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	<!5 PRINCETON, N. J. ^>
Shelj	BL 240 .P754 1871 ^ Pratt, John Henry, d. 1871. Scripture and science not a variance	(

SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE NOT AT VARIANCE.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

ECLECTIC NOTES;

Or, Discussions on Keligious Topics by the Members of the Eclect Society of London, from a.d. 1798 to 1813. Second Edition. Price 105. M. Some of the Members at this time were the Revs. Richard Cecil, John Venn, Thomas Scott, John Newton, Josiah Pratt.

,ic

PARAPHRASE OF THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN,

According to the Horc- Apomlypticm ot the Rev. E. B. Ellioii. Price 2s. Or/.

A TREATISE ON ATTRACTIONS, LA PLACE'S FUNCTIONS, AND THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH.

Fourth Edition. Price 6s. Qd.

The Second i:.lition of the author's work on 'Mechanical Philosophy' has beersomeyeas'otof print, and has been succeeded by different treatises, by vaiTous aXrs, on its%everal subjects. The Treatise here advertised is an Expansion of tliat part of the Mechanical Philosophy which U-eated of Attrac- Uons and the Figure of the Earth. The autlior has endeavoured to supply Sie want of a work on a subject of great importance and -S^y^^^r^.^^- Ta Place's Co-efficients and Functions, and the calculation of the Figuie ot \L Earth by means of his remarkable analysis. No student of the higher brancd.I of Aysieal Astronomy should be ignorant of La Place's analysis and itrrelults-'a'calculus,- says Aiiy, ' the most --o-^^- /"^^^^ "^f ^^^,^^1 ^^^ most powerful in its application, that ha. over appeared He ^'^^^^''^^^^l^^^^ fully into the geodesic, method of fin ling the Eartli's hgure, and lutioduced many propositions bearing upon that subject.

\iMf^

SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE NOT AT VARIANCE;

WITH REMARKS ON

THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER, PLENARY INSPIRATION,

AND SURPASSING IMPORTANCE,

OF THE EARLIER CHAPTERS OF GENESIS.

BY

JOHN h/pRATT, M.A. F.R.S.

ARCHDEACON OF CALCUTTA, AUTHOR OF 'the MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES OF MECHANICAL PlIILOSOPliy.

&IXT11 EDITION,

LONDON: HATCHAEDS, PICCADILLY. CALCUTTA: BARHAM, HILL, AND CO.

1871.

London : Strangeways and Walden, Printers 2S Castle St. Leicester Sq.

V ^-

^ JAN 27 1^:6

PREFACE TO THE : SIXTH EDITION.

It is now fifteen years since the first edition of this treatise was pnbHshed. The last edition has been out of print more than a year; and I feel encouraged to send forth a sixth, especially as I have had various testimonies to the book having answered the end I had in view in writing it.

It was written in the first instance to meet the assertion made by the late Professor Baden Powell, that 'aU geology is contrary to Scripture,' which I found was troubling many minds. I endeavoured to shape my argument in such a way as, not merely to be a reply to this mischief-working declaration, but to be a perpetual antidote to any other assertions of the kind which might emanate from the pen or lips of scientific or would-be-scientific men.

IV PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION.

Since the first edition appeared, Professor Powell's Order of Nature, his ' Essay on Miracles' and Mr. Goodwin's on ' The Mosaic Cosmogony,' both in Essays and Revieivs, Dr. Colenso's Pentateuch, Mr. Darwin's Origin of SjJecies, and Sir Charles Lyell's Antiquity of Man, have been given to the world ; and, with other minor productions, have been replied to in my suc- cessive editions, as far as they concern my argument. And now, in the present edition, the following more recently published works are added : Professor Huxley's Place of Man in Nature, his Lay Sermons, Lectures, and Addresses, his and Professor Tyndall's Address and Lecture before the British Association at Liverpool, Sir John Lubbock's Prehistoric Times and his Origin of Civilization and Primitive Condition of Man, and Mr. Darwin's Descent of Man. The con- sequence is, that numerous additions have been in- serted throughout, both in the text and in the notes. Several books not enumerated above are passed in review, or their suggestions made use of with acknow- ledgment. I regret that three excellent books— Dr. Beale's Protoplasm, his Mystery of Life, and Mr. St. George Mivart's Genesis of Species— c^me to my notice while these sheets were passing through the press, too late for me to make use of them. The part in which I treat on the Unity of the Human Eace,

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION. V

or All Men of One Blood, has been much expanded. Three new illustrations of my leading principle have been added, and largely treated; viz. the Origin of Man, the Origin of Life, and Design as indicating creation. In short, no pains have been spared to bring the treatise down to the present state of Science and the controversies of the present time, as far as they appertain to the subject I have taken in hand.

The book has been thus increased by about half the amount of matter which the last edition contained ; but the price remains as before.

JOHN H. PEATT.

Calcutta, 1871.

CONTENTS.

14

INTEODUCTION.

PAGE

Object and Plan of this Treatise 1

PAET I.

THE HARMONY BETWEEN SCRIPTUEE AND SCIENCE VINDICATED BY AN APPEAL TO THE HISTORY OF THE PAST.

CHAPTER

I.— Examples, from the earlier History of Scientific Discovery, IN WHICH Scripture has been relieved of False Interpre- tations, AND THE Harmony of Scripture and Science there- by re-established

1. The Firmament. 2. Antipodes. 3. The Earth a Globe.

4. The Motion of the Earth.

II.— Examples, from the later history of Science, in which Scripture has not only been relieved of False Interpre- tations, BUT HAS HAD NeW LiGHT REFLECTED UPON IT BY

THE Discoveries of Science 41

1. The Antiquity of the Earth. 2. Creatures in Existence before the Six Days. 3. Existence of Light before the Six Days. 4. Death in the World before Adam's Fall.

5. Specific Centres of Creation. 6. No Known Traces of the Deluge. 7. The Deluge probably not over the whole Earth.

III.— Examples, in which Science has been delivered from the False Conclusions of some of its Votaries, and thereby

SHOWN TO BE IN EnTIRE AGREEMENT WITH ScRIPTURE . .104

1. All Men of one Blood. 2. Differences of Nations since the Flood. 3. Mankind originally of One Language. 4. Age of the Human Race according to Hindoo and Chinese Astronomy: -5. to Egyptian Antiquities: G. to Nile Deposits: 7. to Flint Remains. 8. The Species of the Six Days' Creation distinct from pre- Adamite Species. 9. Origin of Species. 10. Origin of Man. 11. Origin of Life. 12. Uniformity of Nature. 13. Design. 14. Arithmetical Objections to the Pentateuch.

VIU CONTENTS.

PART II.

THE HISTOEICAL CHAKACTER, PLENARY INSPIRA- TION, AND SURPASSING IMPORTANCE, OF THE FIRST ELEVEN CHAPTERS OF GENESIS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — The Historical Character and Plenary Inspiration of

THE FIRST ELEVEN CHAPTERS OF GeNESIS 335

1. Our Lord and His Apostles regarded them as Historical documents. 2. This being the case, their Inspu'ation follows from the nature of their contents. 3. As they are original and not borrowed — Their freedom from Error

II. — The Surpassing Importance of these Chapters .... 35G 1. They are of unrivalled Antiquity. 2. They tell us of the Origin of the World. 3. Of the Entrance of Evil into the World. 4. They explain the contradictions we see in Man. 5. They show the true basis of Physical Science, and the credibility of a Divine Incarnation. 6. They detect the essence of all successful Tempta- tion. 7. They convey remarkable facts in History, the Institution of ^larriage and of the Sabbath, the Deluge, the Confusion of Tongues, the apportioning of the Earth to the Nations, the Institution of Sacrifices. 8. They contain the germ of all Prophecy, the promise of the Seed of the Woman, and the prediction of the destinies of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japhet.

CONCLUSION.

No New Discoveries, however startling, need disturb our Belief in the Plenary Inspiration of Scripture, or DAMP OUR Zeal in the pursuit of Science 369

SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE NOT AT VARIANCE.

INTEODUCTION.

OBJECT AND PLAN OF THE PRESENT TREATISE.

The assertion, not unfrequently made, that the dis- coveries of Science are opposed to the declarations of Holy Scripture, is as mischievous as it is false, because it tends both to call in question the Inspiration of the Sacred Volume and to throw discredit upon scientific pursuits.

Many who are predisposed to reject such a con- clusion, from a general conviction that Scripture is the Word of God, are nevertheless at a loss for arguments to repel the charge. It is the object of the following pages to furnish such persons with a reply, in a concise and portable form. The treatise, therefore, is inten- tionally only a summary of arguments. To expand it, except by the addition of new illustrations, would defeat my design. A larger work woLild not find access where I hope this will. There are others also whose case it is here designed to meet— those who receive the Christian Eevelation, but, under the influenae of sup- posed difficulties brought to Hght by scientific dis-

INTRODUCTION.

covery, are tempted to regard the Earlier Portion of tlie Sacred Volume as not inspired. It is possible that the imbeliever may find something in these pages to soften his prejudices : but his case is not here specially contemplated.

My treatise is, therefore, of the defensive kmd. It is intended to show the inquiring how difficulties are to be met and objections removed. Some hesitate as to the expediency of putting such books into the hands of the young, thinking them calculated to engender doubts where they never existed, and to create the very scepticism which they were intended to rebut. There is some weight in this ; and, no doubt, were the mind never likely in after-life to encounter the false views of sceptics, it might be far better to leave it untainted. If the young could always be fenced around by truth, till its principles became so thoroughly infused into their minds and hearts as to make error innocuous when they go out into the wide world, to leave them ignorant of the difierent forms of doubt and unbelief till circumstances force them upon their notice, might be the better course. But it is next to impossible to protect them, even when under the wisest guidance, from becoming acquainted with, if not imbibing, some of the mischief, which a refined scepticism — especially regarding the historical character and full inspiration of the Holy Scriptures— is spreadmg far and wide through the press and other channels. If the hesitation regarding the propriety of teachmg these things to the young arise from a disUke to see old and prima facie interpretations upset, such a course is most dano-erous. By maintaining false and exploded inter-

OBJECT AND PLAN OF THIS TREATISE. 3

pretations as true, we are sowing in the minds of the young seeds of a future revulsion which is hkely to injure them far more than the introduction of the new views at an earher stage could possibly do. There can be no question that the safest course is conscientiously to teach the young the whole truth without reserve, not shrinking from stating in a plain and open manner the various objections and difficulties they will hear broached, explaining to them at the same time in what spirit and by what kind of argument they should be met.

The fact is, that sceptics and semi-sceptics are, unwittingly or not, undermining the faith of many in Scripture by subtle arguments drawn from the apparent contradictions between Scripture and Science. Against this it is necessary to provide an antidote : and the better fortified our youth are in their earlier days, the better prepared will they be to contend for the truth in after-life. It is not the Christian, but the worldly philosopher, who has raised these questions. But, having raised them, he forces the advocates of Scrip- tural truth to enter upon the contest, and to meet him on his own ground, that they may put a weapon of defence in the hands of those whose faith is in danger of being assailed.

I write for the protection and consolation of the faithful, under the attacks which Science, falscly-so- called, has brought against the Sacred Volume which is dear to them, and in which all their hopes of happi- ness are centred. There are excellent works which have the same end in view ; but they take a different course. I will explain what I mean by an examj)le.

INTRODUCTION.

Some advocates of Development, as the principle which has led to the present order of things, maintain, that creatures have their present habits, not because they were so created, and Divine Design is illustrated in the adaptation of their organs to those habits ; but because no other habits could consist with such organs, that the organism has grown up in the natural course of things, in fact by natural law, and in cases where the habits were suitable to the organism, the or- ganisms survived; in other cases they perished and disappeared. Now there are excellent treatises* which take up subjects of this kind on their own independent ground, not starting from the Scriptural side of the question ; and the writers endeavour to show that an examination of the facts leads to an opposite conclusion ; one which in the result coincides with Scripture statement. This requires a more lengthened treatment, and is very often successful. But there are instances in which this result cannot be thus absolutely attained ; though nothing can be proved to the contrary. I take a different line in this treatise. I begin at the other end ; and my aim is not to establish the truth of this or that theory which may be advanced, but to show that wherever any theory comes in conflict with Scripture rightly interpreted, it is the theory which is at fault, and not Scripture ; if the theory does not touch upon Scripture, whatever it may be, I have in this treatise nothing to do with it. In adopting this line I feel it right to take the highest ground, and to

* I allude to such works as the Duke of Argyll's Reign of Law Dr. George Moore's (M.D.) lite First Man and his Place in Creation, Mr. Gilbert Sutton's Faith and Science.

OBJECT AND PLAN OF THIS TREATISE. 5

maintain it, till dislodged from it by argument and real facts. The Sacred Volume comes to us encompassed with evidence, external and internal, that it is the Written Word of God. This being the case, the most reasonable conclusion is, that it is free from error of every kind ; for even where expressions are used which touch upon merely ordinary and natural things, it would be as easy for the inspiring Spirit to suggest to the minds of the writers words, not scientific words, but ordinary words, which would never be found at variance with fact, as words which, though they might at the time accord with current conceptions, would afterwards be found to be incorrect. Here, then, I take my stand : and I challenge Science — no, I will not so desecrate that honourable name by allowing even suspicion to attach to it, but I challenge Science falsely so called — to produce one instance in which the statements of Holy Scripture are proved to be wrong, except in as far as minor errors have crept in through the mistakes of the most careful copyists. I do not aim at reconciling Scripture and Science, though this is often the result of the investigation ; but at demon- strating the fact which is involved in the title of my book, namely, that Scripture and Science are never at variance. This I do in the first part of my treatise, bringing together and examining all the examples I can think of, in which it has been alleged from time to time, that Scripture and Science are in irreconcilable conflict ; and I show that further light or impartial examination has cleared up the difficulty. From this I argue, that it is in the highest degree unphilosophical, wherever new difficulties arise in these days of dis-

6 INTRODUCTION.

covery, to doubt that these also will be cleared up as light and knowledge advance. The experience of the past should encourage us fearlessly to carry our in- vestigations into the phenomena of nature, fully persuaded no real discrepancy can ever be in the end established. The above may be regarded as a negative argument.

In the Second Part I enter upon an examination of the character and contents of the earlier portion of the Book of Genesis ; as it is in this portion of the Sacred Volume that the seeds of strife between Scripture and Science are supposed chiefly to lie. By what I cannot but regard as an unanswerable proof of the historical character and plenary inspu-ation of these Early Chapters, and by a reference to their important bearing in various eminent particulars, I establish a positive argument for their inspiration, and show that under these circumstances it is impossible that Scripture can, when rightly interpreted, be at variance with the Works of the Divine Hand ; and that therefore, if difficulties remain at any time not cleared up, they must arise from our ignorance, or from hasty interpretation either of the phenomena before us or of the language of the Sacred Becord.

The results of this investigation are then summed up, and the conclusion drawn, — that no new discoveries, however startling they may appear at first, need dis- turb our belief in the Plenary Insphation of the Sacred Volume, or damp our ardour in the pursuit of Science.

It will be seen from the above sketch, that it is not necessary for the validity of my argument that

OBJECT AND PLAN OF THIS TREATISE. 7

every instance of apparent discrepancy between Scrip- ture and Science shall have met with an explanation. It requires only, that so many instances of the suc- cessful removal of difhculties, which at one time appeared to be insm^mountable, should be adduced, as to assure the mind under new perplexities, that there is every reason to beheve that in time these also will vanish. The primary object of the treatise is, not to solve present difficulties, but to create confidence in the mind, whHe in perplexity regarding them, that all wdl in the end be right, and that the harmony of Scripture and Science cannot reaHy be broken, though it may for a time seem to be disturbed. In point of fact, however, I know of no alleged or apparent dis- crepancy between Scripture and Science which cannot be met by a decisive or at least satisfactory answer. The chief examples I have brought together in the foUowing pages, and have made them the groundwork of my argument. Had I known of any existing un- answered difficulty, I should now have brought it forward as an illustration of the use of my principle. If, for example, the sweeping announcement of M. Bunsen and Mr. Leonard Horner, that the age of the human race is many thousands of years older than the Scrip- ture narrative makes it, or the same from the pen of Sir Charles LyeU, in his work On the Antiquity of Man, or the hypothesis that the descent of the human race is not to be reckoned from Adam, but, as Mr. Darwin and Professor Huxley conjecture, from some primitive monad, the progenitor of all plants and animals, could not yet be met, I should have pro- duced it,— not, as in the present edition, domg homage

INTRODUCTION.

to my argument, but as an example of the principle I have set forth, that we should wait, fortified by the experience of the past, and by an immovable belief in the inspiration of Holy Scripture, and feel assured that time would turn objections into proofs, and discrepancy into harmony.

The result, therefore, of my treatise, beyond its direct object to inspire confidence for the future, bi-ings out this,— that, notwithstanding the assertions of certain miters, nothing has been produced and estab- lished which is really contradictory to the statements of Holy Scripture. Guesses and crude speculations have been substituted for facts, and what has been in these instances caUed Science is not worthy of the name. Deeply conscious of the goodness and truth of our cause, we can afford to smile at, and forgive, such rough and unpolished shafts as the following, aimed at us, who maintain and defend the integrity and inspira- tion of God's Holy Word :-' Extinguished theologians he about the cradle of eveiy science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules. . . . Orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, nei- ther can it forget. . . . Philosophers may, now and then, be stirred to momentary wrath by the unnecessary obstacles with which the ignorant, or the malicious, encumber, if they cannot bar, the difficult path [of the progress of discovery].'

We are convinced indeed, that, in the annals of Science, there is no class which stands more promi- nently forward in supplying leaders of scientific thought and of scientific discovery, than the defenders of the Sacred Volume, against whom these bitter words are

OBJECT AND PLAN OF THIS TREATISE. 9

uttered. We cannot, however, with the same compo- sure, overlook and forget the ignorance and irreverence which shock our ears by representing any part of the Holy Scriptures as merely Hhe imaginations current among the rude inhabitants of Palestine.'

We pity from our hearts the men who regard what they call ' the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew,' as ' the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox ;'^'" for they deeply injure their own minds by holding such views, help to bewil- der and mislead the young and the enquiring by throwing among them these sentiments broad-cast in their writings ; and they cut themselves off from enjoyments, intellectual and spiritual, of which we would see them participate as well as ourselves.

* These quotations are from a book published in 1870.

PART I.

TEE HARMONY BETWEEN SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE VIN- DICATED BY AN APPEAL TO THE HISTORY OF THE PAST.

The Book of Nature and the Word of God emanate from the same infallible Author^ and therefore cannot be at variance. But man is a fallible interpreter ; and by mistaking one or both of these Divine Records, he forces them too often into unnatural conflict.

Reason, when combined with a humble mind and a patient spirit, is man's highest endowment. By it he can scale the heavens, and unravel the mysterious ties which imite matter to matter in all its combin- ations ; and can trace the secret and silent operation of its laws. Thus furnished, he can weigh and appre- ciate the claims of truth, as revealed from heaven or produced from the evolutions of the human mind; and can reject the evil and choose the good. But, deprived of these valuable accessories, this noble gift is converted into a snare, and too often hurries him to conclusions from which he is afterwards compelled to retrace his steps.

It is my intention to bring together in this First Part of my treatise a number of Examples, gathered from the history of Science, which show how needless are the fears entertained at the present day by many

SCmPTURE AND SCIENCE, ETC. 11

excellent persons in tlieir holy jealousy for the Sacred Volume, in which their highest hopes are centred ; as it has already, in so many instances, triumphantly emerged from conflicts, as severe as any in which it may now or hereafter be engaged.

In some instances, positive errors in the inter- pretation of the phenomena of nature, and in others ignorance of the facts of nature, have led to the imposing upon Scripture a meaning, which the cor- rection of these errors on the one hand, and the discovery of new facts on the other, have proved to be false. As true Science has advanced, Scripture, so far as it touches upon natural phenomena, has received new illustrations. False interpretations have been detected and corrected. The language of Scrip- ture has been found to be in no case opposed to truth. It in no case stoops to the errors and prejudices of men, even in things natural, although it adopts the language of men and its usages. It speaks on such matters as man would speak to man in every-day life, in the times of greatest scientific light. It selects no particular epoch of discovery for the choice of its phraseology; but it speaks, as the most scientific amongst us speak, in the ordinary intercourse of Hfe, in conformity with the usages of language — namely, according to appearances.

