512 Science and the Bible. [July,
were
thrown up, and deserts made, and the whole earth was stamped with
horror, and joined in the wail of nature. May not evidence, gathered
from the earth, be used to prove that there were mountains and deserts,
and louder groanings than now, before man was created ? From the same
and other texts, interpreters have concluded that, with the fall, death
first entered the world. But may not the proof the earth bears, that
there was death among shells, corals, fish, reptiles, birds, and
quadrupeds, before man, be uttered -within the hearing of such an
interpreter ? and if he should take heed to the evidence, would he be
defiling himself, or the sacred text, by receiving meat from idolaters ?
If
an interpreter suggests the query, after his profound and prolonged
study of the first chapter of Genesis, whether the monkey were not
straightened up into the body of a man, may not truth, gathered from
nature, sound a gentle no in his ear ? and should he not take it kindly ?
Indeed
the author of the " "World-Problem " admits that scientific truth may
sometimes be used by way of suggestion. But it must be careful not to
suggest any error in his own conclusions.
The
truths of Science once generally accepted among men, are not ideas
which we can believe or disbelieve at will. If the evidence is
appreciated, man's very nature forces him to believe and continue to
believe. When geology proved that time, before Adam, was long, and that
the formation of the rocks took place through natural causes, it became
a truth, which evidence from no source could set aside, without
unsettling faith in both God and reason.
The natural, in creation. This
point — the natural in creation — the study of the earth has made
clear; and, although the theological world, with a rare exception, had
otherwise understood Genesis, regarding creation as a series of simple
fiats, Chalmers early admitted the evidence; and now, most writers on
the first chapter of Genesis receive the proof from Geology, and derive
thence new views on the Mosaic narrative.1 There are few, like the author of the " Six Days,"
1 We refer the reader to the remarks of Prof. Barrows on this subject in the Bibliotheea Sacra for January, 1857.
