The Washington herald., 1907-08-26
Geology and the Bible.

EDITOR The Washington Herald:
In a recent number oi The Herald I
ind a letter from Mr.. Eccles regarding
the supposed conflict between the teach
ings of geology and the Bible: and as this
letter is liable TO leave a false impression
in the minds Of some who take their
science on authority as people of the
Middle Ages took their religion. would
Ike little space 10 restate some Of the
matters there referred to.
Not having seen the previous article
which called out this by Mr. Ecles. I can
only take up the points especially dvelt
upon In the latter. Chief OF all is the
truly amazing statement that the one
thing that geoiogists are agreed upon is
that there is no evidence Of a universal
flood" and he quotes LyeH 10 substanti-
ate the assertion. But in protesting 10
give what any modern science teaches. il
would seem more pertinent to quote some
authority more recent than one who has
been dead over thirty years. and whose
chief work was done over half century
ago. Geology has made some advances
IN the last quarter century. to recite a
1.-THE Of which would almost make
Ramsay, Lyell. or Hutton turn in their
graves.
Among these advances has been the
accumulation of voluminous evidence
proving that nowhere on earth is there
now going on anything analogous to the
geological Changes recorded in the rocks.
To quote the poetic words of Eduard
Suess, of Vienna. perhaps the greatest
OF living geologists, wnen we attemDt TO
compare our present quiet. stable earth
with the awful vicissitudes engraved on
the rocky pages of Natures diary. we
are, Ike, Rama, gazing over the ocean Of
the ages, but no sign Of a shore shows
itself to our view Elsewhere he saws
that the real manner and cause Of the
geological changes has not yet been
discovered. In other words. after reign
OF over half a century the uniformitarisn
Ism OF Lyell and the other Huttonians
IS at last found to be bankrupt as an
explanation Of the past history. of our
earth; so that many Of the leaders of the
science, like Prestwich. Of Oxford: DR.. II
Woodward. of the British Museum or
Sir Henry Howorth, who are unwilling to
mug tradition IN science in the face of
the protest Of accumulated facts. are
agreed on one thing, viz, that some ire
mendous catastrophe must have happened
cur world IN the long ago. and that
the evidence on this point was minimized
and persistently ignored by those who.
during the middle nineteenth century.
taught TO cTedulous world the vohtmi-
nous nonsense of their glacial theory.
Two problems would propose for Mr..
Eecles to think over:
% II "palaeolithic' man disappearad
from Europe and Asia along with those
semi-tropical plants and animals at the
time OF the pOst-pliocence subnlergence =
as Dawson and others term Il. and if at
the same time the mammoth rhincceros
and mastodon, with thirty species Of the
horse tribe, and numerous other large
mammals, disappear from North Amer
lea, with similar events occurring con-
temporaneously on all the other CONT
nents, while their remains in all cases
are found buried by flowing water. some
times even on high mountain tons why
should we longer cover up our eyes and
deny this overwhelming evidence Of what
has burned itself into the memory of
every race on earth as ''the Flood?"
~ II We cannot prove that the Cam
brian or Devonian fossils really lived be-
fore the cretaceous or cocene. how are
We TO assure ourselves that that ancient
world Was not unit. after ali. ana zlat