geography. In vain were exhibited the absolute geological, zoological, astronomical proofs that no universal deluge, or deluge covering any great extent of the earth, had taken place within the last six thousand or sixty thousand years; in vain did Bishop Clayton declare, that the Deluge could not have taken place save in that district where Noah lived before the flood; in vain was it shown that, even if there had been a universal deluge, the fossils were not produced by it: the only answers were the citation of the text, "And all the high mountains which were under the whole heaven were covered," and denunciations of infidelity. In England, France, and Germany, belief that the fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah was insisted upon as part of that faith essential to salvation.' It took a hundred and twenty years for the searchers of God's truth as revealed in Nature such men as Buffon, Linnæus, Whitehurst, and Daubenton-to push their works under these mighty fabrics of error, and, by statements which could not be resisted, to explode them.

Strange as it may at first seem, the war on ge

1 For a candid summary of the proofs from geology, astronomy, and zoology, that the Noachian Deluge was not universally or widely extended, see McClintock and Strong, Cyclopædia of Biblical Theology and Ecclesiastical Literature, article Deluge. For general history, see Lyell, D'Archiac, and Vezian. For special cases showing bitterness of the conflict, see the Rev. Mr. Davis's Life of Rev. Dr. Pye Smith, passim.

ology was waged more fiercely in Protestant countries than in Catholic; the older Church had learned, by her earlier wretched mistakes, what dangers to her claim of infallibility lay in meddling with a growing science; in Italy, then entirely under papal control, little open opposition was made; and, of all countries, England furnished the most bitter opponents to geology at first, and the most active negotiators in patching up a truce on a basis of sham science afterward.'

You have noted already that there are, generally, two sorts of attack on a new science. First, there is the attack by pitting against science some great doctrine in theology. You saw this in astronomy, when Bellarmin and others insisted that the doctrine of the earth revolving about the sun is contrary to the doctrine of the incarnation. So now, against geology, it was urged that the scientific doctrine that the fossils represented animals which died before Adam, was contrary to the doctrine of Adam's fall, and that "death entered the world by sin."

Then, there is the attack by literal interpreta

1 For comparison between conduct of Italian and English ecclesiastics, as regards geology, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, tenth English ed., vol. i., p. 33. For a philosophical statement of reasons why the struggle was more bitter, and the attempt at deceptive compromises more absurd in England than elsewhere, see Maury, L'Ancienne Académie des Sciences, second edition, p. 152.

tion of texts, based upon the idea that the Bible is a compendium of history or a text-book of natural science, which serves a better purpose, generally, in rousing prejudices.

Toward the close of the last century, in England, the opponents of geology on Biblical grounds seemed likely to sweep all before them. Cramping our sacred volume within the rules of an historical compend, they showed the terrible dangers arising from the revelations of geology, which make the earth older than the six thousand years required by Archbishop Usher's interpretation of the Old Testament. Nor was this panic confined to ecclesiastics. Williams, a thoughtful layman, declared that such researches led to infidelity and atheism, and are "nothing less than to depose the Almighty Creator of the universe from his office." The poet Cowper, one of the mildest of men, was also roused by these dangers, and in his most elaborate poem wrote:

"Some drill and bore

The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn

That he who made it, and revealed its date

To Moses, was mistaken in its age!"

And difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many of us the battle was still raging most fiercely in England, and both kinds of artillery usually brought against a new science

were in full play, and filling the civilized world with their roar.

About thirty years ago, the Rev. J. Mellor Brown, the Rev. Henry Cole, and others, were hurling at all geologists alike, and especially at such Christian divines as Dr. Buckland and Dean Conybeare, and Pye Smith, and such religious scholars as Prof. Sedgwick, the epithets of "infidel," "impugner of the sacred record," and "assailant of the volume of God."1

Their favorite weapon was the charge that these men were "attacking the truth of God," forgetting that they were simply opposing the mistaken interpretations of Messrs. Brown, Cole, and others, like them, inadequately informed.

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They declared geology "not a subject of lawful inquiry," denouncing it as "a dark art," as dangerous and disreputable," as "a forbidden province," as "infernal artillery," and as "an awful evasion of the testimony of revelation." "

This attempt to scare men from the science having failed, various other means were taken. To say nothing about England, it is humiliating to human nature to remember the annoyances, and even trials, to which the pettiest and narrow

1 For these citations, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, introduction.

2 See Pye Smith, D. D., Geology and Scripture, pp. 156, 157, 168, 169,

est of men subjected such Christian scholars in our own country as Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock and Louis Agassiz.

But it is a duty and a pleasure to state here that one great Christian scholar did honor to religion and to himself by standing up for the claims of science, despite all these clamors. That man was Nicholas Wiseman, better known afterward as Cardinal Wiseman. The conduct of this pillar of the Roman Catholic Church contrasts nobly with that of timid Protestants, who were filling England with shrieks and denunciations.'

And here let me note, that one of the prettiest skirmishes in this war was made in New England. Prof. Stuart, of Andover, justly honored as a Hebrew scholar, virtually declared that geology was becoming dangerous; that to speak of six periods of time for the creation was flying in the face of Scripture; that Genesis expressly speaks of six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, and not six periods of time.

To him replied a professor in Yale College, James Kingsley. In an article admirable for keen wit and kindly temper, he showed that Genesis speaks just as clearly of a solid firmament as of six ordinary days, and that if Prof. Stuart had

1 Wiseman, Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, first American edition, New York, 1887.