PART I.

SCRIPTURE IRRECONCILABLE WITH SCIENCE.

(1.) _The Mosaic Cosmogony_.

IT is not our intention to go with any minuteness into the thrice-told tale of the antagonism between the Mosaic cosmogony and the revelations of geology. That only five days intervened between the creation of heaven and that of man is contradicted by every stratum of the earth.

We readily admit that the word “day” is used in Scripture in a very vague sense, and that even the limiting phrase “evening and morning” by no means circumscribes the interval to twenty-four hours. As the sun did not even exist till the fourth of these days, the three preceding ones could not possibly have been divided by its setting and rising.

In like manner it may be admitted that Daniel’s “vision of the evening and morning” (viii., 26) covers a period of 2,300 days, and his “seventy weeks” (ix., 24) may be 490 years, that is seventy weeks of years; but all this gives very little relief to the real difficulties. It is not true that there ever was a period like that called by Moses “the third day;” a period when the earth was drained, the sea gathered into its bed, the rivers and lakes confined to their proper boundaries, grass growing on the mountains, trees in the forests, fruits in the vineyards, and all the vegetable kingdom complete; yet no fish in the waters, no creeping thing on the earth, no bird in the air. Even in the Cambrian period may be traced the rudiments of animal life; and in the Silurian, long before any trace of land plants can be detected, certain molluscs were so abundant that the period of this formation has been distinctly called “The age of brachiopods.”

Next to the Silurian or mollusc period comes the Devonian or “age of fishes,” when the seas literally swarmed with inhabitants, and it is not till we arrive at the coal formation that we come to the “vegetable age.” And what were these vegetables? principally ferns and mosses, a rank production, which can in no wise answer to the description: “The earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind . . . and the evening and the morning were the third day.”

But of this enough. Come we to the physical features of the heavens and the earth according to the writers of the Old and New Testaments.

The earth is represented by these writers as immovable in the centre of the universe, and the heavenly bodies are described as revolving round it. The clouds (_rakia_) are supposed to be a solid body sustaining an ocean of water similar to the seas: “God said, let there be a firmament (_rakia_) in the midst of [or between] the waters, and let it divide the waters [of the sea] from the waters [of the clouds], and it was so.” This solid firmament, or roof of the earth, is said to have windows or casements in it, which are opened to let the rain fall through.

The New Testament makes no advance upon these primitive notions. We are told (Matt, iv., 8) that the devil on one occasion took Jesus to a high mountain, and showed him thence “all the kingdoms of the world.” Of course the writer supposed the world to be a flat surface, the whole of which could be seen from one spot, if of sufficient elevation. In like manner the solidity of the clouds is taken for granted, for thrones are set upon them, and Christ, it is said, will show himself hereafter “sitting on the clouds,” attended with his court of angels.

We grant that many expressions of daily use will not bear a close analysis. Thus we talk of being “charmed” and “enchanted” without the remotest idea of incantation; and when we say “the sun rises and sets” we ignore the active character of these phrases. These, and hundreds of other words, have acquired a conventional meaning: thus charmed means “greatly delighted,” and the phrases “rising in the east” and “setting in the west,” applied to the sun, mean simply that it shows itself at daybreak in the east, and as the day closes disappears in the west.

This conventional use of words is a very different matter to the endorsing of vulgar errors. To say that the sun rises and sets can mislead no one. It teaches nothing beyond an optical fact, and can in no wise justify such teaching as this: The earth is a vast plane, buoyed up on a bed of water; and under this water is the region of hell, where Satan rules supreme over the fallen angels. The clouds are a solid roof sustaining an aerial ocean, the fountain of our rain; and above this is the region of heaven, where God rules as an earthly potentate, and where are mansions, streets, rivers, and trees, after the fashion of this earth.

It is said again, if Moses had written like a modern geologist, no one would have understood him. Apply this to Newton, or any early teacher of a new science. What would be said of Newton, if he had taught the myths of Scandinavian mythology under a similar plea? If his discoveries of light and gravitation were not new, they were no discoveries at all; but if they were new they were unknown. It is the part of a teacher to teach, to correct errors, and not to perpetuate them; to tell what is not known, and not confirm the folly of ignorance and superstition.

Once more. It is said that the object of the Bible is to teach religion and not science. Granted. And the object of an astronomer is to teach astronomy, of a geologist to teach geology. What then? Is the astronomer and geologist free to revel in all sorts of errors provided they do not affect his special science? No one would advance such a plea except for a sinister purpose. But admitting it for the sake of argument, what is gained by the admission? The express object of the first chapter of Genesis is to teach science. It professes to tell us how the world was made; and all its teaching is wrong. The object of Genesis vii. and viii. is to teach history. It professes to tell us how the world was destroyed by a flood; and the teaching is all wrong. The object of Genesis xi. is to teach ethnology. It professes to tell us how men became dispersed over the earth, and how it is that different nations speak different tongues; and the teaching is all wrong. It is no justification to plead that Moses was not skilled in geology, history, and ethnology. If he knew nothing about these matters, why did he profess to teach them, and why give it out that what he taught was told him by God? If God is the God of truth he can no more teach false science than false morals; it is equally untruthful to falsify a scientific or historical fact, as to falsify a moral precept or church doctrine.