The Examples, above referred to, I shaU class under three heads. The first class arose from the progress of discovery sweeping away long-standing notions regarding the nature of the canopy above us, the existence of antipodes, and the form and stability of the earth. As Science put these things in their

12 SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE

true light, Scri23ture, which had all along been inter- preted in conformity with the current prepossessions, appeared to be in fault: till a closer examination into the real meaning of its language reUeved it of the false interpretation which had been imposed upon it, and the harmony between Scripture and Science, although for a time they had appeared to be irrecon- cilable, was fully re-established.

The second class of examples in its character very much resembles the first, but belongs to a more recent period of discovery. Long-standing notions regarding some of the cu-cumstances of the creation having been cleared away by the discoveries of Science, and Scrip- ture being still fettered with the old intei^retations imposed upon it in the days of ignorance, the cry of antagonism between Scripture and Science was again raised, and perhaps louder than ever. But in these instances also, the difficulty has been removed : and not only has Scripture been relieved of false inter- pretations, as in the first class of examples, but much light has been thrown upon its language and allusions, which would never have appeared but for these scientific discoveries.

Under the third class, I bring forward Examples in which Science, for a time, has in the hands of the self-confident made a retrograde movement. Con- clusions have been put forth regarding the descent of all men from one blood, the difterences of races since the flood, the original unity of language, the age of the human race, the supei-ficial extent of the six days' creation, the origin of species, the origin of man, the origin of life, the uniformity of nature,

NOT OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER. 13

design as indicative of creation, and certain numerical statements in the Pentateuch, which are contradictory to Scripture ; and thus Scripture and Science were again declared to be at variance, till Science, under the guidance of wiser men, has corrected itself, and no want of harmony has been established.

14

CHAPTEE I.

Examples from the earlier history of scientific discovery, in which scripture has been re- lieved of false interpretations, and the harmony of scripture and science thereby re-established.

1. The earliest instance of this kind which I shall produce affords a remarkable example of false notions The Firma- ^^ ^^^ cclcstial mechanism being incorporated ™®"^' in mistranslations of Scripture, in such a way as to consecrate error, and to sow the seeds of future perplexity by bringing God s two books into seeming collision.

It is well known that the ancients conceived the heavens to be an enormous vault of transparent solid matter, whirling around the earth in diurnal revolution, and carrying with it the stars, supposed to be fixed in its substance. In accordance with this view, the Scripture was made by the LXX. to call the heavens (TTsoico[jjcc (stereoma), —thsit is, something solid; and the Vulgate calls them finnameiitum, which signifies the same. Josephus, in his ' Antiquities,' (professedly gathering his ideas from Scripture), in describing the creation calls the heavens KimraKXov (krustallon), i.e.

CORRECTION OF ERRORS, ETC. 15

a sort of crystalline case."^'" Thus all seems to be in accordance, and Scripture and Science appear to agree and illustrate each other ; till the hght of later times pours in its beams, and, showing that space is not a solid mass, detects a seeming contradiction between the Word and Works of God. How is this to be met ? Which is to yield ? The popular solution, current to the present day, is this,— that Moses wrote, in matters of this description, not merely according to the appearance of things (which is true, and is the style which the most enlightened Science now uses in such a case), but in accommodation to the notions and prepossessions of the times. But is this the fact ? Could not the Omniscient have put a correct word into the mind of His servant, as readily as one contradictory to fact ? Let us turn to the word which the Holy Ghost has used by the pen of the inspired writer, and what do we find? that the original by no means impHes, of necessity, a solid mass, but an expanse :t—' And

* The following is from Josephus : ' After this, on the second day, he placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts ; and he determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline [firmament] round it {KpvaraXXoy re Tvepnzi]laQ ai-rw), and put it together in a manner suited to the e^xih:— Joseph. Antiq. lib. I. cap. i. § 1.

I The following is Pool's comment, and Gesenius' meannig of the

word is given below : —

'6. Fiatjirmamentum.'\—k\\i non firmamentum vertunt, sed ex- pansionem, rem expansam seu extensam, eo modo quo aulsea expan- duntur, ut tentorium quod funibus sustinetur ne decidat, vel sicut argentum malleo diducitur et attenuatur. Inde Deus dicitur extendere coelos. Isa. xl. 22 et xlii. 5, et Ps. civ. 2. Grot, reddit t^ctlq (qu£e vox Platonis est), ^i^n, est expandere. Laminae expansse appellantur n^nS ^rpn. Num. xvi. 38. Expamum firinanientum vertit A[ins- worthus]. ' Expansio hsec est diffusum corpus aeris. Nam quid, nisi

16 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse. . . . And God called the expanse Heaven.' (Gen. i 6-8.) So that, in fact, the inspired writer used the best possible word to express the actual appearance and state of things; but man, in his undiscriminating ignorance

aer, dividit aquas inferiores, i. e. mare, a superioribus ? Nee aliud aeri nomen est Hebraiis quam »>pT et D^aaJ. Hoc nomen aeri tribui testantur Chald. par. in Ps. xix. et K(imchi) in Ps. Ixxvii. Quid mirabthns aqms in coelo stantibus ? ait Plinius, 1. 31. Aves cceli vocan- tur, Jer. vn., Os. n., Matt, xviii. et xiii. Alii exponunt Jirmamenttm, et accpmnt de orbibus ccelestibus. Complectitur tamen h^ec vox efam aerem vicinnm, k ccelo in terram expansum, et suo loco quasi firmatum. „ yertunt .r,pi^f,a, vel quia 2,77 est .„p™, i.e. firmo, stabiho; ita vertunt 6 Ps. exxxvi. 6, Isa. xlii. 5, et xliv. 24; yel quia c«lum seepe tentorio eonfertur, quod dicitur „',y,,,ea. (i.e. funibus ad paxiUos m terram depaetos firmari) quatenus expanditur Esa. xlvn. 5 ; vel potius a Syriaco usu V^l quod significat ^U^u., com- primere, Lue. vi. 38. Et forte Vjp^ Heb. prime significat contprimere, .ndeque e^tendere, nam premendo res extenduntur, ut laminae eeris.'- Vtde Foh Synopsis, Gen. i. 6.

The extract below from Leo's translation of Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon will g,re his idea of the meaning of the word. In his co,«- ^nt, m the latter part of this extr.act, Gesenius appears to side with the popular notion I have alluded to in the text; but with this we have nothing to do, but only with the meaning of the word, which he shows will well convey the idea of ...^.<„„., in the sense of open space or expanded atmosphere. Luther's translation, it will be seen, is the only one which does not convey a false idea, except our authorised version in the margin.

is 2ei!?r" ""] '^f/ °-^'" ^^'^" ^^"- '■ 1*' 15' 17' ''-'* «''«>^ or r ; 7''"*''f'-«- ^^rn) '^ «^-- of keaven; i. e. the arch or vault of heaven, which, as to mere sense, appears to rest on the

itt tri: T r r '^^'^^^- ^"^^ ^^'^^^'^•^ - '- *» l'-- --i^el

It as transparent, like a crystal or sappliire (Ezek. i. 22 ; Dan xii 3 • Exod^ xxiv. 10; Rev. iv. 6); hence, different from th brazen and

posed were the waters of heaven (Gen. i. 7, vii, 11; Ps. civ I

REGARDING THE FIRMAMENT. 1 7

of nature, has, by his successive versions of the Word of God, thrown a cloak of sacredness around his own error, in a way calculated to bring discredit upon the Holy Scriptures, as the discoveries of Science clear away the mists. Here, then, Scripture was right from the beginning, and all the confusion has arisen solely from human ignorance and misconception.*

cxlviii. 4). LXX. arepiio^a. Vulg. firmamentum. Luther, Teste ' — See Leo's tramlation of Gesenius' Lexicon. In Aids to Faith (pp. 220- 230), Dr. M'Caul has brought his Hebrew learning to bear with effect

upon this subject.

' Mr. Goodwin [in Essays and Revieios\ wishes to fasten on the Hebrew word the sense of a " solid vault," as that sense which was always received until astronomy and modern geology taught men science ; and he alleges that to translate it by the word " expanse ', is a mere afterthought of the theologians [although it has been in the margin of our Bibles before modern astronomy and geology were thought of] ! He says (p. 220), " It has been pretended that the word rakia may be translated expanse, so as merely to mean ' empty space.' The context sufficiently rebuts this." (I) Now what is the fact? The first translation of the Hebrew Bible made in modern days was that of Pagninus, who lived 400 years ago, and was one of the profoundest Hebraists of his own or any age. He translates this word expansio7iem in every instance. In the next century that extra- ordinary Oriental scholar (as ignorant of geology as geologists can possibly be of Hebrew), Arias Benedict Montanus, who had been appointed to revise the work of Pagnin for the King of Spain, again insisted on expansionem as the true meaning of this word rahia.'' — Literal' y Churchman, April 1, 1861, p. 129.

* It is interesting to observe that the New Testament writers, who often quoted the Septuagint version verbatim et literatim, have been preserved from using this erroneous term arepiiofxa to describe the celestial firmament ; although it occurs in several places in that version of the Old Testament, and the New Testament writers had not scientific knowledge to avoid the error of themselves. The word is once used by St. Paul, but in an entirely different sense (Col. ii. 5), 70 (TTepeiofxa rijg elg Xpitrror Trlarreojg vfuwr, — ' The steadfastness (or, as Alford renders it, the solid basis) of your faith in Christ.'

It has been suggested, that the fact that Moses (Gen. i. 21;

C

18 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

2. Another instance of the Scriptures having been

drawn into this unworthy coUision with the facts of

Nature, is seen in the denial of the exist-

ntipo.eb. ^^^^^ ^^ Antipodes on the opposite side of

the earth. I am not aware of any particular texts, unless one soon to be mentioned is excepted, which have been quoted to support this view ; but no less a writer than the great Augustine, who in so many places''' shows the greatness of his mind in not suffering Scripture and Nature to come into conflict, unfortunately brings the silence of Scripture to bear upon this question. He says that ' the story of there being antipodes, or men on the opposite side of the

particularly specifies ' whales ' among the creatures of the deep, indicates, also, that he wrote by inspiration, and was overruled to use language the minute correctness of which Science could alone illustrate ; as this term might be taken as the generic representative of that remarkable class of sea-animals which are warm-blooded and suckle their young. This suggestion, however, cannot be sustained ; for the Hebrew word 'J''3r) is used in the Old Testament in other senses; e.g. serpents (Exod. vii. 9, 10, 12); and, very frequently, dragons^ described as living in ruined citi.es and desolate places, and, no doubt, meaning serpents in those places also, but by no means whales or sea- mammalia. It is a remarkable fact, however, that, while the word may be translated ' whales,' creatures of the cetaceous genus are at present found only in the upper strata of the earth. See this noticed in Christian Observer, May, 1867, p. 333, and take it in connexion with the view which I advocate further on, that the creation of the six days was the creation and preparation of the present order of things onl}^

* The following are specimens : —

'Si manifestissimse certseque rationi velut Scripturaiiim Sancta- rum objicitur autoritas, non intelligit qui hoc fiicit ; et non Scrip- turarum illaram sensum (ad quem penetrare non potuit) sed suum potius objicit veritati ; nee id quod in eis, sed quod in seipso velut pro eis invenit, opponit.' — Aug. Epist. 143, alias 7, ad Marcellinum. ' Respondendum est hominibus qui libris nostra; salutis calumni-

REGARDING ANTIPODES. 19

earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, planting their footsteps opposite to our feet, is on no account to be beheved:' and that 'even if the earth be a globe,' (a thing in his mind very doubtful), 'it does not follow that the opposite side is not an ocean ; and, even should it be bare of water, it is not necessary that it has inhabitants ; since the Scripture is in no way false, but secures belief in its narrative of the past, inasmuch as its predictions of the future are accom- plished. And it is utterly absurd,' he adds, ' to suppose that any men should have crossed the vast ocean from this side to that, to establish the human race there as well as here.' """ He appears to conceive,

ari affectant, ut quicquid ipsi de natura rerum veracihus documentis demonstrare potuerint, ostendamus nostris Uteris non esse contrarium ; quicquid autem de quibuslibet suis voluminibus his nostris literis id est catholicce fidei contrarium protulerint, aut aliqua etiam facultate ostendamus aut nulla dubitatione credamus esse falsissimuni : atque ita teneamus Mediatorem nostram in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientise atque scientiee absconditi, ut neque falsse philosophise loquacitate seducamur, neque falsse religionis superstitione terreanuu'.' — Auc/. de Gened adliteram, lib. I. cap. xxi. § 41.

'Nunc autem servata semper moderatione pi?e gravitatis, nihil credere de re obscura temere debemus, ne forte quod postea Veritas patefecerit, quamvis libris Sanctis sive testamenti veteris sive novi nullo modo esse possit adversum, tamen propter amoreni nostri erroris oderimus.' — Aiig. de Gen. ad lit lib. II. in fine.

* ' An inferiorem partem terrce, qucc nostrce habitationi eontraria esty antipodcis Imhere credendum sit.

' Quod vero et antipodas esse fabulantur, id est homines a eon- traria parte terra?, ubi sol oritur, quando occidit nobis, adversa pedibus nostris calcare vestigia, nulla ratione credendum est. Neque hoc uUa historica cognitione didicisse S3 affirmant, sed quasi ratioci- nando conjectant, eo quod intra convex a coeli terra suspensa sit, eundemque focum mundus habeat et infimum et medium ; et ex hoc opinantur alteram terrce partem, qua) infra est, habitatione hominum carere non pos^e. Nee attendunt, etiamsi figura conglobata et

20 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

that as Scripture does not tell us of any people on the opposite side of the globe, and he did not imagine that any could have traversed the boundless ocean, it must be concluded that there are no people there. But geographical research has divested this argument of all its force. In Behring's Strait a narrow sea exists, across which many an adventurous bark may have found its way even in the days of only primitive sea- manship, and carried across to the furthest regions descendants of the sons of Noah, who spread forth on all sides to people the earth. Meanwhile Scripture, although it speaks of no nations but such as took their rise and dwelt on this side of the globe, presents no contradiction to the fact which actual observation teaches ; for it nowhere says, that none ever had reached or ever would reach those furthest and then unknown regions.

A little more than a century later, Cosmas, monk of Alexandria, and a celebrated traveller, reasoned

rotunda mundiis esse credatur sive aliqua ratione moiistretur, iion tamen esse consequens, ut etiam ex ilia parte ab aquarum congerie imda sit terra. Deinde etianisi nuda sit, neque hoc statim necesse est, ut homines habeat : quoniam nulla modo Scriptura ista mentitur, qua? narratis, prseteritis facit fidem, eo quod ejus prsedicta complen- tur. Nimisque absurduni est ut dicatur, aliquos homines ex hac in illam partem Oceani immensitate trajecta navigare ac pervenire potuisse, ut etiam illic ex uno illo primo homine genus institucretur humanum. Quapropter inter illos tunc hominum populos, qui per septuaginta duas gentes et totidem linguas colliguntur fuisse divisi, quteramus, si possumus invenire illam in terris peregrinantem civita- tem Dei, quge usque ad diluvium arcamque perducta est, atque in filiis Noe per eorum benedictiones i^crseverasse monstratur, maxima in maximo, qui est appellatus Sem : quandoquidem Taphet ita bene- dictus est, ut in ejusdem fratris sui domibus habitaret.' — Au[/. de Civitate Dei, lib. XVI. cap. ix.

REGAKDING THE FORM OF THE EARTH. 21

against there being antipodes from Gen. ii. 5. ^ These are the generations of the heavens and the earth.' He said that this language is intended to comprise everything that is contained in the heavens and the earth ; and that if there be antipodes, the heavens must contain the earth, and the sacred writer would have said simply, These are the generations of the heavens : with such slender arguments were men satis- fied before the dawn of the days of exact science.'"'

3. Closely allied to this is the question already alluded to, which also exercised the ingenuity of the ancients. Whether the Earth is a Globe, or p^^.^^ ^^ ^^^^ a vast extended Plane ? or, which amounts Earth. to the same. Whether the heavens are a sphere sur- rounding the earth, or a wide-spread canopy over- shadowing its extended surface ? And there were not wanting advocates who appealed to Scripture to decide the question. There could be no doubt, for instance, when the Psalmist thus spoke of the Creator : 'who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain' (Ps. civ. 2). To these Augustine alludes, although he himself repudiates the appeal. ' It is commonly asked,' he says, ' of what form and figure we may believe heaven to be according to the Scripture. For many contend much about these matters, which with greater prudence our authors [meaning the sacred penmen]

* The words of Cosmas in the Latin translation of his work are, — ' Ait, " Hie est Hber generationis cojli et terrse," quasi omnia iis con- tineantur, et universa qua in eis sunt cum illis significentur. Num si secundum fucatos illos Christianos calum tantummodo universa contineat, terram cum coelo non nominasset, sed dixisset, " Hie est liber generationis coeli.'" — See Lecky's History of Hist of Rationalism. Third edition. Vol. I. p. 29G.

22 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

have forborne to sj^eak of/ ^Wliat is it to me/ he adds, whether heaven, as a sphere, on all sides environs the earth, balanced in the middle of the world, or whether, like a dish, it only covers and overshadows the same ? ' And he then throws out a salutary cau- tion against appealing to Scripture in such cases, lest, misunderstanding the divine expressions, we should give inter j)retations, in physical subjects, which may prove to be contrary to fact, and so tempt others to suspect the truth of the sacred writers in more profitable matters.*

* ' Quseri etiam solet, quse forma et figura coeli esse credenda sit secundum scripturas nostras. Multi enim multum disputant de lis rebus, quas majore prudentia nostri auctores omiserunt, ad beatam vitam non profuturas discentibus, et occupantes (quod pejus est mul- tum) preciosa et rebus salubribus impendenda temporum spatia. Quid enim ad me pertinet, utrum ccelum sicut spheera undique con- cludat terram in media mundi mole libratam, an eam ex una parte desuper velut discus operiat ? Sed quia de fide agitur scripturarum, propter illam causam quam non semel commemoravi — ne quisquam eloquia divina non intelligens, cum de his rebus tale aliquid vel invenerit in libris nostris vel ex illis audierit, quod perceptis a se rationibus adversari videatur, nullo modo eis ceetera utilia monentibus, vel narrantibus, vel pronunciantibus, credat — breviter dicendum est, de figura coeli hoc scisse auctores nostros quod Veritas habet sed Spiritum Dei qui per ipsos loquebatur noluisse ista docere homines nulli saluti profutura.' — Aiir/. de Genesi ad Lit. lib. II. cap. ix. § 20.

The following remarks of Lactantius, a Christian writer at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century (or some writer using his name), against the rotundity of the earth and the existence of antipodes, aftbrd a curious specimen of the arguments which sway the mind when devoid of what Dr. Whewell so aptly designates, in his ' History of the Inductive Sciences,' ' the appropriate idea :' —

' Quid illi, qui esse contrarios vestigiis nostris Antipodas putant, num aliquid loquuntur ? aut est quisquam tam ineptus qui credat esse homines, qut^rum vestigia sint superiora quam capita 1 aut ibi qua^ apud nos jacent, inversa pendere ? fruges et arbores deorsum

REGARDING THE MOTION OF THE EARTH. 23

4. The great controversy in which GaUleo bore so conspicuous a part, regarding the motion of the earth, furnishes a further and very striking illus- ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ tration, from the history of the past, of the mischief of bringing Scripture to bear upon scien- tific questions. We may be incHned, perhaps, to smile at the doubts and difficulties which beset men in those days on points which appear so simple to us, and which every child knows. But we must remember that they were good and learned men who debated on these matters. In the struggles of that period,

versus crescere ] pluvias et nives, et grandinem sursum versus caderc in terrami Et miratur aliquis hortos pensiles inter septem mira uarrari, quum philosophi et agros, et maria, et urbes, et montes pen- siles faciant ? Hujus quoque erroris aperienda nobis origo est. Nam semper eodem modo falluntur. Quum enim falsmn aliquid in principio sumserint, verisimilitudine inducti, necesse est eos in ea, quse consequuntur, incurrere. Sic incidunt in multa ridicula : quia necesse est falsa esse, qu^ rebus falsis congruunt. Quum autem primis habuerint fidem, qualia sunt ea, quae sequuntur, non cu'cumspicmnt, seddefenduntomnimodo ; quum debeant prima ilia utrumne vera smt an falsa ex consequentibus judicare. Qua3 igitur illos ad Antipodas ratio perduxit? Videbant siderum cursus in occasum meantmm, solem atque lunam in eandem partem semper occidere, et oriri semper ab eadem. Quum autem non perspicerent, quse machniatio cursus eorum temperaret, nee quomodo ab occasu ad orientem remearent, coelum autem ipsum in omnes partes putarent esse devexum, quod sic videri propter immensam latitudinem necesse est ; existimaverunt ro- tundum esse mundum, sicut pilam et ex motu siderum opmati sunt coelum volvi ; sic astra solemque, quum occiderint, volubilitate ipsa mundi ad ortum referri. Itaque et sereos orbes fabricati sunt quasi ad fio-uram mundi, eosque c^larunt portentosis quibusdam simulacris, qL astra esse dicerent. Hanc igitur coeli rotunditatem illud seque- batur, ut terra in medio sinu ejus esset inclusa. Quod si ita esset, etiam ipsam terram globo similem ; neque enim fieri posset, ut non esset rotundum quod rotundo conclusum teneretur. Si autem rotunda etiam terra esset, necesse esse, ut in omnes coeli partes eandem faciem gerat, id est, montes crigat, compos tendat, maria consternat.

