements, when these are expressed in
poetical language, or used in illustration of
spiritual truths.
But what of the old Hebrew poet whose
production has led to all these difficulties?
Did he go astray in his astronomy, or did he
avoid altogether the scientific snares amidst
which it seems he was treading? We shall
find that he, looking altogether at natural
appearances, and sublimely ignorant of any
theory, has avoided the blunders both of his
copyist and his critic:
"The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the expanse proclaimeth his handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech,
Night unto night showeth knowledge.
In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is as a bridegroom conling out of his chamber,
And rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven,
And his circuit unto the end thereof;
And there is nothing hid from his heat."
This language is bold and poetical; but it
affords no peg whereon to hang any criticism
19 
20      GENERAL RELATIONS OF
similar to that to which the modern poet has
subjected himself.
My notice of this little matter is not a
digression. It is at once an example of the
superiority of the Bible to the attacks levelled
against it, and of the fact that the fiiends of
the Bible needlessly provoke these attacks;
and  it further  raises  the question, What
have we a right to expect of a divine revelation in its treatment of nature? and,;tIow
does that treatment stand related to modern
science? To the answers to these questions
I shall devote the remainder of this introductory lecture, and shall discuss: first, the
most general aspects in which the Bible is
related to science; secondly, the connection
between the Bible and science arising from
the relation of monotheism to our conceptions
of the unity of nature; and, thirdly, the
connections arising from the ideas of law,
order, and plan in nature which are common
to the Bible and to science.
R?elations of Science to Revelation in general.
Here we may begin with the broad general
statement that we have no right to expect 
SCIENCE TO TIIE BIBLE.
any direct revelation from God either of
natural facts or principles, except in so far as
these may be necessary to define our relations
to him; but natural facts known to men may
be employed, and indeed must be employed, to
illustrate the spiritual truths which it is the
function of revelation to state and enforce.
The facts and laws of nature are open to
observation, experiment, calculation, and reasoning, and do not need to be revealed to
man, though it must be admitted that the
stimulus given to the human mind by divine
revelation has been one of the strongest incentives to the study of nature. A revelation
of natural laws prematurely- that is, before
the human mind of itself rises to their comprehension -would be useless or injurious; and, if
we could conceive a revelation of a perfect
science, this would be inaccessible to all but
a few trained and gifted minds, if, indeed, it
could be rendered intelligible to them. On
the other hand, the revelation of a rudimentary
and imperfect science would be unworthy of
God, and would require continual correction
as knowledge advanced. The field of revelation lies in a different domain,- that of
spiritual things, -wherein science confesses
21 
GENERAL RELATIONS OF
itself at fault, and admits that it has reached
the boundaries of the unknowable. Perhaps
there can be no surer test of a true revelation
from God than to ask the question, - Does it
refuse to commit itself to scientific or philosophical hypotheses, and does it grasp firmly
those problems most important to man as a
spiritual being and insoluble by his unassisted
reason? This attitude of non-committal as to
the method of nature and the secondary causes
of phenomena is, as we shall see, eminently
characteristic of the Bible.
HIere we may pause for a moment to consider an analogy and a difference between
religion and science in this most general
aspect. God may be said to reveal science
to man as well as religion; but he reveals
science by raising up gifted minds to interrogate nature and to work out a knowledge of
her laws. HIe reveals spiritual truths directly,
through his own appointed messengers. Both
kinds of truth emanate from God, and are
conveyed through human minds. But science
is the effort of the human intellect to comprehend natural things, while revelation is the
comprehension of spiritual things poured from
above into the mind of man. The one is
22 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
continually changing and enlarging its boundaries: the other remains where it was, until
a new afflatus of the Divine Spirit comes upon
man.  Science laboriously draws water from
the deep well of truth. Revelation pours it
down on the parched earth in showers from
heaven.
But, if we inquire more closely, we shall
find that there are two somewhat dissimilar
aspects in which the Bible as a revelation from
God has treated nature, and in which its relations to science are distinct from each other.
The Bible frequently refers to natural facts
as illustrations of spiritual truths, asserting
thereby an analogy between the natural and
spiritual worlds.   Where  it does this, the
accuracy of its references is remarkable,
unexampled in so far as I know in any other
literature. We are not, however, required to
assign this accuracy to any direct revelation
of natural truth to the minds of the writers;
since it is, in part at least, explicable by secondary causes, which are themselves instructive
as illustrating the bearing of true notions of
God on our knowledge of nature. Such secondary causes  are  the  following:  1. The
habits of a people familiar with nature and
23 
24      GENERAL RELATIONS OF
drawing their images from it rather than
from art or previous literature. In our artificial state of culture, it is difficult to appreciate
this condition of the minds of primitive poets
and religious writers. It might be better for
us if we were to freshen our own minds more
than we do with similar influences. 2. The
absence of all tendency to theorize or to frame
hypotheses, and the direct reference of all
effects to the will of God. 3. The absence of
that superstition which makes natural objects
the basis of mythology, and connects them
with imaginary gods and demons. Properly
speaking, there is no mythology in the Bible,
because this is excluded by its monotheistic
theology. 4. The veneration for natural truth
developed among a people who regarded,all
nature as an emanation from the one God.
The Hebrew could not regard natural objects as
sacred to particular divinities, but he thought
of all things as a material expression of the
power of God, and therefore as in a sense
sacred.
To whatever extent attributable to such
causes, we find both in the shorter references to nature, and in such larger and more
elaborate compositions as the concluding chap 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
ters of Job, a treatment of nature worthy of a
revelation from God, and whose minute accuracy is constantly being confirmed by the researches of scientific travellers.
But there is another point of contact of the
Bible with nature to which such explanations
do not apply to the same extent. In the first
chapter of Genesis we find an obvious attempt
to give the method of creation, or at least
its order in time. This narrative of creation
trenches on the domain of science, and refers
to matters not open to direct observation. It
must, therefore, be a revelation from God, or
a result of scientific induction or philosophical
speculation, or a mnere myth.
If such a narrative of creation should prove
so accurate as to stand the test of facts discovered long after it was written, and of scientific principles not established or thought of
at that early time, this would in itself be a
most powerful proof of its divine origin. On
the other hand, if it commits itself to false
statements, it has stamped its origin as human,
and will so far sink to the level of many
other ancient books of obsolete science and
philosophy. On this point, as we shall see in
the sequel, recent investigations have left no
25 
26      GENEPRAL RELATIONVS OF
room for doubt. The  order of creation as
stated in Genesis is faultless in the light of
modern science, and many of its details present the most remarkable agreement with the
results of sciences born only in our own day.
As examples, I may mention the distinction
between the origin of light and of luminaries,
the origination of the first animals from the
waters, and the creation of the higher land
animals and man on one creative day. These
and many other features could scarcely have
occurred to the unassisted thought of a writer
of so great antiquityj This is a severe test
for the Bible,- one from which many of its
friends seem to shrink; but we shall see in
the sequel how it endures it, and why it was
necessary that it should be subjected to it.
In the mean time I wish to enforce the important principle that, with respect to the history of creation and the subsequent references
to it, we cannot rest in the general statement
that the Bible is not intended to teach science,
any more than we can excuse inaccuracy as to
historical facts by the notion that the Bible
was not intended to teach history.
i
t
i
i
t
F 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
Monotheism and the Unity of Nature.
The Word of God, as the revelation of the
one God, the Creator, has some special and
direct relations with nature, arising not only
out of its own monotheistic position, but out
of the errors and superstitions of ancient religions, and the constant tendency of humanity
to fall back upon secondary divinities.
One of these arises from the worship of
natural objects, or of spirits supposed to haunt
or to be connected with them, which prevailed
in heathen antiquity, and still exists so largely
among barbarous and semi-civilized nations.
When men have lost or are losing the knowledge of the true God, and are not enlightened
by the ideas of causation which spring from
science, they are naturally affected with a
superstitious dread of the powers of nature,
whether apparently injurious or beneficial to
them.  Hence the thunder-storm, the tornado
the volcano, the sun, the moon, and the great
river, become gods or symbols of gods; and
this may proceed to other idolatries of animals
or of deified men. Thus, from mere superstition may arise a systematized polytheism,
which in every stage of growth or decay is
27
1
(i 
GENERAL RELA TIONS OF
subversive of all high religious aims, and
reduces man below the level of the things and
forces of which he was intended to be the
lord and master; while it shuts out from him
the higher glories of the true God, and the
higher spiritual ends of his own being. From
this state it was necessary for revelation to
raise man.  Hence we find the great Hebrew
law-giver, in the beginning of Genesis, grasping the whole material of heathen idolatry,
whether in the heavens above or the earth
beneath, and bringing it within the compass
of his monotheistic theology; -and this testimony to the unity of nature perva,des the
whole of the Bible. 4 Hence, also, he places
man on the throne of creation, as its lord
under God, and lays beneath his feet all the
created things which the blinded nations worship.
This one vindication of God and man from
the debasing thraldom of superstition is a vast
achievement of revelation; and when we consider the prevalence of idolatry wherever the
Bible is unknown, even in our own time, and
the tendency even of cultivated men to fall
into fetichism, gross materialism, or pantheism,
we cannot be too thankful for this great liber
28 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
ation achieved by the Bible for all who will
believe in it as a revelation from God.' Even
science has a right here to express its obligations to the Bible; for, had this not already
taught the unity and uniformity of nature, it
is doubtful if we would yet have emerged
from the crudities of Greek philosophy, or
would have achieved many of the great scientific triumphs of modern times. 4A
Another aspect of a monotheistic revelations
is its obligation to hold God responsible for all
nature. It cannot, like the superstition of the
heathen, relegate the destructive and carnivorous animals, the storm, the earthquake, or the
volcano, to the dominion of malignant demons.
These terrible agencies, as well as the beneficent light and heat and gentle rain, must be
the works of the good God.  Science itself
has in modern times relieved us from some
part of this difficulty; but when we consider
how hard it was for the wisest minds of heathen antiquity to advance so far, and when
we find even our modern philosopher, John
Stuart Mill, avowing that the apparent evil in
nature and in man's estate seemed to him tco
great to permit him to believe in a God at
once beneficent and omnipotent, we can bet
29 
80       GENVERAL RE,LATIONS OF
ter appreciate the boldness of the stand in
favor of unity taken by the Scriptures, when
in the first chapter of Genesis, and before the
fall of man, they affirm that the darkness and
the light, the water and the land, the fierce
tanninim and the harmless cattle, are alike
the workmanship of the same Almighty hand.
1 Yet we can see that no other course was con  sistent with a monotheistic theology, and that
this alone could fully rescue man from the
abject superstition which bows before the
malicious or capricious unknown.:? We shall
have to return to this question of apparent
evil in nature; but in the mean time the treat  ment of it in the Bible presents itself as a
remarkable instance of adherence to the unity
of the cosmos.
Law, Order, Use, and Plan in Nature and the
Bible.
The monotheism of the Bible logically requires that it shall hold to uniformity in the
operations of God, to order and progress in
his works, to a regard to use and purpose,
and to a definite plan in all his procedure.
These great principles, always distinctly maintained in Holy Scripture, have been still more 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
prominently brought before  the  minds  of
men by the growth of modern science, and
establish some very interesting and important
points of contact.
1. The Bible is at one with science  in
affirming the constancy of natural law. God
has made'" a decree for the rain, and a way
for the lightning."  Ile has enacted the "ordinances of heaven." " He hath established
the heavens for ever. He hath made a decree
which shall not pass."   The uniformity of
nature as under natural law, expressing the
will of the unchangeable Creator, is as certain
a dogma of Scripture as it is a result of science. If the Creator is perfect, his action must
be uniform: any thing else would be unworthy
of him.  The extremest materialist can claim
nothing for natural law which the Bible does
not claim for the will that changes not, the
power that " fainteth not, neither is weary." *
Nor can even the pantheist claim any closer
indwelling in nature for his mechanical allpervading essence than the Bible claims for
its personal God.
The Bible, it is true, is anthropomorphic in
its mode of speaking of God, and necessarily
* Isa. xl. 28.
31 
32      GENERAL RELA TIONS OF
so,-for it must speak in the tongues and to
the hearts of men, - but avoids the attribution
of caprice and changefulness to him, as much as,
on the other hand, it avoids the other extreme
of converting him into a mere inexorable and
mechanical fate.
- But what shall we say of miracle and of
prayer? Simply this, that the Bible as a
revelation from God takes, and must take, a
broader ground here than that of the sceptic.
Even the materialist must admit that practi cally he exists in the midst of miracles, or of
processes that he can by no means either fully
account for or control.  He often finds him self in the presence of difficulties which he
cannot surmount, and the overcoming of which
would seem to him miraculous. Yet he knows
that, with more knowledge and power, he could
overcome them and this without contravening
natural laws. If he is aware of any specialist
who knows more than he does of those things
which he cannot master, he naturally applies
to him for aid or counsel. He knows very
well that if there exists any chief engineer of
the universe, who knows all its powers and
properties, such a person could work miracles
without end, by new correlations of forces 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
and matter; and if we could have access to
such a person, he might instruct us and help
us to do almost any thing with matter and
force. Therefore every man who believes in
matter and force and natural law must logically believe in the possibility of miracle and
the efficacy of prayer, provided that there is
an architect of the universe, and that we can
obtain access to him...
Bible miracles do not involve the suspension of natural laws, but only arrangements
under these laws, or the operation of unknown
laws; which, however, may be as inexplicable
to us as if they were contraventions of law.
Prayer, in the Scriptural sense of it, is an
appeal to One whose knowledge of and power
over his own works are capable of effecting results to us not only impossible, but inconceivable.'{ In maintaining the possibility of miracle and the power of prayer, along with the
unchangeable law of God, the Bible is thus on
higher scientific ground than that of any of
those who call these in question. ~
An idea seems prevalent both among scientific and unscientific persons, that there is
something derogatory to God iii limiting his
power by natural law, and that every effect
3
33 
34      GENERAL RELA TIONS OF
explained by a natural cause removes the
influence of God further back, until at last,
by the reference of all things to law, he
shall be quite eliminated from the universe.
Whether we look at this notion from the point
of view of science or of Scripture, it is equally
absurd. Flaw is nothing in itself. It merely
expresses the uniform exercise of some force
or power, and if God is the source of the
power, then the operation of the law is merely
his uniform operation. 4 We may indeed speak
of the law as a voluntary limitation of God's
power in a certain direction, just as a monarchl may define or limit his own power by
a law; but so long as the law continues in
force, it is his power that acts by it, just as
much as if he were acting without law.' This
crude idea reminds one of a story which Herodotus relates, to the effect that the Egyptians informed him that they were less in the
power of the gods than the Greeks,* because
they depended for the fertility of their lands
not on the capricious rains, but on the annual
inundation of the Nile. A little more science
would have informed them that the rise of the
* Perhaps they meant merely the atherial or weather gods. 
SCIENCE TO THIE BIBLE.
Nile was itself dependent on the rains of
interior Africa.
2. The Bible holds with science the doctrine'
of progress and development in nature. This
is implied in the grand march of the creative
work in Genesis, perfecting first the arrangements of inorganic nature, and then those of
the organic world, and in the latter beginning
with plants and ending with mant. It is true
that the Bible carries this farther in both
directions than scientific facts can yet do. It
goes back to a'" beginning," before any of the
present arrangements of the earth were perfected. It treats of an arrested development
by the fall of man, of a failure on his part
to enter into the intended sabbatism of the
Creator, of a world groaning under this
arrested development, of a future new creation when all things shall be restored.
On this idea of progress, it bases in the
main its solution of the difficulty, insoluble to
the gloomy philosophy of Mill, arising from
the apparent evils of the past and present
states of the world.  We  know but in part.
God alone knows the end from the beginning.
His plan is not to be understood from a little
part of it, and this marred to us by the
35 
GENERAL RPELATIONS OF
aberrations of sin.  Nor are the designs of
God to be judged altogether by the criterion
of human advantage, as understood by us, any
more than fromn the facts perceptible at one
point of view.  Here aogain the Bible evidently
scans the fields of nature and man from a
higher stand-point than that of its critics.
I Farther, it is to be observed that this idea
of progress, all along held by the Bible, has
only recently been perceived by science.
The first tendency of the great physical discoveries of this and the last century was to
lead to the notion of an unvaried and unending
succession. Only since the rise and growth
of geology and physical astronomy, has the
idea of continued change and progress afixed
itself on the minds of men. Now we know
that in no day is our earth precisely in the
same state in which it was in the day before,
that this has been its case throughout all
geological time; and that the same law probably applies to all the heavenly bodies.
Science has, it is true, with the zeal of a
new convert, been led farther in one direction
than the Bible can go; and, under the guidance of certain philosophical speculations, has
come to think that there is some necessary
36 
SCIENCE TO TIHE BIBLE.
tendency in all things to improve, or at least
to proceed from the homogeneous and indefinite to the heterogeneous and definite, a progress which, however, implies a beginning and
a finite consummation, and therefore a God;
but which, in the bare, bald sense in which it
is presented by the Spencerian evolutionists,
is no better philosophy than that which we
may suppose to be held by a minnow dwelling
in a reach of the Hudson, that all things inevitably and eternally flow toward the sun.
3. A further point of accordance between the
Bible and science is in the affirmation on the
part of the former of use and adaptation in nature,' in connection with the ideas of design
and final cause. The supposition of an allwise Creator involves this; and science has
so keenly perceived the necessity for it, in
its subordinate forms, that our most popular
hypothesis of the origin of species deifies use,
in the narrow sense in which it applies to the
individual, under the name of natural selection,
and makes it the creator of all things, while,
with singular blindness as to the possibility of
higher uses, it denies the evidence for design.
The teleology of the Bible is very clear and
definite, and it may be well to compare it
3T 
GENERPAL RT,LATIONS OF
more minutely with that which we can learn
from nature. The first and highest aim in
creation is the satisfaction of the Creator:
"God saw, and it was good."  This is a point
of teleology to which science does not often
soar.  It approaches it when it speaks of ab
stract beauty and fitness being ends. When
Darwin, perhaps not wisely, asserted that the
production of any structure for the purpose of
beauty alone would, if proved, be fatal to his
theory, he unwittingly placed himself in direct
antagonism to the Bible, and he was obliged
subsequently to modify his views on this point.
But the instinct of beauty is too strong in
man to allow scientific students generally to
fall into this error. Strauss, who, though he
could get rid of God, could not remove from
his mind the idea of cosmical beauty and
fitness, strove to embody it in his pantheistic
conception of the Cosmos,- the All, existing
in and for itself eternally; which is, after all,
nothing but a vague generalized statement
of the truth now before us.
A second object in nature is the good of
man, who is the "shadow and image" of his
MfLker, and has dominion over the lower world.
In science a like conclusion may be drawn
38 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
from the fact that man is the archetype of the
animal creation, the highest manifestation of
life, and that he enjoys a power of ruling and
using nature by virtue of his reason; while he
can also feel and enjoy natural beauty and
fitness. Merely natural science, however, cannot reach to the full conception of the Bible
on this point, because it has not before it the
idea of this world as a place of training and
culture for the spiritual and immortal nature of
man, and of manifestation to him of the attributes of his Maker.
A third end recognized in the Bible is the
welfare and happiness of all the lower animals.
He listens to the young ravens when they cry,
and provides for the sparrows, while he feeds
all the "creeping things innumerable" of the
great and wide sea. This also science must
recognize, not only because of the wonderful
and complicated adaptations of all parts of
nature to each other, but because of those
vast geological periods in which the earth was
tenanted by the lower animals alone.
Of course if natural science can get rid altogether of the idea of design in nature, it may
regard all these uses as mere results of some
inevitable tendency in things to adapt them
89 
GENE,RAL RELATIONS OF
selves to each other. But science cannot get
rid of design, which, as even Mill came in his
later days to admit, rests on an inductive
basis, and in this respect takes a higher place
than any theory of evolution. So long, indeed,
as the human mind retains its present constitution it cannot rid itself from the belief that
the complex adjustments seen everywhere in
nature imply an intelligent contriver. It may
be noted here, as a remarkable coincidence,
that, when Mill in his essay on Theism states
that the argument from design is the only
one valid to his mind as a proof of the existence of a God, he returns in this precisely to
the ground taken by Paul in the Epistle to
the Romans, when he says, " From the creation of the world God's invisible things, even
his eternal power and divinity, are plainly
seen, being perceived by means of the things
that he hath made."
4. The Bible recognizes type or plan in
nature. It brings out the likeness of man, as
the archetype, to God on the one hand, and to
behemoth, who was made with him, on the
other. It holds to plan and continued purpose
as pervading all nature, and it is full of the
harmonies which obtain between natural and
40 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
spiritual things, and thus it links all things to
each other and to their plan in the divine
mind. Dr. McCosh has noticed, in this connection, in his "Typical Forms and Special
Ends," the remarkable passage on this subject in Psalm 139th:"My substance was not hid from thee,
When I was made in secret,
And curiously wrought in the depths of the earth.
Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect;
And in thy book all my members were written;
Day by day were they fashioned, when there were none of
them."
Perhaps it might too much tax the faith of
scientific men, to ask them to admit that the
writer had before his mind the prototypes of
man which geology has recovered from the
rocks of the earth. No objection need, however, be taken to our reading in it the doctrine of embryonic development according to
a systematic type.
This idea of plan is equally manifest to science, though one great school of scientific men
is in our time disposed to regard it from the opposite point of view to that taken by Scripture,
and to infer, from likeness of plan, merely a
genetic connection or spontaneous derivation
of things.   This mode  of  viewing  nature
41
VI' 
42      GENERPAL RELATIONS OF
serves very well to explain hypothetically
most parts of its plan; but it has no proof
other than a series of uncertain analogies, and
it fails to supply any adequate power to initi ate and carry on the series of changes required.
This, however, we have to consider in the
sequel; and in the mean time may content
ourselves with affirming that the Bible occupies here at least a consistent and logical
position. Taking its stand on the divine will
and power, it holds that these act by law or
in a definite and uniform way, with unerring
prescience, and with a perfect mastery of all
natural forces, and that we thus have, carried
out through all the ages, a continuous and
consistent plan, whose completion is still in the
future.
In concluding our survey of law, order, use,
and plan, it may be well to notice the sense
often attached to the term divine "intervention," as if the Bible theism required that God
should, like a human artificer, frequently interfere to repair or put right certain portions
of his work. This notion is really foreign
from the theism of Scripture, which holds
that God is always present in his work, and
that all his work is perfect, whether we can 
SCIENCE TO THE BIBLE.
see this or not. It does recognize a difference
between his original acts of creation, and his
continuance of what he has created under the
laws of its being,- a difference which we at
once perceive must exist, on any theory of
theism; though we may not be able to define
its nature. It also recognizes a special work
of God in connection with the redemption of
man; and the revelation of himself, and of
the Divine Word in connection with this, is
perhaps the only part of his procedure to
which the term " intervention" can properly
apply, and this not in the offensive sense of an
absent God returning to patch or interfere
with his previous work.
In this opening lecture, I have dwelt on
general features of the relations of the Bible
to science.   I must now proceed to show
more in detail that the Bible is true to nature.
In doing so, I cannot enter into all the topics
involved, but must select such as seem to be
most important in meeting the difficulties and
misapprehensions at present prevalent.
43  
LECTURE II.
BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE UNIVERSE AS A
WHOLE.  
LECTURE II.
BIBLICAL VIEWS OF TIlE UNIVERSE AS A
WHOLE.
THE HEAVENS.- ATMOSPHERIC HEAVEN OR EXPANSE. -
SIDEREAL AND  PLANETARY HEAVEN. - THIRD OR
SPIRITUAL HEAVEN.
T is possible that there may be a condition
of humanity in which the lord of creation
so far resembles the lower animals that his
mental vision is limited to the little space of
earth he inhabits, and his immediate interests
therein. It is certain, however, that even the
rudest tribes of men, as known to us, have
learned to lift their eyes to the heavens and
to give names to the more prominent bodies
and groups of bodies that meet their view, and
even to see something of divinity in these
great orbs; while in the apparently limitless
depths of heaven, and in the ceaseless round
of day and night, and summer and winter,
and in the vicissitudes of storm and calm, and
the occasional appearance of comets and me 
BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
teors, they have been impressed with feelings
of awe and reverence deepening often into
superstition. Nor has science emancipated its
followers from such feelings.  The astronomer
who has weighed the heavenly bodies, and
gauged their distances, and examined their
spectra, stands after all appalled by their inconceivable grandeur and vastness, and complicated mutual relations. Nor can he easily
banish from his mind the idea of an intelligent
contriver of motions which have exhausted
his powers of calculation in endeavoring to
discover their laws.
What, then, is the relation of the Bible to
this wondrous spectacle of the heavens? Does
it fail to perceive its significance? Does it
with the heathen bow down and worship the
host of heaven? Does it weave the heavenly
orbs into a fantastic or beautiful dream of
poetical mythology? Or does it with the
scientific materialist see nothing but dead
forces and star-dust?
Its answer is contained in its opening sentence, "In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth." So its first word is
of the material universe. The first article in
the creed of inspiration relates to physical
48 
UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
nature.  Surely the importance of the outer
physical world is here sufficiently recognized,
-the heavens first and the earth next. But
the business of the Bible with the heavens is
special. First, it tells us that they are not
eternal and self-existent. They date from an
unknown period in the depths of past time,the beginning,- when even they had an origin in the counsels and power of the Eternal.
They were created, the word implying the
most absolute kind of production by almighty
power.* The Creator is God, or in the plural
cc Gods" (Elohim), as including those manifestations of divinity, immediately after mentioned, in his Word and Spirit; or as inclusive
of all true Godhead in the one  God,  the
Creator; and thus leaving no room to the
polytheist to ask, "Which of the gods
created the heavens and the earth?"
The Bible thus in its first verse grasps the
whole universe in two comprehensive words,
and lays it at the feet of the Almighty as its
Creator. It thus purposely cuts itself loose
from mythology and superstition on the one
hand, and from materialism and atheism on
the other, and defines its position in regard to
* This is discussed in "Arcliaia," pp 61 et seq.
49
4 
50      BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
nature as that of rational theism. Nothing
could be more clear than this; and if we are
content to receive it as the only solution of
the ultimate mystery of the origin of things,
-the only answer to that "infinite note of
interrogation" which meets us at the end of
all lines of research, - it forms a broad and
satisfactory basis for religion, and a final goal
for science. Let us next inquire how the Bible
carries out this grand statement into detail,
and this will lead us in the first instance
to consider the Biblical classification of the
heavens.
In the Bible all the depths of space beyond
the surface of the earth are designated by
the general term "heavens" (shamayim), the
heights, or the things which are high. The
heavens are again subdivided into three great
regions: the first or atmospheric heaven,the' expanse; the second or astronomical
heaven, including the planets and stars; and
the third or highest heaven, the unseen
abode of God's special presence, and of higher
spiritual intelligences. 
UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
The Atmospheric Ieaven.
This is introduced to us for the first time in
Genesis, chap. i. verse 6: " And God said, Let
there be an expanse in the midst of the
waters;" that is, to separate the waters of
the clouds above from those of the then universal ocean beneath. This expanse, we are
expressly told, " God called heaven," thus
including it, for purposes of popular classification, with the abysses of space without, rather
than with the earth within.
It is unfortunate that the early Greek translators adopted - perhaps in deference to the
opinions of their time - the word stereoma,
a solid, as the translation of the Hebrew
rakiah, expanse or expanded thing, and
that this error has been continued in our
translation by the word "firmament."  We
may, however, receive it with Milton's explanation, which, while recognizing the word firmament, defines its true meaning:     " The Firmament, expanse of liquid,
Pure, transparent, elemental air,
Diffused in circuit to the uttermost convex'
Of this great round."
The statements in Genesis respecting the
expanse suppose a previous condition of the
51 
52      BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
earth, in which it was encompassed with  a
cloudy, vaporous mantle, stretching continuously upward from the ocean, and not divided
by the film of clear transparent air, which in
all but a few exceptional cases now separates
the clouds above from the sea below. Such a
condition probably antedates geological time;
yet it is not unknown to scientific theory. If,
as seems probable, the earth was once in an
intensely heated state, a time would come, in
the process of cooling, when a heated ocean
would send up abundant vapors, producing a
perpetual mist or fog to be constantly condensed, by the cold of space without, into
continual rains. The change from this to the
present state of the earth would introduce
that nice and delicate balancing of evaporation under the influence of the sun, and condensation from the radiation of heat into
space and the mixture of air at various temperatures, which now gives us the stratum of
air in which we live and move, the beauty of
the azure sky and its floating clouds, and the
regulated  supply of fertilizing rain.  The
Bible does not enter into any details on the
subject, nor is itnecessary for us to do so,
any farther than to say that they form the 
UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
subject of the science of meteorology, one
of the most complicated of scientific studies,
and not yet well understood even in its more
general laws; and that practically they provide
for the possible subsistence of the higher animals and plants of the land.
