The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1881-01-08
Our Oliu
SOME INTERESTING CALCULATIONS.
PLENTY OF ROOM FOR THE WORLDS PAST
AND PRESENT POPULATION. uszif

. .. %
it would appear that his audience accepted
his arithmetic as solid truth. We have
nothing to do with his theories of the
judgment, but there ought to be judg
ment and condemnation in Boston of any
man who delivers such trash to an audi
ence having ordinary common school edu-
cation He is reported to have spoken
thus: II ..f.#
Now the population Of the earth is
1000, 100000, and generation dies every
thirty years. In every thirty years, then,
1000, 900, 900 of human beings go out of
the world and 1,OOO,0O0,000 come in.
Forty years ago the Church taught that
the world was 5000 years old. She dou't
to- day pretend to guess within 100000
years how old the world is. Very we'll,
what has been the population of the world
since the race began? Who can estimate
the number? By what arithmetic shall
you compute the swarming millions :?
Take the globe and fatten it into vast
plain, $4,000 miles by "a, and it would
accommodate but fraction Of the human
beings that have lived upon its surface :?
Where is the locality of the judgment to
be then? Can it have locality?"
Now make the widest conceivable esti-
mates Suppose that the human race has
existed on this earth 100000 years, and
that the population has never from the
first day been smaller than this estimate
for the present time, namely, OO,OOO,-
O00 For the sake of easy calculation,
instead of the estimate of thirty years to
generation, call it three generations to a
century There will then appear to have
been three thousand generations of thou
sand millions each, who, being assembled,
require standing room. For crowded
meeting of men, women and children it
would be ample estimate to give each two
square feet of room. A square mile con-
tains in round numbers, 25, 900, 900 square
feet, and 12,500,O00 persons would stand
on it. Therefore eighty square miles
would hold generation, and three thou
sand times that space would hold the pop
ulation of hundred thousand years.
That is to say, 24O, 900 square miles would
contain them, and, gathered in parallel
ogram, they would stand in space 600
miles long by 400 broad. They could be
easily accommodated in ono or two of our
States.
Dead and buried side by side, they would
require only FIVE times their standing space,
or (say) 100000 square miles, and the
United States of America has ample wild
lands as yet unwan ted and unoccupled to
to give them a cemetery.
But it is just as we'll before leaving the
subject to say that the hundred thousand
years of the reverend lecturers i'm agina-
ton is as wild talk as his figures. Men
of uncertain faith are very fond of saying
that other men have no faith. Nothin G
can be more absurd than what he says
about the Church. The confused man
who fell off stage COACH into the mud
thought the coach had upset. MIR. Muir
ray will soon find out that the Church,
whatever its denominational name, is a
great deal more steady in its ancient faith
than are he and others who would gladly
convince outsiders that the old coach has
actually gone over.
In his lecture, as reported, he makes a
sad tumble of two distinct subjects-the
age of the world and the age of the human
race on its surface. The men who hold
notions about the extreme antiquity of the
human race have been very few, and have
produced no sensible effect on the faith of
the Church or the general opinion of the
world, and among what are called scientists
the present difference of opinion as to the
age of the human race is limited to COM
paratively short period, Bunsen's theory
of date B. c. 10000 for Egyptian orig
ins has vanished, and Mariette Beys date
of B. G. 5000 for Mencs Cor Misraim)
will satisfy the views of the most extreme
among recognized men of sense.
The bone cave men have been met with
the simple rules Of evidence, which apply
to their supposed discoveries as they apply
to all questions of fact; and it is found that
they have not proved in single instance
that human bones have been lying fifty
forty or ten centuries in those caves. The
theory that the Mississippi had been for
forty thousand years depositing drift over
human bones found in the deposit disap.
peared in mist when Humphreys and Alb
bot, United States engineer officers on duty,
having no theory to sustain, accurately ob,
served and satisfactorily determined that
the entire delta of the Mississippi has re-
quired only four thousand years for its
total deposit. 1t Is no longer question
of religion against science, but case in
which common sense and a knowledge Of
the laws of evidence are demanding some
thing more than assertion without proof
asking for facts in distinction from theory.
On the whole it has become the fashion to
laugh little at the fantastic theories Of
science falsely SO called. sa,f
Meantime none of these theories have
produced any sensible effect on the Church
or its teachings. There are just as many
good people and just as many great intel
lectual people as ever who still believe and