24 CORRECTIOX OF ERRORS

between reason and observation on the one hand, and Scripture, or rather Scripture falsely interpreted, on the other, and in the old prepossessions which the men of those days had to abandon, we see the very same causes at work, which still, under new circumstances, agitate and confuse religious but uninstructed minds. Nothing could be more clear, they then thought, than the testimony of Scripture—' the world also is estab- lished, that it CANNOT BE MOVED ' (Ps. xciiL 1). Even so late an author as Calvin, the erudite and sagacious commentator, drew from this passage the inference that the earth is motionless/'^ The old Ptolemaic system, which had so blinded men for ages, chiefly under the authority of Aristotle, ^^as only beginning about that time to meet its death-blow ; and the new ideas had not yet reached the study of the learned reformer. Eleven centuries before him, when Pythagorean notions

Quod si esset, etiam sequebatur illud extremum, ut nulla sit pars terr«, quae non ab hominibus ceterisque animalibus incolatur. Sic pendulos istos Antipodas coeli rotunditas adinvenit. Quod si quseras ab iis, qui h^ec portenta defendunt, quomodo non cadunt omnia in inferiorem illam coeli partem? respondent banc rerum esse naturam, ut pondera in medium ferantur, et ad medium connexa sint omnia, sicut radios videmus in rota ; quae autem levia sunt, ut nebula, fumus, igms, a medio deferantur, ut coelum petant. Quid dicam de iis nescio, qui, quum semel aberraverint, constanterin stultitia perse verant, et vanis vana defendunt, nisi quod eos interdum puto aut joci causa philosophari, aut prudentes et scios mendaciadefendenda suscipere, quasi ut mgenia sua in malis rebus exerceant vel ostentent. At ego multis argumentis probare possem nullo modo fieri posse, ut coelum terra sit mferius, nisi et liber jam concludendus esset, et adhuc aliqua restarent qucT magis sunt prcesenti operi necessaria : et quoniam singulorum' eiTores percurrere non est unius libri opus, satis sit pauca enumerasse ex quibus possit, qualia sint cetera, mieWv^V—Lactantii Omnia Opera Oxon. 1684. Imtitut. lib. III. cap. xxiv.

* Ps. xciii. 1.—' The Psalmist proves that God will not neglect or

REGAKDING THE MOTION OF THE EARTH. 25

had not been so entirely eclipsed, Augustine refers to the controversy thus : ' Some ask the question, Is the heaven at rest, or does it •move ? If it moves, they say, how is it a firmament ? If it is at rest, how do the stars, which are supposed to be fixed in it, move from the east to the west?''" Augustine avoids coming to a decision, on the plea of want of leisure to discuss it, and absence of profit to his hearers. Mixed up, however, as the question is in the above statement of the case with the error regarding the firmament, it is doubtful whether they could have come to a correct result ; and we see the mischief which is likely to ensue from our taking our ideas of natural phenomena from Scripture language in the first instance, and shutting our eyes to the just conclusions of reason.

Other Scripture texts were forced into this unholy warfare. ' God . . . who laid the foundations of the

abandon the world, from the fact that He created it. A simple sur- vey of the world should of itself suffice to attest a Divine Providence. The heavens revolve daily, and, immense as is their fabric, and inconceivable the rapidity of their revolutions, we experience no concussion — no disturbance in the harmony of their motion. The sun, though varying its course every diurnal revolution, returns annually to the same point. The planets, in all their wanderings, maintain their respective positions. How could the earth hang sus- pended in the air were it not upheld by God's hand ? By what means could it maintain itself unmoved, while the heavens above are in con- stant rapid motion, did not its Divine Maker fix and establish it ? Accordingly the particle H^, denoting emphasis, is introduced — " Yea, he hath estaUished ^Y." '—Commentary/ on the Psalms, Calvin Translation, tSocieti/s Edition.

* ' De motu etiam coeli nonnulli fratres questionem movent, utrum stet an moveatur : quia si movetur, inquiunt, quomodo firma- mentum est? Si autem stat, quomodo sidera, qu?e in illo lixa cre- duntur, ab oriente usque ad occidentem circumeunt?' — Aug. de Gen. lib. II. cap. X.

26 COKRECTION OF ERRORS

earth, that it should not be removed for ever/ (Ps. civ. 5). * One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh ; but the earth abideth for ever,' (Eccles. i. 4). Then the following were adduced to establish the correlative truth, as they supposed, that the sun is not at rest : — ' In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom COMING 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 of it ' (Ps. xix. 4-6). ' The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose' (Eccles. i. 5)."'"

The mischief which this appeal to Scripture did is incalculable. It sanctified error. It confirmed the mind in blunders regarding a fact in nature on which some of the ancients had clear and correct conceptions, till chiefly Aristotle and then Ptolemy also, even after a more complete theory had been suggested to him by

* They resorted to such arguments as the following curious piece of reasoning: — Hell, it had long been supposed, was in the centre of the w^orld. Now, if the sun were at rest, with the earth revolving about it, then the centre of the w^orld would be in the sun. So that hell would be in the sun, and therefore, in fact, be up in heaven — which was too absurd, they thought, to be believed. In laughing at such folly, let us beware lest we be guilty of the same in our way, notwithstanding all the light that knowledge gives us, and all the experience that the history of error and of well-intentioned but ill-directed zeal teaches us.

Another argument was, that heaven and earth are repeatedly mentioned in Scripture as correlative, like the centre and circum- ference of a circle. Thus 'the heaven and the earth' (Gen. i. 1), and in a multitude of other texts. Now, said they, the heavens, spread out as they are, must be the circumference ; hence, the earth must be the centre, and therefore at rest.

REGARDING THE MOTION OF THE EARTH. 27

Aristarchus of Sainos, than had been to Aristotle, drew the veil of obscurity over the subject. * So that even Tycho, a name of eminence among philosophers in the days of Kepler and Galileo, was kept back from holding the true view, chiefly by his false estimate of Scripture language, t

All this conflict of ideas and opinions is now passed away ; and Scripture stands unscathed in all its truth, simplicity, and beauty. All are agreed wisdom seen that its words require no apology, and g^'crttmr^ call for no compromise. They spea,k in- P^^-seoiogy. telligibly and correctly to learned and unlearned. Indeed, we may well pause to admire the wisdom with which Scripture phraseology has been chosen.

* Pythagoras, as stated by his follower, Philolaus, held tliat the earth is not motionless in the centre of the universe. His planetary theory was not, however, identical with the Copernican. He conceived that the sun, as well as the planets and the earth, revolved round a mass of fire in the centre of the system, invisible to us, because on the opposite side of the earth from the then inhabited part.

Aristarchus of Samos, in the third century, B.C., proposed a theory of the world exactly similar to the Copernican. This was subsequent to the time of Aristotle; but both Archimedes and Hipparchus rejected the theory of Aristarchus, as did also Ptolemy in the second century after Christ.— See Sir G. C. Lewis's Historical Survey of the Ancients, pp. 123, 124, 189, 252.

t See Sir David Brewster's Martyrs of Science. The freedom of Kepler's mind is nobly shown in the following words, quoted by Dr. Whewell: — 'In Theology we balance authorities, in Philosophy we weigh reasons. A holy man was Lactantius, who denied that the earth was round; a holy man was Augustine, who granted the rotundity, but denied the antipodes; a holy thing to me is the Inquisition, which allows the smallness of the earth, but denies its motion ; but more holy to me is Truth, and hence I prove, from philosophy, that the earth is round, and inhabited on every side, of small size, and in motion among the stars, and this I do with no disrespect to the Doctors.'

28 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

Human systems of religion have usually blended a false theology with some preposterous system of natural philosophy ; and the application of true science is suffi- cient to explode the whole/'' Now, not only has Scrip- ture abstained from thus blending scientific teaching with divine, but, wherever it has incidentally touched upon the phenomena of the natural world, it has avoided the use of scientific terms, and has adopted a phraseology intelligible to all men in all ages. It

* ' Examine all the false theologies of the ancients and moderns ; read in Homer or in Hesiod the religious codes of the Greeks ; study those of the Buddhists, those of the Brahmins, those of the Mahomme- dans ; you will not only find in these repulsive systems on the subject of the Godhead, but you will meet with the grossest en'ors on the material world. You will be revolted with their theology, no doubt ; but their natural philosophy, and their astronomy also, ever allied to their religion, will be found to rest on the most absurd notions.' — TJieopneustia, by M. Gaussen, chap. iv. sec. 6.

In the Christian Observer (May, 1870), the same thing is shown by pointing out that an uninspired writer in 2 Esdras, vi. 38-59, though taking his account of creation from Genesis, has not been able to restrain himself from making sundry additions of his own, which can all be proved to be false. He says (v. 40) God commanded light to come forth from His treasures, almost implying that light is a material substance, and not merely an effect ; this is very different to the simple declaration, ' Let there be light, and there was light' In V. 41 he says that God commanded the ' firmament to part asunder,' as if it were solid ; whereas in Genesis it is said God ' made the firma- ment (expanse or atmosphere), and ' divided the waters ' above and below it. He did not divide the firmament. In v. 42 he commits himself to sa}- ing that the sea is a seventh part of the land, whereas nothing of the kind is said in Genesis : and we know that the sea is about half as extensive again as the land. Indeed, the statement in Genesis, ' let the dry land appear,' seems almost to imply that the land was less extensive than the water out of which it emerged. The writer in the Observer in the same way compares Milton's description with Scripture, and shows how it departs from it, or adds to it, with scientific disadvantage.

REGARDING THE MOTION OF THE EARTH. 29

speaks intelligibly simply because it speaks in such matters according to appearances.

When I say 'appearances/ I should explain this term, as it admits of two meanings, viz. (1) what is seen, (2) what seems to be. Thus I can conceive a person speaking as follows : — 'When darkness came on, a comet appeared; and it ap)peared to be on fire.' The appearance in the first instance was a fact, something actually seen : the appearance in the second part of this description was only something which seemed to be, and was in reality in this case an illusion. It is obviously in the first of these senses that we use the word 'appearances,' when we say that it is according to appearances that Scripture speaks when it alludes to natural phenomena."'

The method of describing a phenomenon by ap- pearances is as correct as any other method. There are two ways in which a phenomenon in nature may be described ; either, first, with reference to the principles and laws of nature involved in the phenomenon : or, secondly, mth reference to the facts or the results which an observer beholds. The first is called the scientific description; the second, the description ac- cording to appearances, or what is seen. These are equally real and equally true. The first is intelligible only to the scientific : the other can be understood by all in every age. This latter method, then, is the one

* In consequence of not seeing this distinction, Mr. Goodwin, in his Mosaic Cosmogony (p. 249), wrongly attributes to me the behef that ' appearances only, not facts, are described, in the Mosaic narra- tive.' There are several passages in the edition of this treatise which he used which might have saved him from falling into this mistake.

30 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

which Scripture adopts. It neither forestalls the knowledge, which it is left to man's reason and power of observation to acquire by long and patient investiga- tion, and which, if used, would not become intelligible till the progress of science had made it so ; nor does it adopt the language of current error and of false theory, in order to accommodate itself to the apprehensions of men. In matters of ordmary observation Scripture speaks the language of se^ise, not of theory : it uses the words of every-day life : it describes natural objects as they appear. It adopts the terms which the most scientific use in the ordinary intercourse of life, and not only so, but often even in their scientific writings, which would otherwise be encumbered and obscured with the most tiresome circumlocutions.* Here is no concession to vulgar prejudice, but an adoption of the usages of human language. What would be thought of even a scientific man, if he were to relate to his companions, that, on his looking towards a rain-cloud, he had beheld a beautiful phenomenon ; that a succession of concentric circular arcs had sent forth to his eye, wdth inconceivable rapidity, an innu- merable series of waves of various lengths, but so minute, that many thousands of them occupied only an inch, and that millions of them impinged upon his eye in every second of time ? Whereas he might, in far easier language, and in language always intelligible all over

•^ Thus, I take down at random a volume of the Astronomical Transactions, and find a Paper by the Astronomer Royal, in which the following passage occurs: — ' The meaning of the third term [in an astronomical formula under consideration] is, that the sun moves (independently of perturbations) in a small circle.' — Roy. Ast. Society's Trans, vol. x. p. 237, 1838.

REGARDING THE MOTION OF THE EARTH. 31

the world, have simply adopted the popular, but no less tn.ie style, and said that he had seen a bow in the heavens, of colours varying from red to violet. The former would be a scientific way of describing the phenomenon, the causes and laws which were in opera- tion to produce the result being introduced ; and this would make it utterly unintelligible, till the undulatory theory of hght was known, and even then it would remain so to miUions, who would, nevertheless, have no difficulty in comprehending the other mode of descrip- tion, which is quite as correct, though stating only what was'actually seen. Although this illustration from the rainbow is somewhat far-fetched, it is not the less true and apt. It serves well to explain the difference between a scientific and a popular description of a phenomenon. The Copernican explanation of the solar system is now so entirely received, that no one for a moment doubts that the planets and the earth revolve about the sun. But this was not the case at one time, and such a statement of the phenomena of sun-rise and sun-set, as would require a knowledge of the physical law which causes the sun to be the centre, would then have appeared inexpHcable, as the scientific description of the phenomenon of the rain-bow would be to most

people now.

I take this opportunity of making some remarks about the terms sun-rise and sun-set, which I thnik are generally misunderstood. I believe ^^^^^.^^^^^^^ that the sun does actually rise and set, l'^^^^ '''''''' go forth out of his chamber (viz. from below the horizon), and go down again. These terms have been so mixed up in past time, with the

32 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

old a,nd now exploded notion that the earth is im- moveable, that most persons imagine that they do really imply that the sun moves and not the earth, and that they are now used only by accommoda- tion and for convenience, and in fact are not true. This I do not believe. The terms are, I conceive, equally true, whether the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system be adopted. They are the description of the phenomena strictly according to what is seen, that is, according to appearances, and involve, as I hope now to show, no assumption whatever regarding the sun or the earth being the centre of the system. It is no doubt very difficult to divest the mind of a long-established persuasion, and to get it out of an old into a new train of thinking.

It is clear that the words rise, set, fall, ascend, descend, and suchlike, are relative terms, and do not by any means indicate of necessity absolute motion in the body spoken of In sun-rise the thing seen is the increase of distance between the top of the sun and the horizon; in sun-set the decrease of the distance, and the phenomena are described in terms of that object which most attracts attention, viz., the sun ; and are called sun-ri^e and sun-^et. This reference of them to the observer's horizon, a line fixed with regard to himself, involves no theory regarding the physical causes which produce the separation or ap- proach ; but is an obvious way of regarding the phenomena. The notion that the earth is immoveable has been so ingrained in former times in men's minds, and indeed to the present day so utterly imperceptible is the earth's motion in itself, that, as I have already

REGARDING THE MOTION OF THE EARTH. 33

said, these terms — rise, set, fall, ascend, descend — when apphed to the sun, are generally supposed to imply that it does actually move in space, and that only for convenience and by accommodation the terms are still used. But, if our phraseology were to be reconstructed, or rather, if our present knowledge had been possessed when these terms were first introduced, I cannot think that others would have been used in preference. I cannot think that the position of the sun and other bodies would have been described by words, which would state that the standard of reference moved. For example, people would not have said, instead of 'See, the sun rises!' 'See, the horizon sinks !' — and simply for the reason mentioned, that the sun, and not the horizon, is the object which attracts attention. Indeed, we may feel sure of this, from the way in which similar language is perpetually used in cases, where no doubt ever existed as to which of the two bodies under consideration was fixed. In travelling towards a mountainous region, is it not the commonest of exclamations, ' Look, how the mountains rise!' they do not say 'seem to rise,' but 'how they rise !' If one ship is pursuing another at sea, and the forward one is moving onward at a great pace, but the pursuer somewhat quicker, cannot we hear the captain of the hinder vessel saying, in sea language, * How she rises!' although the ship pursued is going as fast as it can in the direction opposite to the rise, as the captain well knows. Suppose yourself sitting at the stern of a boat moving smoothly down a stream, and you call a friend at the other end to come to you, and he walks at the same rate at which

34 CORRECTIOX OF ERRORS

the vessel moves down the stream, he is absolutely at rest relatively to the shore : and you are really moving down to him. When you call to him to come, you speak in relation to things around you, and it would be ridiculous for you to use other lan- guage, and to tell him to stop and to say that you were coming down to him, meaning thereby that he was to walk along the deck and you to sit still. So when we are sitting on the earth, and have our horizon, and are speaking of phenomena as affecting ourselves, there is nothing contrary to fact in saying that the sun rises from the horizon, omitting the additional and complementary fact, that the horizon is (Hke the vessel) smoothly sinking down at precisely the same rate, so as to leave the sun in space precisely where it was. The fact is, as I have said, all such terms as sun-rise, sun-set, sun-standi7ig -still, express relative position, position relative to some standard, without any allusion whatever to physical causes and to motion caused by them. It would be a hazardous thing to trust, even in ordinary popular language, much more in Scripture phraseology, to scientific descriptions when reference is made to natural pheno- mena : for the theory may in the end prove to be false, or not sufiiciently general to explain new pheno- mena, and will therefore require re-modelling and re-stating, whereas the description, recording appear- ances, or what is seen, will always stand, so long as men's senses remain the same. It so happens, that the theory, that the sun is the centre of the solar system now admits of indubitable proof But it would, nevertheless, not be wise to surrender the

REGARDING THE MOTION OF THE EARTH. 35

general principle, that descriptions of natural plieno- mena, to be intelligible to all readers, should be couched in terms which involve no theory, however well established, but only in language which comes home to every ordinary observer. Such, as I have always received them, are the terms ' sun-nse ' and ' sun- set J in which there is no necessary reference to the absolute fixity of the sun or the earth ; but only to the position of the sun relatively to the horizon, which is fixed with regard to the observer.'''

* In a former edition, the following note appeared, which I should have omitted in the present one, as its object has been misconceived by Bishop Colenso, but that I wish to point out where his misconcep- tion lies : —

' Among many examples the langiiage of the Sacred Historian in recording the miracle of Joshua is an excellent illustration of this [viz. of describing phenomena by their appearances]. So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and Imsted not to go down about a ivliole day. , The accomplishment of this is supposed by some to have been by the arresting of the earth in its rotation. In what other words, then, could the miracle have been expressed? Should it have been said, "So the earth ceased to revolve, and made the sun appear to stand still in the midst of heaven?" This is not the language which we should use, even in these days of scientific light. Were so gi-eat a wonder again to appear, would even an astronomer, as he looked into the heavens, exclaim, 'The earth stands still!' Would he not be laughed at as a pedant % Whereas, to use the language of appear- ances, and thus to imitate the style of the Holy Scriptures themselves, would be most natural and intelligible. Conceive a vessel moving smoothly down a stream, and a man walking in a contrary direction on its deck at the same rate. What should we think of his asserting that he had never changed his situation at all ? though this would be strictly and scientifically true. So a statement strictly scientific, in the case of Joshua's miracle, would have been unintelligible to common persons, and almost ridiculous in the ears of even tlie learned.'