However little we may have thought of this
subject, every one must admit that the institution of the laws and arrangements of our
atmosphere merited as a physical fact some
notice in the history of creation. Still more
did it require notice from a theological point
of view, since, of all the objects of idolatry
which have competed with a pure theology,
none have occupied a larger place in the
minds of men than cloud-compelling Zeus, and
the other ether gods of antiquity, whose
function Moses completely takes away when
he refers the atmosphere and all its phenomena to the fiat of the one God, Maker of
heaven and earth. Nor need we suppose
that the "waters above the heavens" are
relatively too small to deserve special notice.
The quantity of water suspended in the atmosphere is enormous; and the rains, the springs,
and rivers which fertilize the earth and sustain
its inhabitants, are only the overflowings of
53 
54      BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
this vast aerial reservoir, upheld by the laws
established by God.
It would be remarkable, were it not that the
frequency of such things makes us familiar
with them, that the most absurd misrepresentations of the Biblical expanse are current in
literature, and even in the works of men who
believe in and reverence the Scriptures.
In Smith's Bible Dictionary for instance, in
an article on Hleaven over the initials of an
eminent English scholar, but which may be
affirmed to contain as many inaccuracies, scientific and scriptural, as could well be compressed
into the space it occupies, we find it stated
that it is clear that Moses meant a "solid
expanse,"  " a firm vault," supported  " on
the mountains as pillars;" and in a popular
book on "Myths," by a gentleman of some
reputation in America, I find the quaint and
ridiculous translation, - not, however, altogether original, -" And, said the Gods, let
there be a hammered plate in the midst of the
waters." The existence of such notions warrants a little inquiry as to the precise state of
the case, -inquiry which might otherwise
appear a needless waste of time and an insult
to your intelligence. 
UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
That the idea of extension rather than of
fixity is conveyed by the Hebrew term, is implied in the frequent use of such expressions
as the " stretching out" of the aerial heaven,
and the comparison of it to the curtain of a
tent. In connection with this, and in itself a
beautiful conception taken from the motions
of the clouds, is the New Testament figure of
the "rolling up of the heaven as a scroll."
Nor is the idea of any secondary machinery,
like that of a solid vault, at all congenial to the
spirit of the Scripture treatment of nature,
which refers all things directly to the will of
God. Further, this idea, however it may have
been applied by the philosophers of antiquity
to the explanation of the starry heavens,
could not commend itself to men familiar with
nature, or indeed to any man who had ever
seen a cloud form upon a mountain's brow or
discharge itself in rain.
The expressions of Scripture which have
been quoted in support of this fancy are,
indeed, either mere poetical figures, having
no such significance, or refer to something
different from the atmospheric firmament.
Of the first class are the following: "i He
bindeth up the waters in his thick cloud, and
55 
56'    BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
the cloud is not rent under them,e  a thought
which has much natural truth, as referring to
the weight of the atmospheric waters. So, in
like manner, the mountains are the cc pillars of
heaven," as holding the atmospheric waters
on their cloud-capped summits. So also the
sudden descent of the thunder-storm or the
water-spout is the" emptying of the bottles of
heaven" or the opening of its hatches or
"windows," while the gentle rains are said
with equal truth to " distil" upon the earth.
These are all expressive figures, dealing with
the natural appearances of things, and implying no theory as to the constitution or laws of
the atmosphere.
Of the second class is that remarkable vision
of Moses, t wherein he sees God sitting on a
pavement of sapphire, and compares this to
the heaven in its transparency, a thought
which has as little to do with the idea of
solidity as any poetical figure relating to
heaven's azure vault has among ourselves.
When Ezekiel speaks, in connection with
heaven, of the "terrible crystal," his words
should be rendered the "terrible hail" or
ice of heaven; and when Job compares the
*Job xxvi. 8.      t Ex. xxiv. 10. 
i.NIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
"skly," not the expanse, to a molten mirror,
the connection shows that he refers to the
brilliant tints reflected from the sunlit clouds.
We need not, however, remain on the defensive in this matter; but may assert, on behalf
of the inspired writers, an accurate perception
of the true relations of the earth and its atmosphere.   Take for example an extract from
that "hymn of creation" the 104th Psalm,
which gives a poetical version of the first
chapter of Genesis, and may be regarded as
the earliest of all commentaries on that chapter: -
" Who stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain:
Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters:
Who maketh the clouds his chariots,
And walketh upon the wings of the wind."
The waters here are those above the firmament, the whole of this part of the psalm being
occupied with the heavens; but there is no
room left for the solid firmament, of which
the writer plainly knew nothing.  He represents God as laying his chambers on the waters,
instead of on the supposed firmament, and as
careering in cloudy chariots not over a solid
arch, but borne on the wings of the wind. It
is obvious fromnt this that Bthe writer of this
57 
58      BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
beautiful psalm did not understand Moses in
the manner in which he is interpreted by some
of the moderns.
Or let us refer to the magnificent description of meteorological phenomena in the 36th
chapter of Job, which perhaps, in the beauty
of its many references to the atmosphere, excels any other composition:   " For he draweth up the drops of water;
Rain is condensed from his vapor,
Which the clouds do drop
And distil upon man abundantly,
Yea can any understand the distribution of the clouds
Or the thundering of his tent.*
Out of the south cometh the whirlwind,
And cold out of the north.
By the breath of God the frost is produced,
And the breadth of the waters is straitened;
With moisture he loads the dense cloud,
And spreadeth the clouds of his lightning.
Dost thou know how God disposes these things,
And the lightning of his cloud flashes forth?
Dost thou know the poising of the clouds,
The wonderful works of the Perfect in Knowledge."
This is the same poem from which the
description of the clouds, as resembling a mirror, has been already quoted; and it will be
* "His pavilion round about him was dark waters and thick,
clouds" (Ps. xviii.) explains this expression. 
UNIVERSE AS 4 WHOLE.
seen that it contemplates no atmospheric dome,
but on the contrary speaks of the poising or
suspension of the clouds as inscrutable. So
also God is elsewhere said to have "established the clouds above," * and to have " balanced the clouds," t not by a solid substratum,
but by his unchanging decree.
The attempt, in short, to fix upon the Bible
the idea of a solid atmospheric vault is altogether gratuitous, as well as abhorrent from
the general tenor of Holy Writ; and I may add
that the expression, " God called the expanse
heaven," is in itself a vindication of this conclusion, as implying that no barrier separates
our film of atmosphere from the boundless
abyss of heaven without.
In very special connection with this subject
is the question referred to in the previous
lecture, as to the efficacy of prayer.  "It is
useless to pray for rain, since that is under the
control of physical laws," is the doctrine of a
noted physicist of our time.  "Elijah prayed
to God, and it rained not for three years and
six months, and he prayed again and the
heaven gave rain," is the counter statement
pf Scripture. Which is the more truthful or
* Prov. viii. 28.  t Job xxxvii. 16.
59 
60      BIBLICAL VIEWS OF TIIE
scientific statement, or is there some truth in
both? The Bible takes quite as strong ground
as the physicist on the side of law.   The
weather is not with it a matter of chance, or
the sport of capricious demons. God arranged
it all far back in the work of creation. His
laws are impartial also; for he sends his rain
on the evil and the good.   But the  Bible
knows a Law-giver beyond the law, and one
who sympathizes with the spiritual condition
of his people, and can so, in the complex adjustments of his work, order the times and
seasons as to correlate fruitful seasons or
drought and barrenness with their obedience
or their backsliding. That there is nothing
unscientific in this a very little thought may
show us. Let us take the case of Elijah's
prayer. The worslhip of Baal was not quite
so silly as at first we may think, even in the
case of astute and practical people like the
old Phoenicians and the Israelites.  He was the
sun god, and the study of nature shows us
that the sun is the great source of physical
energy to this world. In a physical sense, all
things may be said to live in him and to be
animated by his power. To thoughtful men,
knowing no higher power, and yet retaining 
UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
some religious feeling, he was almost of necessity the chief God. Yet Elijah, standing on
Mount Carmel, could deride the priests of Baal
when from morning to evening they called
upon the sun and there was no answer. He
could do this, because he knew that the sun
was merely a creature subject to physical law.
Had Professor Tyndall been present on Mount
Carmel, his view would have been thus far
precisely the same; and he, as little as Elijah,
would have joined the priests in their frantic
leaping around their altar and cutting themselves with knives. But had he now turned
to the prophet and said: "You see it is useless
to pray for rain," Elijah could have answered,
"True it is useless to pray to the sun, for he
is the slave of inexorable law; but as you do
not deny that there may be a God who enacted
the law, and as this God, being everywhere,
can have access to the spirits of men, it may
be quite possible for God so to correlate the
myriad adjustments which determine whether
the rain shall fall on any particular place at
any particular time, that the fact shall coincide
with his spiritual relations to his people.
Further, it does not matter in the least how
closely all these natural phenomena are bound
61 
62      BIBLICAL VIEWS OF TIIE
together by links of cause and effect, because
this chain of causation must have had a beginning, and to God who knows the end from the
beginning, and to whom the past and the future
are both alike present, it is the same to arrange
these correlations to-day or in the beginning
of time. Therefore, if you cannot deny that
there is a God, and if you must admit that
such a God cannot be debarred from intercourse with the souls he has made, the science
of nature, which merely makes known in part
certain modes of God's operation, can bear
no true testimony against  the efficacy of
prayer addressed to him." Thus it may be
quite true that it is useless to pray if we know
no power above physical laws and material
objects, and it would be most absurd to pray
to these; but, if we. have access to the mind
that made and rules all these things, who can
tell what answers we may evoke?
There is nothing therefore in science, any
more than in Scripture, to interpose a vault of
brass between us and the higher heaven. But
we may go even further than this, and affirm
that there are some analogical indications afforded by science of a present God, and of the
possibility of access to him. Not long ago, ap 
UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
parently impassable gulfs intervened between
the great forces of nature, now we begirn to
see that they may be one in essence, and so
convertible into each other that the most
strange and unlooked-for mutations may arise.
What if they should all be ultimately resolvable into the will of God? and may not man
by his will and spirit, as well as by his reason,
share in the resources of omnipotence? Moses
long ago included all the great forces of nature,
except gravitation, in the one Hebrew word
or,* translated "light" in our version, and
attributed them to the Almighty fiat; and, if
modern science arrives at the same conclusion
as to the unity of these forces, it need not
quarrel with his conclusion as to their source.
Farther, the inventions which science has
made, giving to man mastery over these same
forces, should render us more humble in limiting the possibilities of intercourse between
man and God. We can fancy the scorn with
which a philosopher of the time of Hume
would have treated the madman who should
affirm, contrary to experience and probability,
that he could stand in an office in London and
dictate instantaneous commands to his agents
* Allied in derivation to the Greek ai'Orp.
63 
BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
in America or China; yet relatively a small
amount of additional knowledge, attained by
a few electricians, has rendered this miracle
familiar to the ordinary business man, who
knows nothing of the laws of electricity.  Such
things, while they are glories of practical science, should make it humble in affirming or
denying possibilities beyond its ken.
The Planetary and Sidereal Heavens.
Leaving the first or atmospheric heaven, let
us ascend to that of the planets and stars.
This is included in the general term " heavens"
in the first verse of Genesis; but the arrangements of the heavenly bodies in their relation
to our earth are not specified till the fourth
creative day, whereas light and its allied
forces were the work of the first day. This
distinction between light and luminaries is
another point on which Moses anticipates
science. On any physical hypothesis of the
formation of the universe, whether the nebular
hypothesis of Laplace or the modifications of
it which have been more recently proposed,
there ought to have been diffused light first,
and the aggregation of this about the central
luminary as a subsequent process; and the
64 
UNIVERSE AS A WfHOLE.
enormous lapse of time implied in this physical
perfecting of our system is well shadowed forth,
in its being finished only on the fourth of the
six creative mons.
Three points with reference to the astronomical heaven, noted in Scripture, and which
are still its most striking features, are, - its
vastness, the number of its orbs, and the
mighty power  implied in their mass  and
movements. When the writer of the 8th
Psalm considers the heavens, he says, "What
is man that thou art mindful of him?" In
another psalm we find that "the heavens
declare the glory of God, and the firmament
showeth forth his handiwork;" and their voiceless proclamation of his power is dilated on
in other poetic images. Again, "' God telleth
the number of the stars, and calleth them all
by name." Isaiah tells us to "lift up our
eyes on high, and behold who hath created
these things, bringing out their host by number. He calleth them by names. By the
greatness of his might, because he is strong
in power, not one faileth."
The Bible, however, does not dilate upon
these subjects merely to feed our wonder. It
adduces them as evidences of the grand unity
5
65 
66      BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
of nature in God, and in opposition to all
those mythological follies which induced even
the most cultivated nations of antiquity to
personify the heavenly orbs and to assign to
them divine attributes.
But the Scripture in two instances assigns
power to prayer and miraculous intervention,
even in the case of the heavenly bodies. In
two instances only, however, - Joshua's miracle and that on the sun-dial of Ahaz; and these
with special note of their great and exceptional character. With reference to any physical explanations of these miracles, it is to be
observed that none is attempted, though other
miracles much less stupendous - as, for instance, the destruction of Sodom and the passage of the Red Sea - are thus in part explained.
We may suggest conjectural explanations; as,
for example, an abnormal atmospheric refraction. But there can be no certainty as to these,
and both are left as blank mysteries to us as a
steam-engine or an electric telegraph would
have been to Joshua or Hezekiah.
A remarkable use is made of the sidereal
heaven in certain prophetical passages, where
it is spoken of as decaying and renewed.
These prophecies are no doubt emblematic of 
UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
human affairs, rather than literal. This is
amply shown by reference to Isaiah's and Ezekiel's prophecies respecting Babylon, Edom,
and Egypt, whose fall is represented by the
falling and blotting out of heavenly bodies,
and a similar explanation is applicable to our
Lord's prophecies in Matthew xxiv., and to
the pictures in the Revelation of St. John.
Still the representations are taken from literal
facts,- some of them belonging to the present
time, others relating to the possible future of
the universe. To St. John in particular, interpreters have scarcely done justice in this respect. Many of his pictures are the most
gorgeous ever shadowed forth in words. Take,
for instance, his harpers harping by the sea of
glass mingled with fire. The scene is the
eventide of the world, after the stormy day of
trial and persecution. The sun, sinking in the
west, throws his beams along the smooth and
unruffled sea, that has forgotten all its storms,
and glows with fiery lustre; while the happy
souls rescued from the terrors of the past, and
standing on the shore of safety, tune their
harps to the song which Moses sang when the
hosts of Israel had passed safely over the dark
waters of the Red Sea. Such sketches, inimi
67 
68       BIBLICAL VIEWTVS OF TIEI
tably touched in a few words, abound in this
wonderful book. But John rises to still
higher flights, when he tells of a sun blotted
out from the heavens and becoming black as
sackcloth of hair; of a moon reduced to that
dull ruddy hue which we see almost with
terror in a lunar eclipse; of meteoric stones,
whose cosmic significance we are only beginning to understand, raining from heaven like
figs from a tree shaken with a mighty wind;
and the atmospheric heaven, with its clouds,
rolling up like a scroll.  Such pictures point
not only to eclipses and meteoric showers. but
to cosmic possibilities now present to the minds
of astronomers; to the decay of the solar
energy, and to the necessity of a renewal of
our world, and to the chances of change implied in the cometary and meteoric matter
which haunts our system. Surely the prophet
who foreshadows these things without any aid
from science must have had some spiritual
insight into the plans of God.  We  may at
least be content to admit that the Bible treatment of the starry heavens is marked by both
power and accuracy. 
UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE.
The Third or Spiritual Heaven.
When the Bible speaks of a third or spiritual heaven, we might suppose that it leaves
altogether the domain of science. But there
are some points of connection even here. It
is necessary, however, in the first place, to
direct attention to the actual doctrine of scripture respecting the third heaven, since there
has been so much vague speaking and writing
on the subject, that the minds of Christians
have become confused as to its nature, and
they often seem scarcely to know whether it
is a place or merely a state. In the Bible, the
highest heaven is certainly a definite place,
where God's presence is specially manifested,
although at the same time it pervades the
whole universe. Our Lord affirms, that he
came from this place, and returns to it; and
he says, " I know whence I came." HIe speaks
of it as his " Father's house," where there are
"cc many mansions;" as a "paradise; " and under
other figures implying  a definite locality.
Paul speaks of being caught up into it. In
the Old Testament, God's temple at Jerusalem
was a local emblem of it, and the angel Gabriel, when visiting Daniel took a stated thine
69 
70      BIBLICAL VIEWTS OF TIIE
to come from it, when " flying very swiftly."
It is beyond the limits of the visible universe,
being the "heaven of heavens," and is tenanted by spiritual beings whose nature can be
explained to us only in figures of speech. It
is a place of special manifestation of God's
power, but does not limit or contain his
energy. It is the -centre whence spiritual
messengers are despatched to all parts of the
universe. Lastly, at the resurrection our
bodies are to take on the condition of heavenly or spiritual bodies, as distinguished from
natural, and the conditions of heaven are to
descend to earth and to be established therein,
so that heaven and earth become one in
nature, and are permanently identified.
These ideas are necessary to the biblical
conception of a personal and spiritual God.
The pantheist may agree with the Bible in
believing in a universal, all-pervading power
of some kind; but he cannot conceive of this
as personal. The anthropomorphic heathen
limits and localizes his gods as if they were
men. The Bible combines both ideas, giving
us a local habitation for the special dwelling
of God, and at the same time maintaining
that the heaven of heavens cannot contain
lim, because his presence is everywhere. 
UNIVERSE AS A WIIOLE.
Of this heaven of heavens, two scientific
conceptions are possible. It may include all
the abysses of space beyond that universe
within which God has, if we may so speak,
set limits to his own action, by the institution
of what we term natural laws. There must
be a sense, however little we can understand
it, in which God inhabiteth infinity as well as
eternity. On the other hand, it may be a
centre of the universe itself, and this is perhaps the more probable view. For just as we
have in our system the glorious sun as its
centre, and as the stars are probably suns with
attendant worlds, it is a matter of not unreasonable conjecture, that there exists a physical
centre for the whole universe,- a sun of suns,
around which all worlds have their prodigious
and almost eternal circuits.   It is true we
have no certain knowledge of such a centre,
but analogy points to it; and, if the world
were to continue long enough to accumulate
in future millenniums accurate series of observations of the motion of the whole heavens,
we might even hope to calculate the direction and distance of the physical heaven of
heavens; and perhaps instruments might be
constructed to catch some rays of its light for
71 
72    BIBLICAL VIEWS OF THE
mortal eyes. Such anticipations may never be
realized, and we must for the present be content to know that science and revelation,
standing on the extreme verge of their respective fields, both point to a mysterious
centre of the universe of God, whence emanate powers that extend to the utmost limits
of space, and where dwells glory inaccessible,
which eye hath not seen, neither hath it
entered into the heart of man to conceive.
Strauss has ventured to say that no man,
"having a clear conception, in harmony with
the present standpoint of astronomy, can represent to himself a deity throned in heaven."
On the contrary, astronomy itself leads us to
the supposition that God, while, like his own
great forces of gravitation and heat, pervading and penetrating all things, may like
these forces exert his power from a grand
dominant centre of creation, where his throne
may be, in the same figurative sense in which
the earth is his footstool.
'It is farther to be observed that the biblical
idea of a future state of this earth, in which its
conditions shall become similar to those of the
spiritual heaven, is not altogether foreign to
science. A recent writer (Ponton) has well 
UVI VERSE AS A WHOLE.
put this by a reference to the stages through
which the earth has already passed in geological time. Suppose an earth wholly mineral,
and that some prophetic intelligence were to
endeavor to shadow forth in terms of the mineral the approaching introduction of plants,
we can readily imagine the difficulties of such
an attempt; or suppose the plant introduced,
and the effort to be made to shadow forth the
new creation of the animal, in terms of the
plant; or suppose the lower animals introduced, and our imaginary prophet to have the
task of explaining from their habits what man
would think and do when introduced on the
earth. All these changes we now know as
actual facts; but may there not be other
changes in store for the universe, and may
not men, inspired by prophetic insight, be commissioned to shadow forth, in terms of the
human and natural, the new and glorious
manifestations of divine power which are to
be realized in the future state.
73  
LECTURE llI.
THE SCIENCE OF THE EARTH IN RELATION
TO THE BIBLE. 
TABLE I. -Parallelism of the Biblical Cosmogony with
the Physical and Geological History of the Earth.
COSMICAL PERIODS.
The Beginntng.
The Earth without form, and
void.  Darkness on the face of the
Abyss.
Creation of Matter and Force.
Condensation of nebulous  or other
matter to form the solar system.
The Earth a vaporous mass.
Day One.
Creatio n o f Light (Or).  Institution of Day and Night.
Diffused light in the solar system. The Earth has a Photosphere.
Condensation of luminous matter
within the Earth's orbit. Decay
of Terrestrial Photosphere.
Day Second.
Universal Ocean. The Expanse
placed in the midst of the -waters.
Water condensed on the Earth's
crust, and covered with a dense
mass of vapors.
The institution of the arrangements of the atmosphere as now
existing.
Day Third.
The Dry Land appears.
The  Earth's crust thrown  into
folds. The first continents.
Pre-Laurentian  vegetation,  known
only inferentially.
Day Fourth.
Luminariesarranged in relation
to the Earth.
Beginning of the  Archsean or
Pre-Eozoic Age of geology.  Completion of existing state of the
solar system.
Day Fi.fth.
Creation of Invertebrates and
Fishes (Sheretzirn of the waters).
Creation of great Tannilira, or
Reptilian animals, and Birds.
Day Sixth.
Introduction of Mammalia  as
dominant.
Creation  of Man and of the
Edenic Animals.
Day Seventh.
The Rest of the Creator.  Historical Human Period.
Day Eiyhth.
Renovation of the Earth.   The
,New Heaven and New Earth.
Paleozoic Time, or age of Invertebrat es.
Mesozoic Time, or age of Reptiles.
n   Neozoic, or Tertiary Time. Culmination of  Mamnmalia.
Close of Tertiary and introduction of the Human Period.
(
I
I
BIBLICAL ONS.
Vegetation introduced.
I
I
-M,odern Time. Age of Man.
In the Future. 
LECTURE III.
THE SCIENCE OF THiE EARTIH IN RELATION
TO THIE BIBLE.
GENERALIZATIONS OF GEOLOGY. - CREATIVE  EONs OF
GENESIS.- ORDER OF CREATION AS COMPARED WITH
GEOLOGY.
T no point has modern science appeared
to impinge more heavily on the Bible
than in the relations of geology to the narrative
of creation in Genesis.   No triumph of inductive science is greater than that by which
it has given us a connected history of the
stages of the genesis of the earth and its
inhabitants through a long series of ages
anterior to man; and on no point has the
Bible appeared to insist more strongly than on
its six creative days. The apparent difference
has given rise to a swarm of attempts at reconciliation, and there has been no'want of stern
denunciation of the impiety of scientific men
on the one hand and of the bigotry of theo 
78    THE SCIE,NCE OF THE EAR TH
logians on the other. I-Iappily, however, so
much light has now been cast upon the subject
that few intelligent men see any contradiction
between the conclusions of geology and the
doctrine that "in six days God created the
heavens and the earth." The subject is, however, well worthy of some attention, if for
nothing else as an example of how the greatest
apparent difficulties may fade away when
boldly encountered.
Nothing can be more surely established on
the basis of scientific induction than the vast
length of the periods revealed by the strata of
the earth's crust Some geologists are indeed
not content with that enormous stretch of one
hundred millions of years which is regarded
as the shortest possible time which may have
elapsed since a solid crust first formed on the
cooling earth.* To understand this, we may
condense into a few propositions the great
leading results of scientific investigation of
the earth.
* Sir William Thomson's estimate. Gould has argued that this
time must be very much shortened, and may indeed fall so low
as five millions of years; while some evolutionists, like Wallace,
demand a much longer time than that stated by Sir W. Thomson.
The absolute age of the earth as a planetary body is at present
altogether uncertain.
I
I.I 
IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE.
Generalizations of Geology.
1. The widest and most important generalization of modern geology is, that all the
materials of the earth's crust, to the greatest
depth to which we can penetrate, are of such
a nature as to prove that they are not unchanged and primitive rocks, but the results
of the operation of causes of change now in
progress. They may be such things as congloinerates, sandstones, shales, and slates, all
of which are the debris of older rocks, broken
down into pebbles, sand, or mud;  or          may
be limestones, made up of the ruins of co>s
and shells; or beds of coal and metallic ores,
accumulated by the agency of vegetable
matter; * or they may be substances analogous to the lavas and ashes of modern volcanoes; or they may be rocks that are aqueous
in their origin, and now hardened and altered
by heat. But everywhere we see the evidence
of change under natural laws still'in force.
* Hunt, in his recent volume, " Papers on Chemical and Physical
Geology," has shown that the great beds of iron ore are probably
due to the indirect agency of organic matter, even in cases where,
as in the Silurian strata, they are not associated with beds of
coal. That the coal and clay iron-stone of the coal formation are
due to accumulation of vegetable matter has long been well
known.
79 
80    THE SCIENCE OF TIHE EAtI TI~
2. This being ascertained, we can next
affirm that, in consequence of the manner in
which successive deposits from water have
been piled upon each other, a regular suc cession can be traced in the strata or beds of
the earth, giving us a chronological sequence
of deposits extending throughout the whole
time since the sea first began to receive into
its basin the debris from the wasting land.
The general nature of this order may be seen
in the table below.
3. This series of rock formations acquires
an immense increase of scienti   value from
the fact that organic remains of the         als
and plants inhabiting the earth at the different
stages of its progress are preserved in the
successive deposits, and can be compared.
Further, these buried remains indicate successive dynasties of life different from that
now existing and from each other; so that we
can divide the geological history not merely
by a series of beds of rock alternating with
each other, but by a series of faunas and
floras which have occupied the earth successively from the dawn of life until now. This
also is exhibited in the table of geological
formations, but in a very general way. The
I
k
II 
IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE.
numerous species characteristic of each geological period can be studied only in books
specially devoted to this branch of science.
4. The lapse of time embraced in this geological history of the earth is enormous. It
is difficult to give an idea of this without
entering into details, out of place here. A
few facts must suffice.  In the modern period,
which includes the time of man and the lower
animals, his contemporaries, such facts as the
growth of coral reefs, the erosion of river
valleys and the deposit of sediment at the
mouths of rivers, give a lapse of time to be
measured by tens of thousands of years.
Passing to a single formation of older date,the coal formation, -  this, as developed in Nova
Scotia, shows in a single section eighty beds of
coal, overlying each other, and about a hundred
fossil forests, all successive. Without reckoning the time necessary for the deposition of
the thousands of feet of sand and mud hardened into stone that enclose these beds, the
growth of so many peaty layers, often of great
thickness, with the production and entombment
of so many forests, and the tinme involved in
the emergences and subsidences of the land
necessary to their appearing as they now do,
6
81
A&
I
II 
82   THE SCIENCE OF THE EARTH
must have required ages, compared with which
the modern period dwindles into insignificance.
The accumulation of even one bed of coal
may have required as long a time as that
covered by human history. Again, numerous
great limestones, of immense thickness, and
covering vast areas, are composed altogether
of shells of mollusks or corals. Such limestones give us for the lowest estimate of time
the l].apse of vast ages. Geological time thus
grows upon us the more that we examine
its details. Plate II., showing the microscopic
structure of two great Silurian beds of limestone, is an illustration of this; and Table II.
represents in a very general way the whole
great series of formations, terminated by the
Human or historical epoch.
ii 
m,%         7 4.
laganified Specimens of Lower Silurian Limestonie, showing the mannar in which
it is made up of fragments of Corals, Crinoids and Shells.
Nature and the Bible.                PLATE II.                                 p. 82. 
T, 
IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE.
TABLE II. - View of the Geological History of the Earth.
VEGETAIILE
GEOLOGICAL PERIODS.            AEIMAL LIFE.            LIFE.
Modern and Post-   Age of Man.
glacial.
or Ter-   Post-pliocene, or                    Age of Angio  tir-.     Glacial.                                  sperms and
Tilye   ePliocene.             Age of Mammals.        Palms.
Miocene.
Eocene.
