History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

t the Earth is only

s made in a week.-P

of the patriarchs.

ates in different ve

e.-The repeopling.-

tongues.-The pr

ini of the oblate

y by Newton of th

hat she has been m

on of this by geol

ocks; corroboration

admitting enormou

of the doctrine of

ies respecting the

space-scale of the

h the discussion of

en con

stem; the earth only one, and by no means the largest, of a family of encircling planets. Taught by the issue of that dispute, when the question of the age of the world presented itself for consideration, the Church did not exhibit the active resistance she had displayed on the former occasion. For, though her traditions were again put in jeopardy, they were not, in her judgment,

r that we are but men, and therefore, receiving the probable mythological tradition, it is meet that we inquire no further into it." Since the time of St. Augustine the Scriptures had been made the g

is with the Lord as a thousand years, it was inferred that the duration of the world will be through six thousand years of suffering, and an additional thousand, a millennium of rest. It was generally admitted that the earth was about four thousand years old at the b

erent copies which had escaped the chances of time varied very much; thus the Samaritan made thirteen hundred and seven years from the Creation to the Deluge, the Hebrew sixteen hundred and fifty-six, the Septuagint twenty-two hundred and sixty-three. The Septuagint counted fifteen hundred years more from the Creation to Abraham than the Hebrew. In general, however, there was an inclination to the supposition that the Deluge took place about two thousand years after the Creation, and, after another interval of two thousand years, Christ was born. Persons who had given much attention to the subject

e world 1656. Dr. Whiston, however, disposed to greater precision, inclined to postpone it to November 28th. Some thought that the rainbow was not seen until after the flood; others, apparently with better reason, inferred that it was then first established as a sign. On coming forth from the ark, men received permission to use flesh as food, the antediluvians having been herbivorous! It would seem that the Deluge had not occasioned any great geograph

lding a tower "whose top might reach to heaven." Eusebius informs us that the work continued for forty years. They did not abandon it until a miraculous confusion of their language too

at the confusion was occasioned by the introduction of polysyllables. But these learned men must surely have overlooked the numerous conversations reported in Genesis, such as those between the Almighty and Adam, the serpent and

e been recognized in these computations; thus the learned Dr. Shuckford, who has treated very elaborately on all the foregoing points in his excellent work "On the Sacred an

no vicissitudes in Nature. After that event the standard of life diminished one-half, and in the time of the Psalmist it had sunk to seventy years, at which it still remains. Austerities of climate were affirmed to have arisen through the shifting of

rs spoken of by the sacred penman were not ordinary but lunar years. This, though it might bring the age of those venerable men within the

thousand years before Christ; 2. That the act of Creation occupied the space of six ordinary days; 3. That the Deluge was universal, and that the animals which survive

moter that event, the more urgent the necessity of vindicating the justice of God, who apparently had left the majority of our race to its fate, and had reserved salvation for the f

he origin of the earth, to an epoch indefinitely remote, and on the Mohammedan theory of the evolution

was. And perhaps we may be brought to the conclusion to which Dr. Shuckford, above quoted, was constrained to come, after his wearisome and unavaili

of the earth as the direct act of God; it rejects

anet Jupiter is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles. Mechanical philosophy demonstrated that such a figure is the necessary result of the rota

tuberant mass is due the precession of the equinoxes, which requires twenty-five thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight years for its completion, and also the nutati

has formerly been in a yielding or plastic condition; 2. That she

ior configuration of the globe of the earth as a spheroid of revolution, it

ancient lands; it has found its way into the water-courses, and by them been distributed anew. Effects of this kind, taking place before our eyes, require a very considerable lapse of time to produce a

e coast-line near the mouth of the Mississippi has been well known for three hundred years, and during that time has scarcely made a perceptible advance on the Gulf of Mexico; but there was a time when the delta of that river was at St. Louis, more than seven hundred miles f

of travertines, the denudation of hills, the cutting action of the sea on its shores, t

by paroxysms at intervals or by gradual movement, into all manner of angular inclinations. Whatever explanations we may offer of

rees stand one above another on successive levels; seventeen such repetitions may be counted in a thickness of 4,515 feet. The age of the trees is proved by their size, some being four feet in