My object in this note was, solely to adduce an illustration of language, but by no means to adopt any explanation of the mode ni

36 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

There is another view of the wisdom shown in describing phenomena by their appearances only. Since the language of Science, even in its highest walks, admits of improvement, and has ofttimes called for correction as the field of discovery has widened, what epoch of knowledge should the Divine Author of Scripture have fixed upon as the best adapted for furnishing terms, if scientific phraseology were to be used ? The more advanced the epoch, the longer would be the period through which Scripture would be

which the phenomenon was brought about. I admit that it looks as if I intended to adopt this explanation. Dr. Colenso thinks that I have given countenance to a ' view which every natural philosopher will know to be wholly untenable.' Though it is not my intention to advocite the explanation which supposes that the earth stood still, jet, that that event was impossible with Him who created the world I deny; nor would the 'profusion of miraculous interferences' w^hich would have been necessary to counteract the natural effects of such an event (of which many will suggest themselves to a philosophical mind, not to say the melting of the whole mass with fervent heat, according to the mechanical theory of heat) be impossible or laborious to Him. But I hold no theory of explanation whatever of this miracle. Where a miracle is wrought the event is taken out of the pale of natural causes, and we are no more capable of reasoning upon it than we should have been able to foresee with what laws the world would be created, had we existed before its creation. Dr. Colenso considers Joshua's miracle to be one of the most prominent examples of Scrip- ture and Science being at variance, and wonders why I do not enter upon it at large, but dismiss it so summarily. The answer is, that it was a miracle. I can no more ascertain how it was wrought than I can how our Lord walked upon the sea, or how His body ascended into the heavens.

Since the above was written (in 1864), I have been told that some, who are quite ready to admit that a miracle was wrought, stagger at the language used, viz. that the sun stood still ; for, they say, the sun alwa3'^s stands still ; what marvel, then, is there in this ? My remarks in the text (about sun-rise, sun-set, sun-standing-still) sufficiently answer this.

REGARDING THE MOTIOX OF THE EARTH. 37

unintelligible even to the learned, because it would anticipate human discovery. Moreover, were this the principle upon which Scripture was written, we should be in danger of finding our interest in the Sacred Volume DIVIDED between the truths which concern our moral state and eternal happiness, and the scien- tific mysteries hidden beneath these unintelligible terms. If, too, scientific phraseology were introduced into Scripture, reason would have no scope, or would be crushed at every turn. It was once the universal creed that the sun moved through the heavens. That it is absolutely fixed, in space took its place. At the present day there is every reason to believe, from accurate astronomical observations, that the sun, with all its system of planets, is, after aU, in motion. These are not conjectures, but the results of mciuiry and reason. Whether the sun is absolutely fixed or not in space is, nevertheless, to this day unknown.^ We wait for science to give the answer. But it Scripture language is so chosen as to settle these questions at once, all such inquiries are hushed; the mind is cramped; reason justly feels her pro^-lnce invaded; and confusion follows. What admirable wis- dom, then, is displayed by Him who knows the end from the beginning, who knows all laws, and foresees all their operations, since from Him they take then- rise ; in that He speaks to us of these things in terms always true and always intelligible !

I have dwelt at some length on this Ulusti-ation from the Motion of the Earth. It is, however, highly instructive to fix our thoughts upon examples which the experience of the past furnishes ; that we may

38 CORRECTION OF ERRORS

benefit by the mistakes of those who are gone before, This a highly learn wisdom in our own day, and see

instructive ex- ...

ample. how we should behave m similar contro-

versies which the march of discovery is perpetually stirring up amongst us. And no controversy is so well adapted for this purpose, as that regarding the motion of the earth. For no truth is at the present day more entirely and universally received ; although no statement appears to be more contradictory to the letter of Scripture, and no physical fact is less palpable to the senses. There is, moreover, a diffi- culty involved in the belief of the earth's motion which only the mind habituated to scientific thought can thoroughly meet. If the earth revolves upon its axis in twenty-four hours, since its radius is 4000 miles, the equatorial parts of its surface must be moving at the amazing speed of 1000 miles an hour from west to east, and places in English latitudes at about 600 miles."' How is it, then, that the atmo- sphere rests quietly upon its surface, being subject only to local and occasional movements in winds and tempests, and those having no peculiar relation to the direction of east and west? How is it that our continents and oceans are not the scene of one incessant terrific tempest from the east, compared to which the most tremendous hurricane is but as the sighing of a summer breeze ? The answer is, that the whole atmosphere itself in one mass is endowed, as well as the solid earth, with this prodigious velocity ; and

"* The velocity round the sun is still grecater; more than sixty times that of the equator round the axis.

REGARDING THE MOTION OF THE EARTH. 39

the winds and aerial currents, which we perceive, are but minor deviations from this average speed, occa- sioned by local and temporary causes. To the scientific, there is no difficulty in admitting this as one among many illustrations in nature of the primary laws of motion. To the unscientific, however, it is next to incomprehensible. How readily would the objectors in the days of Galileo have seized upon such an argument, as conclusive against the new-fangled errors, had they thought of it. But, notwithstanding this^ demand upon our belief that the atmosphere revolves at this prodigious speed, there is not one amongst us in these days who doubts for a moment that the earth revolves, and not the heavens. This is perhaps admitted by most persons under the pressure of the far greater demand which the other alternative would make upon them. For if the heavens revolve, and not the earth, we must believe that the stars move through millions of millions of miles within the twenty- four hours, even quicker than light itself: and also that their velocities, countless as these bodies are, are so adjusted to their distances, that they may preserve their several relative places, as seen from the earth, invariable from age to age. This shuts us up to the first alternative, that it must be the eartli which revolves, and not the heavens. This is now the universal belief. It is received as the true view without hesitation, notwithstanding tlie difficulty of the atmosphere's revolving with such amazing velocity. Nor is the question regarded as an open one^as one involving an unexplained difficulty, and therefore waiting for a better solution. Tlie mind has been

40 CORRECTION OF ERRORS, ETC.

long habituated to the idea, and receives it. So marvellous is the effect of habit, even in thinking. ' Scientific views, when familiar, do not disturb the authority of Scripture,' however much they did upon their first announcement. ' Though the new opinion is resisted as something destructive of the credit of Scripture, and the reverence which is its due, yet, in fact, when the new interpretation has been gene- rally established and incorporated with men's current thoughts, it ceases to disturb their views of the authority of Scripture, or of the truth of its teaching. . ... And .... all cultivated persons look back with surprise at the mistake of those who thought that the essence of the revelation was involved in their own arbitrary version of some collateral circum- stance in the revealed narrative.'* The lesson we learn from this example is this : How possible it is that, even while we are contending for truth, our minds may be enslaved to error by long cherished prepossessions. No man should act or believe contrary to his conscientious convictions. But it may sometimes be a great help to him to know, that it is possible he may be entirely in the wrong : and an example like this, regarding the Motion of the Earth, in which such strong views had been pertinaciously held on the side of error, but are now universally abandoned, is not without its use for this end.

* Dr. Whewell's Philomphij of the Inductive Sciences. Chapter on the ' Reh\tion of Tradition to Palsetiology.'

41

CHAPTER 11.

EXAMPLES, FROM THE LATER HISTORY OF SCIENCE, IN WHICH SCRIPTURE HAS NOT ONLY BEEN RELIEVED OF FALSE INTERPRETATIONS, BUT HAS HAD NEW LIGHT REFLECTED UPON IT BY THE DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE.

A COMPARISON of the discoveries of Geology with the statements of the first chapter of Genesis, has furnished within the present century several examples of apparent discrepancy between Scripture and Science, which further investigation has shown not to be real, while new light has been thrown by these discoveries upon the sacred text. Upon this subject I shall enter somewhat more at large than I have done in the early editions of this work, as the discussion has been revived by the publication of Mr. Goodwin's article on ' Mosaic Cosmogony,' in Essays and JRevieivs. Two questions have been mixed up together in this dis- cussion : viz. Whether the teachings of the first chapter of Genesis are contradictory or not to the teachings of Science ; and, What is the undoubted meaning of the account in Genesis, interpreted scientifically? It is with the former of these questions alone that the present treatise, according to its avowed object, is concerned. Although I do in the following pages

42 DISCOVERIES KEGARDING THE EARTH^S AGE,

express a strong preference for one of the two generally received modes of interpretation, it is sufficient for my purpose if I show that there is no real contra- diction between Scripture and Science in the matter, whatever obscmity may still remain as to the precise meaning of the Scripture statement in a scientific point of view.

There are three leading particulars, in which the discoveries of modern Science are opposed to what were till lately the currently received view^s regarding creation, as gathered from this opening portion of the sacred volume.

1. The vast and unknown Antiquity of the Earth which geology has, undoubtedly, brought to light. Antiquity of the Compared with which the 6000 years of

Earth. -^^g hitherto supposed existence are but as yesterday, is the first of those startling facts, which only a few years ago shocked many, who con- sidered that such a conclusion was plainly repugnant to Holy Scripture.

2. The existence of Animals and Plants for many ages previously to the appearance of man on the rre-Adamite ani- ^^rth, whcu first anuounccd as a fact, was mais and plants. ^,^g^^,jg J as the fabrication of enemies of the sacred volume. The press teemed with attacks upon such reckless theorists ; and crude hypotheses, hasty guesses, and ignorant assertions were thrust forward to take the place of facts. Every effort was made to crowd the countless tribes of creatures, which the rocks poured forth from their opened treasure- houses, within the six thousand years of man s exist- ence ; and to attribute their entombment to the

PRE-ADAMITE CREATURES, AND THE SUN's AGE. 43

Deluge. But Science revolted at such summary work. Rushing waters were not the scene for deposits, in which all the bones and spines of the most delicate structures and the forms of leaves and plants in endless variety could be laid and kept unhurt. A deluge, and that, too, of only one hundred and fifty days' duration, was not the workshop in which strata ten miles thick could be formed and packed with their teeming population ; it had neither time to do the work, nor room to hold the materials. Physiology, too, lent its aid. It was discovered that the buried species, at any rate below the higher (the tertiary) beds, differed essentially in their organisation from the existing races. An order of things had then pre- vailed to which the present families could claim no relationship. Distinct acts of creative power must have called into life the existing beings, and those whose remains Science had brought to Hght. But Scripture records only one such epoch.

3. The existence of Light long prior to, not only the fourth day, on which we are told in Genesis the sun was made, but the first also, on Existence of which light was called forth, was another gfx' Days' crla! discovery which perplexed even philoso- ^'''" phers, and which the multitude indignantly denied as repugnant to the simplest and plainest declarations of Holy Writ. Geologists found that the exhumed remains of animals, belonging to ages long gone by before man's appearance, had eyes : and it was argued that eyes were for use ; that light was necessary, and that light must have existed. But all this seemed directly contrary to Scripture, which spoke thus of the

4 4 DISCOVERIES REGARDING THE EARTH's AGE,

first day. ' And God said, Let there be light, and there was h^ht ' (Gen. i. 3 ) ; and of the fourth day, ' And God made two great Hghts ; the greater Hght to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night : (He made) the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day, and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness' (Gen. i. 16-18).

These are the chief difficulties which modern Science has advanced against the long-standing interpretation Two theories of ^^ ^^® beginning of Genesis. There are explanation. ^^^ classes of interpreters who have en- deavoured to remove the perplexity thus arising, and to show that Scripture and Science are not really at variance, when rightly interpreted. As Science reveals new phenomena, opens up new ideas, and makes new demands, not only do these requii^e a searching scrutiny, but also the hitherto received interpretation of Scripture calls for re-examination. In this way, while it not unfrequently turns out that scientific men have been premature in their gene- ralizations, it also sometimes happens that Scripture is seen to have been subjected to incorrect glosses, from which it is liberated by the discoveries of Science. The torches of nature and reason shed their light, in such instances, upon the letter of the Sacred Volume itself; and God's two books of Nature and Revelation, which appeared for a while to contradict each other, are found to be in harmony.

The first class of interpreters conceive that no violence is done to either the letter or the spirit of Scripture, and that all emergent difficulties are met.

PRE-ADAMITE CREATURES, AND THE SUNS AGE. 45

by imagining that an interval of time of untold dura- tion occurred between the first creation of all things 'in the beginning/ as announced in the p^^^^^r Natural - first verse of Genesis, and the state of <^^y'^'^-^y- disorder into which the earth had fallen, as de- scribed in the second verse : and this view is much strengthened by the feeHng, that the Almighty can hardly have created the earth in a state of confusion and chaos.* From this condition the Almighty raised the earth into one of beauty and order by tlie six days' work described in the subsequent verses, and so pre- pared it for the reception of His rational creature Man, whom he brought into existence and placed in the garden of Eden on the sixth day. This view was pro- pounded by Dr. Chalmers half-a-century ago;t and was adopted by Dr. Buckland, Professor Sedgwick, and

* ToJm va bohu, that is, without form and void ; or, literally, ' desolation and emptiness.' Heb. For illustration of the meaning of this expression, see the description of the land of Israel as deso- lated and depopulated by Nebuchadnezzar, Jer. iv. 23-26. It is worthy of remark, that when the Almighty says, ' He created it (the earth) not in vain— He formed it to be inhabited,' (Isa. xlv. 18) ; the words are literally, He created it not tohu, but He formed it for habitation.

t Chalmers' Works, vol. xii. p. 369 ; vol. i. p. 228 ; Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, chap. ii. ; Sedgwick's Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge. It has been pointed out to me ^that Dathe also gives this view in his translation of the Pentateuch (1791). His translation is, ' Principio creavit Deus caelum atque terram. Post hac vero terra facta erat vasta et deserta.' In a note he adds this comment, ' Non describitur prima telluris nostrse productio, sed altera, sive ejus restauratio.' I may add that the hypothesis, that there was a wide interval of time between the first and second verses, is not a modern one merely to meet the requirements of Science, but was suggested by some of the early Christian Fathers, as pointed out by Dr. Pusey in a note in Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise.

46 DISCOVERIES REGARDING THE EARTH S AGE,

other eminent men, as an easy and sufficient solution of the difficulty. According to this hypothesis, it is sup- posed that the generations of animals and plants which are stored up in the earth's strata lived and perished in that interval of time of unknown duration which preceded the six days' creation, and that Scripture is altogether silent regarding them. The difficulties, there- fore, which the first and second of the discoveries of geology, regarding the Age of the Earth, and the pre- existence of animals and plants long before Adam, gave rise to, are altogether removed. With reference to the third difficulty, arising from the discovery that Light also existed ages before Adam, and not only six days previously, it may be observed, in the first place, that it is not said that light was created or made at all, it is called forth, it is commanded to shine out of the dark- ness which was upon the face of the deep. ' Let there be hght, and there was light;' or, Let light appear, and it appeared. Light is not a substance, but an effect. To suppose that the luminiferous ether, the vibrations of which cause light, was at this moment created, is not necessary ; but simply, that the ether, wliich had been in a state of quiescence on the surface of the earth during the darkness, was caused to vibrate, so as to send forth light, as air vibrates, when properly acted on, and sends forth sound. Nor, with reference to the fourth day, is it said that the sun and moon and stars were created on that day : the word is ' made ' — ' God MADE two great lights' (Gen. ii. 16)— the Hebrew word elsewhere signifying appointed, constituted, set for a particular purpose or use; and never once, in the one hundred and fifty places where it occurs

PRE- AD AMITE CREATURES, AND THE SUN S AGE. 47

in the book of Genesis, is it used in the sense of created*

This being premised, the account of the six days' work may be paraphrased as below. The language of this passage of Scripture consists of statements, and not

a- i There are three words employed iu the Old Testament in reference to the production of the world — jBa7^d, he created ; Yatzdr, he formed ; Asdh, he made — between which there is this difference, that the two last may be, and are, used of men. The first word, Bard, is never predicated of any created being, angel, or man, but ex- clusively appropriated to God, and God alone is called Bore, Snin, Creator. Creation is, therefore, according to the Hebrew, a Divine act — something that can be performed by God alone. In the next place, though, according to its etymology, it does not necessarily imply a creation out of nothing, it does signify the Divine production of something new, something that did not exist before. See Num. xvi. 30 ; Jer. xxxi. 22.'— Dr. McCaul, Aids to Faith, p. 203 ; also p. 212. This remark that hard does not necessarily imply creation out of nothing is made also by M. Max Mliller in his Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. chap. vi. ; from which it appears that the opinion of scholars has on this subject changed, and that though it was once thought that hard meant created out of nothing, this exclusive meaning is no longer received. I may add, however, that the connexion in which the word stands in Genesis shows that in that place it means ' created out of nothing,' because ' in the beginning ' means before anything existed but the Divine Being.

The word occurs eight times in Genesis, and is in these places always rendered by our translators created. It occurs forty times more in the Old Testament ; and in thirty-two of these it is rendered created ; in three, made ; and in the other five it has various meanings. The second word occurs three times in Genesis (ch. ii. 7, 8, 19), and is translated /ormec?. The third word, which occurs 154 times in Genesis, is not once rendered created; it is eighty-eight times c/Zo? or c/o??e; forty-five times ?^ia<:/^ ; and twenty-one times has other meanings, regulated by the context. This word occurs about 2700 times in the Old Testament, and I believe is not once translated created. In short, the first word (hard), appears to be used only when something 7ieiv is made, which did not exist before ; the third word (asdh) appears to have a more general application, meaning made, without specifying whether absolutely new or not : it seems never to be translated created, so as to confine it to that idea : but it is.

48 DISCOVERIES REGARDING THE EARTh's AGE,

of explanations ; and, therefore, how far it pleased the Almighty to work by ordinary means, as in the daily government of the physical world at present, and how far by miracle, it is impossible to say. All I propose to

nevertheless, occasionally, used of things created, as in Gen. i. 26, compared with v. 27.

It is the third of the three words which is used in the Fourth Commandment, and not the first. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is. The work of the six days is here described, in which God did not now bring the world into existence, having done that 'in the beginning,' but re-moulded previously existing matter, and prepared the earth, and the sea, and the clouds, and the atmosphere (or heaven), for man's reception.

Dr. Colenso, at p. 92 of his Part IV., represents me as basing my statement, that Gen. i. 1 refers to the original creation of matter, ' in the beginning,' and the Fom'th Commandment to a subsequent re- arrangement of that matter in the six days, on the English Transla- tion. What I say is this, that in the passages, ' In the beginning God created (hard) the heaven and the earth,' and Exod. xx. 11, ' In six days the Lord made (asdh) heaven and earth,' not only are tw^o different words— ' created ' and ' made ' — used in our translation, but two different words are also used in the Hebrew ; and that, by a collation of all the passages where these two words occur, it may be seen that the second (asdh) has a wide range of meanings, while the other (bard) has not. In this difference of words I find, I think, a confirmation of the thought, derived from other and independent premises, that in Gen. i. 1, the original creation of matter may be referred to, while in Exod. XX. 11, only a re-arrangement of the same matter may be spoken of. It might be inferred from Dr. Colenso's remarks on what he quotes from my Fourth Edition, that the fixct of the sacred writer using these two distinct words is the ground of my argument. This is not the case. This philological basis is too slight to erect upon it such an inference : but it may be regarded, as far as it goes, as confirming the thought arrived at in another way. With reference to his remark in p. 94, I would say, that though this view does not satisfy him, it does me till a better is propounded. I do not feel it to be a ' broken reed .... piercing .... the hands that leant upon it.' Exod. xx. 11 might w^ell be translated, ' For in six days the Lord fashioned heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.'

PRE- ADAMITE CREATURES, AND THE SUN's AGE. 49

do is to show how it is possible to translate the language into that of physical occurrences, on the supposition that the days are natural days.