Mesozoic    Cretaceous.          Age of Reptiles      Age of Cycads
Time      Jurassic.              and Birds.           and Pines.
Triassic.
Permian.
Carboniferous.       Age of Amphibians  Age of Acrogens
and Fislies.
Paloozoic!Erian, or Devonian.   and Gymno Tamzi   Silurian.
Time.    Silur        ian.    Age of Mollusks,        sperms.
SilurCamb   ian       Corals, and Crs           Cambrian., or taceims.                    Age of Algie.
Primordial.
Eoo Huronian?                             Indications of
Eozo        Upper Laurenti an.   Age of Protozoa       Plants, not de  Time.    LoUpper Laurentian.                         terminable as
Lower Laurentian.                           yet.
NOTE. -I have included the Post-pliocene and Modern Ages
under the Tertiary, because I think there is no good Palieontological ground for separating them from the earlier Tertiary, except
in so far as the subordinate divisions are concerned.
83
4*
2 
84   THE SCIENCE OF THE EARTH
Creative Bons of Genesis.
Let us now turn to the first chapter of Gelnesis, and inquire how we are to reconcile
these vast periods with a creation in six days.
It will not serve our purpose here to say that
the Bible is not intended to teach science, and
need not be correct as to minor details. It
commits itself to an order and a time. We
cannot escape by saying that the story is a
myth to vindicate the fourth commandment;
or we shall have to hold very loose notions of
the truth of Scripture. We cannot say that
the vague term "the beginning" covers the
geological ages, because there is no chaotic
condition between these and the human period.
Further, when we look into the order of the
narrative, we find that the creation of animals
begins in the fifth day of the Bible series; so
that, even if we suppose our geological chronology to extend to a little before the introduction of animal life, it will cover at most
three of the six days and part of the seventh.
The explanation of the whole mystery is,
that the creative days themselves are long
periods. It has not been left to geologists to
discover this; for, independently of the tradi
,i 
4
IN RELA TION TO THE BIBLE.
tional impression prevailing throughout antiquity that the world had existed through long
pre-human times, thlere are venerable Christian
authorities as Augustine, for instance, who on
grounds of a purely theological character held
this doctrine. The internal evidence of this
conclusion may be shortly stated as followss: -
1. The perfectly indefinite phrase, "in the
beginning, places no limit in backward extension of time to the commencement of God's
creative work. But the six days must be held
to include the whole period occupied in the
arrangements of the earth and of the solar
system, and the peopling of the earth with
animal life.*
2. The Hebrew word yom, day, does not
necessarily mean a natural day. In Gen. i. 5,
it is used in two senses, only one of which
can mean a natural day: the earlier creative
days preceded the institution of the natural
day; and in Gen. ii. 4, the whole creative
week is called one day.
* The view advocated by Dr. Chalmers and by Dr. Pye Smith
that the geological ages might be contained in the time between
the beginning and first day, involves a strained interpretation of
the passage, and is contradicted by the fact that no chaotic period
intervenes between the human period and the preceding tertiary
ages.
85 
86   THE SCIENCE OF THE EAR TH
3. Many internal difficulties occur on the
hypothesis of natural days. One of these is
the interval which in chapter second appears
to have occurred between the creation of the
man and that of the woman. Others arise
from the difficulty of replenishing the earth
with plants and animals in the course of a few
natural days.
4. In Psalm xc., attributed to MAoses, and
certainly written in the style of his poetry in
Deuteronomy, one day of Jehovah, relatively
to human history, is said to be a thousand
years; relatively to creation, it must be much
longer.
5. The seventh day is not said to have had
a morning and evening, nor is God said to
have resumed his work on the eighth day.
Hence the seventli day is the period of human
history in which we still live. Our Saviour
sustains this view of God's Sabbath in his remarkable expression, "My  Father worketh
hitherto, and I work."
6. The fourth commandment, as explained
l)y Moses, requires the supposition of long
creative days. It c,innot be meant that >rod
works six natural days, and rests on the seventh
as we do; but it may be intended that on
li 
IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE.
God's seventh day we should have entered on
his rest, and that the weekly Sabbath is an
emblem of that rest, lost by the fall and to be
restored in the future.
7. This explanation has the support of the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose
argument in his fourth chapter has no force,
unless on the supposition that God entered
into a rest of indefinite duration, which man
lost by the fall, retaining only the weekly
Sabbath as a shadow of it, but which is to be
restored in Christ, who has already entered into
his rest, of which the Lord's day is in like
manner a foreshadowing. This view is indeed
the only one which brings the Lord's day of
the Christian fully into harmony with the
Jewish Sabbath; making the latter a weekly
commemoration not only of the completion of
the work of creation, but of God's rest, which
man lost by his fall, and the former a weekly
commemoration of that rest into which the
Redeemer has entered, and to which Christians
look forward.
8. There is good reason to believe that the
use of the Greek word aiones, with reference
to the creation, in IHeb. i. 2, and in Eph. iii.
11, refers to the creative days as indefinite
87 
88   THE SCIENCE OF THE EAR TI
periods, and that these passages should be
translated in accordance with this view; while
we have this authority for rendering the creative periods of Gen. i., by the word ceon rather
than by day.*
These things being considered, it is worthy
the attention of theologians whether it would
not be better to abandon the literalism of a
medieval theology and return to the patristic
authority and to the internal harmony of
Scripture itself in this matter, and thus to
put Moses in accordance with modern science
as to the length of the creative days, which
there seems good reason to believe he himself
intended to assume.
Order of Creation as compared with Geology.
We have noticed as shortly as possible the
generalizations of geology and the creative
days of the Bible, to clear the way for the
more detailed consideration of the harmony
which subsists between these records, - the one
revealed to man before the dawn of geological
* The above is to be regarded merely as a summary of reasons.
A  more fill discussion of the subject will be found in the author's
"Archaia," chap. vii., also in McDonald's  "Creation and the
Fall," pp. 93 et seq.; and Lewis's Introduction to Lange's Genesis,
pp. 131 et seq.
I
i
I.I
I
i
i
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ILV RELATION TO THE BIBLE.
science, the other obtained from the inscriptions which God himself had left in the rocks
of the earth. That an order of creation is
given, is in itself a remarkable fact. Still,
that Moses might cover all the ground of
ancient heathenism, it was necessary to place
the work of creation in some order, and none
could be more appropriate than the order of
time. I do not here discuss how this revelation of the creative work was communicated,
whether in visions corresponding to days or
otherwise. That it was a divine revelation
we may rest assured, unless we can believe
that the contemporaries of the writer had
already made such progress in physical and
natural science as to have reached to a scientific cosmogony.
The sacred record opens with a "beginning," a time when neither the heavens nor
the earth existed except in the mind of the
Eternal. To us it is equally impossible to
conceive an eternal succession of natural
things or an entire absence of matter and
force. Yet it is plain that one or other must
be assumed; and if we exclude God, we place
ourselves in an absolute dilemma. On the
other hand, believing in an eternal spiritual
89 
90    TIIHE SCIENCE OF TIIE EARTH
First Cause, we may fall back on him, and with
Moses say," God created."  Further, the tendency of all modern geological and astronomical research has been to point by positive
indications to a beginning. Geology shows
us that the animals and plants which are our
contemporaries did not always exist, and we
can trace back animal and vegetable life perhaps to their origin on our earth. Even the
rocks and continents have their geological
dates, and there are none of them that we
cannot assign to an origin in geological time.
So in astronomy, the moon, -once apparently
a body similar to the earth in its physical
character, has withered into a dry volcanic
cinder destitute of water and air. The earth
and Mars are advancing to the same stage.
Jupiter and Saturn from their great mass, are
further behind.  On  the one hand we  can
look back to a time when the whole solar
system was in a state of incandescence or
vaporous diffusion, and forward to a time
when the sun himself will have dissipated all
his energy. Science therefore must agree with
Moses in affirming a beginning of all things.
The prophet of creation introduces us to
the earth at a stage when it was without form
4
,,
t. 
IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE.
and void, or more literally desolate and empty,
and darkness was on the face of the abyss,a stage precisely corresponding with the one
indicated by physical and chemical science,
when the earth, having not yet ceased to be a
whirl of vapor, and before it became a shining,
sunlike ball with a photosphere, rolled through
space a vast gaseous and misty mass, destitute
of its present features, and incapable of being
the abode of life; a condition for which the
words " formless and void" constitute the
best possible expression. Let it be observed
here that it is the doctrine of the Bible that it
pleased God to create not a perfect world, but
a chaos; and that thus while the Bible claims
for God even"  chaos and old night," it opposes
no theological obstacle to any of those nebular
or other hypotheses by which astronomers
have sought to explain the origin of our system, or to those deductions which have been
drawn from a consideration of its chemical
conditions in comparison with those now
known to exist in the sun, the fixed stars and
nebula, and the comets.*
* These chemical theories are admirably'explained in Dr.
Hunt's Essay on the " Chemistry of the Primoeval Earth." Chem
ical and Geological Essays, p. 35. See also for a popular exposition of them, the author's "Story of the Earth," chap. i.
91 
92   THE SCIENCE OF THE EARTH
And now in the sacred record the Almighty
Word breaks the silence, and with the fiat,
"Let there be light," the actual work of reducing the old chaos to order and life begins,
and begins with scientific appropriateness in
the introduction of these great forces of which
solar and nebular light may be taken as the
type and expression. In the state to which
the earth had been brought it was a sunlike
star,
"Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun was not,"
as Milton says, gathering this truth, in his
poetic insight, from the Bible in advance of
science. Further, the Hebrew word used here
for light includes the allied forces of heat and
electricity, which with light now emanate from
the solar photosphere.   It represents  that
incomprehensible ether which, though theoretically continuous, vibrates, and whose vibrations are so regulated as to give light with its
prismatic colors, and heat, with all its vast
powers, and the still more strange and wonderful actinic power which puts in motion all
the vital machinery of plants, and so is the
material source of life. If science can any.where find evidence of design in the revela
i
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II
I 
IN RELATION TO 7'IIE BIBLE.
tions of physical agencies; if it can anywhere
find a stepping-stone to lift it from the grossness of atomic matter, surely it is here. Fittest of all emblems of God is this heavenly
light; and when first it pulsated through
space, then, if there were anywhere in the
universe eyes to behold it and minds to think
of it, might it be said that there existed a
physical analogue of Him who is light. But
another stage has to be passed through, and
the. earth becomes a dull yet heated mass, with
a dense pall of vaporous substances lowering over it and constantly descending in acid
rains on its heated surface, to be as constantly
thrown off in vapor, until at length a boiling
saline ocean could rest upon its surface.
Modern solar physics, aided by the spectroscope, and modern chemistry reasoning on
the action of the elements in an earth melted
with fervent heat, have alone enabled us to
attach due significance to these stages of the
creative work.
Here I may pause to notice a double relation in the first chapter of Genesis, one to
science, the other to the most ancient myths
by which religion had been corrupted in the
days of Moses. We have already noticed the
93 
94    THE SCIENCE OF THIE EARTH
remarkable fact that Moses can distinguish
light from luminaries, and that he attaches so
great importance to the introduction of that
marvellous ethereal vibration to which we
owe all the great vivifying powers of nature;
and that thus, without any actual scientific
teaching or committing himself to any theory,
he falls into harmony with all that we know
up to this time of light, heat, and electricity,
all of which are included under the word he
uses. So in like manner he seizes here on some
of the most important material of the old
superstitions which he wishes to subvert.
Light and the dawn or twilight are great
divinities in the myths of antiquity; and perhaps the dawn, as the mother of day and night,
the greatest and most widely adored of all.
They, too, must come into their places in the
Bible as the haudmaids of the Almighty.  One
laments, in studying this magnificent revelation, that it has not been put to its full use by
the Christian teachers of modern times, but
perhaps it has triumphs yet in store, not only
in relation to the old myths that still reign
in the dark places of the earth, but with reference to the more aggressive superstitions of
modern infidelity.
l
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IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE.
When next the historian lifts the vail we
see a universal ocean, with the Spirit or breath
of God brooding on the face of the waters.
Here again we have a stage in the geological
history of the earth, that in which its waters
were condensed on its surface, forming a shoreless sea, before those foldings of the crust
which formed the first dry land. I introduce
this here, because the universal ocean is to be
inferred from the statements under the work
of the second day; and because, though the
brooding Spirit is introduced in the general
statement preceding the first day, I conceive
that the operation referred to extends up to
this time. The exact physical significance of
this operation we may not be able precisely
to explain. The old Phoenician cosmogony,
which is related to that of the Hiebrews, understands it to be a mighty wind or agitation
of the vaporous mass covering the primeval
ocean. It is more likely that the meaning is
theological rather than physical, and imports
the agency of that Divine Spirit whose emblem
is breath or the wind, and that it is primarily
intended to reclaim this from its heathen uses,
and to give it its place as an emrlblem of a per
95 
96   THE SCIENCE OF THE EARTH
son of the Godhead concerned in the creative
work.
I need not here refer again to the production of the atmosphere or to the arrangement
of the heavenly'luminaries, except to remark
that the order is that of nature; since the
atmospheric firmament must first be cleared,
in order to the heavenly bodies coming into
due relation to the earth, and since the condensation of our system might require long
time before the sun and thle larger planets
were established in their present relations to
our globe, and the superabundant cometary
and nebulous matter of the planetary spaces
got rid of.
The greatest of all the physical changes
implied in the preparation of the earth is that
of the third creative day, in the elevation of
the dry land and clothing it with vegetation.
It is in perfect accordance with what we know
from scientific investigation that the dry land
should appear before the completion of the
final arrangements of the bodies of the solar
system; but it is an unexpected and hitherto
unexplained statement, that vegetation should
make its appearance before these arrangements were complete.
I
f
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Fifty Miles of Crumpled Laurentian Rocks, extending from Petite Nation to St. Jerome in Canada.  (From the Report
of the Canadian Geological Survey, by Sir W. E. Logan.)
W.  Petite Nation.                              R. Rouge.                                                          St. Jerome.  E.
a                                                   c       c                                a                 b
(a) Lower Laurentian, the dark bands being Limestones, holding remains of Eozoon in some places.
(b) Upper Laurentian.
(c) Granite and Porphyry.
Nature and the Bible.                                     PLATE III.                                                     p.97. 
IfV RELATIONV TO THE BIBLE.
The natural cause of the appearance of the
first dry land is explained by geological inves tigation. We left the earth, at the end of the
second creative eon, with a solid crust supporting a universal ocean.  But, as time advanced, the gradual cooling of the earth's
mass M ould make this crust too small for its
shrunken size. At length it would collapse
and fall into folds, giving ridges of land and
shallow oceans.   That this process actually
occurred, not once only, but repeatedly, we
know from the folded and crumpled condition
of the rocks along their old lines of upheaval.
The section in Plate III. affords an actual example of this crumpled condition of the oldest
rocks. The time required for this, relatively
to the contemporaneous cl-hanges in other parts
of the solar system, has not, so far as I am
aware, been calculated; but some rough approximation to it could no doubt be made.
The question would be, Supposing a vaporous
condition of our system, what would be the
time necessary to enable the earth to acquire
a s()lid crust, relatively to that needful to enable the sun to condense to itself (ll the nebulous matter within its reach, and to enable the
larger planets to assume their present form?
7
97 
98   THE SCIENCE OF THE EAR TII
When that calculation shall be made, I have
no doubt that it will vindicate Moses in giving
precedence to our little earth, which has not
only completed its planetary form, but gone
through a vast series of geological changes,
while we know that in this work the sun and
Jupiter and Saturn have still much to do.
Let us observe here, that the elevation of
the first dry land was not merely a barren act,
leading to no consequences.  With that great
change began volcanic phenomena; the meta.morphism of rocks; the denuding action of the
rains, waves, and breakers on the land; the
deposit of true sedimentary strata in the sea;
the unequal thickening of the earth's shell;
the establishment of the great oceanic currents; and, in short, all those ceaseless causes
of change by which, in the progress of geological time, our continents have acquired their
present form and structure. These considerations serve to account for that otherwise singular intimation in the thirty-eighth chapter
of Job, that the s' morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy," at
this stage of the creative work. The beings
designated by these terms may be supposed to
have seen in this process, not merely a crump 
I4~4N
IN RELA TION TO THiE BIBLE.
ling and fracture of the earth's crust, but all
that this would lead to in the institution of
geological changres tending to the production
of that beautiful variety of mountain, hill, and
plain, and river, valley and shore, which the
land now presents, and which fits it to be the
abode of the highest forms of life and beauty
known to our planet.
So also in this, as in other parts of the great
work, we have the note of approval, "c God
saw that it was good."   To our viewv that
primeval dry land would scarcely have seemed
good.  It was a world of bare rocky peaks
and verdureless valleys: here, active volcanoes,
with their heaps of scoria and scarcely cooled
lavas; there vast mud-flats, recently upheaved from the bottom of the waters; nowhere even a blade of grass, or a clinging
lichen.  Yet it was good in the view of its
Maker, whlo could see it in relation to the
great uses for which he had made it.  There
is, however, a farther thought suggested by
the approval of the great Artificer. In the
progress of creation, it seems as if every thing
at first was in its best estate.  NTo succeeding
state could parallel the unbroken symmetry of
the vaporous; deep," or the brilliancy of our 
100   THE SCIENICE OF TIHE EA.RPTI
globe lwhen it shone out as a little star with a
plhotosplhere of its own.  Before the elevation
of tihe laued  the atmospheric currents, and
those of tihe ocean must have been surpassingily re)ular, and in their best and iniost
perfect state.  The first dry land may have presented crags and peaks and ravines, in,a more
marvellous manner than any succeeding continents, -  even as the dry and barren mioon
now, ill this respect, far surpasses the earth.
So wve shall find in the progress of organic being, that every grade of life was in its highest
and best estate lwhen first introduced, and
before it was made subordinate to some higher
type.  This is in short one of the great general laws of creation, suggested in Genesis
and wvorked out in detail by geolo,y.*
We may now turn for a moment to another
aspect of these questions. Man, according to
Genesis, as in all the traditions of antiquity,
is earth-born, but the earth is not on that
account a great goddess, nor is the sea the
domlain of other gods.  c The sea is God's, and
he made it.  His hands also formed the dry
* MIany illustrations of it will be found in the "Story of the
Earth," where I have specially aimed to develop these general
laws.
.. 
IN RELATION TO TIlE BIBLE.
land," and accordingly he named them both.
This naming has a further significance.  God
called the dry land c earth," the same term
used in the first verse for the whole world.
The earth therefore of the following passages,
and of Scripture generally, is specially the dry
land.  H-ence the earth is said to be laid on
"foundations" and "pillars," and supported
above the water, and is said to be   in the
water and by the waler," expressions perfectly
accurate when we understand that the continents constitute the earth referred to.
The elevation of the dry land is perhaps
more frequently referred to in the Bible than
any other cosmological fact, and while all have
been unfairly dealt with, this has been preeminently so.  It has been left t  ot of sight
that the word c earth" is by the terms of the
record restricted to the dry land, and therefore that it is this, and not the whole,globe,
teat is referred to, vlwhen God's power in upholding, it above the waters and establishing
it so that it cannot be moved is magnified.
lWhen thus riglhtly understood, nothin  canL be
more  thorou,ghlly accurate than  the  Bible
language respecting those elevated portions
of the crust arched and pillared above the
101 
102   THE SCIENCE OF THE EARPtTH
waters, and in wNhich we have our secure
abode, except  when  the earthquake  causes
the earth to tremble.  Take, for example, the
poetical version of this part of the work of
the six days as it appears in the hymn  of
creation.
" HIe founded the earth on its bases,
That it should not be moved for ever.
Thou didst cover it with the deep as with a garment;
The waters stood above the mountains;
At thy rebuke they fled;
At the voice of thy thunder they hasted away, -
While mountains rise, valleys sink,
To the place which thou didst found for them."
In Job xxviii., also, we have nearly all of the
phenomena of the earth referred to in a manner
at once grand and truthful.
"Surely there is a vein of silver,
And a place for the gold which men refine;
Iron is taken from the earth,
And copper is molten from the ore.
To the end of darkness and to all extremes man searchethi
For the stones of darkness and the shadow of death.
He opens a passage (shaft) from where men dwell;
Unsupported by the foot, they hang down and swing to
and fro.*
The earth -out of it cometh bread;
And beneath, it is overturned as by fire. t
* Gesenius.
t Perhaps " changed," metamorphosed, as by fire. Conant has
" destroyed." 
IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE.
Its stones are the place of sapphires,
And it hath lumps * of gold.
The path (thereto) the bird of prey hath not known;
The vulture's eye hath not seen it; t
The wild beasts' whelps have not trodden it;
The lion hath not passed over it.
elan layeth his hand on the hard rock;
He turneth up the mountains from their roots;
Hle cutteth channels in the rocks;
His eye seeth every precious thing.
He restraineth the streams from trickling,
And bringeth the hidden thing to light.
But where shall wisdom be found,
And where is the place of understanding?"
This passage, incidentally introduced, gives
us a glimpse of the knowledge of the interior
of the earth and its products, as it existed in
an age probably anterior to that of Moses. It
brings before us the repositories of the valuable
metals and gems, - the mining operations,
apparently of some magnitude and difficulty,
undertaken in extracting them, -and the
wonderful structure of the earth itself, green
and productive at the surface, rich in precious
minerals beneath, and deeper still the abode
of intense subterranean fires. The only thing
* "Dust" in our version, literally lumps or " nuggets."
f The vulgar and incorrect idea, that the vulture "scents the
carrion from afar," so often reproduced by later poets, has no
place in the Bible poetry. It is the bird's keen eye that enables
him to find his prey.
103 
THE SCIENCE OF THE EARPTH
wanting, to give completeness to the picture,
is some mention of the fossil remains buried
in the earth; and, as the main thought is the
eager and successful search for useful minerals,
this can hardly be regarded as a defect. The
application of all this is finer than almost
any thing else in didactic poetry. Man can
explore depths of the earth inaccessible to all
other creatures, and extract thence treasures
of inestimable value; yet, after thus exhausting all the natural riches of the earth, he too
often lacks that highest wisdom which alone
can fit him for the true ends of his spiritual
being.   Hlow true is all this, even in our own
wonder-working  days!   A  poet of  to-day
could  scarcely  say  more  of  subterranean
wonders, or say it more truthfully and beautifully; nor could he arrive at a conclusion
more pregnant with the highest philosophy
than the closing words:
"The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
And to depart fromn evil is understanding."
One expression only in the Old Testament
gives IIus the word c earth " in its astronomical
meaning, - that in the twenty-sixth chapter
of Job: -
104 
IN RELATION TO TIIE BIBLE.
"He stretched out the north over empty space;
He hanged the earth upon nothing,"
in which the reference seems to be to the
resolution of the visible heavens around the
pole-star, in connection with the free suspension of the earth in space, - altogether a
remarkable evidence of the views which so
old a writer was enabled to reach with reference to the constitution of the universe.
In the Mosaic account, the land elevated
above the waters is in the same creative day
clothed with vegetation. IHere a difficulty
arises, for science as yet knows nothing of a
vegetation which preceded by a whole period
the introduction of animals; and that view
which overlooks the earlier animals, and supposes the plants of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods to be here referred to, certainly
involves a straining of the record.
Further, the vegetation referred to is expressly said to have included not merely the
lower and humbler groups of plants, the deshe'
or grass of our version, but the higher phTnogams, or plants equivalent to them, havinlg fruit and seed, and trees as well as the
herbaceous plants. This is not in accordance
with the testimony of the rocks, as at present
105 
106   THE SCIENCE OF TtIE EAR TI
known to us. The oldest stratified rocks contain remains of humble animals of the sea.
Land plants do not appear as fossils until a
comparatively late geological time.   Either
there is some discrepancy here between the
two records, or there is an old plant-bearing
formation yet undiscovered. That the latter
should be the case would not be surprising.
Vegetable life naturally precedes animal life
as being the sole source of the food of animals.   We know that land existed from a
period at least as old as that of the first animal
remains, and it would be somewhat anomalous
if it remained during all the earlier periods of
geological time unclothed with vegetation.
There may, therefore, be in this direction discoveries in store for geology, though from -the
highly metamorphic condition of the oldest
sediments, it is possible that no remains may
exist of this primeval vegetation.*   There
may be some reference to this first vegetation
in the statement in Gen. ii., that God had not
* If any Laurentian or Pre-laurentian land flora should be
discovered, analogy would lead us to believe that it would consist
of plants so simple in structure that they might be mistaken for
alga while they might be tree-like in dimensions, and more advanced in their fructification than the structure of their stems and
other vegetative organs would lead us to expect.  
Psilophytoni princeps, one of the oldest Land Plants known to geology-from
the Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian. (a) Its fruit. (b) Part of
its Stem. (c) Scalariform vessels from its stem magnified. The figure is
restored from specimens described by the author.
Nature and the Bible.              PLATE IV.                               p. 107.
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'b 
IN RELATION TO TIIE BIBLE.
caused it to rain upon the earth, but that, a
mist went up and watered the face of the
ground. Now it happens that we know, by
the evidence of rain marks, that there was
rain as far back as the primordial ages, so that
this would place the first plants probably at
least as far back as the Laurentian age of
geology. It may be proper to add here, that
as it is the plan of the first chapter of Genesis
to mention the original introduction of each
new form of being, and not the details of its
history, a vegetation of simple structure, if
arborescent in its habit, might be held sufficiently to correspond with the statement as to
the plants of the third day. The oldest land
plants of which any satisfactory remains have
yet been found are those of the upper Silurian,
and they are allies of the modern club-mosses,
a low but not the lowest type of vegetation.
Some of them are of rare beauty and perfection of structure. I figure in Plate IV. one of
them, which seems to have been extremely
abundant and widely diffused, and which I
am enabled to restore from specimens found
by myself.
The introduction of vegetable life forms a
new era in the world's history. The earth
107 
108    THE SCIENCE OF TIIE EARTIf
brought forth plants, yet they were made
after their species, and, when made, a new
relation was established between solar light
and the earth, by which not only a new beauty
was given to the world, but a new power of
producing those marvellous organic compounds
on which animal life, with all its farther endowments, would be founded.  If one looks at
the structure of a leaf, with its vessels and
fibres drawing into it the soil water taken up
by the stem; its microscopic sac-like cells piled
loosely on each other, its hygrometric breathing pores opening and shutting with every
atmospheric change, and considers that this
delicate organ is fitted for exposure to wind,
sun, and rain, and through all to avail itself of
undulations transmitted through 90,000,000
of miles of space, by means of which it can
convert all the gases of putrescent matters
from the soil and air into the endless variety of
products of the plant, we have before us a
marvel of adaptation perhaps inferior to no
other in affording an inductive argument for
design.
The Bible surely accords with the highest
science when it claims the vegetable kingdom,
with all its wonders, as a product of Almighty 
IN RELA TION TO THE BIBLE.
power, and it touches a chord which every
physiologist can appreciate when it dwells on
the fruit and seed, the organs of the new and
wonderful power of vegetable reproduction,
perpetuating the plant after its kind; a subject we might profitably dwell on here, but
that it will come up again in connection with
animal life.
109  
LECTURE IV.
THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF ANIMAL LIFE
IN NATURE AND IN THiE BIBLE.  
LECTURE IV.
THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF ANIMAL LIFE
IN NATURE AND IN TIIE BIBLE.
ORIGIN OF LIFE IN GENESIS. - COMPARISON WITH GEOL  OGY. - PHIYSICAL THIEORIES OF LIFE. - THEORIES OF
DI)ERIVATION OF SPECIES.
HE   subject of this lecture is the origin
and progress of animal life, as we find it
brouight before us in the two records of the
Bible and of geology; and we shall here give
precedence to the former. After the completion of the inorganic creation in the fourth
creative Ton, the story of the great work in
Genesis proceeds thus: "And  God said, Let
the waters swarm with swarming creatures,
and let birds fly on the surface of the expanse
of heaven. And God created great reptiles
and every living, moving thing, which the
waters brought forth abundantly after its kind,
and every bird (or flying thing) after its
kind." In thie next creative day the mam                     8 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
malia are introduced, and are distinguished
into the two groups of Herbivora (bemah)
and Carnivora (hay'tho-eretz); and in the same
day man himself is created. We shall, in this
place, however, attend principally to the work
of the fifth day, as the connection of man with
the other mammalia will bring them under
notice in the sequel.
Origin and History of Life in Genesis.
We may first consider very briefly the
terms and character of the biblical narrative,
as introductory to our comparison with the
results of geology. It will be observed that,
according to Genesis, all the arrangements of
the inorganic world were perfected, and the
dominion of what geologists term cc existing
causes" fully introduced before the creation
of animals. Further, a whole creative con
elapsed between the completion of these arrangements, as far as the earth was concerned,
and that event. The first animals are produced by the waters; but these waters are
not now the shoreless ocean of the first day.
