The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1897-08-22

Nv.
Meanwhile. the probing of the earth's crust
went on. revealing. amid all the seeming con-
fusion of distorted and metamorphosed rocks.
an unvaryinR sequence OF strata, and OF the
fossils imbedded in them. Different causes were
assigned for the vast changes ranging over vast
periods; one school believing in the action of
volcanic and like catastrophe agents; another
In the action Of aqueous agents, seeing moro
consistently in present operations tho explapa-
tion OF the causes Of past changes. There was
no diversity Of opinion. however. concerning tho
necessity OF extending tho earth's time-history
and life-history to millions on millions OF years.
When this induction from the facts could DO no
longer resisted. thcologians sought some basis
OF compromise on such non-fundamental points
as the six days of creation. 1t was suggested
that, perhaps. these did not mean tho seventh
part of q week, but periods. or cons, or cycles
equally elastic. and that. ifthe Mosaic narrative
were regarded as a poetic revelation of the gen.
eral succession of phenomena. beginning with
the development OF order out of chaos and end
Ing with the creation of man, Scripture would
be found to have anticipated or revealed what
science confirms. 1t was impossible. SO the
ologians argued, that there could be aught
else than harmony between the divine works
in outward nature and the writings which
were assumed to be of divine origin.
Science. they said, could no. contradict reve-
lation, and whatever seemed contradictory
must be duo to misapprehension either of the
natural fact or to misleading of tho written
word. But, although the story OF the creation
might DO clothed in poetic form, that of the fall
OF Adam and of the drowning OF his descendants,
eight persons excepted, must be taken, the thco-
logians insisted, in all its appalling iiteralness.
Confirmation of the deluge story was found in
the fossil shells on high mountain tops. while
as for the giants of antcdiluvian times. there
were the huge bones in proof. Some of the relics
OF mastodons and mammolhs were actually
hung up in churches as evidence that +" there
were giants in those days" One Henrion pub
li-hed a book in 1918 giving the height Of Adam
as 1913 feet q inches and that Of Eve as lls
feet 8 inches. Noah being OF rather less stature.
But. as MIR. Clodd reminds us, to pnrley with
science is fatal to theology. Arguments which
involve the cause they support in ridicule may
be left TO refute themselves. While theology
WAS hesitating as to what to say about the deluge
story, archaeology produced the Chaldean origi-
nal OF the legend, whence the myth OF tho flood
was derived. The time came. too. when Canon
Driver, professor of Hebrew at Oxford, was TO
admit that, read without prejudice or bias, the
narrative in the first chapter OF Genesis creates
an impression at variance with the facts re-
vcalcd by science" all efforts at reconciliation
being only different modes OF obliterating the
characteristic features of Genesis. and of read
Ing into il II view which 1t does not express"
While the ground In favor OF tho literal inter.
probation OF Genesis was being contested, an
invading force was advancing in the shape of
the science of biology. The workers therein fall
INTO TWO classes: the one. represented BY Lin