On the first day, while the earth was ' without form and void,' the result of a previous revolution on its surface, ' and darkness was upon the face of the deep,' God commanded light to shine upon the earth. This may have been effected* by such a clearing of the thick and loaded atmosphere as would allow the light of the sun to penetrate its mass with a suffused illu- mination, sufficient to dispel the total darkness which prevailed, but proceeding from a source not yet apparent on the earth. On the second day a separation took place in the thick vapoury mass which lay upon the earth, dense clouds were gathered up aloft, and separated from the waters and vapours below by an ' expanse,' the word rightly substituted in the margin of our Bibles for ' firmament' On the third day, the lower vapours, or fogs and mists, which still concealed the earth, were condensed, and gathered, with the other waters on the earth, into seas — we may suppose by the upheaval of the ocean-bed in some places — and the dry land appeared. Then grass and herbs began to grow. On the fourth day, the clouds and vapours were so rolled into separate masses, or even altogether absorbed into the air, that the sun shone forth in all its brilliancy, the visible source of light and heat to the renovated earth,

* This view of the light of the sun, temporarily obscured, struggling through the earth's vapoury atmosphere, and not shniing fully on the earth till the fourth day, is not peculiar to the natural- day interpreters.

E

50 DISCOVERIES REGARDING THE EARTHS AGE,

while the moon and the stars gave light by night ; and God appointed them henceforth for signs and for seasons, for days and for years, to the rational beings whom He was about to call into existence ; as He afterwards set or appointed the rainbow, which had appeared ages before, to be a sign to Noah and his descendants. On the fifth and sixth days the waters and the earth brought forth living creatures, and man was created.

' We hold the week of the first chapter of Genesis,' writes Dr. Chalmers, 'to have been literally a week of miracles; the period of a great creative interposition, during which by so many successive evolutions the present economy was raised out of the wreck and materials of the one which had gone before.' That the Creation of Man was a signal act of Divine power, not brought about by secondary causes, we must, at any rate, admit. Why, then, should there be any hesitation in supposing that the great changes which preceded this act were due to an equally direct exer- cise of Creative Agency ? It has been said, that if we have to accept the theory that the week of creation was a week of miracles, the whole question is placed beyond our criticisms ; and we may just as readily at once admit, that all the tribes of creatures which geology reveals were created during those six natural davs. But an examination of the fossils themselves must soon dispel such a notion. They exhibit the varied effects and accidents of ordinary vegetable and animal life to such a degree, as to make it far more difficult for us to suppose that these circumstances

PRE-ADAMITE CREATURES, AND THE SUN's AGE. 51

have been imitated in a miraculous existence and destruction of these creatures in a few days, than that the physical changes, as' above described, may have taken place in the same time. That the fossils should have been created as they are found, with scattered bones and broken shells, is a notion, of course, too foolish to be entertained for a moment.

The particulars of the above paraphrase may be capable of improvement. Hereafter, some better one may be advanced upon this natural-day hypothesis. I have given this, as I have already said, only in order to indicate, that on the hypothesis of the days being- natural days, a consistent interpretation can be given to the passage, as an account of actual occurrences, and that the account so interpreted advances nothing really contradictory to Science. I do not consider that Scripture receives any confirmation from Science by this interpretation ; but I contend that it meets with no contradiction from it. According to this view, the first chapter of Genesis does not pretend (as has generally been assumed) to be a cosmogony, or an account of the original creation of the material uni- verse. The only cosmogony which it contains, in that sense, is confined to the sublime declaration of the first verse : ' In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' Then stepping over an interval of indefinite ages, with which the human race has no direct concern, the inspired record proceeds at once to narrate the events preparatory to the introduc- tion of man on the scene, employing phraseology strictly faithful to the appearances which would have met the eye of man, could he have been a spectator

52 DISCOVERIES REGARDING THE EARTH's AGE,

on the earth of what passed durmg those six days/'"

The other method of interpretation has been adopted by various writers. According to this view, the six days Second or period- ^^'^ imagined to be, not days of the ordinary day theory. ]^[j^^^ }y^f^ pcriods of cnormous duration, and not necessarily of equal length. In this way the first of the three difficulties I have mentioned is at once met ; since, on this view, no limit whatever is assigned to the age of the earth. In support of this it is argued that the word ' day ' is not always used in Scripture to mean a period of twenty-four hours, and that even within the space of the first thirty-five verses of Genesis the word has three separate meanings, viz. a day of daylight ; a day of an evening and morning (Gen. i. 5) ; and a day wliich seemingly mcludes the whole six days of creation (Gen. ii. 4). The six days' narrative is taken to be an account of the creation, during these enormous periods of time, of the innumer- able animals and plants which are found fossil in the strata ; which are, therefore, not passed over in silence

* It has been suggested that even v. 1 may refer to the six days' creation, and that there is no interval between that and the second verse. In this case geological time would be prior to v. 1. This interpretation w^ould have the advantage of making the language of the fourth commandment coincide more simply with that of the first chapter of Genesis, than when we have to exclude the first verse, and point out that the word 'made' is used, and not ' created.' But it is obvious, I should say, that St. John, in using the phrase ' In the beginning ' at the commencement of his Gospel, made a distinct refer- ence to the same phrase at the commencement of Genesis. In St. John's Gospel, there can be no question that it means in the beginning of all created things, and not the present order of things, as the declaration of the eternity of the Son of God is the apostle's object. This, then, must be the meaning in Genesis.

PRE-AD AMITE CREATURES, A^D THE SUN's AGE. 53

in this account, as they are supposed to be according to the other hypothesis. The second of the three discoveries of geology is thus accounted for. Mr. Miller, one of the advocates of this theory, considers that he can identify the work of the third, fifth, and sixth days respectively — when plants (i. 11-13), sea- monsters and creeping things (i. 20-23), and cattle with beasts of the earth (i. 24, 25) were made — with what geologists call the palaeozoic, the mesozoic, and the kamozoic periods,'" in which the copious flora producing the coal-measures, the huge saurian animals, and mammalia, are the distinguishing fossils. By ' evenmg and morning ' he understands a diminution and increase in the existences, vegetable or animal, by which the periods are most prominently characterised. No mean- ing is assigned to these terms for the other three days— the first, second, and fourth. The third difficulty, regarding the non-appearance of the sun, moon, and stars till the fourth period, although light must have existed previously, is met very much as under the former method of interpretation, though without so simple an explanation of the cause of their obscuration throughout the long interval of the first, second, and third periods, t

Both these theories of interpretation, it will be seen, furnish a solution of the three difficulties I have enumerated, as advanced by modern Science against

* That is, three geological ages, in which the fossil creatures are supposed to be of ancient, middle, and recent types ; corresponding with the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary divisions of rocks and formations.

■f Testimoui/ of the Rocks, p. 152.

54 DISCOVERIES REGARDING THE EARTH's AGE, &C.

the old method of understanding this chapter. The charge against Scripture and Science that they are here at variance, falls therefore to the ground, as no contradiction is established. It is clear, however, that both these theories of explanation cannot be true, though neither may advance anything positively at variance with this brief statement of Scripture. Mr. Goodwin makes this difierence of interpretation a matter of triumph, in his Essay on * Mosaic Cosmo- gony,' and founds on it the illogical conclusion that both are wrong ; and more than this, that the Mosaic account itself is untrue ! He entirely passes by the several points in which the interpreters concur : viz. that the account in Genesis is true ; that it was communicated to the writer by inspiration ; that it teaches that matter is not eternal ; that God created matter in the beginning ; that the beginning may have been, and probably was, countless ages ago ; that the document describes a creation which was distri- buted over six portions of time ; that man was created out of the dust in the sixth period ; that the Sabbath was instituted, for the benefit of man, in commemo- ration of this work. The points on which they differ are these : (1) whether the six days are ordinary days or not : (2) whether the brief account of what occurred in these six periods is sufficiently full to justify us in expecting to find in the records of terrestrial changes such corresponding traces of phenomena as may enable us to test the truth of the narrative. It is upon these points alone that the theories are ' mutually destructive.' But these are points which affect the explicitness of the narrative, not its truth. Both

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 55

accounts agree in considering that the general idea of orderly succession was mainly what the narrative was intended to convey.

Though, however, I write in this general way when arguing against a common opponent, without any hesitation I adopt the first of the two methods of interpretation. I proceed now to give at length my reasons for this.

Before entering upon a comparison of these two methods of exposition,* I would observe, that it is difficult to see any good ground for sup- Genesis i. not a posing, as some have done, that the reve- lation of these truths was made to Moses by vision. That they were supernaturally communicated is evi- dent, as they refer to transactions which occurred before the creation of man ; but one method of com- munication is as easy to the Almighty as another; and no special reason is apparent why that of vision should have been chosen. In other cases, wliere information was given in visions, this is expressly stated by the prophet to whom the vision was vouch- safed. But here there is not the slightest intimation to that eflPect. The verses in question bear all the marks of being a plain narrative, precisely such as an observer, had he been present, would have given. ^ This mode of description is the one we often adopt in de- scribing scenes to others who have not witnessed them : we treat them as actual spectators, at the time, of what we are describing. This method gives the hveliest and most durable impression of what we are describing. In * Should my readers not be interested in this discussion, tliey may pass over 32 pages to page 8G, where it ends.

56 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

the fourth commandment, these verses are, unques- tionably, referred to as history.

Dr. Eorison '"" has suggested that they are a Psalm of Creation ; and, after others who have preceded him in this, he points out that the verses follow the rules of parallelism, such as Bishop Lowth discovered in the Psalms and the Prophets. There can be no objection to this, if the psalm be taken to be an historical psalm. If I mistake not, however, Dr. Eorison does not take this view, and in so far I decidedly differ from him. He seems to consider that there are no chronological marks whatever in the narrative; that the expression, 'The evening was, and the morning was,' is merely a poetical refrain, to mark the change of chorus where the subjects of the poem change ; and that the number seven is mystic, t

I will now enter upon my reasons for rejecting the period theory of explanation, and for accepting the natural-day theory.

The fact of the alternations of light and darkness being distinctly defined as Day and Night in Gen. i. 5, Objections to the ^^^ ^^ ^J mind, a strong argument in period theory, favour of natural days, and against periods. For what is the primary meaning of Day and Night ? — and surely the primary and currently used meaning must be designed here, where they are given as defini- tions. Any other meaning (such as in John, ix. 4 : 'I must work .... while it is day, the night cometh wherein no man can work ') is secondary and figurative, and derived from the primary one.

* Replies to Essays and Reviews, pp. 281-286. t Ibid. pp. 333-336.

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 57

The use assigned to the sun and moon and stars, which are made to shine upon the earth on the fourth day, viz. to be ' for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years ' (i. 1 4)— seems clearly intended for the advantage of God's intellectual creature, man. But upon the period system of interpretation, he was not created to enjoy this benefit for myriads of years after it was prepared for him — all the animal existences on the earth, the work of the fifth and sixth days, in- tervening before man's appearance. There is something incongruous in this.

The visible appearance of the sun on the fourth day, in the midst of the week, furnishes a conclusive argu- ment for natural days, if the term ' and evening was, and morning was' — which occurs six times — is to be interpreted consistently throughout. For it may be fairly assumed that the heavenly bodies began at once to fulfil the functions assigned to them, viz. ' the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night' (i. 16); and therefore the -fifth and sixth days, at least, must have been ordinary days of twenty-four hours each ; and as they were of sufficient length for the works belonging to them, the first, second, third, and fourth may well have been sufiicient for their respective works. The description, 'evening was, and morning was,' being the same, the day must be homogeneous.

Mr. Birks well remarks, that ordinal numbers never occur either in the Bible or elsewhere, when words of time are used as indefinite periods. And he adds, that the reason is plain : two, three, four indefinite periods make only one indefinite period. The simple fact that

58 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

the days are numbered from the first to the sixth, is thus a clear proof that definite periods or days are meant.

The dominion given to Adam over the creatures, the creation of which had been described, and the use assigned to the fruit-trees, viz. that they should be for food to Adam (i. 28, 29), can, by no contrivance, be made to refer to the flora of the coal-measures, and the saurians and mammals which, according to the period- theory, had been for ages buried in the earth as fossil deposits 1

The wording of the fourth commandment appears to me opposed to the view of periods. The spirit of the commandment, I admit, is the same whatever the duration of the days be. But the wording appears to forbid the period interpretation. Exod. xx. 8 : ' Remem- ber the Sabbath-day to keep it holy 9. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work. 10. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates : 11. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day, and hallowed it.' Is it not a harsh and forced interpretation to suppose that the ' six days ' in v. 9 do not mean the same as the 'six days' in v. 11, but that in this last place they mean periods ? In reading through the eleventh verse, it is extremely difiicult to believe that the ' seventh day ' is a long period and the ' Sabbath- day ' an ordinary day ; that is, that the same word ' day '

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 59

should be used in two such totally different senses in the same short sentence, and without explanation.

There is one argument advanced for the period- theory which appears to me hardly worthy of being mentioned. It is said, that God's work of creation is not going on now, and that the formula ' and evening was, and morning was,' is not recorded for the seventh day, because His Sabbath rest is still going on. Hence the seventh day of the creation-week being a long period of time, the six working days must have been so too. But there are two rephes to this. It proves too much. God's rest from the six days' work will last, through eternity ; and therefore each of the six periods should have been of eternal duration to keep up the analogy. Again ; it is the fact of a cessation after six days' work which is taught by the analogy of the creation-week, and not the length of the rest. Six days did God work, and then ceased. Six days we are commanded to do our ordinary work, and then to rest. The Almighty's work during the creation-week is once done and not repeated. Man has again to enter upon his ordinary occupations, and to spend his life in a cycle : and therefore the length of his rest is fixed, and it is appointed to be one day after six (Gen. ii. 3 ; Exod, xx. 10), when he begins his routine again. Too much is made, moreover, as it appears to me, of God's now resting from work, and human ideas are mixed up with divine in an unwarrantable manner. Surely the upholding of all things, the ordering of all things in heaven and earth, and the work of redeeming a ruined world, are undertakings as arduous —I speak with reverence, and am forced into this strain by the Ian-

60 COMPARISON OF THE NATUHAL-DAY AND PERIOD

guage of the opposite side — as the creation of the world, to Him who ' spake and it was done, who com- manded and it stood fast ' (Ps. xxxiii. 9). Mr. Miller, indeed, justly feeling the greatness of the scheme of redemption, is unable either to leave it out of the estimate of the Divine doings or to abstain from calling it a 'work/ His theory, therefore, of periods, which compels him to consider that God is now resting from His work of creation, compels him also to adopt the inconsistent course of assigning other work in the new creation now going on. ' The work of Redemption may be the work of God's Sabbath-day/ '"

These six arguments which I have given against the period-theory are quite independent of any geological facts or speculations. The advocates of that theory draw their chief arguments from this source. Argu- ments can be drawn on the opposite side also from geological research. The following is an example.

The late M. D'Orbigny, in his Prodrome de Falceontologie,f by an elaborate examination of vast multitudes of fossils, gives reason to believe that there have been at least twenty-nine periods of animal and vegetable existence, that is, twenty- nine creations,

* Testimony of the Bocks, p. 153. See ChHstian Observer, July 1858, and The Bible and Modern Thought. Second edition.

Bishop Wordsworth, in his comment on Gen. i. 5, after observing that there must have been death in the geological periods, says, ' But the Days of Creation, as represented in the Book of Genesis, are not Days of Death, there is no place for death in them ; they are days of creation only : and God saw everything that He had made in them, and behold it was very good, v. 31. But death is not good; it is evil : therefore, God saw no death in them ; it was not there.'

t See Lardner's Museum of Science and Art, vol. xii., pre-Adamite Earth, pp. 5, 37, 38, 120, 155.

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. Gl

separated one from another by catastrophes ^vhicli have swept away the species existmg at the tmie, with a very few sohtary exceptions, never exceeding one- and-a-half per cent of the whole number discovered, which have either survived the catastrophe, or have been erroneously designated. M. D'Orbigny states that both animals and planets appeared in every one of these twenty-nine periods. This is quite irreconcilable with the period theory. The parallel is destroyed both in the number of the periods — thirty, including the azoic, instead of six — and also in the character of the things created. To say that only the more important ones were announced in Genesis, is to resign the office of interpreter altogether. But I consider geology to be a science so young, still growing and so frequently shifting its ground, that arguments drawn from the speculations it gives rise to are not to be trusted in this grave inquiry, in which Scripture and Nature are brought into comparison.

Besides these objections to the period theory, it appears to me that the several methods of applying that theory all fail in some important Each method of particular. Thus, to begin with Mr. Mil- ^PSleoJv lers method. How iU do his three iUus- ^^^i^ s^^^^^vhere. trations from the fossils of the palaeozoic, secondary, and tertiary deposits, with their dawn and decline, suit the description of the work of the third, fifth, and sixth days, with their ' evening and morning.' On the third day grass and 'the fruit-tree yielding fruit' (v. 11), meant 'for meat' for man (v. 29), were created. Though edible fruit might have been found in the palmacese, cycadaceae, and coniferae, which

62 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

abound in the coal measures, yet, what is to be made of the 'evening and morning?' If 'evening and morning' of these periods mean the dedine and dawn of species (it is necessary to invert the terms from their natural order), what can this expression mean when used for the other periods, when no plants or animals were created ? Assui'edly, the Hebrews could derive no other idea from the words than that the hteral evening and morning of the day were meant. There is another point, too, in which Mr. Miller s illustrations fail. They are by no means characteristic of the ivhole of the respective periods to which they belong, but only of some part, and that, perhaps, only a small part, and are obviously selected because they best suit the description in Genesis. And more than this ; this interpretation would make it appear that the strata testify to the fact, that the earth was first covered with a flora, and that afterwards living creatures appeared (as described in Genesis) ; whereas geologists inform us that animal and vegetable life first appeared on the earth at one and the same time.

Let us next take Dr. M'Caul's interpretation.'"' I cannot but think that his accommodation of the nebular hypothesis of Laplace — which, though a highly ingenious hypothesis, is, after all, a mere hypothesis, with various scientific difficulties besetting it, — to the elucidation of the account of creation, is very hazardous. Is it wise to mix up Scripture interpretation with a theory of planetary evolution so utterly uncertain as

* Aids to Faith, p. 212.

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 63

this is ? Our first-rate works on astronomy do not even allude to it.* Nor is the aid which the theory, were it true, would bring to his interpretation of any use. The theory is briefly this : that myriads of ages ago, the planetary space was filled with an enormous gaseous globe of great heat revolving on an axis ; that as the heat radiated into space the mass contracted, and the velocity of rotation therefore increased ; that during the process of contraction the globe threw ofl a ring of matter at its equator, when the centrifugal force became greater than the attraction of the globe ; that in this way successive rings of irregular thickness have been thrown off, which each contracted into a planet itself revolving on an axis ; and the satellites were formed in the same way from the planets. Geometry shows that this theory remarkably accounts for the facts in the solar system as it was known in the time of Laplace, t Dr. M'Caul considers that it accounts for the earth being spoken of in Genesis as in existence before the sun. He allows that the whole nebulous mass must have been created at one and the same time ' in the beginning ; ' but he appears to consider

'^ Sir John Herschel, in his Astronomy, and Mr. Grant, in his History of Physical Astronomy, both standard works, make no mention of it. Humboldt, in his Cosmos, in the passages referred to by Dr. M'Caul (i. 85, 90, and iv. 1G3), cannot properly be said to 'take it for granted.' His language in the first and second passages is : ' If the planets have been ' so formed ; and, in the third passage, he speaks of the primitive internal heat of our planet, ' generated possibly by the condensation of a rotating nebulous ring.' The latest difficulty which has appeared, viz. that the satellites of Uranus revolve the wrong way, appears fatal to the theory.

t Professor Huxley says, that Kant first propounded this hypo- thesis in 1755. See Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, p. 2G3. Laplace was born in 1749.