They include depths and shallows of the sea,
estuaries, and probably lakes and fresh-water
streams as well. Thus they afford all the con
114 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
ditions required for a varied and abundant
aquatic fauna.
Again, the first animals belong to the lower
grades of that kingdom.  The term sheretz,
used to denote them, does not apply, as we
would infer from the translation "creeping
things" of our version, to their locomotion,
but to their reproduction. It implies their
fecundity, and this again implies that low
grade of organization which admits of reproduction in its most prolific forms; since the
lower and simpler types of animal life are
those which can  multiply in the  greatest
variety of ways and with the greatest rapidity. A comparison with other passages in
the Pentateuch, and especially with the lists of
animals in Leviticus, will show that this term
applies chiefly to the invertebrate animals,
with the fishes and a few of the humbler
members of other vertebrate groups.
One peculiar group of animals is specially
characterized in the recapitulation or second
member of the clause,   the tanninim, translateld  c great whales" in our version, but
which a comparison of passages shows is really
the generic name for the larger and more
formidable reptiles, of which the crocodile of
115 
ORPIGIN AIND IIISTOR Y
the Nile, " the great tantni) that lieth in the
rivers," is the representative. The confusion
of the meanings of the word has been shown
by Gesenius to depend on the error of identifying it with the word tan, which is probably the name of a very different creature,
- the jackal. The distinction is very well
seen in the fifty-first chapter of Jeremiah,
where the king of Babylon is introduced,
under the emblem of a great crocodile (tann/n), devouring the nations; while it is threatened that the jackal (tan)) shall howl in his
ruined palaces. A comparison of the not very
numerous passages in which this word occurs
will fully vindicate  the  translation  1 great
reptiles," and thus suffice to characterize the
fifth creative eon, or the latter half of it, as
that of the 1 reign of reptiles." *
The birds and the reptiles come in together
as allied and contemporaneous groups, and the
introduction of animnal life is, especially in the
case of the tann)i)ima, said to be a cc creation,"
a term not used before in the narrative, except
in reference to the initial act of the beginning.
* See also "Archaia," page 189, and Appendix G, in the  same
work; in which will be found also discussions of the import of the
other terms referred to in the text.
11.6 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
Farther, while one creative day is assigned to
the introduction and growth of invertebrate
life, with that of the fish, the reptile, and the
bird; in the last creative  eon, the herbivorous and carnivorous mammalia are introduced
along, with man.
Comparison with Geology.
These preliminaries being understood, we
may next proceed to inquire what bearing the
facts ascertained by the modern science of
paleontology have on this scheme of animal
creation.
The first and a very startling conclusion
that we reach here is, that the fifth and sixth
days of the Mosaic record cover nearly the
whole of geological time. Of the earlier creative eons geological science knows nothing except by inference. Only as the work reaches
that period when animal life made its appearance, does its record begin. All our geological formations down to the Laurentian contaim  fossils; and the reduction of animal types
to fewer and lower forms, as we go backward,
seems to point to the Laurentian period as
near the beginning of life on the earth.
A second conclusion is, that both records
117 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
agree in assuring us that the general arrangements of inorganic nature were perfected
before the introduction of animals. In the
biblical history the sea and land had been
separated, and all the arrangements of the
atmosphere and the relations of the earth to
the heavenly bodies completed. So, in the
geological record, the eyes of Silurian trilobites were fitted for the same conditions as
those of existing animals of their tribe. The
structure of the trees of the Devonian and
Carboniferous formations shows that the sap
moved, and all the other changes of vegetable
life were carried on as at present. Impressions of rain drops occur in some of the earliest rocks. Hills and valleys, swamps and
lagoons, rivers,  estuaries,  coral reefs, and
shell beds must have existed at the date of
the oldest formations; and all conspire to
show the fixity not merely of physical laws,
but of the arrangements and correlations of
those laws, probably from the beginning of
geological time.
Thirdly. It is remarkable that both records
concur in ascribing the origr,in and earliest existence of animal life to the sea, where we are
told there are " creeping things innumerable."
118  
Earthy Sheretzim of the Waters.-Restorations of Trilobites and other Cr
ceans, Worms,  Pteropods and Zoophytes of the Primordial Peri
adapted from the " Story of the Earth."
Nature and the Bible.              PLATE V.
p. 118. 
OF ANIMAL L [FE.
The sea is even yet the great storehouse of
animal life, and it would seem for long geological ages to have been the only theatre of
its development. This great cosmical truth,
revealed to the ancient Hebrew prophet,
is not without its scientific significance.  In a
physiological point of view, it indicates the
important fact that the conditions of animal
life are easier in the sea than on the land.
There both the most minute and the grandest
forms of life can find suitable conditions, and
there the feebler tissues and the less energetic
vitality can succeed in the battle of life. In
its geological relations, it shows that it was
necessary that the land itself, to be suitable
to the support of the higher forms of life,
must be born from the sea, and that the action
of marine organisms in heaping up beds of
their skeletons was one of the necessary preparations for the actual condition of our continents.
Fourthlly. Both records give us a grand
procession of dynasties of life, beginning from
the lower forms and culminating in man.
This is necessarily more complete in the geological record, so far at least as details are
cone rned.  But the relation is precisely that
119 
ORIGIN ANiD HIIISTOR Y
of a broad, general sketch from the pen of an
historianl to tihe results of thie patient search
of the an4tirquary into the buried relics which
illustrate that same history. The geological
succession of life has already been given in a
condensed form  in the table attached to the
last lecture; but we may here consider it a
little more in detail.
The oldest animal known to geology is the
Eo.zooet  Canalde)ise, found  in  the  lower
Laurentian, the most ancient series of rocks
known to us.  It is a member of the group of
Protozoa,-  very simple, gelatinous animals, as
near in their structure to the elementary germinal matter, which seems to be the special
seat of life in all animals, as it is possible for
individual livingi things to be.  The modern
representatives of this group inhabit both the
ocean and the fresh waters; but it is in the
former that they most abound, and it is there
that they became clothed with calcareous
shells, which have accumulated in the sea to
form great limestone beds.*  The represent  * Doubts ha~re been thrown on the animal nature of Eozoon;
but these seem due rather to preconceived prejudices than to any
thing defective in the evidence. The whole subject will be fully
treated in a work now in the press, -" The Dawn of Life." See
also Appendix A.
120 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
ative of this group in the Laurentian era was
of gi,ganltic size, forming great reefs of calcareous rock, after the manner of modern corals,
and it seems to have had few if any rivals in
the occupancy of those ancient seas.  Tile
skeleton of Eozoon consisted of a series of
plates of calcareous matter, perforated with
pores and canals, and having, spaces or chambers between them for the lodgment of the
soft gelatinous body of the animal. In Plate
Io the appearance of this skeleton, as preserved
in the Laurentian rocks of Canada, is well
seen. That this was the first created kind of
animal we cannot affirm.  It is merely the
oldest as yet known to us; but it may have
been the first; and the fact that the earliest
known type of animal is of this very simple
and generalized structure, is significant in
connection with the scriptural intimation that
the waters were commanded to 11 swarm with"
thie first animals; as if these were not built on
or derivedl from any previous organized being,
as for examnple the plant, but created directly
in that grade of being in which the nearest
ap —roaceh is madle to the inorganic.
Leaving the Laurentian age, in the next
succeeding or Primordial a great and wonder
121 
ORIGIN AND IIISTORY
ful development of life occurs; and we have
now species belonging  not only to the Protozoa, but to the groups of Radiates, Mollusks,
and Articulates, no longer merely gelatinous
animals, but presenting most complicated parts
and organs. The teeming multitudes of these
creatures in the Cambrian and Silurian periods were so great that thick beds of limestone are often made up of fragments of their
skeletons, and it appears that the seas then
brought forth the lower forms of life in abundance since unsurpassed. (See Plate V.)
As we ascend in the geological series, vertebrate life has its commencement, beginning,
like the lower forms, in the waters, and represented at first only by the fishes; and it is not
until we are approaching the close of the
Paleozoic that reptile life is introduced. Reptiles and birds make their appearance abundantly in the earlier and middle Mesozoic, in
which also reptilian life culminates in the
gigantic and multiform Dinosaurs and their
allies, of what is par excellence the Reptilian
age. In like mnanner, the record of creation,
after stating the creation of lower forms, goes
on to specify the gigantic reptilian animals of
the Mc.9zoic by the term ta1w,titim, and con
122  
Tanninim of the F?fth Day.-Restorations of Mesozoic Reptiles;-adapted
from the " Story of the Earth."
Nature and the Bible.           PLATE VI.                             p. 123. 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
nects with them the birds, which, with allied
winged reptiles, were their contemporaries in
geological time. We may note here a still
closer agreement, when we consider that
according to both records gigantic carnivorous
reptiles were lords of creation during at least
the latter half of one long creative period.
(See Plate VI.)
So, as we pass into the next creative eon,
the mammalia, represented in the Mesozoic of
geology by only a few small species, become
dominant; and here we have, in the prominence given to the larger Herbivora (the bemoth of Genesis), a position corresponding to
their grandeur and dominance in the Eocene;
while in the introduction of the beasts of the
earth or carnivorous mammalia, we have the
inauguration of an era, the later Tertiary, in
which these assume the highest rank in nature,
and tale the place of the great reptilian lifedestroyers of the Mesozoic. Lastly in this
long progression, man appears, not the product of a separate day, but, in accordance
with the revelations of geology, at the close
of the same great period in which the mammalia became dominant. And then follows
the rest of the Creator, in which man was to
123 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
carry out first in Eden, and afterward in the
whole earth thie will of his Maker, in replenishing the earth and subduing it under the rule
of his higher intelligence.
The progress in animal life thus shortly
sketched, is sufficient to show the remarkable
manner in which Revelation had long ago
foreshadowed what in these last days the
rocks have opened their mouths to tell.
Fifthly. With reference to the precise manner of the introduction of life, or the secondary
causes, if any, employed in introducing its
various forms, neither record gives any definite information. In the sacred record the
term " create" is used in the case of the first
animal life and of that of man. The other
stages are indicated by a word of less power,
make," and by the expressions, "let the
waters bring forth,"  "let  the land  bring
forth." So in the geological record the waters
and the land bring forth successive dynasties
of life, which continue for a time and perish,
without telling us how or why they appear,
and giving us few hints even as to the causes
of their decay and disappearance.
Modern philosophical speculation has  endeavored to press scientific facts into its ser
124 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
vice with the view of supplying this deficiency,
in our knowledge, and the greater number of
these speculations have in our time taken one
form, that of derivation, or the descent, with
modification, of one species from another.
They are based on the order of succession
of life as it appears in geology, which such
views would refer not merely to the plan of
the Creator, but to a progression of animals
under natural laws; and also on the analogy
between the development of the individual
animal from the embryo and the progress of
animal life in geological time.
These two classes of facts they divorce from
the plan and will of the Almighty, at least in
so far as any direct action is concerned, and
explain by certain laws which they profess to
derive from natural facts. In this way they
seek to satisfy the desire of the mind for a
cause of things, without penetrating to a primary cause on the one hand or troubling
themselves as to final causes on the other.
These speculations may with advantage be
considered under two distinct divisions: the
one including hypotheses as to the possible
origination of life without any creative act;
the other those which assume some forms of
125 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
life as created or otherwise introduced, and
proceed to explain the derivation of other and
higher forms from these primitive types.
Phtysical Theories of Life.
We may descend at once to the lowest
depth of these hypotheses, by referring to
Strauss, who, after laboring for a lifetime to
rationalize the Gospels, at length in his old
age accepted Darwin as the great apostle of a
new religion, and was content to believe that
all the phenomena of life and spirit were
merely physical, and to utter that unhappy
confession of unbelief.'"If we could speak
as honest, upright men, we must acknowledge
that we are no longer Christians." It is fair,
however, to say here that Strauss, as is natural, goes beyond his teachers, and affirms more
than many  evolutionists will admit.   Still,
there can be no doubt that in doing so he
merely does what nine-tenths of earnest men
will do if they accept his premises. It is easy
for shallow men on whom religious feelings
have little hold, or who regard religion as
merely a thing of sentiment, or a device to
tickle the senses and quiet the conscience of
the multitude, to say that they can reject
126 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
Moses without rejecting Christ; but common
sense cannot be deceived in this way, and
Strauss is merely in this an example of an
honest thinker who, having drifted from the
belief in revelation, has founded his faith on
what, in many cases incorrectly, he fancies to
be proved results of scientific investigation.
When Strauss considers it proved, as he
does, that physical forces have been shown to
be sufficient to account for all that has been
referred to life and spirit, he goes altogether
beyond any thing that scientific discovery has
yet revealed.  If we reduce a living organism
to a single vegetable cell, or to the microscopic
grain of jellylike matter which constitutes one
of the simplest animalcules, we have in such a
cell, or in such an animalcule, structures not
accounted for by any physical or chemical law,
or combination of such laws, and phenomena
of life which stand alone among forces, and
have not yet been shown to be caused by
either physical or chemical energy. Farther,
when such an organism dies, we have as yet
no means of isolating or registering the force
which it has lost, and yet all the effects formerly produced by this force have disappeared.
Whether ultimately, as heat and light have
127 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
been shown to be allied forces or modifications
of one force, it will be found that any combination of these forces may produce, develop,
or be converted into vital force, we cannot
say; but that this has not been done or even
shown to be possible is certain.
It is easy, with some physiologists and physicists, to assume this, and to ridicule those
who believe in vital force; but when we examine their mode of treating the subject, we
find that they give us figures of speech and
vague analogies instead of facts. When, for
example, Huxley says that we might as well
attribute the formation of water, when hydrogen and oxygen combine, to an imaginary
principle of aquosity as the properties of living
matter to a vital force, his own words show
that he is merely begging the question at
issue.  He says,  If the nature and properties of water may properly be said to result
from the nature and disposition of its component molecules I can find no intelligible
ground for refusing to say that the properties
of protoplasm result from the nature and properties of its molecules." Now if by protoplasm
here be meant living protoplasm, the whole
matter to be Droved is taken for granted. If
128 
OF ANIAIAL LIFE.
protoplasm on the other hand be taken to
mean dead albumen regarded merely as a
chemical compound, then the statement has
nothing whatever to do with the subject in
hand, and it is so far inaccurate that even dead
protoplasm has not yet been produced by
merely physical or chemical means; but taking the two substances at precisely the same
value as chemical compounds, the denial that
some new force has actuated the protoplasm,
when it assumes the varied functions of life, is
as unreasonable as the denial that some new
force has taken hold of the water when it
ascends into a pump or into the branches of a
tree. Whatever is the nature of the force,
and however dissimilar in these different
cases, it is unquestionably superadded to the
merely chemical forces combining the atoms
of the compound.
Or take such a statement as that made by
Tyndall in a work extensively used as a textbook. cc Molecular forces determine the form
which the solar energy shall assume. In tihe
one case this energy is so conditioned by its
atomic machinery as to result in the formation of a cabbage; in another case it is so conditioned as to result in the formation of an
9
129 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
oak. So also as regards the reunion of carbon and oxygen: the form of this reunion is
determined by the molecular machinery
through which the combining force acts; in
the one case the action may result in the
formation of a man, while in the other it may
result in the formation of a grasshopper."
This is, to say the least, a very imperfect and inaccurate statement of the facts
of the case, and if taken as an exposition of
the origin, cause, or conditions of existence
of living beings, is certain to mislead. In the
first place, though a cabbage could not grow
without solar energy any more than it could
grow without water or potash or many other
things, it cannot be in any sense called a form
of solar energy, neither have we any evidence
that solar energy, acting for ever, could produce a cabbage, without a previous cabbage
seed. Nor is it true that the difference between a cabbage and an oak is merely a difference in form of solar energy, unless indeed
we assume that the germ of the cabbage and
of the oak, with all their diverse vital powers,
have also been created by this same solar
energy. But in this case we should have to
assume that the omnipotent solar energy, even
130 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
when unconditioned by any machinery whatever, could produce these different forms and
structures. Further, it is untrue that either
a man or a grasshopper can be produced by a
reunion of carbon and oxygen, or that any
reunion of elements could have such effect
without the previous existence of men and
grasshoppers. Indeed the solar energy has
much less to do with the grasshopper than
with the cabbage, since its direct action on
the grasshopper is merely concerned in producing its vegetable pabulum. But it is useless to follow such random statements any
further than to say that when men like Strauss
are so deluded as to accept them as conclusions of science, we need not wonder at their
falling into any amount of error. It is the
more necessary when utterances of this kind -
examples, by the way, of an exaggerated and
sensational style of science-teaching too common in our time- pass current with the
multitude, as sufficient to explain the origin of
life, that educated men should have such general knowledge of nature as may enable them
to judge of the validity of the generalizations
thus promulgated in the sacred name of science. Stripping, however such views as those
131 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
just referred to, of their more fanciful adjuncts and applications, they merely bring
before us the wonderful manner in which the
properties of matter, and the forces which
actuate it are placed in relation to the organism and its peculiar vital powers. How the
organism was at first constructed and endowed
with powers so different from those of dead
matter they do not inform us, and still less do
they enable us to dispense with creative
power.
Theories of -)erivation.
But life being once introduced in some of
its lower forms, whether animal or vegetable,
is it necessary to affirm in addition that animals and plants were created after their species?  May  we not be content to suppose
that lower forms of life were gradually
changed into higher, and that thus the earth
was peopled in its successive ages? Now, in
so far as theology is concerned, this may be a
matter of little consequence, so long as we
limit our attention to the lower animals; but
when we arrive at man the case is very different, and the course followed by the advocates
of such views is to bring first before us the
182 
OF ANIlIAL LIFE.
origin of the lower animals, and the lowest
among them, and having familiarized us with
the idea of descent with modification in their
case, to ascend to man, and show that the
same law applies to him not only in his material nature, but in whatever of higher powers
and sentiments there may be in him. Darwin, the great apostle in our day of these
views, does not seem to have gone so far as
absolutely to identify the physical and the
vital, in the way that Huxley, Tyndall, and
others have done. He seems to require that
some living forms, however few and simple,
shall be given to him to begin with. It is
clear, however, that there is a certain inconsistency in this; since, if the act of creation
has been even once performed, there is no
good reason to deny that it may have been
repeated. In a philosophy of this kind, however, some first point must be reached where
the premises must be assumed, and it is perhaps as well to stop at the great gap between
the living and the non-living as anywhere
else, and this is where Darwin has found it
convenient to stop.
Granting, then, as material for the process,
a few of the more ancient —-nd lower forms of
133 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
life, as, for example, the old Eozobn of the
Laurentian, or a few mollusks and crustaceans
of the Primordial, have we any evidence that
out of these the remainder of the animal kingdom has been evolved? I take the animal
kingdom because in it the record is more
varied and complete. A difficulty meets us
here at the outset, with reference to the precise nature of the question with which we
have to do. It is that as to the distinction
between  species and varieties.   Species of
animals are supposed to be separated from
each other by well-marked lines of difference,
and they have not the power of so intermixing
with each other as to produce continuously
fertile progeny.   They stand thus as units
in our systems of natural-history classification.
But species are more or less variable under
the influence of external conditions, and the
varieties so formed may or may not be true
species. I say  may not; "for, though I believe
that they are not, the derivationist tries to
break down the line between species and varieties. It results from this that there may be
different views as to the limits of species.
Man himself has, for example, been broken
down into different species; while by most
134 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
naturalists the diversities of men are regarded as of the nature of races and varieties.
The best British naturalists of our day have
usually held to large specific aggregates; the
continental naturalists, like your own Agassiz
ald his disciples in this country, have been in
the habit of naming as a distinct species every
slightly different form. This is still an unsettled point, though I think the error has been
rather in making too many species than two
few, the prejudices and interests of observers tending that way. It is plain, however,
that if we hold that species were created separately, and if out of one group of animals one
naturalist makes ten species and another three,
we are not bound to claim the ten species as
separate creations unless we regard them as
well founded.
There is another caution to be noticed on
the theological side. The verbal precision of
the first chapter of Genesis must strike every
candid student. Yet the writer uses different
forrmulae for the introduction of different
grades of being. " Let the earth bring forth,"
is the formula for plants.   "Let the waters
bring forth,  is the formula  for the lower
animals.  God " created" the  great tanninmi;
135 
ORIGIN AND HISTOR Y
so the earth " brought forth" the mammalia,
and God " made" or formed them, but man
he "created."   We can see distinctly by a
comparison of the use of these expressions in
the record itself and in other parts of Scripture
that they are not used at random, and that
they have different degrees of significance;
but what these are we do not as yet precisely
know. I-ad I time to enter on the subject, I
could, however, show you a certain paleontological appropriateness in them which we
are beginning to perceive, and, further, that
they imply that each step of the creative work
was used by the Creator in some way to
further each new advance. In the mean time
we may regard them as intimating that Moses
does not himself adhere to one mode of creation
for all animals and plants.  lIe informs us
that they were created at different times,
which geology has since amply confirmed, and
he intimates also that there were different
modes of operation of the divine power in
their introduction, a fact which is perhaps less
clear to us because as yet we have been
struggling to prove that all animals were
introduced in one way or another to the
exclusion of the rest; while some have been
136 
OF AIVIIIAL LIFE.
striving to dispense with creation altogethler,
and some to reduce God to an arbitrary mode
of working.
Keeping these limitations in view, we come
to the question::-What evidence have we
that the animals now on the earth, or any
considerable part of them, have been derived
from preceding creatures of different species?
The direct evidence might be of two kinds.
First, we might be able to show that species
have so varied as to pass over into new specific
types. Secondly, we might be able to show
that ancient and now extinct species have
given birth to those that now exist. If either
of these two things could be proved, we should
then have positive evidence of derivation.
The first kind of proof has been attempted
with vast industry and consummate ability by
Darwin, and the result has been confessedly
to show that, on this line, direct evidence
cannot be obtained. In some species, as in
the pigeon for example, marvellous variability
can be found; but then, as Darwin himself
has shown, all these extreme varieties are still
pigeons, capable of breeding into each other,
and even of returning, by cross-breeding, into
the wild stock from which they sprung. While,
137 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
therefore, by selection, a vast range of variety
can be secured, it seems all to fall within the
limits of the species, and to be incapable of
breaking down the barrier between any given
species and even those most nearly allied.
This Darwin admits, but he claims that he has
established a presumption that, longer time
and greater isolation and varieties of condition
being given, the specific limits might be overstepped; but this is all, and even this presumption seems to become less tenable as the
facts are more  carefully studied.   He  has
shown, however, that we should be more
cautious in our determinations in zoology,
lest we confound varieties with species.
The laws referred to by Darwin as concerned in the work of derivation are thus
stated by Wallace, in a summary of the hypothesis maintained by the former: -
(1.) The law of multiplication of animals in
geometrical proportion. By this any animal,
if unchecked, would soon fill the world with
its progeny. The checks are supplied by the
destruction of germs and of adults by enemies,
by limitation of geographical range, by limitation to particular kinds of food, and by other
causes.
138 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
(2.) The law of limited population, whereby
the habitable area afforded by the earth has
always been stocked with inhabitants; so that
the introduction of any new form of life must
involve the extinction of others, and the
spread of any one beyond its former limits
must involve the limitation of others, while
the germs produced by every kind of animal
and plant must, in the great majority of cases,
fail to find space for their development. Hence
is supposed to arise a constant "struggle for
existence."
(3.) The law of heredity, by which the progeny of all animals resemble their parents in
all essential points, though differing in individual details; and whereby also individual
peculiarities acquired by the parent may be
transmitted to its offspring.
(4.) The law of variation, by which such
differences under the influence of external
conditions accumulate until they give rise to
distinct variations in form, or to races, as we
observe to be the case in so marked a way
in our domesticated animals, but not to so
great an extent in wild animals. This is one
reason why we can domesticate some species
and not others.
139 
ORPIGIN AND HISTOR Y
(5.) The law of change of physical condi tions, whereby certain areas of the surface of
the earth become different at one time from
what they were at another, in the conditions
necessary to life. Thus we know that in the
Miocene tertiary period the climate of Greenland and Spitzbergen was so mild that plants
like those of the Middle States could flourish
in those now inhospitable regions.   On the
other hand, in the Post-pliocene time an Arctic
climate extended further south than at present over our continents and seas. We know
also that nearly all parts of our continents
have been many times submerged for long
periods, and re-elevated to a higher position
than now.
(6.) The law of the equilibrium of nature,
whereby individual varieties and species well
adapted to their environment flourish, while
those less perfectly adapted decay; and as,
according to the previous laws, the conditions
are constantly changing, the struggle for existence constantly goes on, and the animals being
liable to vary and perpetuate varieties, there
must of necessity be a gradual change in the
animal population of the earth. That is, those
which change so as to become suitable to the
140 
Sivatherium giganteum.-One of the great Bemoth of the Miocene Tertiary.
Restored from bones found in the Sub-Himmalayan deposits of India.
By Dr. Murie, F.G.S. (From the London Geological Magazine.)
Nature and the Bible.            PLATE VII.                              p. 140.
-                                   co
I  
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
changed conditions live, and those which become unsuitable die.
Stated in this way, we can easily see that
the Darwinian theory has  a very plausible
aspect, and it is to this that Mill refers when
he says that, when investigated in detail, it is
not so absurd as it appears at first sight.
You will observe, however, that these laws
do not touch the actual origin of living things.
They presuppose species and suitable conditions of life. Further, if there should be any
way in which new species may be introduced,
then these laws may be limited in their application to the variation of species within certain
limits, and to their extinction when the conditions become unfavorable too rapidly, or to too
great an extent. The main conflict between
the application of these laws and the Scripture, is when they are applied to the origin
of things, or when they are employed to dispense with the action of the divine power, by
which, on the theory of theism, these very
arrangements  were introduced into nature.
They further come into conflict with revelation when they represent man with all his
higher powers as a mere outgrowth of the
variation of brute  animtals.  But for these
141 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
applications of it, the Darwinian hypothesis
would be a harmless toy for philosophical
biologists to play with until they can obtain
some basis of fact on which to explain the
origin of species.
These unfair applications of the laws of
variation are, however, constantly made, and
are paraded by a host of litterateurs and
third-rate scientific men as if they were sufficient to explain all things, and to relieve us
at once from the necessity of the Scriptures
and of God.
The second line of argument, that derived
from paleontology, might be expected to
furnish in fossils connecting links between
extinct and recent species. On the contrary,
however, it shows a marvellous persistency of
species through vast periods of geological
time, and often under diverse varietal forms,
passing into each other; but each species
seems to come in without progenitors, and to
become extinct without descendants. It is
true that the geological record is very imperfect, and that connecting links may be lost;
but the want of them in the vast number of
cases of appearance of new species, and this in
those formations in which fossils most abound,
142 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
takes away the greater part of the force of
this consideration. Indeed, as new species of
fossils multiply, and new facts are ascertained
as to the conditions of their introduction and
disappearance, the gradually diminishing "imperfection of the record" becomes less and
less available for the purposes of the evolutionist.
The obvious fact that there has been a
gradual increase in variety and elevation of
living beings, from the earlier periods until
now, is often adduced as an evidence of derivation, but is equally explicable on the supposition of a creative plan. Nay, more, the
paleontological laws which have been established as to the introduction of great numbers
of allied species at once, and in many places at
the same time; as to the introduction of each
great type in high, if generalized, forms, and
its subsequent degradation in relative rank;
and as to the rapid variation of each new
species, so as to adapt itself in a very short
time to all conditions open to it, - lean decidedly to the doctrine of creative law and plan,
rather than to that of derivation.*
* These laws are stated and discussed in a popular form in my
"Story of the Earth."  See also Appendix B.
1438 
ORIGIN AND HISTORY
The nearest approach to direct palmontological evidence is that which has been adduced
by Huxley in England, and Marsh in this
country, as to the relations of the modern
and tertiary horses to some similar animals,
their predecessors in the middle and early
tertiary periods. This shows undoubtedly
the introduction at successive periods, between
the beginning of the Eocene tertiary and the
modern, of animals more and more approximating to the modern horse.  But none of
these are known to pass into each other by
varietal forms; and the supposition that they
were produced by a passage from one to the
other, even if this were granted as possible,
requires, when striving to realize it, such a
complicated combination of changes in the
animals themselves and in their surroundings,
that it becomes simply incredible, except on
the supposition of intentional intervention.
