The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1901-09-13
OUR FIRST
Do Scientists Realize the Havoc They
Are Trying to Commit?

6O 0CtCIIIiSlS ncdltZS the havoc nSY
Are Trying to Commit?
Chicago Tribune: The American
Association for the Advancement of
Science, in session at Denver, with
almost unanimous recklessness and
Indifference to consequences, has re-
legated Adam and Eve to the dumping
ground of the myths. The curator of
the anthropological section of the
Field Columbian museum fought hard
to save the pair, alleged to have been
our first parents, and at whose graves
Mark Twain wept SO copiously, but
it was of no use. The scientists tell
us there could have been no Adam
and Eve of blessed memory in a gar
den of Eden, and offer to us as sub
stitutes white,I black, red, yellow, rus
set, copper colored and black and tan
Adams and Ewes, to account for an
thropological variations.
Even admitting that the scientists
are correct in this matter, would it
not have been kinder if they had
kept the secret to themselves and not
demolished the dear old story at one
fell swoop? Do they realize what
havoc they have committed? If there
were no Adam or Eve, then there was
no garden of Eden with all the
creatures Adam named, with it's pur-
ling brooks and fowery meads and
chanting birds, with it's stately trees,
and in their midst the tree of life and
of the knowledge Of good and evil; no
adventure of Eve with the serpent;
no temptation of Adam with the ap-
pie; no eviction from their home; no
curse of labor pronounced against
them as they fed out of Eden in ter
ror; no beautiful cherubim with fam
ing swords, the delight Of every child,
keeping watch and ward over the
way that led to the tree of life.
And this is not all the scientists
have taken from us. If there were n O
Adam and Eve then certainly there
was no Cain. "the man behind the.
hoe no Abel, who tended the sheen
and no murder in the field. But,
worse than all else, perhaps, is the
ruthless n in which the scien-
lists have torn up that old genealogy,
the despair of youth and the revered
object of age, and tumbled down like
a row of bricks the long line of lusty
and vigorous "begats," beginning with
Seth and ending with Noah, and in
Guiding between these extremes so
many hale old fellows, among them
Enosh, and Kenan, and Mahalaleel,
and Jared, and Enoch, and Methuse-
lah, the record breaker, all of whom
kept on begatting hundreds of years
after they should have been dead.
And if Noah is gone, too, what be-
comes of the ark, and the clean beasts
and the beasts that were not clean,
and the fowls, and all the creeping
things that went in unto Noah into
the ark, two and two of all flesh.
wherein is the breath of life?'
1t is sad, sad havoc the scientists
have made with the grand old story of
creation. Cali, all are gone, the old
familiar faces" But will they not re-
turn again? Will not Prof. Dorsey
rally the anthropologists and make a
concerted attack upon the iconoclasts,
and save Adam and Eve and all the
"begats" Victory would rebound to
his credit and be a triumph for the
Field Columbian museum, and Incl
dentally for Chicago. There is alto
gether too much of the iconoclastic
spirit abroad. It should be rebuked.
In this connection it is pleasing to
observe that the Sunday school con-
vention at Winona has unanimously
restored and rehabilitated hades. That
is a good beginning. !