64 COMPAEISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

that the vapoury ring, out of which the earth was formed, according to the hypothesis, became a globe sooner than the central mass did. There is no reason whatever for this. Indeed, the central mass w^ould have been a globe, a globe of continually diminishing dimensions, from the beginning, and through all the changes ; whereas the nebulous ring could not have become a globe for long after the central mass had contracted within the limits of the earth's orbit. The heat which the central mass would radiate away (the loss of which is supposed to have produced the con- traction of its dimensions) would keep up the heat of the nebulous ring, and thus retard its contraction into its present dimensions. Again, the theory suggests nothing whatever regarding the luminosity of the nebulous matter. The hypothesis is merely a mechanical contrivance for suggesting how the peculiar motions and positions of the bodies of the solar system may possibly have been acquired from a primitive cause. The Sun's being furnished therefore with a luminous atmosphere on the fourth day, as supposed by Dr. M'Caul, is not taken from this theory, but is borrowed from Genesis, which it is his object to explain. Again, he explains God's making the greater light to rule the day, to mean His giving to the opaque mass of the sun a luminous atmosphere. But the moon is spoken of in Genesis in precisely the same language as the sun, except that it is only of less intensity. But the moon has no luminous atmosphere, but shines only by borrowed light. Again, he uses the same nebular hypothesis to explain the fact which geologists have announced, that none of the fossil

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 65

plants or animals indicate the existence of climatic distinctions during any age previous to the present or human period. He assumes that the whole of the palaeozoic, secondary, and tertiary fossils were created, flourished, and perished during the first and second days of the creative week, that is before the sun had become the centre of light and heat to the earth, and therefore before the present seasons and varieties of cHmate had begun ; that the works of the third and following days were a preparation of the earth for the reception of man ; and that the plants and animals then created are the progenitors of the present flora and fauna.* But, in reply to this, I would say, that till the third day there was no visible dry land, and yet in the tertiary deposits, at least, there are multi- tudes of fossils of terrestrial animals and trees. Then, lastly, what were * evening and morning ' on the fourth and following days on this hypothesis, if they were not the ordmary diurnal evening and morning ? And if they were so, is there not a want of homogeneity in the interpretation of this formula, which occurs six times in the narrative, as Dr. M'Caul expressly asserts that ' the first three days were not measured by the interval between sun-set and sun-set, /or, as yet, the sun [according to his hypothesis] was not perfect, and had no " light ?'

Professor Challis adopts the idea that the days

* Auh to Faith, pp. 217-219. At p. 217, 1. 6, he says that the first two days 'may' include the primary, secondary, and tertiary formations. But, in the last line, he assumes the truth of this when he says that, the dry land appearing on the third day, the tertiary world was buried by the rise of the ocean.

F

66 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

were periods, and supposes that the sun was created in the beginning, but was prevented from illuminating the earth during the first three periods by a vast stratum of vapour, which vapour he imagines to have been luminous on the first, second, and third days, but to have been in such a state of disquietude during the darkness which separated them, when pre- paration was taking place for the work of the following day, as to have lost its luminosity, and so to have produced the nights between the periods.* On the

* Creation in Plan and Progress, pp. 19-40. The theory of this book is, that in the portion of Scripture we are considering, God gives a Plan of Creation, and that in the subsequent portion and in nature we have a representation of Creation in Progress ; and that it does not necessarily follow that the progTess has followed the plan in all precise particulars. Professor Challis makes much of Genesis ii. 4, 5, as rendered in the English version and in the LXX, which seems to teach that God made plants, &c., in one sense (in plan) before He made them in another (that is, actually in the earth). But these verses may be better translated. The word rendered in our version ' before,' means also ' not j^et,' as in 1 Sam. iii. 7. These verses will then read as follows : — ' These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, then no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet grown ; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.' This entirely cuts away the ground from under this interpretation.

If, indeed, we retain the present English translation of the passage, which has the support of the Septuagint, it by no means implies that God designed one thing and in the act of Creation produced something different to it. But it rather implies that God created the vegetable kingdom in the stage of plants, herbs, trees — all containing in themselves the power of reproduction when the proper influences of moisture and heat came to act ; — and that He did not create it as seed only in the first instance. And similarly He created man and woman in their adult condition, and not in some earlier and more helpless stage of existence, through which their offspring would pass.

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 67

fourth the vaporous clouds break up and the sun shines forth in its brightness, and henceforth becomes the regulator of night and day as at present. Hitherto the ' evening and morning ' have been the alternations of darkness and light, as the thick nimbus thrice lost and twice regained its brightness. But, although the sun rides throughout the remainder of the creative week, the ' evening and the morning,' for consistency sake, is not considered that 'evening and mornmg' which the setting and rising of the sun once in twenty- four hours actually produced, but soniethmg else,* which, however, the theory does not explain, for no notice is taken of the formula ' evening was, and morn- ing was' on the fourth, fifth and sixth days. Here is again the same want of homogeneity in the explanation of this formula as before, and which of itself seems to me fatal to these theories of interpretation.

Dr. Dawson, another advocate of the period scheme, has a theory regarding the creation of man and the dominion given to him over the creatures, which he thinks greatly strengthens the hypothesis of periods. He asserts that carnivorous animals are not mentioned, but heMmahs, or herbivorous animals, among the crea- tures over whom Adam was given dominion. He supposes that Adam was created at the end of the sixth period, along with a group of creatures adapted to contribute to his happiness and having no tendency to injure or annoy, and that they are alluded to m Gen ii 19, 20, and that Eden was the region which they inhabited. But that in the regions around, and all over the earth, were the descendants of animals

* Creation in Plan and Progress, p. 41.

68 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

created in the earlier times of that period, and not all endowed with the harmless dispositions of the latest groups. The cursing of the ground for man's sake, on his fall from innocence, consisted in the permission given to the predaceous animals and the thorns and the briers, of other centres of creation, to invade man s Eden ; or, in his own expulsion, to contend with the animals and plants which were in- tended to have given way and become extinct before him. He assumes that many animals, contemporaneous with man, extend far back into the tertiary period : and that these creatures, not belonging to the Edenic centre of creation, but introduced in an earlier part of the sixth day, are now permitted to exist along with man in his fallen state. He considers that this view strengthens the probability that the creative days were long periods, and opposes an almost insurmount- able obstacle to every other hypothesis of reconciliation with geological science.* But Dr. Dawson's assertion, upon which his theory stands, that the word hehemah (used in Gen. i. 26) means herbivorous creatures exclusively, is not true. Indeed, in v. 30, where grass is assigned to the beasts of the earth, the word hehemah is not used, but the other word, which Dr. Dawson takes to mean carnivorous creatures. Moreover, hehe- mah is the word used in Deut. xxviii. 26, which leaves no doubt that it does not mean herbivorous creatures exclusively : in Pro v. xxx. 30, it is used in reference to a lion.

Dr. McCausland is another follower of the period

* Arckaia, or Studies of the Cosmogony and Natural History of the Hehj^ew Scriptures, pp. 215-222.

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 69

theory. In his book, Sermons in Stones, there is much in common with others who take that view, and which therefore need not be alluded to here. I will notice some things which are peculiar to him, and which show the difficulties under which his theoiy labours, in addition to those which are common to the whole class. He finds that in the Silurian and Devonian strata there are three classes of submarine animals : (1) zoophytes and bivalve mollusks, without visual organs, and which may have existed before light ; (2) the higher classes of mollusks and crusta- ceans, furnished with organs of sight, and which must have come into existence after ^the creation of light; and (3) the still higher class of vertebrate fish. The first class, he asserts (though nothing of the sort is stated m Genesis), were created on the first day, before the dawn of light; the next on the second day, after the appearance of light ; and the third, contem- poraneously with land vegetation, on the third day. How can he venture to make these assertions, when it was on the fifth day or period, and not sooner, that 'the waters brought forth the moving creature that hath \ifeV* He finds it all in the second verse, 'And the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters,' and brought into existence these marine

* Dr. McCaiisland makes much of the Hebrew word sheretz, trans- lated 'moving creature' (Gen. i. 20), and says it should be rej^tile, as the verb means to creep. He thus excludes fish from the fifth day, and admits only reptiles, and hence saurians. But the word also means to swarm, and, being applied to Pharaoh's frogs (Exod. viii. 3), which did not creep, but hop, must have a more general meaning. Gesenius's meanings are— 1. To multiply or propagate itself abun- dantly. 2. To creep, crawl, swarm.

70 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

creatures. He explains the fact of nothing being said of these creations in Genesis, by adding that as this work was spread over, as he assigns it, tin^ee days, and could not be appropriated to one only, it was not more particularly mentioned, and, in fact, * ought not to have formed part of the Mosaic narrative ! '* Dr. McCausknd follows Mr. Miller in regarding the whole as being a vision, and observes that Moses could not see or hear what was going on beneath the waters, and therefore this intimation, of the brooding of the Spirit on the surface, was given instead.t How, then, did Moses see the creatures which Hhe waters brought forth abundantly after their kind' (v. 21)? Dr. McCausland draws out more forcibly than any of his CO -theorists the correspondence between the work of the third day, (when the earth, enveloped in a vapoury atmosphere, and not fully shone upon by the sun, was clothed in vegetation,) and the existence of the coal-fields ; and the unwary reader may, doubt- less, be carried away into admiration of the parallel so eloquently described. But what are the contents of these fossil coal-fields, even on Dr. McCausland's own showing ? Half, at least, are of the fern or bracken tribe, and the rest cryptogamic and flowerless plants. | Where, then, is the 'fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind,' described in Gen. i. 11 ? How can so minute a depictor of striking coincidences have passed by this fatal discrepancy ? ' The evening and the morning,' too, meets with only a passing notice, as it evidently must stand in the way in the period theory under every

* Sermons in Stones, 1857, pp. 154, 155, 170. t Ibid. p. 156. i Ibid. p. 166.

I

THEOPvIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 71

form. In one place, indeed, he seems almost to ac- knowledge, that the effect must have been produced by the sun's alternate rising and setting, when he speaks of the ' dim diurnal light and nocturnal dark- ness alternately pervading aU.'* If this be the case, it is difficult to reconcile it with his theory of

periods.

Mr. Warington, in his recent book. The Week of Creation, must be regarded as an upholder of the period theory. He regards this portion of Scripture as histoiy, and not a vision or mere ideal representation ; he repeatedly speaks of it as 'a histoiy of creation :' he writes of it as 'a professed revelation of otherwise unknown natural facts, whose narration as facts is an essential part of the purpose in view ' (p. 5). He says, that it contains ' information of a scientific character, not otherwise obtainable by those to whom it was given;' but 'to impart such information' was not 'its proper end' (p. 23) ; 'the aim of the narrative was not to en- large men's ^ews of nature as such, but, through nature, to teach them concerning nature's God' (p. 27). 'But we have a right to expect that the truths taught shall be in harmony with the resvilts of science .... and that the facts alleged as embodiments of these truths shall be really facts, described in language phenomenally correct' (p. 28). He considers, that 'in the -six-days' work is to be included the entire history of creation' (p. 65) ; and that ' these days are without doubt literal days and not long or indefinite periods' (p. 67); but yet that we are not to conclude that it was the

* Sermons in Stones, p. 180.

72 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

intention to teach us ' that in six literal days of twenty- four hours each the whole of creation was accomplished from beginning to end' (p. ^7), In reference to this paradox he adds, ' It by no means follows, that because the description speaks of literal days, therefore the realities they described were also days' (p. 67). This contradiction he attempts to remove in the following way. We read in Scripture of God's arm, God's eye, God's mouth, the words used mean literally arm, eye, mouth, and nothing else. But the use here made of these words is figurative. This is a distinction which we can clearly understand. So he says that we read that 'God went down to see,' that 'God smelled a sweet savour,' and that 'God repented:' and he adds that the words used mean literally, went down, smelled, and repented. ' Yet we do not ascribe,' he adds, ' any one of these actions literally to God, but we assert that there were actions of God having the like relation to His nature, which these actions, taken literally, have to our nature ' (p. 69). All this is intelligible. Causes, or instruments, or actions are put for theu* effects. Man's arm, eye, mouth represent his strength, know-- ledge, directing power. So, though in a degree and sense superhuman, the Divine strength, knowledge, and commands are represented by the Divine arm, eye, mouth, as if the Deity were really possessed of those parts. This idea he applies thus to the case in hand. The six days are literal days ; but as the terms occur in a description of the Divine acts, they may really represent something else. This I will admit is possible. But ivhat else ? Analogy would say, something similar to what would be an effect of six days in human Hfe

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 73

and practice. But in Mr. Warington's explanation the thing represented is Other Periods of time, only of unknown length, periods long enough for the terrestrial work which geology shows us has been done in a practical mundane way in ages past. The six days represent not any attribute of the Deity, as the arm, eye, and mouth do, or even Time in the abstract ; but periods of time, differing from the days merely in being of unknown duration. The analogy, therefore, altogether breaks down. That days might represent periods, I admit, if no valid arguments from other sources exist opposed to the idea— which, in fact, I have already shown there are. But then the historical character of the whole passage, which Mr. Warington attributes to it, must be abandoned. The description becomes a mere dramatic representation, and not a history of facts.

1 might quote the works of other upholders of the period theory ; but the references already made will suffice, as they will represent the views of this class of interpreters, and show, I think, the danger of trust- ing to any such theories of interpretation. It is sur- prising what analogies an ingenious mind may trace in things which really have nothing in common. By passing by everything which is contrary, and pressing into service everything which is favourable, writers may persuade themselves and the incautious into a beUef of almost any theory so constructed. The ready writer, whose work. Sermons in Stones, I have been noticing, comes, apparently, under this description. He brings forward several remarkable analogies be- tween the Mosaic account and the records of the earth.

74 COMPARISON OF THE NAt URAL-DAY AXD PERIOD

and sets them forth in a very striking manner ; but he passes by, unnoticed, with one exception * (which is not, however, met), whatever is opposed to his con- clusions. His analogies, moreover, do not prove an identity. There is nothing at all improbable in the idea that the Almighty, in calling into existence plants and animals, at the time that man was created, to be the progenitors of species now existing, should follow in some respects the order of previous creations, t

No such difficulties as those which beset the period theory stand in the way of our reception of the first The naturai-dav ^icthod of explanation, m which the days theory accepted, ^rc taken to be natural days. Mr. Miller, though he became the advocate of the period theory towards the close of his life, originally maintained the natural-day theory. The argument which turned him from his former view appears to be this : That an examination of the species of the tertiary strata and of the present flora and fauna indicates, that there has been no such break in organic life preceding the present order of things, as is represented according to this inter- pretation in Gen. i. 2 — no such ' chaotic gulf of death and

* This is, the trilobites with eyes have been subsequently found lower down than the sightless zoophytes : see pp. 149, 150, and com- pare this with p. 148 of Dr. McCausland's book.

f Since writing the above I have met the same sentiment in Dr. M'Cosh's work, The Supernatural in Relation to the Natural: — ' Who will venture to affirm that God, who has proceeded from the beginning in our Cosmos according to the method of type, that is, model or exemplar .... may not have proceeded by type likewise in that necessarily wonderful transaction which ushered man upon the scene ? . . . . The account in Genesis may thus be a description of six literal days, as representative of six epochs.' Pp. 343, 344.

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I.

ro

darkness.'-'' M. D'Orbigny has, however, re-examined the fossils, and asserts in his Prodrome de PalcBonto- logie, that not a single species, either vegetable or animal, is common to the tertiary and the human periods : and therefore that, in his opinion, a break did occur previously to the human period, since it is through species, and species alone, that an hereditary succession is kept up.t This conclusion has since been called in question. All, then, that can be said is, that when eminent men differ so materially on the subject, it shows how uncertain their conclu- sions must be, and how unworthy of being brought into competition with the plain statements of Scripture. The very fact that eminent men diifer in opinion, as to the identity of species of these living and fossil crea- tures, of itself convinces the impartial bystander, that theii' rides cannot be so free from uncertainty as some would have us take for granted. Certahi canons are laid down in natiu-al history, sometimes arbitrary in their character, which have been so long unhesitatingly received, because nothing has arisen to shake confidence in them, that they are regarded as true ; and if a doubt arises, suggested from the side of Scripture, its evidence is regarded as utterly untrustworthy. But there are many instances in which scientific men have been com- pelled to abandon canons which they have once firmly held. This subject of the exact identity of species of living creatures, and of others seen only in the fossil, and therefore in some degree imperfect, state, is one which

* Testimony of the Rocks, p. 122.

t See Lardner's Museum of Science and Art, vol. xii., Pre- Adamite

Earth.

7Q COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

seems to be open to serious doubt/"^ Moreover, as it is clear that there are many new creatures which came into existence with man and never ajDpeared before, why cannot it be beheved that some species which existed in former ages were reproduced ? If apparent identity seems indisputable, I cannot see why we should hmit the Almighty in His choice of what He should see right to produce when He refitted the world, after its chaotic condition, for the reception of man. This whole subject of species has undergone great changes of opinion, and is still in an unsettled state. Even among living creatures a division of species has often been made which has been erroneous. It is now universally admitted that the cases are extremely numerous in which diversities of age have led to the establishment of species which have no existence in nature; the former, thus distinguished, being those of the same species in different stages of growth, t The cases I have here referred to are in- stances of species considered at first to be different, which have been afterwards thought to be the sama

* For example : Professor Hiixley writes, ' No one would hesitate to describe the pouter and the tumbler as distinct species, if they were found fossil, or if their skins and skeletons were imported as those of exotic wild birds commonly are-and, without doubt, if con- sidered alone, they are good and distinct morphological species. On the other hand, they are not physiological species, for they are de- scended from a common stock, the rock-pigeon the pouter and

the tumbler breed together with perfect freedom, and their monoi^els If matched with other mongrels of the same kind, are equally fertile.' — Lay Serrmm, Addresses, and Reviews, p. 298, 299.

\ Gychjpoedia of Anatomy and Physiology, \vi. 'Varieties of Man- kind, p. 302. The following is a recent example of what I have said above : ' In a paper before the Zoological Society, Dr. Gunther, in dealing with the clupsoids of the British coasts, gave it as his opinion

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 77

I do not know of any illustrations of the opposite kind, viz. where species once thought to be the same are found now to be different. But my argument is, that the question of species is an unsettled one, and, therefore, the identification of fossil and living species open to uncertainty.

In adopting the explanation that the days were literally days of twenty-four hours, we have but to suppose that an interval of untold duration occurred between the first creation of the heaven and the earth, (that is, of the planetary and starry heavens and the heaven of heavens and all that they contain, and of the earth, as a member of the solar system), and the preparation of the earth for the reception of man ; that in this interval the plants and animals, which we find fossilized in myriads in the earth's crust, lived, died, and were entombed, to tell, in after ages, their own story ; and that, regarding these — with which man was not concerned — the Scriptures are silent. ■^'' Thus, the three geological discoveries regarding the Antiquity of the Earth, the Existence

that the whitebait is really a young herring. We are glad to learn the belief of one of the most eminent of European ichthyologists, and the more so as it confirms the opinion expressed in an article in one of our earlier volumes, in which the writer expressed his conviction that the anatomical affinities of the herring and whitebait were so close as to justify their being grouped into one species.' — The Popular Science Review, No. 29, October 1868, p. 456.

* ' There is nothing to connect the time spoken of in Gen. i. 2, with that of the first great declaration of the creation of all things in the beginning. " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Rather, of the forms of speech which could have been chosen to express past time, that has been chosen which least coimects the state, when the earth was one vast waste, with the time when God created it. Both were in past time ; but there is nothing to connect

78 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

of Animals and Plants long prior to the appearance of Man, and the Existence of the Sun also prior to the work of the six days, may be true, and yet find no opposition in the statements in the book of Genesis, interpreted according to this theory, which takes the days to be natural days ; and Scripture and Science are found to be not at variance. The six-days' creation exhibits a series of creative acts, which termi- nated in the appearance of the Human Race upon the scene. The animals and plants then created were the progenitors of those which now, possibly with others since created, tenant the earth.

Mr. Goodwin has attempted to cast upon this interpretation the reproach that it teaches nothing. What ! have these sublime verses taught nothing from age to age since they were revealed ? Are the lessons they convey dependent upon confirmations, supposed or real, which we, in these later times, may find in the opened book of nature ? Is this the spirit in which we are to receive a message from on high,

those times together. First, we have, as far back as thought can reach, creation, in the beginning, of all those heavens of heavens through those all-but-boundless realms of space, and of our earth. Then, detached from this, a past condition of the earth, — but not a condition in which God, Avho made all things very good, ever made anything. What follows is connected with this state. First, we have a contemporary condition (as it is expressed in Hebrew), " and darkness upon the face of the deep ;" then a contemporaneous action, of more or less duration, " and the Spirit of God hvood.ing upon the face of the waters;" then successive action (as this, too, is expressed in Hebrew), "And God said ;" which is continued on through the rest of the history of the Creation. It seems, then, that God has told us, in the two first sentences, just what concerned us to know : first, that He created all which is ; then, how He brought into order this our habitation which He has given us. What intervened between that

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 79

in which the Almighty deigns to reveal to ns that He is the Great Creator of all things in heaven and earth ? I have, however, already pointed out some certain truths which this communication does teach. This opening portion of the book of revelation appears to have been written to communicate a right view of the origin of the universe, as an antidote to those false notions which had already arisen in the time of Moses, or would afterwards arise on that subject. The leading principle, which the first verse teaches, is, that the universe exists, not independently of God, by any necessity or by any inherent power ; nor yet contemporaneously with God, as being co-existent with Him ; nor yet in opposition to God, as a hostile element; but dependency upon Him, subsequently to Him, and in subjection to Him. This leading principle of the subordination of matter to God in every respect is expressed in broad terms in these opening words, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' The same great prmciple

creation " in the beginning" and that re-modelUng for our habitation, does not concern us ; and on this God is silent. He tells us the first and the last, that He created all things, and that He prepared this our beautiful earth for us, and created all things in it and ourselves. In the interval there is room for all the workings of God which geology speaks of, if it speaks truly. This history of Creation in Genesis falls in naturally with it, in that it does say that this our mysterious habitation, which God has made the scene of such wondrous love, was created " in the beginning," i. e. before the time of which it proceeds to speak. Another period of undefined duration is implied by the words, " And the Spirit of God was hroo^ing upon the face of the deep." For action, of course, implies time in which the action takes place. And this action was previous to that of the first "day" of the Creation, which begins, like the rest, with the words, "And God said." '—Dr. Pusey on Daniel, Preface, p. xix.