In so far, then, as either the origin of species
or the origin of man is concerned, the Darwinian theory is not entitled to rank as a
result of scientific induction. It rests merely
on analogy, and on its power to explain easily
a great variety of phenomena, provided its
premises are granted. In this it contrasts in
i44 
OF ANIMAL LIFE.
a scientific point of view unfavorably with the
old idea of creative design, which undoubtedly
rests on an inductive basis. On the whole,
therefore, we may be satisfied that Scripture
in its doctrine as to the origin of animals
contradicts no received result of science and
anticipates many of its discoveries, though
neither Scripture nor science as yet enables us
to understand the precise mode in which new
species were introduced. I would that I had
time to add some notices of the many beautiful references to the animal kingdom in the
Scriptures. Many lectures would be required
to illustrate the multitude of ways in which,
with inimitable truth and beauty, the animal
kingdom is made to teach us of spiritual
things, and to illustrate the character of its
Maker.
10
145 
I. -:.. -.
,.: 1.......: 
LECTURE V.
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF MAN,
ACCORDING TO SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.  
LECTURE V.
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF MAN,
ACCORDING TO SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.
TESTIMONY OF GEOLOGY.- ANTIQUITY OF MAN.- RE  LATION OF PREHISTORIC MAN TO MODERN RACES.  COMPARISONS WITH BIBLICAL HISTORY.
HAT  is sometimes in our day termed the
science of anthropology is a strangely
mixed subject, compounded of archeology,
physiology, and psychology, and touching at
almost every point on geology and sacred history, though pursued by its many followers in
a spirit both dashing and independent. As I
may take it for granted that my auditors are
well acquainted with what Scripture teaches
of the early history of man, I may on this
subject proceed at once to notice what we
learn of it from archeology and geology.
Testimony of Geology. 
We have already seen that geology presents an ascending progression of life, and in 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
passing upward in the scale of the geological
ages we are for a long series of these ages
like travellers exploring some desert isle
where new and strange animals meet us at
every step, but where we see no trace of man.
It is only after the magnificent culmination of
mammalian life in the middle Tertiary period,
and its decadence on the approach of the
cold of the Glacial or Pleistocene, and the
renewal of the world in the Post-glacial or
Modern period, that we can look for man with
any hope of success. In the later Miocene
and Pliocene ages, our continents had attained
to their full development. Under the mild
climatic conditions of these times, they were
clothed with a luxuriant flora, and the numbers and wide distribution of the higher and
larger forms of mammalian life were greater
and more complete than at any previous or
subsequent period. But it would seem that
man was not destined to appear in this age of
the world, so noble in all other respects.
At the end of the Pliocene began the great
age of arctic cold, the so-called Glacial period.
The land by gradual subsidence began to lose
its fair proportions, the seas became invaded
by northern ice, snows began to settle perma
150 
IISTORY OF MAN.
nently on the hill-tops, and glaciers to plough
their way toward the sea. The world, after
all its changes seemed about to fall into ruin,
and multitudes of species of animals and plants
either perished or were driven to those southern portions of the continents which still remained habitable. But this great change was
only a long winter, during which the ploughshare of God was to prepare the world for a
new spring. So the land rose again, and its
warm climate was partially restored; great
rains and melting snows remodelling its features of valley and plain. At length the northern continents became even more extensive
than they are now. England and Ireland, for
example, were joined to the Continent of
Europe; and a great but nameless river
flowing through wide plains now covered by
the sea, received the streams of Northern
France, England, and Germany. The American land also stretched farther into the
Atlantic than it does at the present day, of
which remarkable evidences exist in the submerged forests under the waters of the Bay of
Fundy and elsewhere on our coasts.
In this, the Post-glacial period of geology,
the land again became tenanted by animals,
151 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
some of them survivors of the Pliocene age,
some of them new; and it is to this time that
many geological facts tend to assign the first
appearance of man in Europe and Western
Asia. If this was the date of his appearance,
he was then contemporary with many great
mammals now extinct, or which have become
much limited in geographical range. According to Pictet, ninety-eight mammals are known
by their remains to have inhabited Europe at
this time. Of these, fifty-seven still survive,
and no new ones have been added except man,
the sheep, the dog, and a few others which
may have come in with man. In Britain,
Dawkins estimates fifty-three species in all of
Post-glacial mammals. Of these, twelve are
survivors of the Pliocene, forty-one are new,
twenty-eight survive as modern inhabitants of
Britain, fourteen have become wholly extinct,
eleven are locally extinct or are now known
only in other parts of the world.*
Of the wholly extinct species are E lephas
primigetnius, the mammoth; Phinoceros tichorhainu.s, the woolly rhinoceros;  Ursus spelceus, the cave bear, &c. Of the locally
extinct species are the reindeer, the musk
* Memoirs of Palaeontographlical Society. See Appendix C.
152 
F,xtinct Animals supposed to have been con?tempor(ry with Palteocosmic Man.    The Mammoth, Tichorhine Rhinoceros, Extinct Hippopotamus, Machairo    dths and Long-fronted Ox. The animals reduced from a Picture by
Waterhouse Hawkins.
ature and the Bible.
PLATE VITI.
p. 152.  
HISTOR Y OF MAX.
sheep, the long-fronted ox, the lion, the cape
hyena, &c.: a strange union of species now
widely separated geographically; but indicating a wooded country with a somewhat equable climate, though perhaps a low mean
temperature.
It would thus seem that man entered Europe
at a time when its mammalian fauna was
richer than now, and when it was a densely
wooded region, into which he straggled from
his Edenic centre of creation, with a few of
the animals connected with him there. If so,
he was not destined to remain long undisturbed, for another great subsidence seems to
have occurred, connected apparently with the
extinction from Europe of many kinds of animals, and closing the time of what may be
called Palmocosmic, or, if we take a Biblical
mode of expression, antediluvian man, and
reducing eventually the European land to its
present proportions, and introducing a new
race allied to the Basques and Lapps, who
may be named the Neocosmic peoples, to
be followed by the Celts and Teutons, and
other historic nations. To this Neocosmic age
belong the remains found in the Swiss lake
habitations and the shell-heaps of Denmark.
153 
THE ORIGIN AND EARL Y
I have rapidly summed up the results of
recent geological researches on this subject,
the details of which may be found in many
popular works, as for example in Sir Charles
Lyell's c Antiquity of Man."  It is to be observed, however, that no geological researches
are accompanied with greater difficulties than
those that relate to the period immediately
preceding the advent of man, and that in the
above statements I have been obliged to speak
in very general terms to avoid trenching on
disputed ground. It is farther to be observed
that it is only in Europe and Eastern America
that even tolerable certainty has been attained
respecting the geology of the Post-glacial and
early Modern periods, and neither of these
regions can be affirmed either on historical or
geological grounds to have been the most
primitive abodes of man.
European antiquaries have called the most
ancient of the races known in that part of
the world Palmolithic men, and the more
modern Neolithic, under the impression that
the earlier race used only rudely formed
instruments of stone, while the later could
fashion better stone implements; but American analogies and many European facts teach
154 
HISTOR Y OF MAANX.
'us that these indications from iinplements
may be very fallacious. The ruder American
tribes, as well as those in a semi-civilized
condition, used at one and the same time
implements roughly chipped and highly polished, the difference depending on the material
employed and the uses for which the weapons
or implements were intended; and it is well
known that contiguous tribes differed in their
expertness in the manufacture, and in the
methods and materials they employed. This
was no doubt also the case with prehistoric
men in Europe. Further, in some districts
and for some purposes, very rude stone implements were used up to a late time, long
after the abundant introduction of metals.
Little chronological value is thus to be attached to this distinction, and the terms themselves are therefore objectionable; while it
is evident that they cannot even locally be
absolutely maintained, since highly polished
bone implements and even pottery are found
in repositories classed as of PalTeolithic age.
It is for these reasons that I have suggested
the terms Palmocosmic and Neocosmic, and I
would hold as of the first age such men as can
be proved to have lived in the time of greatest
155 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
elevation of the European land in the Postglacial period, and as of the second those who
came in as their successors in the Modern
period. The earlier or Palcocosmic age has
also been termed the Mammoth age, because
that great elephantine animal is believed to
have still survived; and the later Stone age or
the Neocosmic has, in its earlier part at least,
received the name of the Reindeer age, because
of the abundance of remains of this animal
found in deposits of the time.
Both the Palaocosmic and Neocosmic men
belong to the "Stone age," which continued
to prevail in Europe from a period of unknown
antiquity, until the introduction of bronze,
that useful and beautiful alloy of copper and
tin, as a material for weapons, tools, and
ornaments.  This " Bronze age" undoubtedly
began to replace that of stone when  the
discovery of the tin deposits of Cornwall
enabled the Carthag(,inians for the first time
to manufacture cheap bronze, and to supply
it to the tribes with which they carried on
trade; and in still more recent times iron
superseded bronze.
As an illustration of the evidence of the
distinction between the earlier and later Stone
156 
HISTORY OF MAN.
age, as represented by the terms Paleocosmic
and Neocosmic, I may refer to the caves near
Liege, in Belgium, explored by Schmerling,
Dupont, and others. Some of these have a
lower stratum of mud or gravel, containing
bones of the mammoth and other extinct
animals, mixed with human bones belonging
to a large and well-developed race of men.
Over this are, in some cases, to be found
interments of a smaller race, like the modern
Laplanders, who seem to have succeeded the
first race, and with whom are remains indicating that the animals of Europe were similar
to those now living there, except that some
species, as the reindeer, now locally extinct,
were present. This second race is by some
held to be Palmolithic, and it certainly preceded the more modern Celtic and Germanic
races, but it came in after the mammoth and
other great Post-glacial mammals had become
extinct, and after the European land had been
settled at its present level. It is therefore in
our view Neocosmic, whereas the older race,
supposed to be contemporary with the mammoth, can alone claim to be Palmocosmic.  I
confess that the evidence stated by Dupont, in
his work on the Belgian caves is that which
157 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
to me most clearly establishes a geological
probability in favor of the existence of man
in the Post-glacial or Mammoth age; and this
evidence is corroborated by so many other
facts that I think it must, for the present at
least, be accepted. The conclusions which it
seems to prove may be stated thus. At s(ome
unknown period, before the occupation of
Western Europe by the modern historic races,
it was occupied by a race of men of small
stature, brachycephalic, or with short heads
and with Turanian * features, allied in physical
characters to the modern Lapps, and using
implements similar to those of the modern
Esquimaux. In their time Europe was occupied by its present fauna, but was sufficiently
cool, or sufficiently densely wooded, to enable
the reindeer to exist abundantly in France.
At a still earlier time this race of the Reindeer
age was preceded by another race not dissimilar in its modes of life and implements
and weapons, and of Turanian type, but of
large stature and great bodily power, and
dolichocephalic, or with long heads. In their
* The term Turanian is used as representing the Mongolian and
American races, which resemblie each other in physical characters
and language, and whichl are also the most akin, in the characters of
the skeleton at least, to the oldest European races.
158 
HISTOR Y OF MAN.
time the European land was more extensive
than at present, and the mammoth and its
contemporaries still existed. This race and
many species of large mammalia had disappeared from Europe before the advent of the
first-mentioned race. These large men of the
Mammoth age are, then, the true Palmocosmic
men, and the oldest race of men of whom we
have any geological information.*
Antiquity of 2lan.
We may in this investigation limit ourselves
to the consideration of the earliest or Palcocosmic men; and the two main points with reference to them, embraced in our present subject,
are their antiquity and their relation to modern
races of men. With respect to the first point,
we shall find that little certainty as to their
absolute date can be attained, except that they
are geologically very modern and historically
very ancient; and with respect to the second,
that they are closely allied to that race of
men which in historic times has been the most
widely spread of any. As these men are prehistoric, we can have, with respect to their
antiquity, only geological evidence, and this
* See Appendix C.
159 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
resolves itself into the calculation of the rate
of erosion of river valleys, of deposition of
gravels and cave-earths, and of formation of
stalagmite crusts, all of which are so variable
and uncertain that, though it may be said that
an impression of great antiquity beyond the
time of received history has been left on the
minds of geologists, no absolute antiquity has
been proved; and while some, on such evidence, would stretch the antiquity of man to
even half a million of years, the oldest of these
remains may, after all, not exceed our traditional six thousand. With reference for example to the erosion of river valleys in Western
Europe, it can be shown that this probably
belongs to a much earlier period than that of
man, and that old valleys filled with debris
during the Glacial period could be scoured out
in no great lapse of time, especially if the early
Modern period was, as some suppose, a time
of excessive rainfall. With reference to the
growth of stalagmite in caves, recent observations show that this may be much more rapid
than has been supposed, and that its rate now
is no measure for that which may have prevailed at an earlier period and in a forest-clad
region. With reference to the elevations and
160 
HIS TOR Y OF MAN..
subsidences which have occurred, we have no
measure of time to apply to them; and the
question is not yet settled whether they were
of a slow and gradual nature like some now in
progress, or whether, like others that have
occurred in connection with earthquakes, they
may have been rapid and cataclysmal.
If, on the other hand, we turn to the evidence
afforded by the extinction of animals, we know
that the reindeer and the aurochs existed in
Europe up to the time of the Romans, and the
great Irish deer up to the time of modern peat
bogs. And we have no good evidence that
the mammoth and cave bear and woolly rhinoceros may not have lived up to the time when
men of the Biblical antediluvian period first
migrated into Europe. Nor have we any
good evidence as yet as to whether their extinction was gradual or comparatively sudden,
or whether man himself may not have had
some connection with their disappearance.
One fact adverse to the high antiquity which
has been demanded for European man is the
small number of individual skeletons found in
Europe, compared with those of contemporary
animals, which either implies a short time of
residence or an extremely sparse population.
11
161 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
It is remarkable in this connection that nearly
all the remains referred to Palaocosmic men
have been found in caves, and many of them in
circumstances which imply interment. What
has become of the other cemeteries of these
nien, if they had such? The question especially strikes us in America, where even nations
not very populous have left extensive ossuaries
and burial mounds. Were their tombs swept
away or buried by a diluvial cataclysm? Did
these ancient peoples, like some American and
Australian tribes, place their dead on wooden
stages, and were the cave burials exceptional;
or were there, after all, only a few very small
tribes in Europe in Paleocosmic times, and was
their duration only brief?
As I have referred to America, I may state
here that the actual American race, though
nearly allied in form and feature to Paleocosmic
men, can make no pretension to great antiqnity. Even its oldest remains, those of the
mound-builders of the Ohio and Mississippi,
though historically ancient, are on the modern
alluvia of the rivers and can claim no geological antiquity.  Their languages, customs, and
religions are allied to those of post-diluvian
nations of the Old World; and, though they
162 
HISTORY OF MAN.
indicate migrations at a time when the Turanian race was still dominant there, go no farther
back than this.  Further, those skulls and
other remains for which a higher antiquity
has been claimed are identical with those of
the modern races; and I agree with my friend
Dr. Newberry, and other good geologists, that
no valid geological evidence of the great age
assigned to some of them by their discoverers
has yet been adduced.
Comparisons with Modern Races.
When we come to the second question, that
of their relations to modern men, we find no
reason to refer Paloeocosmic men to a low
type; and we have, fortunately, now obtained
good material for comparison, in so far as
skulls and skeletons are concerned. More
especially the skull found in the cave at Engis
in Belgium, those of Cro-magnon and other
caverns in France, so well described in the
"Reliquise Aquitanics " of Lartet and Christy,
and more recently those found in the caves of
Mentone, leave little to be desired in this respect.
The skeleton found by Dr. Riviere in the
cave of Mentone in Southern France, and now
163 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
well known by means of his excellent descriptions and photographs, is that of a man of large
stature and great muscular power, with no
simian characters, and with a countenance
Mongolian or Turanian in type, but in every
respect entirely human, while the brain was
of large dimensions. The man had been
buried clad in a robe of skins, with a headdress ornamented with shells and teeth of
deer. A bone bodkin and flint implements
were found near him, and a quantity of red
oxide of iron, no doubt his cc war paint." Dr.
Riviere considers it certain from the remains
found in the debris overlying this skeleton
that it belongs to a man of the Mammoth age,
a truly Palseocosmic man. It is also certain
that he was interred: and the whole of the
circumstances point to a somewhat rude state
of society, corresponding perhaps to that of
the hunter tribes of America; but to a physically high development of the human type,
and to a volume of brain not inferior to that
of the modern European.
I may be pardoned for giving a little more
in detail the facts derived from the remarkable skeletons of Cro-magnon, which may be
in part illustrated by the outlines of skulls in
Plate IX.
164 
Outlines of three European Palwocosmic Skulls.-Outer outline,  Cro-magnon
Skull; Second Outline, Engis Skull; Third Outline (dotted), Neanderthal
Skull. Inner Figure, an ancient American Skull, from the site of Hoche    laga, on a smaller scale, for comparison.
:ature and the Bible               PLATE IX.                                p. 164.
, /               -
,,~!~ -.._~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i 
I 
HISTORPY OF MAN.
The beautiful work of Lartet and Christy
has vividly portrayed to us the antiquities of
the limestone plateau of the Dordogne, the
ancient Aquitania, - remains which recall to
us a population of HIorites, or cave-dwellers,
of a time anterior to the dawn of history in
France, living much like the modern hunter
tribes of America, and, as already stated, possibly contemporary, in their early history at
]east, with the mammoth and its extinct
companions of the later Pleistocene forests.
What manner of people were these oldest of
Europeans?   The  answer is given by  the
skeletons found in the cave of Cro-magnon.
This is a shelter or hollow under an overhanging ledge of limestone, and excavated
originally by the action of the weather on a
softer bed. It fronts the south-west and the
little river Ve'zere; and, having originally been
about eight feet high and nearly twenty deep,
must have formed a cosy shelter from rain, or
cold, or summer sun, and with a pleasant outlook from its front. All rude races have much
sagacity in making selections of this sort.
Being nearly fifty feet wide, it was capacious
enough to accommodate several families, and
when in use it no doubt had trees or shrubs
165 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
in front, and may have been farther completed
by stones, poles, or bark placed across the
opening. It seems, however, in the first in stance to have been used only at intervals,
and to have been left vacant for considerable
portions of time. Perhaps it was visited only
by hunting or war parties. But subsequenitly
it was permanently occupied; and this for so
long a time that in some places a foot and a
half of ashes and carbonaceous matter with
bones, implements, &c., was accumulated. By
this time the height of the cavern had been
much diminished, and instead of clearing it
out for future use it was made a place of burial
in which four or five individuals were interred.
Of these, two were men,-  one of great age,
the other probably in the prime of life. A third
was a woman of about thirty or forty years of
age. The other remains were too fragmentary to give very certain results.
These bones unquestionably belong to the
oldest race of men known in western Europe.
They have been most carefully examined by
several competent anatomists and archmologists, and the results have been published with
excellent figures in the " Reliquim Aquitanicm."
They are, therefore, of the utmost interest for
166 
HISTOR Y OF MAN N.
our present purpose; and I shall try so to
divest the descriptions of anatomical details
as to give a clear notion of their character.
The " Old Man of Cro-inagnon" was of great
stature, being nearly six feet high.   More
than this, his bones show that he was of the
strongest and most athletic muscular development,- a Samson in strength: and the bones
of the limbs have the peculiar form which is
characteristic of athletic men habituated to
rough walking, climbing, and running; for
this is, I believe, the real meaning of the enormous strength of the thigh-bone, and the flattened condition of the leg in this and other
old skeletons.   It occurs to some  extent,
though much less than in this old man, in
American skeletons.   Hlis skull presents all
the characters of advanced age, though the
teeth had been worn down to the sockets
without being lost, which again is the character of some, though not of all, aged Indian
skulls. The skull proper, or brain-case, is
very long, more so than in ordinary modern
skulls, and this length is accompanied with a
great breadth, so that the brain was of greater
size than in average modern men; and the
frontal region was largely and well developed.
167 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
Its length is stated at 7.9 inches, its height
5.1 inch, and its breadth 5.8 inches, while
its capacity is no less than 97 cubic inches.
In this respect this most ancient skull fails
utterly to vindicate the expectations of those
who would regard prehistoric men as approaching to the apes.  It is at the opposite extreme.
The face, however, presented very peculiar
characters.   It was extremely broad, with
projecting cheek-bones and heavy  jaw, in
this resembling the coarse types of the American face; and the eye-orbits were square, and
elongated laterally. The nose was large and
prominent, and the jaws projected somewhat
forward. This man, therefore, had, as to his
features, some resemblance to the harsher
type of American physiognomy, with overhanging brows, small and transverse eyes,
high cheek-bones, and coarse mouth.  lHe
had not lived to so great an age without some
rubs, for his thigh-bone showed a depression
which must have resulted from a severe
wound, perhaps from the horn of some wild
animal, or the spear of an enemy.
The woman presented similar characters of
stature and cranial form, modified by her sex,
and must have been in form and visage a veri
168 
IIISTOR Y OF IMAN.
table squaw, who, if her hair and complexion
were suitable, would have passed at once for
an I,ndi,an woman, but one of unusual size and
development.  Hler head bears sad testimony
to the violence of her age and people.  She
died from the effects of a blow from a stoneheaded pogamogan or spear, which has penetrated the right side of the forehead with so
clean a fracture as to indicate the extreme
rapidity and force of its blow.  It is inferred
from the condition of the edges of this wound
that she may have survived its infliction for
two weeks or more. If, as is most likely, the
woundl was received in some sudden attack by
a hostile tribe, they must have been driven off
or have retired, leaving the wounded woman
in the hands of her friends to be tended for a
time, and then buried, either with other members of her family or with others who had
perished in the same skirmish.   Unless the
wound was inflicted in sleep, during a night
attack, she must have fallen, not in flight, but
wilth her face to the foe, perhaps aiding the
resistance of her friends or shielding her little
ones from destruction. WTith the people of
Cro-imagnon, as with the American Indians,
the care of the wounded was probably a sacred
169 
TIIE ORIGIN AND EARLY
duty, not to be neglected without incurring
the greatest disgrace and the vengeance of tile
guardian spirits of the sufferers.
While the skeletons of Cro-magnon correspond to that of Mentone in type, they correspond also in indications of the habits of the race.
The ornaments found at Cro-magnon were
perforated shells from the Atlantic, and pieces
of ivory.  Those at Mentone were perforated
l\eritin,e from the Mediterranean, and canine
teeth of the deer. In both cases there was
evidence that these ancient people painted
themselves with red oxide of iron; and, as if
to complete the similarity, the Mentone man
had an old healed-up fracture of the radius of
the left arm, the effect of a violent blow or
of a fall. In the cave of La Madelaine, which
was probably inhabited by the same race, was
found a plate of ivory having a rude likeness
of the mammoth carved on it,- probably some
family or  tribal   " totem" of the  period.
(Plate X.)  Skulls found at Clichy and Grenelle in 1868 and 1S69 are described by Professor Broca and Mr. Fleurens as of the same
general type, and remains found at Gibraltar and in the cave of Paviland, in England,
seem also to have belonged to the same race.
170 
--           ffi~~~- 7'
')rawing of the iliamnmoth (Elephas primiyenius). Scratched on a plate of fossil Ivory, 
found in the Cave of La Madelaine, France.
p. 170.
PLATE X.
attire and the Bible. 
I 
IIISTOR Y OF SIAN.
The celebrated Engis skull, believed to have
belonged to a contemporary of the mammoth,
is also precisely of the same type, though less
massive than that of Cro-magnon; and, lastly,
even  the somewhat  degraded  Neanderthaal
skull, found in a cave near Dusseldorf, thoug(rh,
like that of Clichy, inferior in frontal development, is referable to the same peculiar longheaded style of man, in so far as can be judged
from the portion that remains.
Let it be observed, then, that these skulls
are probably the oldest known in the world,
and they are all referable to one race of men;
and let us ask what they tell as to the position
and character of Palmocosmic man.  The testimony is here fortunately well-nigh unanimous.
Huxley - who well compares some of the
peculiar features of these ancient skulls and
skeletons to those of Australians and other
rude tribes, and of the ancient Danes of Borroby, a people not improbably allied to the
Esthonians and Finns - remarks that the manner in which the individual heads of the most
homogeneous rude races differ from each oth(r
in the same characters, though perhaps not
to the same extent; with the Engis and Neander'thal skulls, seems to me to prohibit any
171 
THE OPRIGIN AND EAPRL Y
cautious reasoner from affirming the latter to
have necessarily been of distinct races." My
own experience in American skulls, and the
still larger experience of Dr. Wilson, fully
confirm the wisdom of this caution.  I-le
adds: " Finally, the comparatively large cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skull, overlaid though it may be by pithecoid bony
walls, and the completely human proportions
of  the  accompanying limb-bones, together
with the very fair development of the Eng,is
skull, clearly indicate that the first traces of
the primordial stock whence man has been
derived need no longer be sought by those
who entertain any form of the doctrine of
progressive development in the newest tertiaries, but that they may be looked for in an
epoch more distant from that of the Elefihas
prihnigeniius than that is from us." If he had
possessed the Cro-magnon and Mentone skulls
at the time when this was written he might
well have said immeasurably distant from the
time of the Elephas primijeittus.  Professor
Broca, who seems by no means disinclined to
favor a simian origin for men, has the following
general conclusions, which refer to the Cromagnon skulls:  " The  great volume of the
172 
HISTOR Y OF MAN.
brail, the development of the frontal region,
the fine elliptical profile of the anterior portion
of the skull, and the orthognathous form of
the upper facial region, are incontestable
evidences of superiority which are met with
usually only in the civilized races. On the
other hand, the great breadth of face, the
alveolar prognathism, the enormous development of the ascending ramus of the lower
jaw, the extent and roughness of the muscular
insertions, especially of the masticatory muscles,
give rise to the idea of a violent and brutal
race."
He adds that this apparent antithesis, seen
also in the limbs as well as the skull, accords
with the evidence furnished by the associated
weapons and implements, of a rude hunter
life, and at the same time of no mean degree
of taste and skill in carving and other arts.
He might have added that this is precisely
the antithesis seen in the American tribes,
among whom art and taste of various kinds
and much that is high and spiritual even in
thought, co-existed with barbarous modes of
life and intense ferocity and cruelty. The
god and the demon may have been combined
in these races, but there was nothing of the
mere brute.
173 
THE ORPIGIN AND EARLLY
These Palmocosmic skeletons are, it is true,
but dry bones; but by careful observation a
strange and interesting history can be learned
from them. They all represent a race of grand
physical development, and of cranial capacity
equal to that of the average modern European;
while the implements found with some of them
show a state of the arts similar to that of
the ruder tribes of American Indians, and similar customs of burial, and probably a similar
system of tribal and family totems, and of
worship of Manitous or subordinate divinities.
They are thus not merely men, but men corresponding to the Turanian and American
type, one of the most widely spread  and
ancient of the races still existing. If antediluvian men, they thus show that these did
not differ even varietally from Modern men,
though of greater than average physical power,
a property quite consistent with their existence
in the dawn of the human period, and at a
time when man inhabited larger continents
than at present, and had to contend with
more formidable animals.  If their antiquity
be conceded, they really take away all semblance of probability from the doctrine of the
origin of man by derivation. They tell us
174 
HISTOP Y OF MAN V.
that primitive man had the same high cerebral
organization which hlie possesses now, and we
may infer the same high intellectual and moral
nature, fitting him for communion with God
and headship over the lower world.   They
indicate also, like the mound-builders who
preceded the North American Indian, that
mnan's earlier state was the best, that he had
been a high and noble creature before he
became a savage. It is not conceivable that
their great development of brain and mind
could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a
mere brutal and savage life.  These gifts must
be remnants of a noble organization degraded
by moral evil.  They thus justify the tradition
of a golden and Edenic age, and mutely protest
against the philosophy of progressive development as applied to man, while they bear
witness to the identity in all important
characters of the oldest prehistoric men with
that variety of our species which is at the
present day at once the most widely extended
and the most primitive in its maniners and
usages.
Comparisons with the Bible.
If now we compare these facts with the
Biblical history of man, we find certain re
175 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
markable coincidences, which I shall, to save
time, state under a few definite propositions
which will require but little illustration.
1. As in the Bible record man is introduced
in the same creative Ton with the higher
brute animals, so in geology he is united without any break to the close of the Tertiary
period of the great mammals. We have seen
that in Europe the existing mammals now
contemporary with man existed in the Postglacial era, and were then the contemporaries
of many creatures now extinct either locally
or wholly. Thus no geological break separates man from the Tertiary age; and if we
regard the Glacial period as constituting such
a break, -  which, however, it did not,- still
this will come in long before the time of
man.
2. As God is said to have prepared a place
for man, so we find that his appearance is
preceded by the close of the Glacial period,
and by the removal out of his way of many
forms of animal life. We must not understand the Bible as picturing an Eden in which
all the animals of the world were contained.