th vast fresh-water formations are repeatedly intercalated with vast marine ones, like the leaves of a book, it became evident that no single cataclysm was sufficient to account for such results; that the same region, through gradual variations of it

the prodigious multitude that have inhabited it heretofore; that for each species now living there are thousands that have become extinct. Though special formations are so strikingly characterized by some predominating type of life as to justify such expressions as the age of mollusks, the age of reptiles, the age of mammals, the introduction of the new-comers did not take place abruptly. as by sudden creation. They gradually emerged in an antecedent age, reached their culmination in the one which they characterize,

parate creative acts. But surely it is less unphilosophical to suppose that each species has been evolved from a predecessor by a modification of its parts, than that it has suddenly started into existence out of nothing. Nor is the

ions to the formations of recent times, a chain in which each link hangs on a preceding and sustains a succeeding one, demonstrates to us not only that the production of an

sh-water origin are intercalated with those that are marine; how vast masses of material have been removed by slow-acting causes of denudation, and extensive geographical surfaces have been remodeled; how continents have undergone movements of elevation and depression, their shores sunk under the ocean, or sea-beaches and sea-cliffs carried far into the interior. It considers the zoological and botanical facts, the fauna and flora of the successive ages, and how in an orderly manner the chain of organic forms, plants, and animals, has been extended,

s present equilibrium of temperature. Astronomical observations give great weight to this interpretation, especially so far as the planetary bodies of the solar system are concerned. It is also supported by such facts as the small mean density of the ear

to which she belongs. Nay, more, we cannot restrict ourselves to the solar system; we must embrace in our discussions the starry worlds. And, since we have become familiarized with their almost immeasurable distances from one another, we are

on astronomical, some on physical principles. Thus calculations founded on the known changes of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, with a view of determining the lapse of time since the beginning of the last glacial period

the revealed with the discovered facts, but they have proved to be unsatisfactory. The Mosaic time is too short, the order of creation incorrect, the divine interventions too anthropomorphic; and, though the presentment of the subject is in harm

is the detection of human remains and human works in formations

ndicate a savage life, spent in hunting and fishing. Recent researches give reason to believe that, under low and base grades, the existence of man can be traced back into the

advanced, but this time not so far as formerly. This ushered in the Quaternary period, during which very slowly the temperature came to its present degree. The water deposits that were being made required thousands of centuries for their completion. At the beginning of the Quaternary period there were alive the cave-bear, the cave-lion, the amphibious hippopotamus, the rhinoceros wi

th. Vast changes in the climate and fauna were produced by the slow operation of causes such as are

itish Islands were undergoing a change of level, like that at present occurring in the Scandinavian Peninsula. Scotland was rising, Engla

red to, when a large portion of Europe was covered with ice, which had edged down from the polar regions to southerly latitudes, and, as glaciers, desc

er the remains of trees that in those localities have long ago become extinct, his relics are still found, the implements that accompany him indicating a distinct chronological order. Near the surface are those of bronze, lo

ndicates the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how inventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips, that the huntsman was including smaller animals, and perhaps birds, in his chase; bone whistles, his companionship with other huntsmen or with his dog. The scraping-knives of f

e animals contemporary with them. In these prehistoric delineations, sometimes not without spirit, we have mammoths, combats of reindeer. One presents us with a man harpooning a f

r parts indications of the use of fire. These are often adjacent to the existing coasts sometimes, however, they are far inland, in certain instances as far as fifty miles. Their contents and

e inferred from the accompanying implements, begun in the Stone age, and continued into that of B

ood simultaneously for the whole human race. Thus the wandering Indians of America are only at the present moment emerging from the Stone age. They are still to be s

housands of years. It must be borne in mind that these investigations are quite recent, and confined to a very limited geograph

of years, and human existence antedates that. But not only is it this grand fact that confronts us, we have to admit also a primitive animalized state, and a slow, a gradual development. But this

ded in the present century. They have been conducted with so much moderation as to justify the term I have used in the title of this chapter, "Controversy," rather than "Conflict." Geology has not had to encounter the vindictive opposition with which astronomy was assailed, and, though, on her part, she has insisted on a concession of great antiquity for the earth, she has herself