80 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

runs through the beautiful description which follows of the orderly preparation of the earth to become the residence of man, God's rational creature whom He was now about to call into existence. Matter owes its form and modifications to the will of God. In itself dull and inert, it receives its vivifying capacities from the influence of the Spirit of God brooding over the deep : (i. 2). The progressive improvements in its condition were the direct effects of God's will. No interposition of secondary causes is recognized. * He spake, and it was done' (Ps. xxxiii. 9). And the pointed terseness and sharpness with which the writer sums up the whole transaction in the three expressions, *God said' — 'It was so' — * God saw that it was good,' the first declaring the Divine volition, the second the immediate result, the thu^d the perfection of the work, harmonizes well with the view he intended to express. Thus the earth became in the eyes of the pious Hebrew, and is seen by us also to be, the scene on which the Divine perfections were dis- played : the heavens (Ps. xix. 1), the earth (Ps. xxiv. 1 ; civ. 24), the sea (Job, xxvL 10 ; Ps. Ixxxix 9 ; Jer. V. 22), ' mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl' (Ps. cxlviii. 9, 10) aU displaying His good- ness and power.* The lesson here taught us is not

* Compare Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, article ' Earth.' The following observations are from Bishop Wordsworth's comment on Gen. i. 1 : — ' God created. Here is a prophetic protest against the false systems of Natural Philosophy which have prevailed in the world. God created all things. The world is not God, as the Pan- theists affirm. It did not exist from eternity, as the Peripatetics taught. It was not made by fate and necessity, as the Stoics said. It

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 81

a scientific lesson, but a moral one : and therefore to attempt to deduce from it a scientific history of the Earth is altogether out of the question. The data for this purpose are not given. If we are tempted to regret that we can gain no precise scientific infor- mation from Genesis regarding the details of the original creation, we should resist such a temptation, and call to mind the great object of the Scriptures — to tell man of his origin and fall, and to draw his mind to his Creator and Eedeemer. When the Almighty speaks of the works of His hands, it is with a majesty and dignity which become the Maker of the world. He speaks in language which declares Him to be the originator of all things, the Almighty Lord of heaven and earth. He condescends not to describe the process or the laws by which He worked : all this He leaves to reason to decipher from the phenomena His world displays.* My design in attempting, under the first method of interpretation,

did not arise from a fortuitous concourse of atoms, as the Epicureans asserted ; nor from the antagonism of two rival powers, as the Per- sians and Manichseans affirmed ; nor was it made by Angels j nor by the emanations of ^ons, as some of the ancient Gnostics held ; nor out of matter, co-eternal with God, as Hermogenes said ; nor by the spontaneous agency and evolution of self-developing Powers, as some have affirmed in later days. But it was created by One, Almighty, Eternal, Wise, and Good Being — God.'

* ' . . . . The first chapter of Genesis stands alone among the traditions of mankind in the wonderful simplicity and granjdeur of its words. Specially remarkable — miraculous it really seems to be — is that character of reserve which leaves open to reason all that reason may be able to attain. The meaning of those words seems always to be a-head of science, — not because it anticipates the results of science, but because it is independent of them, and runs, as it were, round the outer margin of all possible discovery.' — Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, p. 367.

G

82 COMPARISON OF THE NATURAL-DAY AND PERIOD

to give a physical representation of what the process of the six days' work might have been, is not to impose this or any suchlike meaning upon the words, but to show that the language is in no way contra- dictory to scientific possibilities. It rather detracts from the simple grandeur of the whole, and diverts attention from the great lesson to be conveyed, to seek for a scientific meaning, especially, too, where it was not designed. I take this meaning, not as necessarily taught by Scripture, but as merely illus- trating it in those scientific points. I receive it full ready to change it for another, if scientific study require it, and the language of Scripture have no unnatural interpretation forced upon it. We may well rise, indeed, from the contemplation of the sacred volume with admiration at the wisdom with which its phraseology has been chosen ; so that while human systems have disappeared before the light of advancing knowledge. Holy Scripture, in its original tongues, remains pre-eminent, and no charge of error brought against it has ever been substantiated.

I cannot close my remarks on this -p^rt of my subject without entering a protest against the practice

of propoundin|2^, in support of Holy Scrip- Danger of adopt- ^ \ ^ f^ . ing imperfect turc, imperfect theories, derived from a

theories,

very partial knowledge of the past history, or even the present laws, of the physical world. Mixed as these theories generally are with conjectures and ill-determined facts, they become most dangerous to the stability, not of Scripture, which is an immovable rock, but of the faith of those who are carried away by them. In what I have written I have appeared

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 83

perhaps to lean upon the recent researches of i\I. D'Orbigny. My object m doing so is to meet the upholders of the period theory on their OAvn ground. But I am aware that further research may lead to a modification of his results, and that the doubts regard- ing them may, in some measure, be confirmed. Surely, much as we may justly admire the pursuit of Science, we have learnt caution ere this not to receive its results too hastily, as the established expression of the laws of nature. No principle seemed more sure than that which Su^ Charles Lyell announced some years ago in an early edition of his Principles of Geology, that m many respects the species of the tertiary beds are the same as in the present flora and fauna. He gave the name Eocene, Meiocene, Pleiocene, and Pleistocene '"^ to express this idea, and to present the gradual increase of recent species in the tertiary beds as they approach the human period. But this has been controverted by M. D'Orbigny, in his more recent and extended researches, which seem to show that there is not one species in common in the tertiary and present plants and animals. Sir Charles Lyell has, in his last work, alluded to M. D'Orbigny 's conclusions ; but re-asserts his former views, based originally upon the investigations of M. Deshayes.t I can but repeat, that, if eminent men are so divided in their opinion on these matters, it

* These words mean, Dawn of recent, Minority of recent, Majority of recent, Greatest number of recent (species).

t ' In the year 1830, I announced, on the authority of ^[. Deshayes, that about one-fifth of the moUusca of the Falernian, or Upper Meiocene strata of Europe, belonged to Hving species. Although the soundness of that conclusion was afterwards called in question by two or three eminent conchologists (and by the late M. Alcide D'Orbigny among

84 COMPARISOX OF THE NATUKAL-DAY AND PERIOD

shows how uncertain their conclusions must be, and how unworthy of being brought forward as arguments against Scripture. The science of Geology — one of the most ennobling studies of the day — is in far too young and unsettled a state to justify us in bringing its results into competition with the brief and unscientific, though literally true, description of God's work of creation in the Book of Genesis.

I cannot do better than refer to an admirable article in the Universal Review (July, 1859) on illogi- cal Geology,' in which the unavoidable inconveniences of a tendency to rash generalization are well pointed out, while the necessity of exercising the faculty, if Science is to advance, is made equally clear. We must speculate in order to make progress ; but it is only well-matured results, demonstrated beyond dispute, which must be allowed to take the position of esta- blished theories. The writer draws a striking lesson from the history of astronomical science. There fol- lowed one another, beginning from the earliest times, ^YQ provisional theories of the Solar System, each in its turn held as final, till the sixth and abso- lutely true one was reached. In these five theories may be traced both the tendency men have to leap from scanty data to wide generalizations, which are either untrue or only partially true, and also the

others), it has since been confirmed by the majority of Hving natural- ists, and is well borne out by the copious evidence on the subject laid before the public in the magnificent work edited by M, Homes, and published under the auspices of the Austrian Government, On t'.ie Fossil Shells of the Vienna BasinJ—^ee Lyell's Antiquity of Man, p. 430. On this debated matter of species we may soon have as strong opinions advanced on the other side.

THEORIES OF INTERPRETING GENESIS, CHAP. I. 85

necessity there seems to be for these premature generalizations as steps to the final one. The same laws of thought have prevailed and are prevailing in the younger science of Geology. We have had crude utterly untrue dogmas, for a time, passing current as universal truths. We have evidence collected in proof of these dogmas. By-and-bye a colligation of facts is produced m antagonism with them. Eventually, a consequent modification is suggested. In conformity with this somewhat improved theory, we have a still better classification of facts ; a greater power of arranging and interpreting the new facts, now rapidly gathered together ; and further resulting corrections of theory. We are at present in the midst of this process, and therefore it is not possible to give an adequate account of the development of geological science ; the earlier stages are alone known to us. As one source of uncertainty in some of the general results at which geologists are supposed to have arrived, we may men- tion the difliculty of determining the relative age of strata which are not contiguous. Neither their mineral structure nor the fossils they contain by any means lead always to conclusions which are beyond dispute. This is a matter of great importance ; for much depends upon it.* Another is the metamorphic effect of heat. Sir Charles Lyell says, that in some cases every vestige of vegetable and animal remains in limestones and in clay formations has been entirely obliterated by this process. It may, then, so happen that the fossils now in existence are but the last chapter of the earth's

* Let the reader consult the Anniversary Address liefore the Geological Society in 18G2, by Professor Huxley.

86 DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE

history, and that many primary chapters, stretching back to a time immeasurably more remote even than existmg fossils, have been burnt, and with them all the records of life we may presume that they contained ! The analogy which our period theorists draw between existing fossils and the account in Genesis would be, in this case, altogether thrown ont. The subject is too vast and too unsettled, to allow ns to base any trust- worthy conclusions upon such comparisons. I have no desire to disparage the study of this noble science ; but I w^ould rather promote it. But when its results, which are, after all, only approximations, and often very uncertain approximations, to the true history and condition of this wonderful globe on which we live, are turned into arguments against the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, I stand amazed at the temerity of the men, who, knowing anything of their relative claims, will doubt, for one instant, on which side the error must lie, if any real discrepancy is foimd to exist.

4. Besides the three points of apparent difference between Scripture and Science which I have been considering at such length, geology gave rise to another formidable difficulty regarding the existence of Death in the world before the fall of Adam. The myriads Death before ^^ crcaturcs which the strata have brought the Fall. ^^ light lived and died ere Adam came : and yet St. Paul has said, 'By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin' (Rom. v. 12). So inianswerable has this objection appeared to some, that blindfold they condemn the whole science of Geology, and ignore the universal testimony of the greatest and

REGARDING DEATH BEFORE ADAM. 87

best men. And no doubt, while ignorant of the facts which the Book of Nature reveals, we should conclude from the Apostle's words that it was the sin of Adam that had brought Death upon the irrational as well as the rational creation. But is this the necessary mean- ing of the passage? By no means. Science here comes to our aid to correct the impressions we gather from Scripture; and the lesson we learn from the Apostle is, not that Death had never appeared, even in the irrational world before the Fall of Man, but that in that fearful event sin had degraded God's in- tellectual creature to the level of the brutes in his animal nature, and in his spiritual to that of a lost and fallen being. Death received its horrors when its sentence fell upon man, who alone was made in the image of God.*

* Two hundred years ago — long before the science of Geology called for the belief that mortality had been stamped on creation and had manifested its proofs in the animal races previously to Adam's appearance — Jeremy Taylor could write as follows regardmg Adam himself before the Fall. He considers him to have been created mortal — not merely liable to become mortal, but actually

mortal.

'For "flesh and blood," that is, whatsoever is born ot Adam, "cannot inherit the kingdom of God." And they are injurious to Christ, who think, that from Adam we might have inherited immor- tality. Christ was the giver and preacher of it ; " He brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel." ' Again:—' For that Adam was made mortal in his nature, is infinitely certam, and proved by his very eating and drinking, his sleep and recreation,' &c.— Works ofJeremij Taylor, by Bhhop Heher, vol. ix. pp. 74, 76.

And in another passage quoted by Professor Hitchcock :— ' That death which God threatened to Adam, and which passed upon his ]M)8terity, is not the going out of this world, but the manner of going. If he had stayed in innocence he should have gone placidly and fairly, without vexatious and afflictive circumstances; he should n..t have died by sickness, defect, misfortune, or unwillingness.' These senti-

88 DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE

5. Another difficulty, which the progress of scien- tific discovery has originated, arises from the theory of Specific Centres. Accordino' to this

Specific centres. . ^ °

discovery, every species, whether of plants or animals, is confined to a certain region or habitat, beyond the boundaries of which its individuals cannot live. Each species, therefore, must have diverged from some centre within its region ; and this is called a Specific Centre : and these centres must have been the foci of creation. No doubt the bounda- ries of these regions may have varied since the six days' creation, under the influence of climate. But it is contended that no change of climate which is likely to have occurred, can account for the transfer of the centres to such considerable distances as many

ments I quote, not as necessarily approving them, but to show that so good and learned a man as Jeremy Taylor had a view regarding death and mortality no less unusual than that which geology demands. , ' It is certainly a startling fact,' writes Bishop Ellicott, ' that ages before the sin of man cast the shadow of vanity on the world, suffering, in one of its forms, the corporeal, was certainly present. The very stones and rocks bear witness of it, the acknowledged presence in the pre- Adamite world of the fierce and fell race of the carnivorous animals renders its past existence a certainty. ... In every endeavour to view suffering in its most comprehensive and general aspects, we must be especially careful to draw a clear line of demarcation between the corporeal sufferings of the individuals that belong to lower genera unendued with foresight and reason, and the mixed mental and cor- poreal sufferings of a personal and intelligent being, the immediate child and offspring of God. . . . The scattered hints and speculations of earlier writers, afterwards more fully developed by some of the deeper thinkers of the seventeenth century, that regard the early history of the world and the fall of angels as in some sort of connexion, are certainly not wholly unwortby of our consideration. . . . How far the disturbance caused by that fearful lapse was propagated through the other realms of creation, we know not. How far demoniacal malignity might have been permitted to introduce or multiply sufferings into the

REGARDING SPECIFIC CENTRES OF CREATION. 89

of tliem are found to be from the limits of Paradise. This appears to be at variance with the account in Genesis, which seems to represent the creation, of animals at least, to have been in regions within the reach of Adam. But this difficulty need not stagger us, unexpected as it is. For in the first place, it is not impossible that the regions, of which the limits are far from the boimdaries of man's first residence, have become the scenes of creative power at epochs subse- quent to the six days' work. The statement that ' the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them,' does not imply that the Almighty would never exert His creative power again, but that the work of the six days was then completed.* It has been said, that at the antipodes there are animals

early animal world Scripture does not, even incidentally, reveal. Still, it does not seem utterly presumptuous to imagine that there might have been the same powers of evil partially and permissively at work in a pre-Adamite world, that, at a later period, when man's sin had wrought a still more frightful confusion, were permitted to drive the swine down the steeps of Gennesaret.' — See Bishop Ellicott's Destiny of the Creature, Serm. ii.

For thoughts upon this view of the subject, I would refer my readers to a suggestive and original, though speculative, article in the Christian Remembrancer, vol. xli., first quarter of 1861, p. 402, which is worth pondering over.

* ' The difficulty as to the animals found, each in their several habitats, in Australia, New Zealand, &c., is properly no scientific difficulty. It lies on the surface ; but it presupposes that the " rest " of God, spoken of in Genesis, implies that He created nothing after- wards, which is contrary to our Lord's words, ' My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,' and to the fact that He is daily and hourly creating those myriads of human souls which He infuses into the bodies prepared by His Providence.' — Dr. Pusey's Lectures on Daniel, p. xxii.

Dr. Colenso, in his criticism of a former edition of this work (Part. IV. p. 131), assigns no reason why the words, 'The heavens

90 DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE

apparently approaching extinction, and others really extinct, and that this appears to show that they were created earlier and not later. Were this generally true of the species of those parts, it might be of some importance, but otherwise it shows only that those few species were of short continuance. And further, there is nothing in the account of the six days' creation to militate against the idea that creation may have been going on over the whole surface of the earth at the same time. It simply requires us to suppose that the animals brought to Adam for him to name them, must have been those only in the neighbourhood of Paradise. Indeed, this seems to be the most natural interpretation of the narrative in Genesis, as I will show. The first three chapters consist of two parts. The first portion describes the week of creation ; and in the second, beginning at ii. 4,* the sacred writer pro-

and the earth were finished, and all the host of them,' should imply that the Almighty could never exercise His creative power again. His preconceived notions evidently trammel his mind in his supposing that the first chapter of Genesis necessarily describes everything that the Almighty ever created. With regard to his second interjected quotation, with italics, I would say, that Dr. Colenso appears often to throw emphasis upon wrong words, so as to pervert the direct meaning of the writer, and to draw attention to the wrong point. The correct idea, as it appears to me, conveyed in the words he quotes in brackets, viz. ' The man called names to all the cattle and to the fowl of the heaven, and to every animal of the field,' is, that Adam gave names to creatures, and that he did so to all kinds of creatures ; not necessarily that there was not a creature or even a species in the whole world which was not brought to Adam to receive its name.

* It has been a matter of discussion whether v. 4 belongs to v. 3 or is the beginning of a new paragraj)h. It appears to me that the words, ' These are the generations,' are the beginning of a fresh para- graph which terminates with chap, iii., written by the ^Yriter who wrote the account of the creative-week, and that the word ' these '

KEGARDING SPECIFIC CENTRES OF CREATION. 91

ceeds to the narrative of man's moral probation and his fall, the key to his subsequent history. In prepara- tion for this additional particulars are given to enable us to understand the place and circumstances of the temptation, and the means which the tempter used to effect his purpose. Man's frail origin, out of the dust, the earthly part of his nature, is therefore here first mentioned ; the garden is described in which he was placed when created, with its tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil ; the origin of woman in man's want of a companion, as none of the creatures w^hich passed in review before him met that want, and man's relation to her, are now told us, that we might the better understand their double fall. This all occurs in Eden. It was, therefore, only the animals in Eden that passed in review before Adam to receive names. Animals beyond the limits of Eden are not

refers back to that description. ' These [which I have now described] are the generations of the heavens and of the earth.' To imagine that the writer changes simply because the title of the Deity is changed from ' God ' to ' Lord God,' is an arbitrary hypothesis. Moreover, the hypothesis very soon breaks down altogether ; for in the very midst of this narrative the name 'God' is used three times in the third chapter. Dr. Colenso has a theory to account for this — a theory to explain a theory, viz. that the sacred writer would not put the name of ' Lord God ' into the devil's mouth. But if he, a mere critic, can divine a reason why the name should be changed in this instance, is it not rather self-confident to assume that there is no reason, because he cannot guess it, why the sacred writer should first have used ' God ' in his description of the creation, and then ' Lord God ' in his description of the temptation and fall ? And so in other places in this book of Genesis, wherever a change takes place in the name of the Deity, this critic fear- lessly asserts, as others do whom he follows, that interpolations from other writers have taken place. Save us from such plastic ingenuity, which, on the flimsy pretext of a critic's theory, will tear to bits the sacred text which has been handed down to us from age to age.