This kind of representation belongs only to
nursery toy-books. It is expressly said that
176 
HISYTOR Y OF MAN ~.
man was placed in Eden with a selected group
of animals as well as of plants, and these animals and plants were with him to overspread
the habitable earth, replacing everywhere
those surviving from the Tertiary age.*  This
is the Bible theory of the mode of introduction of man, and it corresponds with geological fact, and with what we would a priori
expect in the case of the introduction of any
new and important type.
3. In both records man is geologically modern, coming at the close of the great procession of animal life; and it is remarkable that
geology concurs with revelation in not finding
any new species introduced since the creation
of man, and only a few species can be supposed to have been introduced along with
him. Geologically it will be observed man
comes after the culmination of mammalian
life in the Tertiary age, and in a time of decadence, when the fauna of the world was becoming more sparse in species, and when the
greater and nobler species were being removed.
This corresponds precisely with the indications
of Genesis.
4. The oldest men whose remains have been
*Gen. ii. 18, et seq.
12
177 
THE ORIGIN AND EARLY
found are not of a different species from modern men, but, on the contrary, are nearly
allied to the most widely distributed modern
race; while their great stature and physical
power remind us of the nephilim, or giants of
Genesis. They testify, in short, to a specific
identity and common descent of all men; and
their great bodily development, accompanied
probably with great longevity, is such as
geological facts would lead us to anticipate in
the case of a new type recently introduced,
rather than in one which had descended
through a long course of struggle for existence from an inferior ancestry.
5. The cranial capacity of these earliest
men shows that they were as much lords of
creation and as little allied to brutes as their
successors are.  Further, when we place this
fact in relation with the statement made by
Ilaeckel, that, according to the latest views of
derivation, lemurs or monkey-like animals of
low type in the Eocene passed into apes in
the Miocene, and these into men in the Postpliocene, the contradiction between this and
the high type of the pre-historic skulls seems
absolute, especially when we consider the unchanged characters of the Turanian race from
178 
HISTORY OF MAN.
the Palmocosmic age to the present day.  The
image and shadow of God are reflected even
from Palmocosmic skulls, and they show no
signs of affinity with brutes.
6. The condition, habits, and structure of
Paleocosmic men correspond with the idea
that they may be rude and barbarous offshoots
of more cultivated tribes, and therefore realize
as much as such remains can do the Bible history of the fall and dispersion of antediluvian
men. We need not suppose that Adam of the
Bible was precisely like the old man of Cromagnon.   Rather may  this man  represent
that fallen yet magnificent race which filled
the antediluvian earth with violence, and probably the more scattered and wandering tribes
of that race rather than its greater and more
cultivated nations. Interpreted in this way,
our Paleocosmic men are precisely what we
should expect antediluvian men to be.*
Lastly. Their funeral rites and the traces of
their religious beliefs point to a similarity with
those of the most ancient races of men, which
are all fairly traceable to corruptions of those
primitive articles of faith revealed in the earlier part of the Hebrew Scriptures. Into this
* See Appendix D.
179 
TIIE ORIGIN AIND EARLY
I cannot enter here, but may have occasion to
refer to it in the concluding lecture of this
course.
In the mean time we may surely conclude
that all the above coincidences cannot be
accidental, and that what we know of primitive man from geological investigation presents no contradiction to the history of his
origin in the Bible; but rather gives such corroboration as warrants the expectation that,
as our knowledge of pre-historic men increases,
it will more and more fully bring out the
force of those few and bold touches with
which it has pleased God to enable his ancient
prophets to sketch the early history of our
species.   These coincidences are the more
remarkable wheii we consider the primitive
and child-like character of the notices in Genesis, making  no  scientific pretensions,  and
introducing what they tell us of primitive man
merely to explain and illustrate the highest
moral and religious teachings. Truth and
divinity are stamped on every line of the
early chapters of Genesis, alike in their archaic simplicity, and in that accuracy as to
facts which enables them not only to stand
unharmed amid the discoveries of modern
180 
HISTORY OF MAN.
science, but to display new beauties as we are
able more and more fully to compare them
with the records stored up from of old in the
recesses of the earth. Those who base their
hopes for the future on the glorious revelations of the Bible need not be ashamed of its
story of the past.
181 
I 
LECTURE VI.
REVIEW OF MODERN SCHOOLS OF TIIOUGHT. 
I 
LECTURE VI.
IREVIEW OF MIODEPRN SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.'
SCEPTICAL PIIILOSOPHIIES. - MATERIALISTIC SCIENCIE. -
EVOLUTIONIST ARCIIAOLOGY. -MIODIFIED CHRISTIAN  ITY.
PROPOSE in this concluding lecture to no   tice some of the errors and partial truths,
respecting our subject, that are more or less
current, and to inquire wherein they are false
or defective, and how they are to be treated.
I may take as a motto a remarkable saying of
our Lord to the Sadducees of his day: "Ye do
err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power
of God." Jesus was always more tender with
the Sadducees than with the Pharisees. HIe
evidently regarded an honest sceptic as more
estimable than a ritualist, and even a little
science as a better thing than a mnere round of
hypocritical performances; and this tenderness is apparent in the mild rebuke which I 
PE VIEW OF MODEPRN
have quoted; and which I think well characterizes the scientific infidelity of our day.
Men err in judgment from not knowing the
Scriptures, and so attribute to them doctrines
which are really not those of the Bible.  They
err from not knowing, or rather not having
distinct conceptions of, the being and power of
God.  Their want of knowledge may proceed
from inadvertence, or from want of opportunity, or perhaps from a natural dislike to
higher truth or an incapacity to perceive it.
Much, however, of their error is due, I fear, to
the imperfect presentation of truth by those
who know it, and to the false glosses and bad
morals of the Pharisees.
Sceptical Philosop7zies.
It is to be observed, in the first place, that
a large part of the opposition to religion attributed to science really proceeds from a philosophy which has little connection with science,
and which I would therefore mention merely
in its relation to the views of scientific men.
The philosophies of Herbert Spencer and of
John Stuart Mill, for example, though diverse
from each other, lie at the foundation of much
of this, as it appears in England and in this
186 
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.
country. Neither of them is in precise accord
with science any more than with the Bible.
Both philosophies agree in relegating God to
the domain of the unknowable, or at least of
the unknown, though in different ways; but
in so far as they are related to science, they
proceed from this point in very different
paths.  Spencer takes a constructive method,
and, assuming matter and forces, proceeds by
a skilful use of analogy to assure us that these
can successively produce all forms of being.
But this constructive method is the very opposite of that of true science, however it may be
supported by illustrations taken from scientific
facts. It postulates in the first place certain
self-existing forces and atoms of matter, or
both, endowed with certain powers, and, instead of diminishing the mystery of existence,
forces it back and concentrates it on these
atoms or forces, which, if not produced by an
intelligent Crea tor, are far more wonderful
and inexplicable than the arrangements for
which they are supposed to account. Its
argument, after the assumption of the almost
omnipotent resources claimed for matter and
force, is after all merely an argument of analogy and not of the inductive character required,
187 
REVIEW OF MODERN
in science. If scientific men are captivated
with this philosophy, I believe this is due prin cipally to its gorgeous generalizations, and the
profuse use it makes of comparisons based on
scientific facts. For this very reason, its influence in discouraging true science and in
tempting to vague speculations has been of
the most marked character, and has vitiated
too much both of the original investigation
and scientific education of our time.
Mill, on the contrary, in holding that all
knowledge is only relative and phenomenal,
and that causation is merely invariable sequence, cuts at the roots of our belief both in
matter and force; and in this way throws
doubt on all that science would regard as the
essence of things; leaving us as destitute of a
basis for our knowledge of nature as for our
knowledge of God. It is, however, only just
to say that in his essay on Theism, his latest
work, published only after his death, he bears
what, from his point of view, must be considered a most remarkable testimony to the
power and the word of God.  Discarding as
valueless the a priori argument for the existence of God, he regards as the only valid argument that from design, and shows that this,
188 
SCIHOOLS OF THOUGHT.
is really of an inductive character, and of no
mean force when considered in the case of the
more complex animal structures, as for instance the eye, to which he specially refers as
indicating design. As already observed, in
preferring the argument  from  design, he
closely agrees with Scripture, which uses that
argument alone in those passages in which it
reasons on the subject, as for example in the
concluding chapters of Job, and in the first
chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. It
is certainly a remarkable coincidence that the
only way in which Paul thinks the heathen
could, without revelation, attain to the knowledge of God, is precisely that which the sceptical English philosopher singles out as the
only argument valid to his mind.
On the other hand, he regards the principle
of the survival of the fittest, as held by evolutionists, as a " startling and prirnafctcie improbability," and will only admit that "it is
not so absurd as it looks, and that the analogies which have been discovered by experience, favorable to its possibility, far exceed
what any one would have supposed beforehand." This is, I think, from his point of
view, a fair estimate of the value of evolution
189 
PREVIEW k9;' MODERN
as a means of accounting for organic struct ures and species; and the value of the analo gies, when examined scientifically, is even less
than Mill imagined. It is to be hoped that
this estimate of evolution, on the part of a
thinker so severe and logical as Mill, will have
its weight with the younger scientific men,
who are so easily deluded with the brilliant
phantoms of Spencerianism.
It is true that Mill was, even at the last, to
such an extent ignorant of the power of God
that he affirms that, in so far as the natural
argument goes, it fails to prove omnipotence.
He can believe only in a God of limited resources. On this point, however, it is very
questionable if the details on which he relies
to prove imperfection in nature have any such
significance, and in so far as Scripture is concerned he does not take into the account the
explanations which it gives. For example,
(1) the incompleteness of our knowledge of
God's plans, for " his thoughts are very deep;
-his ways are unsearchable;" or (2) the
necessary imperfection of created things and
their incomplete reflection of their Maker, for
the works of nature are not in themselves like
God, but, on the contrary, in their essence
190 
SCH,OOLS OF THOUGHT.
and modes of existence diverse from Him; or
(3) the compensations which  are in  God's
power, as, for example, when  he overrules
physical evil for moral good; or (4) the imperfection arising from the introduction of
sin; or (5) the progressive development of
God's plans in history, and the impossibility
of discerning all their scope at any one point
of time.
The German pantheists endeavor to combine
these realistic and idealistic philosophies in the
conception of a universal, all-pervading Cosmos,
neither spiritual nor natural, neither God nor
matter nor force, yet including all; and
developing all things from itself to return
into it again. This, however, though having
roots both in theology and philosophy, is an
idea foreign to physical and natural science.
I mention these theories merely to say that
they do not belong specially to my subject, any
further than they aid in producing the actual
state of mind in which we find scientific men.
Materialistic Science.
Passing to the materialistic science of the
time, we may take as an example of this a
production which has excited much attention,
191 
REVIEW OF MIODERN
not so much on its own account as on account
of the quarter whence it emanates, and the
state of the scientific mind which it indicates
or supposes,- the recent address of Professor
Tyndall as President of the British Association.
In its aspect with reference to Scripture,
this address is first of all remarkable for its
ignoring altogether the position of the Bible
with respect to nature, and neglecting to
acknowledge the obligations of science to God's
Word.  Truly stating the low and superstitious
conception of nature, which led to the polytheism of antiquity, Tyndall gives credit to
the atomic philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus for raising their contemporaries to a
higher conception of the unity of nature, and
he calls their philosophy science, which it was
not in the modern sense of the term. But he
omits to state that, long before these Greek
philosophers, Moses had established in the
Pentateuch the idea of the unity of nature,
and this on a basis which has lasted to our
own time and overspread the whole civilized
world; while the Epicurean philosophy failed
to root out the idolatries of Greece, and failed
to leave any impress on later ages. Historically, it is a fact that one Paul of Tarsus, a
192 
SCIIOOLS OF THOUGHT.
disciple of MIoses and of Christ, had to preach
to the Epicureans of Athens, as late as the
first century of our era, the doctrine of the
unity of God, of nature, and of man; and that
Athens, standing in the midst of its idols, could
only, like Spencer and AIill and Tyndall, bow
before an C unknown Gocd," till Christianity
had overthrown both Stoicism and Epicureanism.  Still more unfairly, Tyndall, while thus
leaving out of sight the cosmogony of Scripture,
attributes to the Bible and to Christ those
bigrotries of the middle ages which were due
to ignorance of the Bible and to anti-Christian
superstition.  Let us hope that in this he errs,
not knowing the Scripture.
Tyndall ascribes science to an impulse
whereby, 1; in a process of abstraction from experience, we form physical theories which lie
beyond  the pale of experience, but which
satisfy the desire of the mind to see every
natural occurrence resting on a cause." Hle is
willing, however, to gratify this natural desire
only to a certain length.   He traces back all
material thin(Ts to atoms having certain definite
properties; but as soon as we venture to ask
whence these atom's, and why their properties,
he peremptorily says: 1i Hitherto shalt thou
13
193 
PREVIEW OF MODERN
come, and no further." This is his ultimate
dogoma, without reason or cause. So when we
inquire as to force, lhe is willing that we should
correlate forces, assign laws to gravitation, and
decide that heat is a'1 mode of motion; " but
wie must inquire no further.  So if we inquire
as to consciousness and will and other phenomena of mind, he may tell us that these are
functions of brain; but though  he quotes
Democritus to the effect that mind may be
composed of cc smooth round atoms," he is unwilling that we should satisfy our desire to
assign things to causes any further than the
anatomist's knife can carry us.  There is no
more science in this than in the statement of
the old physicists that water rises in an empty
tube because nature abhors a vacuum.
So in his attempt to advocate evolution
on scientific grounds, while he freely admits
that to believe this dogma fully we  must
"C radically changre our notions of matter,"that is, must transfer to matter the powers of
mind, - he attempts to illustrate the doctrine
by the supposed development of the eye.
Hle supposes first a disturbance of chemical
processes in the animal organism similar to
those which light causes in the plant, - a sup
194 
SCIIOOLS OF TIIOUGHT.
position chemically untrue.   But, granting
this, he next supposes pigment cells.   The
eye, he says, is then c incipient but it is only
capable of distinguishing between light and
shade; while, contrary to fact, the pigment
cells are supposed to be the seat of this sensitiveness and no mention is made of the nerve
matter.   "The adjustment continues,"  we
are told, "and there is a bulging of the
epidermis over the pigment cells," -why, we
are not told.  A lens is now " incipient;" and,
through the " operation of infinite adjustments,
the organ may reach the perfection of the eye
of an eagle." But this is not science. It is
only vague speculation, and he well concludes
with the remarkable statement: "In fact the
whole process of evolution is the manifestation of a power absolutely unsearchable to
the intellect of man. As little in our day as
in the days of Job can man by searching
find this power.* Considered fundamentally,
then, it is by the operation of an insoluble
mystery that life on earth is evolved, species
* The quotation is unfortunate; for Job was  a theist, and
his question reads: " Canst thou find out the deep things of
God? canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?  It is
high as heaven; what canst thou do?  deeper  than hades;
what canst thou know? "
195 
REVIEWTV OF MIODERN
differentiated, and mind unfolded, from their
prepotent elements in the immeasurable past."
We may well apply here to Tyndall the latter
part of our Saviour's reproof:'" You err, not
knowing the power of God."  It is further to
be observed that in the conclusion of this
statement, as well as in the apology or vindication which he has published subsequently to
the address, Tyndall is driven to take up
ground which is actually that of the pantheists,
whose doctrines he would no doubt altogether
repudiate. HIis position thus obliges him to
oscillate between materialism and pantheism,
and to present a strange aspect of inconsistency;
whereas if he were content to follow uip the
adjustments of nature to a designing Creator,
all-pervading yet personal, omnipotent  yet
acting by law, his science would fall at once
into harmony with theism and with the Bible,
without requiring him to submit in the smallest
degree to the superstitions and ecclesiastical
tyranny which he seems so cordially to detest.
A second phase of apparent antagonism of
science to Scripture is that which concerns the
origin of life and organization. The doctrine
of " archebiosis," as it has been called, which
implies the spontaneous generation of living
196 
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.
Organisms from dead matter, has recently received some apparent support from the bulky
volumes of Bastian on the cc Beginnings of
Life;" but the greatest doubts have been
thrown upon the validity of his experiments
by Sanderson, Huxley, and others, and even
a cursory survey of his statements and illustrations leads to the conviction that his work
has not been sufficiently careful and accurate
to afford trustworthy results. We have already considered this theory of archebiosis,
in relation to the scriptural account of the
creation of animals. It now presents itself in
antagonism to theism in general. It has not,
however, as yet received the authentication of
facts in any actual experiment.
Huxley himself, as we have already seen,
by his doctrine of protoplasm as a physical
basis of life, really dispenses with vitality as a
distinct force or modification of force, as much
as Bastian, and would remove all difficulty in
supposing the origin of living things without
any creative  act.   Further, in his recent
paper on Animal Automatism, he goes as far as
possible, without directly reaching it, toward
the conclusion that the animal and even the
human organization is a self-regulating ma
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RE VIE W OF MODERN
chine, requiring no special vital or mental
force to secure its actions and results. The
doctrine of protoplasm has, however, been
thoroughly canvassed by Beale; and the distinction between living, dead, and formed
protoplasm clearly defined. Indeed, the position of Huxley here has been illogical from
the first; for, while attributing to protoplasm,
or mere albuminous matter, the properties of
life, and ridiculing the idea of a vital force, he
was of necessity obliged constantly to refer
to living protoplasm and dead protoplasm as
quite distinct in properties, while denying in
his hypothesis that any such distinction could,
exist. In reviving the Cartesian doctrine of
animal automatism, Huxley has well illustrated
some very remarkable physiological facts,
which rightly understood throw some light on
the debatable ground between the merely
physical and the immaterial.  More especially
they illustrate that nice balancing of the parts
of the bodily machine which enables a stimulus
infinitesimally small from without or within to
put it in motion, and help us to conceive how
mind force, though in itself destitute of material potency, can act on the material organism.
Dr. Carpenter, in his'c Mental Physiology,"
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SCHOOLS OF THOUrGHT.
has treated these facts in a more scientific
spirit, and has shown that they imply the action
of mind as well as of matter. So far, therefore, we cannot say that physiology, any more
than physical science, is committed to the side
of materialism, or can relieve us from the
necessity of that spiritual world to which the
Bible refers us.
It is, however, deserving of notice, as an
example of ignorance or misrepresentation of
Scripture, that Huxley in the address to the
British Association, in which he so strongly
dissented from Bastian's conclusions, took occasion to ascribe to the scriptural writers a
belief in spontaneous generation, or at least
in transmutation of species, in common, as he
said, with many other ancient authorities.
His evidence as to this was the reference by
the Apostle Paul to the germination of a grain
of wheat, in illustration of the resurrection.
' That which thou sowest, thou sowest not
the body that shall be, but a bare grain, it
may be of wheat or some other grain: but
God giveth it a body, according as he pleases,
and to each kind of seed a body of its own."
It seems difficult to see here any kind of doctrine of spontaneous generation, and indeed
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RE VIE W OF MODERN
the whole argument is of the opposite sort.
Paul had affirmed that the grain of wheat is
n      ot quickened except it die, -  a  v ivid way of
putting the plain truth that the mass of the
seed perishes in favor of the little, almost
invisible germ of life which it contains, and
which springs up as a new body. I-e next
says that God determines the body it shall
h   ave, and this not arbitrarily, but in accorda     n     c     e      with his own law of  constant reproduction, - c to every seed its own body," accordi      ng to the kind of         seed it may  be.  There
is no room here for heterogenesis: and if it
were possible either that something not a seed
should produce a new body, or that wheat
should produce tares or tares wheat, the argum     e nt                would be altogether invalidated; for it
is the germ of spiritual life existing in the
man here that must grow upp, and this according to its kind, in the future completion of
the spiritual life. Paul, in short, most perfectly agrees with Moses that God created
plants according to their species, otherwise his
illustration might go to show that a wicked
man might                   rise in the resurrection as a  righteous one, or the reverse, which would of course
entirely subvert his whole argument, as well
200 
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHIIT.
as the whole tendency of Bible theology from
Genesis to Revelation, which makes a man's
character and conduct in this world the sole
tests of what will happen to him in the next.
We thus fail to secure as yet any materialistic solution of the beginning of life; and. till
we can succeed in this, we need not inquire
as to how far any discovery of physical causes
for the origination of living beings would
modify our views of theology. It is evident
also that the question of derivation of one
species from another is comparatively of secondary importance; and in its scriptural aspect relates chiefly to the meaning we are to
attach to the views of mediate creation given
in Gen. i., and to the force to be attached to
the expression, " after its kind," relatively to
the views which natural science may settle as
to the limits of species. These points we have
already discussed, and also to some extent the
more important questions as to the origin of
man.
Evolutionist Archeology.
It may be well, however, to notice the manner in which the presumed origin of man from
lower animals is followed out by writers of
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REVIEW OF MODERN
various schools of archmology in their speculations on primitive culture and religion. Tylor,
Lubbock, and others in England, and their
followers in this country, proceed constantly
on the assumption that all human culture is to
be traced back into a period of pre-historic
darkness in which man had scarcely emerged
from a brutal condition. In short, they neither
admit the scriptural account of the origin of
man and of his religion, nor do they admit the
power of God to create a being in his own
likeness. These men, ignorant like the Sadducees of the Scriptures and of the power of
GCod, claim for their speculations the rank of a
science, and, deducing all that is noblest in
humanity from all that is lowest, dispense at
once with God and religion, and destroy all the
grandest historical traditions of our race. As
a student of nature, I confess I have less respect for them than for the mnere physicists
and physiologists, who at least collect facts
and interrogate nature in an earnest and scientific manner, and are less animated by a mean
spirit of detraction from the higher aspects
of humanity.
These men derive all religion from myths,
trace back sacrifice and prayer to merely
202 
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.
human relations among savages, resolve the
belief in immortality into the result of dreams,
and the idea of God into a fanciful ascription
of Cc animism" to dead objects. If their conclusions had any scientific value, they would
be much more destructive of scriptural and
rational theology than any thing arising from
physical or natural science can be. Fortunately they do not come within the limits of
true inductive science, but rather constitute a
sort of new and debased mythology, founded
on certain scientific and historical facts, clothed
in the garb of fanciful speculation. They have
in them, however, an element of truth which
becomes manifest when we compare them
with the simple theology of the early chapters
of Genesis, and with the crude beliefs that
have replaced true religion in the minds of
the lower and more isolated races of men,
and they are worthy of notice here, if for no
other reason, because they tend to give a new
importance to the study of these c; unwritten"
religions of the world, and to their comparison with the earlier stages of divine revelation.
We may take, as an example of their treatment of religion, the instinct of immortality,
203 
BE VIE W OF MODERN
which it is admitted is universal among men.
This is quietly attributed to the fact that men
dream of their dead friends or enemies, and
thus have everywhere come to believe in their
continued existence after death. It is evident,
however, that this is merely a convenient evasion of a difficult fact. Men in a rude and
primitive state dream little. They are much
more likely to dream of affairs that concern
themselves than of their dead friends, and such
dreams are likely to be only occasional and
exceptional.  Nor is there so close a connection between such dreams and the future life
of the dead as to make the belief universal.
It is much more likely that the belief proceeds
from some cause belonging to the primitive
state of man, and perhaps coeval with his
origin. The Bible gives us a more logical
solution.  Man was originally immortal, and
it was consequently a part of his nature to
cherish the hope of an undying life.  When
hlie lost the gift of immortality, hlie had a hope
held out to him of its restoration, and this
hope necessarily lies at the foundation of all
the religions of humanity, and is the last part
of religion which remains in the midst of its
corruption and decay. Wherever we find this
204 
SCHIOOLS OF THOUGHIIT.
belief, under however corrupt and degenerate
forms, we should respect it as a relic of primitive faith, nay more, as a primitive instinct or
intuition depending on the original immortality
of man, and should not with the sceptic relegate it to the domain of mere myth and fancy.
Christian writers have often been false to the
Bible and to the cause of truth in their treatment of such old beliefs.  Let us sift from
them the errors with which they are mixed,
and retain the golden grains of truth.
Sceptical writers of this school often make
another strange mistake or wilful misrepresentation, in the opposite direction, in denying
the existence of the doctrine of a future state
in the Old Testament, while they admit its occurrence in the rudest heathenisms. Now it
is true that this doctrine is little insisted on in
the Old Testament, because it was an instinct
already implanted in men's minds, and because
it had been made immoral use of by priests,
who pretended by their rites and ceremonies
to give bad men a passport into future happiness. The prophets of the Old Testament
denied, not the reality of a future state, but the
power of priests and external forms to give
wicked men a claim to its happiness, and they
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REVIEWI OF MODERN
insisted more on a holy life in this world, and
on the doctrine of the present and immediate
chastisement of God's people for their sins,a doctrine also of the New Testament, and
perhaps to be more inculcated than it now is.
But the promise of salvation made to Adam,
the promise to Abraham, the Messianic doctrine, the system of sacrificial atonement, and
a hundred incidental references, show that, as
our Saviour said, the God of the Old Testament c is not the God of the dead, but of the
living." If life and immortality are said to
be brought to light by Christ, this is not that
they are initiated, but more clearly and plainly
made known.
The offences of this school of writers against
truth go, however, yet farther. Another relates to the belief in God. Primitive man, if
destitute of knowledge of God, feels for him
in nature. Paul argues that human reason so
seeking for God can discover his power and
his divinity, and holds that the true God is
not far from every one of us. The modern
school of archoeology maintains that man fit'st
deifies and personifies all objects around him,
and only by slow and painful steps attains to
polytheism or pantheism, and in a higher stage
206 
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.
of culture reaches to imaginations and sentiinents respecting a Supreme God; while at a
still higher stage he comes with Spencer and
Mill to find that he was mistaken, and that
after all no such being can be found or known.
But this is wholly conjecture. Perhaps there
is an historical basis for monotheism, as well as
for a future state. How does it stand in the
Bible? Have any of us ever endeavored to
realize the theology of Adam, and what it
would be to hear the voice of God in the
evening breeze in the trees of Eden, and to
learn from that and our own consciousness
his nature and unity?   Or if we cannot
clearly conceive this, let us add to it those
strange words, that sound like an echo from
Eden, which Paul spoke on the Acropolis of
Athens,- " that they should seek God, if
haply they might feel after him, and find him,
though he be not far from any one of us: for
in him we live, and move, and have our
being." Let us suppose this to be the sum
total of our theology, and then think how
easily out of this the mind of humanity might
develop in the course of the ages all the more
rude beliefs that have ever existed in the
world; every one of them containing this
207 
RE VIE TV OF MODERN
much of theology with various additions and
under di'fferent modifications.
Or let us suppose that we possess in a traditional form the story of creation and of the
fall, and this alone. Let us think of the plural Elohim with attributes of unity, and creating by his vivifying breath or Spirit and by
his almighty Word; of the golden age of
Eden; of the fall and the promised Saviour,
the coming one, the Jehovah.  Now let us go
forth with this as our sole treasure of divine
knowledge, and idealize it into a triple God,
and deify the God-given woman,  the first
mother, as an Astarte, an Isis, an Artemis, or
Atahensic, and worship as the coming Saviour
every great hero and benefactor, whether a
Vishnu or Osiris, a Hercules or Apollo, or an
American Yoskeka. IHere we have again the
germ of the more complex religions. Moses
has given us in the old Bible story, and purposely, no doubt, the substance of the whole.
It is pretended by some of the writers of
the school now under consideration, in oppositionl to an historical basis for primitive reli,gions, that traditions cannot survive for any
long time. They forget, however, that a traditional belief, interwoven with men's hopes
208 
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.
and fears, becomes a part of their nature, and
is preserved and transmitted after the facts on
which it is based are quite forgotten. So a
tradition incorporated into the songs of a people, or crystallized in some short and easily
learned form of words, may become as permanent as if inscribed on granite.  Traditions
are like footprints on the sand.  They  are
usually effaced by the next tide, but geologists know that, buried under sediments and
hardened into rock, they may take their place
among the most imperishable monuments of
the earth's crust, and may exist unimpaired
long, after the bones of the animals that produced them have mouldered into dust.
Why cannot we teach these truths to modern heathens as Paul did to their predecessors
at Athens? One of the reasons which have
induced me to dwell a little on them here, is
to indicate a biblical method of dealing with
the pseudo-science of the evolutionist archrology, which has grown up to so great proportions, especially in Germany and England, and
vwhich, from the interest that attaches to its
vast agglomerations of facts and fancies, is
pervading all our literature.
14
209 
REVIEW OF MODERN
Modified Christianity.
It is a relief to turn from these writers
to men like Max Miiller and Kingsley, who,
though feeble-kneed in orthodoxy and amenable to some extent to the charge of not well
knowing the Scriptures and the power of God,
have at least some regard for the religious
beliefs of mankind, and are not tied to the car
of the evolutionary Juggernaut which is crushing the brain and heart alike of science and
theology.
Max Miiller, in his lectures on the " Science
of Religion," and Kingsley, in his pleasant if
superficial lectures on c Superstition and Science,  have given us some thoughts suggestive beyond the applications they make of
them, with a reference to which I may fitly
close these lectures.
Miiller, in attemipting to classify religions,
objects to the distinction of natural from
revealed religions, on the ground that no
religion is purely natural, and that revealed
religion should include the elements of what
is natural. He further objects that revealed
religion would be taken to include only the
religion of the Bible, while all other religions
210 
SCHOOLS OF TIIOUGHT.
would be relegated to the domain of natural
religion. Miiller's conclusion here is in perfect harmony with the teachings of the Bible,
but his reason for arriving at it shows that he
does not fully apprehend the matter in question. Natural religion in the view of the Bible
would include all that appertains to the original image of God in man and all the knowledge of the power and divinity of God which
man can learn from nature. This should and
does more or less exist in every religion whatever, and on many of these points, as we have
already seen, heathen religions occupy common ground with the Bible. On the other
hand, divine revelation to mail gives him those
higher spiritual truths which he cannot learn
for himself; and since, according to the Bible,
such revelation began in the time of the first
man, and was continued more or less in all the
following generations, this also must enter in
some degree into every form of religion. The
elements of natural and revealed religion are
therefore to be found side by side everywhere,
and it is for this reason that no religion is
wholly natural or wholly revealed, and that
no religion is wholly false.
The classification which Miiller adopts of
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RPEVIEW OF MODEPRN
religions into three divisions, corresponding
to the three great groups of languages, -the
Turanian, the Aryan, and the Semitic -is
more in accordance, as far as it goes, with
Bible history than he seems to be aware.
The Turanian religions are universally regarded as the most simple and primitive, and
they still exist in full force among the ruder
American and North Asiatic tribes, and in
more refined form in the oldest religion of
China.   What  are these religions?   They
include a belief in immortality, often developed
into a worship of ancestors, a recognition of a
God in nature, sometimes as a Great Spirit
and Creator, often with a generally diffused
deification of nature. These elements lie at
the basis of the Aryan and Semitic religions
as well. What are they all but more or less
disintegrated remnants of that primitive faith
in God and an immortal life which we find in
the early chapters of Genesis,- a more or less
corrupt survival of antediluvian and patriarchal religion?  The religion of the Aryan
races, as we have it in the ancient mythologies
of India and Greece, must have sprung from
a faith akin to that of the Turanians but
further developed. It begins with the idea of
212 
SCHOOLS OF TIIOUGHIT.
a I-leaven-father, or supreme god, Dyauspitar,
Zeus-pater or Jupiter, whose name Miiller
compares with the Christian invocation,'c Our
Father in IHeaven, and whose attributes are
distinctly related to some of those of the true
God. It goes on to add to this various mediatorial and sacrificial ideas, connected with
a series of principal gods and deified heroes
amalgamated with old nature-gods or manitous. It is, in short, aboriginal theism run
wild into a labyrinth of subordinate mnediators
and intercessors, and divorced by a corrupt
anthropomorphism  from  the  higher moral
aspects of religion. The Semitic religions, if
we except that of the Jews, followed,a similar
course of development, except that they clung
closer to monotheism, and to the human rather
than the physical elements of religion. Hence
a hilgher and grander character even in the
Semitic heathenism. The relation of this to
the Hebrew monotheism is very close, even in
the name of God; El, or Eloah, or Elohim,
being prevalent throughout.
Thus the iebrew Scriptures combine the
elements of the whole of the ancient religions,
and though they denounce the corruptions by
which heathens worshipped the creature ra ther
213, 
REVIEW OF MODERN
than the Creator, they are willing to acknowl edge the remnants of truth which corrupt
religions contain, as we find in Paul's speech
at Athens and in his Epistle to the Romans.
"Forasmuch as we are the offspring of God,
we ought not to think that the godhead is
like unto gold or silver or stone graven by
art and man's device.  Hiowbeit those past
times of ignorance God hath overlooked, but
now he commandeth all men everywhere to
repent."*   Although they knew God, they
glorified him not as God," and so were given
up to all base idolatries and evil ways. Still
when the Gentiles who have no law do by
nature the works of the law," and obey the
dictates of their conscience according to the
light they have, they will be so far justified
"in that day when God shall judge the secret
counsels of men." t This is the true spirit of
biblical archeology, and it should be applied
to the interpretation of all the traditional
beliefs of mankind, rather than the fanciful
theory of nature-myths.
What I mean may be farther illustrated by
a familiar example. One of the earliest and
most wide-spread idolatries is the worship of a
* Acts xvii.      t Romans ii.
214 
SCIOOLS OF THOUGHT.
female deity- Ishtar, Astarte, or Isis - mother
of men, or of a Saviour hero, or of both. The
root of this must have been in a tradition
similar to our story of Eve and of the fall, and
not, as often alleged, in a deification of the
moon or of night.* The naturalness of the
idea is seen in the wide-spread modern adoration of the Virgin Mary as the mother of God,
which has precisely the same relation to the
Gospel story of the nativity that the older
worship bears to the story of the fall; and just
as the older female deities were associated in
their worship with heaven and the heavenly
bodies, with seasons of the year and with
sacred places, so is the more modern goddess,
and but for the historical facts, it would be
quite easy to reduce the Virgin Queen of
Heaven to a nature myth.   Even those who
reject all historical grounds for the ancient
idolatries, and who ridicule what they are
pleased to term"  euhemerism," cannot deny the
historical basis of the adoration of the virgin,
* A remarkable vindication of this view has been recently
afforded by Smith's translations of the Chaldean account of the
deluge, in which Ishtar is represented as pleading for her children,
"I have begotten man, and let him not like the sons of the fishes
fill thie sea." The writer of this old legend was clearly a "eu-,
hemerist," and identified Ishtar with Eve.
215 
REVIEWT OF MODERN
or fail to see the analogy which it presents to
the worships derived, according to the Bible,
from the story of Eve.
I have endeavored to show that -the so called science of religion, in so far as there is
any true science in it, really brings us back
to the religion of the Bible; because there
seems room to fear that, in these times of
atheistic literature, such loose and partial and
at the same time attractive views as those of
Miiller may gain a currency to which they are
not entitled, unless with such qualifications
and explanations as those above suggested.
An interesting view of the relations of
science to superstition on the one hand, and
religion on the other, may be obtained from
the lectures of Canon Kingsley above referred
to. He defines superstition to be an unreasoning fear of the unknown, and very
cleverly traces the steps by which ignorant
and barbarous peoples may come to dread the
supposed demons of the storm, the rapid or
the landslip, and to attach superstitious reverence to animals and plants. No doubt this is
a large and fertile source, if not the principal
source, of superstition; and this accords with
what we have already seen of the use of the,
216 
SCHOOLS OF THO UGHT.
early chapters of Genesis in opposing such
tendencies.  He shows how superstition may
be remedied by a better knowledge of natural
laws derived from science; and no doubt there
is much truth in this, since, so soon as men
learn that natural processes depend on invariable and ascertainable laws, they learn
also to hope for mastery of nature and cease
to dread the evils which they can avert. He
fails, however, to observe that there are many
natural sources of pain and evil which no
science, however perfect, has hitherto succeeded in overcoming, and that a boundless
extent of the dreaded unknown must ever
surround the little circle of light in which
science enables us to stand. This can only be
finally overcome by the conviction that the
unknown is in the hand of a God who is our
Father and cares for us. This revelation of
God to man must ever encircle with its
infinite embrace the limited sphere of science.
In his lecture on Science he contrasts the
fear of the superstitious with the boldness of
the man who interrogates nature and seeks to
pry into her secrets. He singles out the races
and men who have thus boldly asserted the
mastery of man over nature, and justly gives
217 
REVIE W' OF MIODERN
the first place to the " Old Jews." Sketching
the superstitions of Egypt and Canaan, from
which they emerged, he says there were
among them a few men-" sages, prophets
— ho denounced superstition and the dread
of nature as the parent of all manner of vice
and misery, who said that they discovered in
the universe an order, a unity, a permanence
of law, which gave them courage instead of
fear. They found delight and not dread in
the thought that the universe obeyed a law
which could not be broken; that all things
continued to that day according to a certain
ordinance. They took a view of nature totally
new in that age- healthy, human, cheerful,
loving, trustful, and yet reverent- identical
with that which is beginning to prevail in our
own day. They defied those volcanic and
meteoric phenomena to which their countrymen were slaying their children in the clefts
of the rocks, and, like Theophrastus's superstitious man, pouring their drink-offerings to the
smooth stones of the valley, and declared they
would not fear, though the earth was moved,
and though the hills were carried into the
midst of the sea."  He adds "that no nation
has succeeded in perpetuating a school of in
218 
SCItOOLS OF TItOUGHT.
ductive physical science save those whose
minds have been saturated with these same
views of nature which they have- as an
historic fact- slowly but thoroughly learnt
from the historical writings of the Jewish
sages."
We have already seen how true all this is;
but it suggests two questions to which Kingsley does not refer, in deference perhaps to the
unbelief of a portion of his Royal Institution
audience. Of what use would such courage
and conviction be if there were not a paternal
God beyond the volcano, the earthquake and
the storm, who could and would overrule for
the good of his children those terrible agencies? The second is, how did the Jew more
than other men learn all this, and may it not
have been that God, in his grace and mercy,
revealed these great and glorious truths to the
prophets who taught them?  If not, why did
not the Jew himself go on to build on theism
the vast fabric of science which has grown up
among modern Christian nations? The only
possible answers to these questions bring us
back to the glorious old truth that all true
science, as well as true religion, must emanate
from the Father of lights, and from that
219 
REVIEW OF MODERN
Divine Word which, coming into the world,
lightens every man.
It is not necessary that I should refer here
to the many great and good men, our contemporaries, who have held fast to the truth of
God's word while exploring the mysteries of
nature, or who have rejoiced to magnify
God's works which men behold, while directing others to his higher spiritual revelation. Such men -men of faith, knowledge,
and action- God has highly magnified by giving them the chief places in science, in philosophy, and in his own spiritual kingdom; by
giving them power to benefit their fellowmen, and to live in their grateful remembrance. May we follow in their footsteps,
and enjoy in our own experience the combined blessings of faith and science. It has
been well said, "If men of piety were also
men of science, and if men of science were to
read the Scriptures, there would be more faith
on the earth and also more philosophy." Let
us hope that this is to be more and more
realized in the time to come.
I have now endeavored to sketch, however
roughly and imperfectly, the various shades
of ignorance and half knowledge of the Scrip
220 
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.
tures and of the power of God now prevalent,
from the dark negation of Spencer and Mill
up to the modified Christianity of Miuller and
King,sley, * and have endeavored to bring out
in contrast to these the grand and simple consistency of the Word of God, which in its
assertion of unity, order, and design in nature,
strikes the key-note of all true science and
philosophy, and, in its power for the regeneration of man and his return to the family of
God, contains all that can make human knowledge really valuable for the true happiness of
our species. If the Bible does all this in a
way plain, historical, and progressive, and
through the mseans of successive prophets in
the lapse of ages, this is a method more consonant with the procedure of God in nature,
and more suited to the condition of man than
any other. And, finally, I may state, as the
conclusion of the whole matter, that the Bible
contains within itself all that under God is
required to account for and dispose of all
forms of infidelity, and to turn to the best and
highest uses all that man can learn of nature;
* I have spoken of Kingsley as a living writer; but as these
pages are passing through the press, the Atlantic cable brings the
sad intelligence of his death.
221 
222   ]IODERN SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT.
if only its truths can be presented in an intelligent and loving manner, and by the lips of
men themselves animated by the Divine Spirit,
whose inspiration speaks in the Sacred Scriptures. That this may be the high aim of those
to whom these lectures have been more especially addressed, is my earnest wish and
prayer. 
APPENDIX.
A.
The Animal Nature of Eozoon.
S much unreasonable scepticismn has been ex      pressed in some quarters with reference to
the animal nature of  Eozoon Canadense, and as
the author is responsible for naming and first describing it as a Foraminifer, it may be well here to
give a short statement of the leading reasons for
regarding it as a fossil.
(1.) The Laurentian limestones may be supposed, like the great limestones of later formations,
to have been accumulated by the action of animal
life; and the probability of this is increased by their
association with large quantities of carbon in the
form of graphite, and with phosphates and metallic
sulphates. This probability has been well argued
by Hunt and Dana; and, if they are organic limestones, they might be expected still to show some
traces of organic remains.
(2.) The specimens of Eozoon occur in definitely
limited masses of various sizes and in certain layers of the limestone, in the manner in which the 
APPENDIX.
fossil Protozoans known as Stromatopore occur in
the Silurian limestones; and when weathered or
polished they present very much the appearance
of those Stromatoporae, and would be readily taken
by any collector for fossils of that type.
(3.) VVhen examined under the microscope, they
justify this presumption, by showing in their calcareous laminae distinct structures; namely, a proper
wall penetrated by microscopic tubuli, and larger
ramifying canals, penetrating the thicker parts of
the laminae. These are precisely the structures
found in the larger fossil Foramininifera of the Nummuline group, and in allied modern Foraminifera.
Further, the Foraminifera are oceanic animals of
very simple structure, and of very wide if not
universal distribution in geological time and geographically, and therefore among the most likely
creatures to be found in the oldest rocks.
(4.) Fragments having similar structures are
widely distributed ill the Laurentian limestones, in
addition to the larger masses showing the general
form.
(5.) The attempts which have been made to explain these forms by reference to crystallization,
concretionary action, and  pseudomorphism, are
negatived by the fact that while the portions of the
supposed fossil believed to have been its skeleton
are nearly always in the state of carbonate of lime,
the filling of the chambers and canals supposed to
have been occupied with the soft substance of the
224 
APPENDIX.
animal, is sometimes serpentine, sometimes loganite, sometimes pyroxene, and sometimes dolomite
or limestone. This variety of filling strengthelns
the conclusion that these forms were originally
calcareous organisms whose  cavities have been
filled, according to circumstances, with different
kinds of mineral matter.
Dr. Hunt has discussed, in his "Papers on Chemistry and Geology," the chemical conditions under
which Eozo,on has been fossilized, and the resenmblance of these to those which occur in the case of
other and undoubted fossils; and his reasoning, as
well as the association of glauiconite or greensand
with more modern foraminiferal deposits, and the
recent results of the "Challenger" dredgings in
the South Paclfic, even estalb)lish a probability that)
the hydrous silicates filling Eozoon, as well as tho se,
associated with organic remains in other formations,
may themselves be indirectly accumulated by thoe,
influence of organic beings in the sea.
B.
The Testimony of Palceontology with regard to Evo                     lution.
Professor Nicholson, of the Durham University
College at Newcastle, England, has recently commu-L
nica,ted to the Victoria Institute a very interesting
paper on this subject, in which he discusses the
15
225 
A. PPENVDIX.
explanations given by Darwin as to the failure of
the succession of fossil animals to show intermediate links connecting species, or other evidences of
derivation. He argues that the breaks in the geological succession of animals are not such as would
be expected on the theory of the derivation of
species from one another; that the imperfections
of the geological record, in such extensive and
continuous series as, for example, the Palaeozoic
Rocks of North America, are not so great as to
affect their testimony to the succession of forms
required, had this existed. That the sequence of
species allied to each other, in successive formations, is not such as to indicate a genetic connection of these species, except in the case of such
nearly allied specific forms as are probably mere
races; that the coming in of new  generic types
without apparent ancestry, and their disappearance
without apparent successors, are highly unfavorable
to the probability of derivation. I have myself, in
my report on the "Devonian Plants of Canada,"
held the same line of argument as regards fossil
plants, and have shown that it applies also to the
fossil mollusks and other invertebrates of the Pleistocene period.  The following extracts illustrate
these points.  The first is Dr. Nicholson's summary of conclusions.
"1. The common phenomenon 6f closely allied forms
directly succeeding one another in time, renders it a
reasonable supposition that in certain zool1ogical groups
226 
APPENDIX.
many forms so distinct as to have been described by
competent observers as distinct species may have descended from a single primitive ancestral type.
"2. The evidence at present in our hands is opposed
to the view that this )production of groups of allied
forms from as many primitive types has been effected
solely or mainly by "natural selection; " though it is
probable that this agency may have played a subordinate part in the process.
"3. New types of life are constantly making their
appearance, without, so far as we know, being preceded
by any closely allied types; and we have, therefore, no
positive ground for believing that the origin of such
types is due to evolution fi'om pre-existent forms.
"4. Variability -even in the most variable groups
— has never been shown to be indefinite; but, on the
contrary, appears to be confined witlin certain fixed
limits for each species; in some cases wide, in others
very narrow. Palieontology shows no instances in
which we can positively assert that the variability has
been unlimited; and, though we meet with types connected by intermediate links, we have also to account
for the existence of a vast number of isolated forms,
which, so far as our present knowledge goes, stand
alone, and are not intimately related to other forms.
"5. Even where we find types which may be regarded as strictly transitional or intermediate (as hlipparion in its relation to Anchitherium on the one hanld,
and Eqtus on the other hand), we nevertheless are
confionted with forms which are in themselves quite
distinct, and which could not be confounded with the
forms which they serve to connect.
22T 
APPENDIX.
"6. We cannot fairly have recourse to the "imper-.
fection of the record," as satisfactorily explaining the
absence of the numerous intermediate types required by
the Darwinian theory.  Such imperfection admittedly
exists, and is in some instances almnost hopelessly great.
On the other hand, we have had in other instances a
fairly complete series of successive forms preserved to
us.  This is the case with the Brachiopoda and Cephalopoda, for example, and it is by these and similarly
well-preserved groups that any theory of the origin of
species will have to be tested.
"7. The  examination of such  tolerably complete
groups affords support to the belief that evolution has
operated within certain limits, and has been one of the
causes which has led to the production of new forms.
Even in the best-preserved groups, however, we meet
constantly with isolated types, and we are incessantly
met with the sudden appearance of new types. An
excellent example of this is to be found in the sudden
apl)earance of new species of Ammonites in the Liassic
rocks, and their very definite ranlge and complete limitation to known  zones.  The  study of such groups
would, therefore, lead us to reject any exclusive doctrine of evolution.
"8. Whilst certain types of life exhibit a striking
variability, others exhlibit an equally striking persistence
and immobility. This would go fir to prove that
changes its external conditions have little to do with the
originz of variatiowns; since some forms appear to vary
even under approximately constant conditions, whilst
others remain unchanged even when submitted to the
most varying surroundings.
228 
APPENDIX.
"9. In some instances it can even be shown that
entire groups of species have existed without chlange
through periods which we may justly estimate as excee(dinrgly long.  Thus, Principal Dawson affirms that
of more thlan two hundred species of fossils, chiefly
MIollusca, fiom the Post-pliocene deposits of Canada,
no one form  can be shown to have varied materially,
during the long period which sel)arates the oldest
boutlder-clay from the present time, and in spite of
notable climatal and geographical changes.
"10. Upon the whole, we may conclude that paleontology, in its present stage of development, offers no
stroig support, or is directly opposed, to the special
theory of the origin of species advocated by Mr. Darwin. On the other hand, many known paleontological
facts would lead us to infer that, in certain cases and
within certain limits, new forms have been produced by
the modification of pre-existent types. Palaeontology,
therefore, would appear to support, at any rate, a partial doctrine of evolution.
"11. It remains for future consideration, whether
evolution - in so far as it has operated at all- has not
been effected by means of inherent tendencies impressed
upon living beings by the Creator.  On this view, evolution is not a mere disorderly and fortuitous process,
by which a given animal or plant is produced out of a
different one by the operation of chance and accidental
surroundings; but it becomes an orderly process, by
which certain forms  of life have f)-om the beginning
bee) imp)ressed w    ith the ijnherent powe of developing in
certaini fixec  directions, acnd thus  of giving rise to a
defiiite series of specific types.
229 
APPENDIX.
"12. It fuirther remains for filture consideration,
whether this orderly process of evolution has always
been effected in a gra(dual manner, and whether it has
not been occasionally effected by changes taking place
suddcnly and pee salturn.
"13. Finally, it remains to consider within what
limits evolution has operated, and what supplementary
causes may be found to have acted in the production of
new forms of life. Or, rather, it remains to consider
whether evolution is a main, or only a subsidiary, agency
in the production of new species."
The following are general conclusions on the
same subject, deduced firom the study of palmozoic
plants, and contained in my " Report on the Devo nian and Upper Silurian Plants of Canada, 1871."
"1. Botanists proceed on the assumption, vindicated
by experience, that, within the period of human observation, species have not materially varied or passed
into each other. We may make, for practical purposes,
the same assumption with regard to any given geological period, and may hold that for each such period
there are specific types, which, for the time at least, are
invariable.
"2. When we inquire what constitutes a good species
for any given period, we have reason to believe that
many  names in our lists represent merely  varietal
forms or erroneous determinations.  This is the case
even in the modern flora; and in fossil floras, through
the poverty of specimens, their fragmentary condition
and various states of preservation, it is still more likely
to occur.  Every revision of any group of fossils detects
230 
APPENDIX.
numerous synonymes, and of these many are incaiable
of detection without the comparison of large suites of
specimens.
"3. We may select from the flora of any geological
period certain forms, which I shall call specific types,
which may for such period be regarded as unchanging.
hlving settled such types, we may compare them with
simnilar forms in other periods; and such comparisons
will not be vitiated by the uncertainty which arises
fiom the comparison of so-called species, which may, in
many cases, be mere varietal forms, as distinguished
from specific types. Our types may be founded on
mere fiagments, provided that these are of such a nature
as to prove that they belong to distinct forms which
cannot pass into each other, at least within the limits of
one geological period.
"4. When  we  compare  the specific types of one
period with those of another immediately precedent or
subsequent, we shall find that some continue unchanged
through long intervals of geological time, that others
are represented by allied forms regarded either as
varietal or specific, and as derived or otherwise, accordingcr to the view which we may entertain as to the permanence of species. On the other hand, we also find
new types not rationally deducible on any theory of
derivation from those known in other periods.  Farther,
in comparing the types of a poor period with those of
one rich in species we may account for the appearance
of new types in the latter by the deficiency of information as to the former; where many new types appear
in the poorer period this conclusion seems less probable.
For example, new types appearing in poor formations,
.231 
APPENDIX.
like the Lower Erian and Lower Carboniferous, have
greater significance than if they appeared in the Middle
Erian or in the Coal Measures.
"5. When specific types disappear without any known
successors, un(ler circumstances in which it seems unlikely that we should have failed to discover their continuance, we may fiily assume that they have become
extinct, at least locally; and where the field of observation is very extensive, as in the great coal fields of
Europe and America, we may esteem such extinction
as practically general, at least for the northern hernisphere.  When  many  specific types become  extinct
together, or in close succession, we may suppose that
such extinction resulted fiom physical changes; but
where single types disappear, under circumstances in
which others of similar habit continue, we may not
unreasonably conjecture that, as Pictet has argued in
the case of animals, such types may have been in their
own nature limited in duration, and may have died out
without any external cause.
"6. With regard to the introduction of specific types,
we have not as yet a sufficient amount of iinformation.
Even if we fieely admit that ordinary specific forms, as
well as mere varieties, may result fiom derivation, this
by no means excludes the idea of primitive specific
types  originating in some other way.  Just as the
chemist, after analyzing all compounds and ascertaining
all allotropic forms, arrives at length at certain elements
not mutually transmutable or derivable, so the botanist
and zoilogist must expect sooner or later to arrive at
elementary specific types, which, if to be accounted for
at all, must be explained on some principle distinct
232 
APPENDIX.
from that of derivation. The position of many modern
biologists, in presence of this question, may be logically
the same with that of the ancient alchemists with reference to the chemical elements, though the fallacy in
the case of fossils may be of more difficult detection.
Our business at present, in the prosecution of palveobotany, is to discover, if possible, what are elementary
or original types, and, having found these, to inquire as
to the law of their creation."
The following review of the same subject is
based oni the new geological facts recently obtained in the  Cretaceous  and Tertiary beds  of
Western America, and is contained in my Annual
Address as President of the Natural History Society
of Montreal, May, 1874:  " Simple though the structure of these Western
regions is, it has already given rise to controversies,
more especially with reference to the age of the plants
and animals whose remains have been found in these
formations south of the United States boundary.  In
looking over these controversies, I am inclined in the
first place to believe that we have in the West a grad
ual passage from the Cretaceous to the Tertiary beds,
and that these last may scarcely admit of a definite
division into Eocene and Miocene. We may thus have
in these regions the means of bridging over what has
been one of the widest gaps in the earth's history, and
of repairing one of the greatest imperfections in the
geological record.
"Physically, the change firom the Cretaceous to the
Tertiary was one of continental elevation, -drying up
233 
APPENDIX.
the oceanic waters in which the marine animals of tne
Cretaceous lived, and affording constantly increasing
scope f)r land animals and plants. Thus it must have
happened that the marine Cretaceous animals disappeared first fiom the high lands and lingered longest in
the valleys, while the life of the Tertiary came on first
in the hills and was more tardily introduced on the
plains. Hence it has arisen that many beds which
Sieek and Cope regard as Cretaceous on the evidence
of animal fossils, Newberry and Lesquereux regard as
Tertiary on the evidence of fossil plants.  This depends
oul the general law that in times of continental elevation newer productions of the land are mixed with
more antique inhabitants of the sea; while on the contrary in times of subsidence older land creatures are
liable to be mixed with newer products of the sea.
Thus, in Vancouver's Island, plants which  Ileer at
first regarded as Miocene, have been washed down into
waters in which Cretaceous shell-fishes still swarmed.
Thus Cope maintains that the lignite-bearing or Fort
Union group contains remains of Cretaceous reptiles,
while to the fossil botanist its plants appear to be
unquestionably Tertiary. Hence also we are told that
the skeleton of a Cretaceous Dinosaur has been found
stuffed with leaves which Lesquereux regards as Eocene.
At first these apparent anachronisms seem puzzling, and
they interfere much with arbitrary classifications. Still
they are perfectly natural, and to be expected where a
true geological transition occurs.  They afford, moreover, an opportunity of settling the question whether
the introduction of living things is a slow and gradual
evolution of new types by descent with modification, or
234 
APPENDIX.
whether, according to the law so ably illustrated by
Barrande in the case of the Cephalopods and Trilobites,
new forms are introduced abundantly and in perfection
at once. The physical change was apparently of the
most gradual character. Was it so with the organic
change? That it was not is apparent from the filct that
both Dr. Asa Gray and Mr. Cope, who try to press this
transition into the service of evolution, are obliged in
the last resort to admit that the new flora and fauna
must have migrated into the region from some other
place.  Gray seems to think that the plants came from
the north, which other considerations render not improbable.  Cope supposes the mammals came from the
south. Neither seems to consider that if giant Sequoias
and Dicotyledonous trees and large herbivorous mammnalia arose in the Cretaceous or early Tertiary, and have
continued substantially unimproved ever since, they
must have existed somewhere for periods far greater
than that which intervenes between the Cretaceous and
the present, in order to give them time to be evolved
from inferior types; and that we thus only push back
the difficulty of their origin, with the additional disadvantage of having to admit a most portentous and fatal
imperfection in our geological record.
"The actual facts are these.  The flora. of modern type
comes into being in the Cretaceous of the West without
any known ancestors, and it extends with so little
change to our time that some of the Cretaceous species
are probably only varietally distinct from those now
living. On the other hand the previous Jurassic flora
had died out apparently without successors. In like
manner the Cretaceous Dinosaurs and Cephalopods
235 
APPENDIX.
disappear without progeny, though one knows no reason why they mirght not still live on the Pacific Coast.
The Eocene mammals make their appearance in a like
mysterious way.  This is precisely what we  should
expect if groups of species are introduced at once by
some creative process. It can be explained on the
theory of evolution, only by taking for granted all that
ought to be proved, and imagining series of causes and
effects of which no trace remains in the record.
"The problems for solution arc, however, much more
complicated than the derivationists seem to suppose.
Let us illustrate this by the plants. The Cretaceous
flora of North America is in its general type similar to
that of the Western and Southern part of the continent
at present. It is also so like that of the Miocene of
Europe that they have been supposed to be identical.