DISCOVERIES OF SCIEXCE

alluded to in the narrative. Indeed, it is observable that beasts of the field only and birds are mentioned ; reptiles, and fish, and the ' great whales,' are not alluded to/'^

The difficulty, therefore, which the theory of Specific Centres was supposed to introduce, altogether vanishes, t

There is a remarkable illustration of the truth of these narratives in the first and second chapters of Genesis which is worth noticing here. It is known

* The same view Professors Keil and Delitzsch take in their com- mentary on the Pentateuch. ' To call out this want [of a help-mate], God brought the larger quadrupeds and birds to man, to see what he would call them (lit. each one); and whatsoever the man might call every living being should be its name (Gen. ii. 10). The time when this took place must have been the sixth day, on which, according to chap. i. 27, the man and woman were created; and there is no difficulty in this' since it would not have required much time to bring the animals to Adam to see what he would call them, as the animals of Paradise are all we have to think of; and the deep sleep into which God caused the man to fall till he had formed the woman from his rib, need not have continued long. In chap. i. 27, the creation of the woman is linked with that of the man ; but here the order of sequence is given, because the creation of woman formed a chronological incident in the history of the human race, which commences with the creation of Adam.' See Clarke's Translation^ p. 87.

t Dr. Colenso, misled by some of his German masters, has asserted that the accounts in Gen. i. and Gen. ii. are contradictory to each other. I cannot do better than quote from the late Dr. M'Caal's admirable reply, condensing from the last work he wrote ere the Church was deprived of his invaluable services.

1. Gen. i. 9, 10. The land emerges from the waters, and was therefore, Dr. Colenso says, saturated with moisture, which is contrary to Gen. ii. 6. Answer.— In Gen. i. 9, 10, it is expressly said that the land was drij^ not moist.

2. Gen. i. 20, 24, 26. Birds and beasts are created before man, Gen. ii. 7, 19, the opposite occurs. Answer.— In this second narrative, the^ historian alludes to events, not necessarily in chronological order as in the first chapter, but as they bear upon the object which he has

REGARDIXG SPECIFIC CENTRES OF CREATION. 93

that the cereaha, which produce bread -corn, on which the human race so depends for subsistence, exist only as cultivated products of the soil. They perish, as far as concerns usefulness to man, without man's care. In correspondence with this necessity for cultivation, we find, in both these accounts, almost incidentally, and certamly with no direct statement of its necessity, that Adam, even before the fall, is admonished to cultivate the vegetable kingdom. ' And God blessed them ; and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and

now in view. From v. 8, 9, it might otherwise seem that the trees did not grow in the garden till after man was placed in it; whereas v. 15 proves that that was not the case. [I may here say, that the Hebrew has only one past tense ; it has no pluperfect. Hence, v. 8 might just as well be translated, ' And the Lord God had planted a garden . . . and there He put the man whom He formed.' I would also observe that the English reader must not be misled by the words, ' So,' * Thus,' ' But,' ' Therefore,' ' Now,' ' For,' with which some of the verses in these three chapters begin ; for they are all Van in the Hebrew, the word translated ' And ' in all the other verses.]

3. Gen. i. 20, the fowls that fly are made out of the waters ; GJen. ii. 19, out of the ground. Answer. — This is a blunder which a Hebrew scholar would not make. In Gen. i. 20, ' fowl,' is not in the accusa- tive but in the nominative, and the words should be, ' and let the fowl fly above the earth ; ' nothing is said there of what the fowls were made of.

4. Gen. i. 27, man is created in the image of God ; Gen. ii. 7, he is made of the dust of the ground, and merely animated with the breath of life, and only after eating of the forbidden fruit is it said (iii. 22) that he was become like God. Answer. — Here is no contradiction. We are not told in chap. i. what man's body was made of. By the breath of life cannot be meant simply animal life ; for in the narrative before the eating, Adam is described as intelligent, free, moral, lord over other creatures. Is not this to be more than a mere living creature? Is not this to be like God, to have the stamp of His likeness ?

5. Gen. i. 25, man is made the lord of the whole earth ; Gen. ii. 8, 15, he is placed only in the garden of Eden to dress it. Answer. — In tlie first God speaks of man as of the whole human race and its destiny ;

94 DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE

multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it ' (Gen. i. 28). 'And the Lord God took tlie man and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it ' (ii. 15).*

6. Another instance in which Science has been

looked upon as inimical to Scripture, is the asser-

No known traces tiou, uow Universally made by geologists,

e uge. ^j^^^ ^^ known traces exist of the Noachian

Deluge.

The disappointment which this has occasioned

in the second chapter, the particular circumstances of the individual, Adam, are related.

6. Gen. i. 27, man and woman are created together, and, as is implied, in the same kind of way. Gen. ii. the beasts and birds are created between the man and the woman. Ansiver.—GQw. i. 26-28 indicates that man and woman were not created together, i. e. simultaneously. 'And God said, Let us make man' [Adam, without the article]. Here the language is indefinite, and refers to the whole human race. But then follows, ' And God created the man [Adam, with the article] in His image ; in the image of God created He him [masculine] ; male and female created He them.' This is perfectly consistent with the more extended narrative of the second chapter.

* In connexion with this I quote the following striking remarks : ' Not a stalk of corn remains where man is not. If com cannot now live without man's aid, it is an unavoidable inference that man was instructed from the first to cultivate corn. So strong has been the conviction of all ages, that the cereals are not spontaneously produced, that the mythologies of India, Egypt, and Greece ascribe their cultiva- tion to direct Divine interference. The Medes, who were the de- scendants of Medai, a son of Japhet (Gen. x. 2), and among the earliest of recorded nations, certainly anterior to the Chaldfeans, connected their notions of piety with the cultivation of the earth as a duty enjoined on them by God. ... As Mr. Vicien stated at the meeting of the British Association in Birmingham (1865), no trace of the existence of the cereals can be discovered in geological formations that can be imagined more than 6000 years oW—The First Man, and His Place in Creation, by George Moore, Esq. M.D. p. 310. See also Rev. Hugh Macraillan's Bible Teachings in Nature, chapter on Corn.

REGARDING THE DELU(^E. 95

has been felt all the more severely, because the advocates of Revelation had long been in the habit of pointing triumphantly to the rocks in all parts of the earth as containing shells even to the highest peaks, and so being infallible witnesses to the fact of the Deluge. Geologists used to support this view. One of their number, eminent both for his eloquent expositions and thorough acquaintance with the science, had even written a work* upon the subject, describing a cave at Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, where bones of numerous animals had been accumulated, it was supposed, by the waters of the Deluge. But it is now acknowledged by all geologists that these con- clusions were premature. In a subsequent work this author publicly renounced his former views upon the subject, and recalled his book. Further consideration has shown, that the Deluge cannot have been the occasion of embedding shells and other fossils in solid rocks, and to such a depth as they are found. Nor are the superficial deposits — those, for instance, in the Yorkshire cavern — -such as a temporary deluge could have produced, t

The more the progress of scientific discovery has brought to light the varied agencies which are perpet- ually at work in changing the aspect of the earth's surface, the more is it seen, that it was unreasonable to expect to find traces of the great cataclysm at the present day, so many ages after its occurrence. Any marks it left must have been long since obliterated, or so mixed up

* Reliquice Dihiviance.

t See this subject fully discussed in Testimony of the Rocks, Lect. 8 — on tlie Noachian Deluge.

96 DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE

with the effects of subsequent gradual changes as to be undecipherable, even if they ever j^ossessed any charac- teristic features peculiar to themselves. The marvel of this great historic event was the presence of so vast a body of waters — their rapid appearance and as rapid disappearance — the windows of heaven being opened, and the fountains of the deep being broken up. Whether this great catastrophe was brought about by the intervention of second causes or not, it was by the interposition of the Almighty for the punishment of a guilty world. The record of this Scripture conveys to us ; and Science, though robbed of its supposed power of illustrating the Scripture truth, never- theless places no obstacle in the way of its reception. 7. The history of the Deluge furnishes an illustra- tion of my subject in another way. It has been

The Deluge not ^^^^^^^^^^ ^y most readers of Scripture, over the whole that it describes the Deluge as having covered the surface of the whole earth. To this view Science of late years has presented various difficulties.

Of course, a behever in the Divine Power can have no difficulty m admitting any miracle, however astound- ing, so long as it does not involve an impossibility, and is clearly demanded by the sacred narrative. But he must not be charged with scepticism, or with favouring it, if he seek so to interpret the record as to avoid an impossibility ; or if he endeavour to confine the miracle within limits proportioned to the occasion ; or if he search for an explanation, in part at least, in the operation of second causes — by which the Almighty, in many recorded instances, has worked His wonders : for

EEGARDING THE DELUGE. 97

if we exaggerate the demands of Scripture on men's faith, beyond what the text, fairly interpreted, abso- hitely requires, we make ourselves, so far, responsible for their scepticism. That secondary causes were made use of, though no doubt in a subordinate manner, in the miracle of the Deluge, is apparent from the language — ' the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights' (Gen. vii. 11, 12). We cannot be wrong, therefore, in seeking the most simple combination of secondary causes which the Almighty may have brought into play to effect His purpose.

Now Mr. Hugh Miller, in his work. The Testimony of the Rocks, has shown how all the phenomena of the Deluge might have been produced by the gradual submergence and rising again of the country comprised within a radius of a few hundred miles around the dwelling-place of Noah, so as to include the portion of the globe then inhabited. This phenomenon of the change of level of large portions of the earth's surface, by depression or elevation, is not unknown to geologists ; though the periods in which these vast oscillations occur are of immeasurably longer duration than that of the Deluge. He shows that the depression during the first forty days might, nevertheless, have been so gradual as to have been imperceptible, except from the effects — the pouring in of the mighty waters from the neighbouring seas into the growing hollow, and the disappearance of the mountain -tops. And when, after a hundred and fifty days had elapsed, the depressed hollow began slowly to rise again, the boundless sea

H

98 DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE

around the ark would flow outwards again towards the distant ocean, and Noah would see that 'the fountains of the deep were stopped/ and ' the waters were returning from off the earth continually.' (Gen. viii. 2, 3.)

This process, miraculous though it be in thus calling into sudden action secondary agents, meets the difficulties of the case in a way which no other known hypothesis will. It supplies and disposes of the mighty mass of water required for the catastrophe : it makes the* miracle proportioned to the occasion, viz. the destruction of the human species for their wickedness ; and, above all, it limits the number of animals which Noah would have to accommodate in the ark within reasonable bounds. Mr. Miller mentions an interesting calculation made by Sir Walter Raleigh, to show that Noah's ark was capable of holding all the then known animals of the world, with provisions for all the time during which the earth was submerged. The calculation of this great voyager is justly con- sidered to have been sober and judicious. But our growing acquaintance ^^dth the animal kingdom has converted his trustworthy result from being an argu- ment for a Universal, to that for a Partial Deluge. The eighty-nine known animals of his time would now embrace but a single region. There are between one and two thousand different species of mammals at present known! To this extraordinaiy increase in our knowledge may be added the six thousand two hundred and sixty-six birds of Lesser, and the six liundred and fifty-seven reptiles of Charles Bonaparte, or, subtracting the sea-snakes and turtles as fitted

REGARDING THE DELUGE. 99

to live outside tlie ark, his six hundred and forty-two reptiles.* Now granting that all these thousands of species of mammals, birds, and reptiles could have been brought from all parts of the earth, and actually as- sembled roimd Noah, and afterwards replaced in their respective habitats all over the globe, it seems impossible that they could have been all accommodated within the prescribed limits of the ark during the earth's submergence.

The question has been asked. Why were birds taken into the ark, if the Deluge were only Partial ? But this objection is based upon an error in natural Science, into which even naturalists of the last century, such as BufPon, not unfrequently fell : viz. that of assigning to species wide areas in creation, which in reality they do not occupy. A better acquaintance with the habits of many of the non- migratory birds will convince such an objector, that even in a local deluge, of the extent which w-e suppose the Deluge may have attained, many species would have become extinct but for their preservation in the ark, as the surrounding regions could not have supplied them, t

But is not this notion of a Partial Deluge contrary to the express language of Scripture? The words of Scripture, were there no facts like those T have mentioned to modify our interpretation, would, by most persons, be understood as describing a Universal flood of waters over the whole extent of tlie globe : there would be no cause for questioning this, and

* Testimony of the Rocks, ^.^rd. f Ibid p. 202.

100 DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE

therefore no ground of doubt. But when the new facts become known, as they are at present, then the question is started, Does the Scripture language pre- sent any insuperable obstacle to this more limited interpretation ? That it does not, may be inferred from the fact, that two of our celebrated commentators on Scripture, Bishop Stillingfleet and Matthew Pool, both in the seventeenth century, long before the discoveries of natural Science required it, advocated this view. The strongest expression in the whole account is this, ' All the high hills that were under the whole HEAVEN were covered' (Gen. vii. 19). But that, if other circumstances require it, this phraseology may refer solely to the region affected and not to the whole globe, is apparent from the use of the same expression by the same inspired writer in another place, in which it is evident, that he cannot have intended the whole globe, but only Palestine and the countries in its immediate neighbourhood : ' This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the WHOLE HEAVEN, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee' (Deut. ii. 25). Compare this with xi. 25, where the extent of the dread is limited to ^all the land that ye shall tread upon!'

With some minds tlie argument of the Divine Omnipotence is sufficient to meet all the difficulties of a Universal Deluge : to others they have appeared so formidable as to recommend the theory of a Partial Deluge,— partial not with reference to the human race, but the surface of the earth — which certainly

REGARDING THE DELUGE. IC 1

furnishes a ready and complete answer to all the objections.*

The difficulties which I have been considering in this chapter refer to the earlier parts of the book of Genesis, from which source indeed spring others which I discuss in the next chapter. It is needless perhaps t<j say to those who have read what has gone before, that I am no advocate for forced reconciliations between Scripture and Science. Scripture does not speak in scientific language ; nor should we desire, as it appears to me, to draw scientific conclusions from its statements, where it does touch upon the phenomena of nature. Obscurities and difficulties on this subject may always be looked for, in consequence of the difierent points of view from which tlie natural world is regarded in Scripture and by the scientific investigator. What I contend for — and this the very title of my book indicates — is, that, though many charges of variance between Scripture and Science have been made, not one has been substantiated. Where simple explana- tions of apparent difficulties can be given, it is satis- factory. But were none forthcoming, nothing is ne- cessarily proved against Scripture — as is too generally supposed ; but our ignorance is brought to light. In such cases forced reconcihations are very hazardous, and may in the end do great harm. It is far better to let tlie obscurity remain, till time and further facts throw light upon it. I think, however, that we are too apt to lose sio-ht of the fact, that obscurities and difficulties are exaggerated in number and importance, and that

* On the subject of the Dehige see an excellent paper, by the Kev. M. Davison, in the Jounud of the Victoria Institute^ vol. v. No. 14.

102 DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE

when allusions are made in Holy Scripture to natural phenomena they are often truly remarkable. All the outcry we hear, that the progress of Science is at variance with the Scriptures, — what does it come to ? We might, from the things which are said, suppose that the texture of Scripture Revelation was studded with errors regarding nature, which at once disprove its Divine origin. But this is by no means the case. While the difficulties which are produced refer merely to the earlier chapters of the first book, the references to the phenomena of nature throughout the main body of it are not only not charged with error, but are luiiver- sally admired for their true sublimity, and are as much in advance of the philosophy of even later times, as truth is in advance of error. Hear how truly we are told in the ancient book of Job, that the Almighty ' hangeth the earth upon nothing ' (xxvi. 7). Hear how the prophet Amos alludes correctly to the process of evaporation from the sea, and the outpouring of the clouds so formed to fructify the earth : ' He calleth for the waters from the sea, and poureth them out on the face of the earth ' (ix. 6). And Solomon too on the same subject : 'All the rivers run mto the sea, and yet the sea is not full ; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again ' (Eccles. i. 7) : that is, by evaporation and the w^aftiug of the clouds and vapour to the hills and high-lands. No such correct natural philosophy is to be found in other ancient books. And where the phenomena of nature are made use of in a poetical way, with what sublimity do the inspn-ed writers refer to them and bear witness to the presence of God in His own world — and that,

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103

thougli in poetical language, with no violation of scientific truth : ' He maketh the clouds his chariot. He walketh upon the wings of the wind' (Ps. civ. 3) : and in another place; 'He made darkness His secret place; His pavilion round about Him were dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the highest gave His voice ; hail-stones and coals of fire' (Ps. xviii. 11, 13) — and it is well known that hot thunderbolts sometimes now fall from heaven and not unaccompanied with hail, regarding which the science of the present day has an interesting theory.

Take up a volume of only one hundred years old which touches on any of these matters, and there is little doubt that you wHl detect some gross error which the progress of human knowledge has exploded. But in the Holy Scripture we have a book, of very great antiquity, still fresh. Apparent discrepancies invariably prove the germ of new agreements. A book, so written as to touch upon many subjects of human research, and without anticipating discoveries which man can make for himself, not to contradict them when made, is certainly a paragon of wisdom and knowledge of the highest order. That the Scriptures should stand thus pre-eminent through all ages, and that they should never be behind Science however advanced, producing, that is, nothing contradictory to Science from age to age, is sufficient to convince the most sceptical of their Divine origin.

104 REFUTATION OF FALSE CONCLUSIONS

CHAPTEE III.

EXAMPLES, IN WHICH SCIENCE HAS BEEN DELIVERED FROM THE FALSE CONCLUSIONS OF SOME OF ITS VOTARIES, AND THEREBY SHOWN NOT TO BE AT VARIANCE WITH SCRIPTURE, AS THEY HAVE ALLEGED.

1. From the great diversities which exist among the tribes of men which at present inhabit the earth it All men of one ^^^ been boldlj inferred by some writers, that it is impossible that they can all have descended from common parents. The statements of Scripture, that Eve was the * mother of all living' (Gen. iii. 20) ; that after the Deluge the earth was peopled by the descendants of one man, Noah (Gen. X. 32); and the declaration of St. Paul (Acts, xvii. 26) that God ' hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,' are equaUy set aside as irreconcilable with the facts of nature. Thus the Word and Works of God have been driven once more into conflict, and upon entirely new ground.

(1). This apparent contradiction between Revelation and Nature has been examined by the late Dr. Prichard. His facts and arguments have been collected in his invaluable work on the Natural

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History of Man. He takes no guide but the pheno- mena which the various tribes present, and which well-authenticated history furnishes. And he comes to the conclusion, that there are no permanent lines of demarcation separating the several tribes or nations ; that all the diversities which exist are variable, and pass into each other by insensible gradations ; that there is scarcely an instance in which the actual transi- tion cannot be proved to have taken place ; and that there is everything to lead us to infer, quite irrespect- ively of Scripture testimony, that all the families of the earth are descended from common parents, and that at no very distant epoch.

His language is too important not to be quoted. * The sacred Scriptures,' he says, ' whose testimony is received by all men of unclouded minds with implicit and reverential assent, declare that it pleased the Almighty Creator to make of one blood all the nations of the earth, and that all mankind are the offspring of common parents. But there are writers in the present day, who maintain that this assertion does not compre- hend the uncivilised inhabitants of remote regions ; and that Negroes, Hottentots, Esquimaux, and Australians, are not, in fact, men in the full sense of that term, or beings endowed with like mental faculties with ourselves. Some of these writers contend, that the races above mentioned, and other rude and barbarous tribes, are inferior in their original endowments to the human family which supplied Europe and Asia with inhabitants — that they are organically difterent, and can never be raised to an equality, in moral and intellectual powers, with the oifspring of that race

106 REFUTATION OF FALSE CONCLUSIONS

which displays, in the highest degree, all the attributes of humanity. They mauitain that the ultimate lot of the ruder tribes is a, state of perpetual servitude ; and that if, in some instances, they should continue to repel the attempts of the civilised nations to subdue them, they will at length be rooted out and exterminated in every country on the shores of which Europeans shall have set their feet/

Although this question is one of which the decision is not a matter of indifference either to religion or humanity, yet he follows the strict rule of scientific scrutiny which requires that we should close our eyes against all presumptive and extrinsic evidence, and abstract our minds from all considerations not derived from the matters of fact which bear immediately on the question. ' The maxim we have to follow,' he says, ' in such controversies is, Fiat justitia, ruat cwlum. What is actually true it is always most desirable to know, Avhatever consequences may arise from its admis- sion.' Taking this course, he sums up the results of his able investigation thus : —

' In the ethnographical outline which I have now concluded, the facts have been very briefly stated, and it would be difiicult to recapitulate them in a shorter compass. I shall merely point out some of the most obvious inferences. The diflerences of men are not distinguished from each other by strongly- marked, uniform, and permanent distinctions, as are the several species belonging to any given tribe of animals. All the diversities which exist are variable, and pass into each other by insensible gradations ; and there is, moreover, scarcely an instance in which

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