In Europe, however, the Cretaceous and Eocene floras,
though with some American forms, have a different
aspect, more akin to that of floras of the Southern Hemisphere. There have therefore been more fluctuations
in Europe than in America, where an identical group of
genera seems to have continued from the Cretaceous
until now. Nay, there is reason to believe that some
of the oldest of these species are not more than varietally distinct firom their modern successors. Some that
can be traced very far back are absolutely identical with
modern forms.  For example, I have seen specimens of
a fern collected by Dr. Newberry from the Fort-Union
group of the Western States, one of those groups disputed as of Cretaceous or Tertiaiy date, which is absolutely identical with a fern found by Mr. G. M. Dawson
in the Lignite Tertiary of Manitoba, and also with
236 
APPENDTX.
specimens described by the Duke of Argyle firom the
Miocene plant beds of Miull. Further, it is undoubtedly
our common Canadian sensitive fern, -  Onoclea sensibilis. There is every reason to believe that this is
merely one example out of many, of plants that were
once spread over Europe and America, and have come
down to us unmodified throughout all the vicissitudes
of the Tertiary ages.  But while this is the case, some
species have disappeared without known successors, and
others have come in without known predecessors. Nay,
whole floras have come in without known origin. Since
the Miocene age the great Arctic flora has spread itself
all around the globe, the distinctive flora of North Eastern America and that of Ellrope have made their appearance, and the great Miocene flora, once almost
universal in the Northern Hemisphere, has as a whole
been restricted to a narrow area in Western and warm
temperate North America. Even if with Gray, in his
address of two years ago before the American Association, we are to take for granted that the giant Pines
(Sequoias) of California are modified descendants of
those which flourished all over America and Europe in
the Miocene, Eocene, and Cretaceous, we have in these
merely an exceptional case to set against the broad
general facts. Even this exception fails of evolutionary
significance, when we consider that the two species of
Sequoia which have been taken as special examples
are at best merely survivors of many or several species
known in the Cretaceous and Tertiary. The process of
selection here has been merely the dropping out of sev eral species which are of unknown origin, and the sur vival in a very limited area of two, which are even now
237 
APPENDIX.
probably verging on extinction.  In other words, the
two extant species of Sequoia may have continued
unchanged except varietally from Mesozoic times, and
other species existed then tnd since which have disap peared; but as to how any of them began to exist we
know nothling, except that, for some mysterious reason,
there were more numerous and far more widely dis tributed species in the early days of the group than now.
This is precisely Barrande's conclusion as to the Paleo zoic Trilobites and Cephalopods, and my own conclu sion as to the Devonian and Carboniferous plants.  The
record tells of rapid culmination; and then not evolution, but elimination by the struggle for existence.
"In the mean time the record of the rocks is thus decidedly against evolutionists in the particular points to
which I have above adverted, more especially in the
abrupt appearance of new forms under several specific
types and without apparent predecessors.  They should
direct their attention in this connection to the appearance of Foraminifera in the Laurentian; of Sponges,
Brachiopods, Trilobites, Phyllopods, Crinoids, and Cephalopods in the older Palmozoic; of Land Snails, Millipedes, Insects, Fishes, Labyrinthodonts, Acrogens and
Gymnosperms in the middle and later Palaeozoic; of
Belemnites, Dinosaurs, Ornithosaurs, and other Reptiles,
and of Marsupial Mammals and Dicotyledonous trees
in the Mesozoic; of Placental Mammals and Man in the
Tertiary and MIodern. When they shall have shown
the gradations by which these, out of the many cases
which may be cited, have been introduced, and this
without assuming an im-erfection in the record incredible in itself and destructive of its value as a history of
238 
APPENDIX.
the earth, they may be in a position to rebuke us for
our unbelief
"But it may be asked: Have we no positive doctrine as to the introduction of species?  In answer I
would say that it is conceivable that the origin of species may be one of those ultimate facts beyond which
science by its own legitimate methods cannot pass, and
that all we can hope for is to know something of the
modes of action of the creative force and of the modifications of which species when introduced are susceptible. In any case it is by searching for these latter
truths that we may hope successfully to approach the
great mystery of the origin of life. It is with reference
to these truths also that the discussion of modern theories of derivation has been chiefly valuable; and, in so
far as established, they will remain as substantial results
after these theories have been exploded. Among such
truths I may mention the following: We have learned
that in geological time species tend to arise in groups
of like forms, perhaps in many parts of the world at
once; so that genera and families culminate rapidly,
then become stationary or slowly descend, and become
restricted in number of species and in range.  WVe have
learned that in like manner each specific type has capacities for the production of varietal and race forms
which are usually exercised to the utmost in the early
stages of its existence, and then remain fixed, or disappear and re-appear as circumstances may arise, and
finally the races fall off one by one as it approaches
extinction. Many of these races and varieties constitute conventional species as distinguished from natural
species; and, in so far as they are concerned, descent
239 
APPENDIX.
with modification occurs, though under very complex
laws, and admitting of retrogression just as much as of
advance.  We have also learned that in the progress of
the earth's history embryonic, generalized, and composite types take precedence in time of more specialized
types, and thus that higher forms of low types precede
higher types, and are often replaced by them.   We
are further, as the relation of varieties and species is
investigated and their extension in time traced, becoming more and more convinced of the marvellous permanence of specific types, and of their powers of almost
indefinite propagation in time.  Lastly, vast stores of
facts are being accumulated as to the mi,gration of species from one area to another, and as to the connection
of the great secular elevations and subsidences of continents with theirintroduction and extinction. All these
are substantial gains to science, and the time is at
hand when they will lead to more stable theories of
the history of life on the earth than those now current."
In the mean time it is daily becoming more andl
more evident that the brilliant fabric of speculation
erected by Darwin can scarcely sustain its own
weight, still less afford any solid ground on which
to build a satisfactory theory of the origin of species; and that we must be prepared to abandon
the enticing but unsubstantial foundation of analogy and go back to our old though slow mode of
painful collection of facts and inductive reasoning
thereon, if we desire in any degree to obtain a
solution of the mystery of life.
240 
APPENDIX.
I cannot better close this note than with the testimony of the lamented Agassiz in his latest paper
on the hypothesis of evolution.  "As a paloeontologist I have from the beginning stood aloof from
this new theory of transmutation now so widely
admitted by the scientific world. Its doctrines in
fact contradict what the animal forms buried in the
rocky strata of our earth tell us of their own introduction and succession on the surface of the globe."
C.
Other Tiews as to the Antiquity of Prehistoric Man.
In the text I have not entered into the discussion of some questions which have been raised as
to Palseocosmic man, and which may properly be
noticed here.
Professor Boyd Dawkins of Owen's College,
Manchester, is one of the most zealous and successful students of the Pleistocene and Modern
deposits of England, and has given many of his
results and a summary of the general state of the
subject in his recent work entitled "Cave Huntinig." He regards the skulls and skeletons of
Engis, Cro-magnon, and Mentone as of uncertain
age, and refuses to admit their " Paleolithic" or
Paleocosmic date.   In this he  differs from the
mnany able observers who have studied the actual
relations of these remains. His principal reasons
16
241 
APPENDIX.
for his scepticism are the following: First, the
possibility that these bones may have accidentally
or by interment at a later date become mixed with
the remains of the Mammoth age; secondly, the
improbability of men of so high a type physically
having existed at so early a period; and thirdly,
the resemblance of the implements, &c., of the Palaeolithic age to those of the Esquimaux, whom he
supposes to be the modern representatives of these
ancient people.
To these objections it may be answered: (1.)
That, but for the foregone conclusion that the
oldest men were of rude and brutal type, and the
higher character of these remains, such doubts
would probably not have occurred to any one.
(2.) That the evidence collected by Schmerling,
Dupont, Lartet, Riviere, and others seems sufficient
to prove the age of the remains, more especially in
the case of the Engis skull and the skeleton of
Mentone, while facts stated by Dawkins himself as
to the condition of the ivory objects found with the
Paviland skeleton in England seem to confirm the
testimony of the continental observers. (3.) All
these skeletons so closely resemble each other as to
prove identity of race, and they differ from any of
the Neocosmic or historic races that have succeeded
them. (4.) If we refuse to accept these as remains
of Palmocosmic men, we have then the remarkable
anomaly of the existence of great quantities of
implements and other relics of this age without
242 
APPENDIX.
any certain osseous debris of the people to whom
they have belonged.  (5.) The carving on the
bone and ivory objects found in the French "Palmolithic " caves bespeaks a people of more than
average taste and intelligence, while the character
of the Palmolithic  imnplements generally would:
indicate a people of great muscular power  and
rude habits, and in both these respects the skulls,
and skeletons found correspond with the other,
remains. (6.) The resemblance between the Pal-.
Neolithic weapons and those of the Esquimaux does
not necessarily imply a precise accordance in the:
other characteristics of the two peoples. Further,
the Esquimaux are long-headed, and are allied by
language and customs to the Kutchin and other
races of North America, who are of good bodily
development; so that the imagined resemblance to'
them would not necessarily militate against the
stature or dolichocephalism of the European abo-.
rigines.
Dawkins supposes a long interval of time between the Neolithic or Neocosmic age and the
Palaolithic.  His arguments for this, based on
extinction of animals, erosion of valleys and de-i
posits in caves, have already been discussed in the
text, and are of no real geological force.  He
includes the whole period preceding the Neocosminic age under the term Pleistocene, and divides
this into three subordinate periods: (1.) The late
Pleistocene, in which are included both the Rein
243. 
APPENDIX.
deer and Mammoth periods of the French geologists, and which he truly says cannot be separated
by animal remains, though they are separated by'the
occurrence of a subsidence of the land. This late
Pleistocene corresponds, in so far as man is concerned, with our Palmocosmic age. (2.) The middle Pleistocene, which corresponds with the early
Glacial and later Pre-glacial periods, and in which
Europe was inhabited by many species of mammalia
which had disappeared in the Post-glacial or late
Pleistocene.  Dawkins refers the earliest traces of
man to this age, but on no better grounds than the
flint flakes of the Crayford clay and Brixham
cave, - which are probably natural, - and the
occurrence of certain boulders (supposed, on altogether insufficient evidence, to have been deposited
by a glacier), in connection with a fragment of bone,
believed to be human, in the Victoria cave at Settle
in Yorkshire. It is a curious illustration of the set
of opinion in England at present, and the compulsion which it imposes on honest workers, that Dawkins should hold the Engis skull to be of uncertain
age, while he trusts to such evidences as these.
It is not pretended that any very definite limits
can be assigned to these subdivisions of the Pleistocene age; and the physical evidence seems to show
that the late Pleistocene should b)e divided into
two portions by a subsidence which inaugurates
the Neocosmic or Modern age, and that the middle
Pleistocene is the time of re-elevation from the
244 
APPENDIX.
great subsidence of the early Pleistocene, which
subsidence was gradual and closed the Pliocene
age. This, as I have elsewhere shown, is the only
view which enables us to correlate the deposits of
these ages on the two sides of the Atlantic.
Geikie, in his work"  The great Ice Age," - which
is really an extended plea for the views of the extreme glacialists, which are now beginning to give
place to more common-sense conclusions, -believes
man to have been Pre-glacial on somewhat different grounds. Holding the Pliocene to have been
followed by a time of intense cold and by a "continental ice cap," he supposes a warm interval in
which man made his appearance in Europe, succeeded by a second glacial age in which man was
exterminated or expelled, to return with the modern animals. This theory depends altogether on
the requirements of the hypothesis of land glaciation in the temperate latitudes, and obliges the
ingenious author to separate from each other the
undoubtedly contemporary northern and southern
forms of animals of the proper Post-glacial age, in
which he intercalates his second period of glaciation. On this last point I have elsewhere made
the following remarks: * -
"It is most unsafe to reason as to the climate required
by extinct mammalia, especially in contravention of the
evidence of contemporaneous existence afforded by the
* "Leisure Hour," Nov., 1874.
245 
APPENDIX.
occurrence of their remains. Even the hippopotamus
of the English caves andl gravels may have been protected by a coating of fat like the walrus. The elevated
land of Post-glacial Europe, if it were clothed with forests, would have precisely the climatal properties which
we know in America and Asia favor the intermixture
of the animals of different latitudes. Again, that socalled Palmeolithic implements are not found over the
boulder deposits of North Britain is merely a consequence of the fact that they are in the main limited to
the chalk and flint districts, a circumstance which, as
already hinted, throws grave doubts on their being even
so ancient as usually supposed, and gives them a local
rather than a chronological character.   Further, in
Eastern America we know that the higher elevation of
the land immediately preceding the Modern period was
accompanied by a milder climate than that which now
prevails, and that this occurred after the close of the
Glacial period. I must, therefore, reject this supposed
later Glacial age intervening between Palmolithic and
Modern man, and maintain that there is no proof of the
existence of man earlier than the close of the Glacial
age proper."
In opposition to these arrangements of Geikie
and Dawkins, I may place the following tabular
view of the succession in Great Britain, condensed
from the summary given in Lyell's "Antiquity of
Man," pp. 331 et seq.:
246 
APPENDIX.
iVNewer Pliocene.
Continental Period. Land el-   Cromer Forest bed.
evated.  Climate mild... I
Post-pliocene or Pleistocene.
Period of Submergence.
Land depressed 1,000 feet or
more. Climate cold, and much
floating ice.........
Second Continental  Period.
Land again elevated until much 
higher  than  at present,  and 
British Islands united to main 
land.  Climate continental, and 
surface densely wooded...        v
Modern.
Age of Amiens gravels and
raised beaches, and close of
Palmocosmic and beginning
of Neocosmic age. Men sub jected to great diminution of
numbers by floods and subsi dences.   Several species of
mammals become extinct.
Stone age of antiquaries.
Bronze and Iron ages of anti  quaries.
Mo der n or Historic age.  L    and
slowly subsiding......
This I believe expresses as nearly as possible the
latest ascertained results of geological inquiry, and
with local modifications it is applicable to the
whole Northern Hemisphere.
I add here two facts which show how dangerous
it is to reason, as to the age of superficial deposits,
on imperfect data. It has been constantly asserted
that the thick crusts of stalagmite overlying cave
deposits are a proof of great antiquity. But Daw
I
24T
Passage of German flora into
England. Mammoth ancl
Megaceros and Cave Bear,
etc., living in Europe. Ad vent of Palmocosmic Man. -
Period of depression and oscillation, ending in re-elevation,
and present geographical condition of Europe...... 
APPENDIX.
kins has shown that the stalagmite in the cave of
Ingleborough is growing at the rate of a quarter of
an inch per annum, and still more rapid deposition
has been shown in the case of waters flowing from
mines.   Hence, as Dawkins well remarks,  the
thick beds of stalagmite in Kent's Hiole and other
caves, may have accumnulated in less than one
thousand years. Yet this stalagmite accumulation
is one argument, if not the sole argument, for the
great antiquity of the implements found in this
cave, and described in the Reports of the British
Association Committee. Stalagmite crusts are a
warrant in so far for the undisturbed condition of
the deposits found under them, but not for their
antiquity. Much of the evidence for the great
antiquity of man has been derived from the occurrence of flint flakes in the deposits of caves; but
there is good ground for the suspicion that many
of these flakes are natural and have not been used
by man. The Brixham cave, for example, is constantly referred to as having afforded evidence of
man in its lowest beds, in the form of flint " knives"
or "implements" found by explorations undertaken under the auspices of the Royal Society.
Yet the actual fact appears to be that the objects
found were merely chips of flint, without any clear
evidence of human use; that they occurred mixed
with gravel; and that similar flakes, mixed with
similar gravel, form a constituent of the ordinary
surface deposits in the vicinity of the cave. Fur
248 
APPENDIX.
ther, defective observations at one time led to the
inference that the valley near the cave must have
been excavated to a depth of seventy feet since
the gravel found with these supposed knives was
swept into it, whereas it now appears that the
material of similar gravel is found on the same side
with the cave.  These facts are brought out in a
recent paper by Mr. Whitley,* and they contain an
emphatic warning to geologists against committing
themselves to doubtful conclusions of this kind,
fitted not only to propagate error, but to bring geological evidence itself into disrepute.
Geologists were perhaps at one time too sceptical
as to evidences of prehistoric man; but the heedlessness with which some of them have been running into the opposite extreme is on all accounts
greatly to be deprecated. Several causes have I
think contributed to this result. One is the tendency to apply by a false analogy the evidence as
to the great antiquity of the older formations to
the human period.  Another is the influence of
the evolutionist phlilosophy, which requires almost
unlimited time for the process of development, and
besides has been training geologists to its own
loose modes of argument from analogy and disregard of facts and induction. A third, I fear, is the
straining after sensationalism and premature and
startling generalizations, which has been one of
the evil effects of the rapid extension of scientific
* "Transactions Victoria Institute, 1874."
249 
APPENDIX.
discovery, and of the struggle for existence on the
part of scientific writers. These causes are probably temporary, and facts are accumulating which
at no distant time will place our knowledge of this
subject on a more solid basis.
D.
The Deluge.
A separate lecture might well have been devoted
to this subject, which I have, however, already
noticed in " Archaia." I may merely state here:
(1.) That there are somle grounds for anticipating
that this event may yet be identified with the Postglacial or modern subsidence which geology indicates, in which case Paleocosmic man would
correspond to Antediluvian man. (2.) That the
Scriptural deluge was probably universal only in
the sense of being co-extensive with the abodes of
Antediluvian man. (3.) That the terms of the
Scripture record in reference to the animals said to
have been preserved and destroyed, give reason to
believe that some species were at least locally rendered extinct by the deluge. Five distinct lists
are given, a comparison of which shows that only
certain specified species were to be taken into the
ark. (4.) The structure of the narrative shows
that it is to be taken as the report of an eye-witness,
a sort of" log" of the deluge, — and is to be
250 
APPENDIX.
understood in this sense; a view corroborated by
the structure of the Chaldean version, which has
been deciphered on the clay tablets of Nineveh.
E.
Professor Pritchard on Science and Religion.
In an address before the Church Congress at
Brighton, Professor Pritchard, of Oxford, has
given a summary of the actual position of science
with reference to religion, as it appears in England. He has no objection to evolution if actually
proved, and if considered as a mode of operation
of the Creator; and he quotes Bishop Butler's
saying, that, "an intelligent Author of nature
being supposed, it makes no alteration in the matter before us whether he acts in nature every
moment, or at once contrived and executed his
own part in the plan of the world." Hlie shows,
however, that evolution, as maintained by Spencer
and Darwin, is not really proved by science; and
he ably argues for design from the structure of the
eye, and urges against Darwin the arguments of
his ally Wallace against the derivation of man
from lower animals. These arguments I have not
noticed in this work, because Wallace's previous
admissions as to the origin of the lower animals
weaken very much their force, though they are
valuable as showing that the gap between the
251 
APPENDIX.
higher nature of man and the lower animals is
more difficult to bridge over than any other.
Pritchard makles a good point in his own special
field, by bringing out, in opposition to the idea of
all things being potentially contained in atoms,
the views of Herschel and Maxwell, as follows: -
"Our knowledge of these atomic forces, so far as it
at present extends, does not leave us in serious doubt
as to their origin; for there is a very strong presumptive evidence drawn from the results of the most modern scientific investigation that they are neither eternal
nor the products of evolution. No philosopher of recent times was better acquainted than Sir J. Ilerschel
with the interior mechanism of nature.   From  his
contemplation of the remarkably constant, definite,
and restricted, yet various and powerful interactions
of these elementary molecules, he was forced to the
conviction that they possessed all the characteristics
of manufjictured articles. The expression is inemorable, accurate, and graphic; it may become one of the
everlasting possessions of mankind. Professor Mlaxwell, a man whose mind has been trained by the mental discipline of the same noble university, airives at
the same conclusion; but as his knowledge has exceeded that of Hierschel on this point, so he goes firther in the same direction of thought.' No theory of
evolution,' he says,'can be formed to account for the
similarity of the molecules throughout all time, and
throughout the whole region of the stellar universe, for
evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and
the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction.''None of the processes of
252 
APPENDIX.
nature, since the time when nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any
molecule. On the other hand, the exact equality of
each molecule to all others of the same kind precludes
the idea of its being eternal and self-existent. We
have reached the utmost limits of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that, because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent, it must have been
created. These molecules,' he adds,' continue this day
as they were created, perfect in number and measure
and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations
after truth in statement and justice in action, which we
reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours
because they are the essential constituents of the image
of him who in the beginning created not only the
heaven and the earth, but the materials of which
heaven and earth consist.' And this, my friends, this
is the true outcome of the deepest, the most exact, and
the most recent science of our age. A grander utterance has not come from the mind of a philosopher since
the days when Newton concluded his'Principia' by
his immortal scholium on the majestic personality of
the Creator and Lord of the universe."
After giving some good advice to scientific men
as to the study of religious literature, and to theologianrs as to the study of nature, he concludes
with the following hopeful views of the present
state of the subject:
"There is no need to be frightened at the phantoms
raised by such terms as matter, and force, and mole
253 
APPENDIX.
cules, and protoplasmic energy, and rhythmic vibrations of the brain; there are no real terrors in a philosophy which affirms the conceivability that two and two
might possibly make five; or in that which predicates
that an infinite number of straight lines constitute a
finite surface; or in that which denies all evidence of
a design in nature; or in that which assimilates the
motives which induce a parent to support his offspring
to the pleasures derived firom wine and music; or in
that which boldly asserts the unknowableness of the
Supreme, and the vanity of prayer. Surely, philosophies which involve results such as these have no permanent grasp on human nature; they are in themselves
suicidal, and, in their turn, and after their brief day,
will, like other such philosophies, be refuted or denied
by the next comer, and are doomed to accomplish the
happy despatch."
254 
I N D EX.
PA.GE
Bible, its idea of heavens..  48
on the atmosphere...   51
on the starry heaven.  63
on the third heaven..  69
on  cr     eative days...  84
on chaos......  91
its idea of the earth. 98,101
on creation of animals. 114
on primitive man... 175
on immortality.... 205
on ethnic religions... 211
on superstitious fears.. 217
on primitive theology.. 206
Birds, creation of..... 116
Bottles of heaven.....  56
Brachycephalic skulls.... 158
PAGE
Addison's hymn.....  16
2Eons, creative.........       84
Agassiz on derivation... 241
species....  135
Age of the earth...... 81
Ahaz, sun-dial of.....  66
" Aiones," explained....  87
America, pre-historic man in. 162
Animals, creation of.... 119
Antediluvians........ 178
Antiquity of the earth..      78
man....159, 241
Archeliology.........           201
Archebiosis.........          196
Aryan religions......     212
Astronomy of the Bible...  64
Atoms, doctrine of.. 187, 193, 252
Atmosphere, creation of...  51
Augustine on creative days.  85
Aurochs..........           161
Automatism, animal.... 197
Cambrian age.....
Carpenter on mental physiology
Chaos, nature of......
Continents, origin of....
Cranial characters of ancient
men...........
Creation as related to science.
nature of.....
Crust of the earth.....
Cro-magnon, cave of.
Baal, worship of......
"1 Bara".........
Bastian on archebiosis...
Beale on protoplasm..
Beauty in nature.....
B3eginning, the......
" Bemah," explained....
Bible not to teach science..
its manner of treating
nature......
on law, order, etc..
on miracles...
on development.
teleology of..
on type in nature...
Darwin, theory of........139
Dawkins on antiquity of man.  241
Days, creative......        84
Deep, the........        91
Deluge, the.......         250
Derivation, theories of...  132
Design, argument for.. 40,188
Development, in nature.   35
Dinosaurs........     122
Dolichocephalic men...  158
122
188
91
97
167
1 25
90
97
164
60
49
197
198
38
49
ill
20
23
30
33
35
37
40 
INDEX.
Guizot, quoted.......
Dry land, origin of....
Dupont on Belgian caves.
"Hayath," exiplained.... 114
Heavens...................47
classified..............50
atmospheric............51
third................. 69
starry................64
as symbol...........67
Herodotus, quoted.........34
Horse, ancestry of.....    144
Hunt on primeval chemistry.  91
Huxley on Engis skull... 171
on protoplasm..128,197
Earth, the word explain ed.
hung on nothing. ~
supported on bases
Eden of the Bible
Elijah's prayer.
Engis, cave of
skull of......
Eozoon........
animal nature of...
Ether godls.......
Euhemerism......
Evil in nature
Evolution.......
Expanse, the......
Eye, origin of......
Intervention, divine....
Immortality, belief in...
in Old Testament
Isaiah on heavens......
Female divinities....         2
Firmament......
not solid......
Fishes, creation of....
Fossil remains.....
plaits an d derivation
Foundations of the earth.
Fourth commandment..
Job,  xxvi........*
Xxxvi..........
Joshiua's miracle...
Kingsley on superstition... 216
La Madelaine, cave of..
Lartet and  Christy on Cro
m.agiion.......
Laurentian rocks....
Law in nature.....
of variation
Leaf, structure of....
Light, creation of....
and luminaries..
Lubbock, referred to...
Geikie on antiquity of man..
General relations of Bible and
science........
Geology, its generalizations 
compared with Bible
tabular sumnmary of.
its order of creation.
its explanation of ori          gin of land...
its testimony as to
first plants...
its history of animal
life......
its testimony as to
derivation....
its testimony as to
origin of man..
its testimony as to
antiquity of man.
Mammalia, creation of... 123
Mammothl age......         156
Man, origin of.......      152
antiquity of....159, 241
Bible history of.... 176
Materialistic science.... 191
McCosh on types.....  41
oMentone, cave of......    163
iseteorology of the Bible...  53
Mill, referred to.... 35, 40,188
Milton on the atmnosphere..  51
Mi ning described in Job... 102
256
PAGE
. 97
. 157
PAGE
. 14
101
105
101
176
60
163
171
120
223
53
215
9, 35
187
51
194
215
51
54
122
80
230
101
86
245
20
79
88
83
88
97
106
117
142
149
159
150
206
42
203
205
65
.. 102
.. 58
.. 66
. 170
. 165
. 120
30, 31
. 138
. 108
. 44
63,64
. 202
Glacial age........
God, primitive knowledge of. 
INDEX.
Revelation, its sphere...  21
of St. John...  67
Rivi6re on Mentone cave.. 163
Roliing up of heaven...        55
Sabbath, doctrine of...         87
Sadducees, characterized..   185
Sceptical philosophies... 186
Science as distinct from reve lation......... 9, 22
Science to be free.....  15
Sea, origin of  life in.......   120
Semit ic r     eligions..... 213
"Shamayim," explained..   50
"Sheretz," explained....  115
Sidereal   heaven.....    61
Species, questions a s to...   134
origin of..... 132
Spencer's philosophy.... 186
Spirit of God........         95
Spiritual heaven.....  69
Strauss on origin of life       126
Superstition, its origin.. 27, 216
Table of Biblical and geological
periods.............1Wio     76
Table of  geological history..  83
" Tannin," explained....  115
Teleology of Bible.....  37
Third heaven.......   69
Turanian race...... 158
religions.... 212
Tylor, referred to..... 202
Tyndall on life.....129, 193
Type in the Bible.....  40
Unity in nature......  27
Use in nature.......  30
Variation, laws of..... 138
Vegetation, the first.... 105
Waters above the heavens..  51
Weather gods......  53
Whitley on antiquity of man   249
Wilson on American skulls.. 172
Windows of heaven....  56
"Yom," explained.....   85
Miracle.................  66
Monotheism as related to   s      ci  ence...........                      27
Muller, Max, on  s             cience  of
religion........... 210
Mythology not in Bible...  24
ho w                    explained.. 214
N    at ure as referred                 to in Bible   23
N     eanderthal skull....  171
lNeocosmic men.......         155
"Neolithic" age....... 154
"Nephilim "...2 178
Nicholson   on      derivation... 225
"O r," name  of light.... 63
Order in nature......      30
in creation.....  88
Origin of linfe.......           113
Paloeocosmic men..... 155
Paloeolithici " age..... 154
Pantheism........   191
Palreontology       and derivation
144, 225
Paul on unity of God....       192
on argument of design. 189
on germination of seed. 199
Physical theories of life... 126
Plan  in nature.........    30
Pl anetary heaven.....  64
Plants, creation of.....  105
Pleistocene period..... 150
Ponton on phases of nature.  72
Post-glacial age...... 151
Prayer..:..... 59, 66
Primordial age...... 121
Pritchard on science and re ligion.........  251
Progress in nature.....  35
Psalm viii........  65
xix.                     18
civ...... 57, 102
Rain, prayer for......  59
" Rakiah," explained....  51
Reindeer age....... 156
Reptiles, creation of.... 122
ILesurrection, doctrine of.. 200
25T
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