It is said that the writers of Scripture were inspired by divine wisdom to write nothing but truth. Now either the world was made in six days or it was not; either the flood covered the whole world or it did not; either the sun stood still at the bidding of Joshua or it did not; either Balaam’s ass spoke Hebrew and the serpent in the garden spoke the language of Adam, or they did not. If these things are not positive facts they are fictions, and could only deceive as they still do. It is inconceivable that Professor Airy or Huxley, knowing certain facts, should write a book and wholly ignore that knowledge. It would be puerile in the extreme if they were to plead in excuse for such folly that they were writing on another subject. The true question is this: were they knowingly stating fiction and falsehoods as veritable facts? If they knew that man was not made of dust, nor woman of a rib taken out of Adam while he was asleep; if they knew that the world was not made in six days, but affirmed that it was; if they knew that the serpent was not doomed to crawl on the ground and eat dust because the devil chose to assume its shape, but said that it did, then are they altogether to blame, and it is a matter wholly indifferent whether they were writing science or theology. So with the “inspired penmen.” They profess to write truth, to write facts, and if the words they utter are not truths, and the events they record are not facts, it is quite beside the question whether they pertain to the immediate object of their books or not.

Lastly, it is said that science at present is unsettled, and therefore it is too early to pronounce upon the scientific teaching of the Bible. No doubt there are questions in science still _in nubibus_, and others _sub judice_, but what of that? Because a science is still not fully developed, is it worth nothing? has it no voice, no authority? It is still doubtful whether some of the nebulæ are unfinished stars, or stars so thickly clustered together that at this distance they look like a “cloud.” Because this question is not fully determined, must we ignore the fact that the earth is a globe; that the planets roll round the sun; that the clouds are due to evaporation, and rain to a change of temperature? The Bible says the earth is a plane, and the clouds a solid flooring; that the sun, moon, and stars are set in the atmosphere between the upper and lower waters. We are told to suspend judgment on these points, because there are problems of astronomy and geology yet unsolved. This indeed is clinging to a hopeless hope; it is the obstinacy of a Gambetta, who finding no help in man, dreamt in his enthusiasm that the stars in their courses would fight for France against the Prussians.

To return to the Mosaic notion of creation. The writer tells us that man was made in the image of God—a male and a female. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” This seems to imply an Isis as well as an Osiris, a female as well as a male deity, and no doubt Moses, who derived his inspiration from the Egyptian priests, believed this sexual divinity. But what is meant by “the image and likeness of God?” We are told over and over again that God has no image, no bodily form, and we are forbidden to make any likeness of any creature and look on it as a likeness of God. Theologians tell us the likeness referred to is righteousness and true holiness. But why say “the image and likeness?” _image_ seems to point to bodily form. Besides, Adam was not like God in holiness and true righteousness, for he hearkened to temptation, and if he was “like God,” it implies that Satan might delude even God, and that God might by possibility fall like Adam.

Having made man, the writer says: “God ended his work” (Gen. ii., 2). He made man and ceased the work of creation. Strange, that the writer should say this, and yet in the very same chapter contradict the statement, by the “new creation” of a woman! The dogma, however, that the creative work of God was sealed up, never to be re-opened when man was made, is in direct antagonism to the whole reading of the rocks. Geology shows us worlds of extinct vegetables and animals, the types of which, in one geological period differed entirely from those which existed at a succeeding one, and every anterior period had a flora and a fauna wholly unlike any of those with which we are familiar. There are hosts of creations at every era, and there has never been a period from the mystical “Beginning,” when the creative force has ceased from its operations. At one period we see nothing superior to shell-fish and sea-worms, and for a time the work of creation seems ended; but another set of rocks unfold themselves, and show us myriads of molluscs, especially of the arm-footed kind, trilobites and graptolites, stone-lilies and corals. Again a change comes over created things: mountains are upheaved, but no grass grows upon their sides, the ocean bed is contracted, and the waters are tenanted by innumerable swarms of fishes, for the most part unlike any which now exist. This dynasty of the fishy tribe gives place in time to the “age of ferns and mosses,” and the lizard race makes its appearance; but it is not till we come to the “secondary group of rocks” that we meet with the fish-lizards and the predacious plesiosaur, the bird-beaked saurian, and the labyrinthodon. Ages roll on, ages past all calculation, and new families of molluscs, fishes, and reptiles put in their appearance for the first time: ammonites and belemnites among the molluscs; eryons and horse-shoes among crustaceans; pterodactyls, teliosaurs, steneosaurs, and megalosaurs among reptiles, with here and there a sort of opossum, the first type of the mammal family. In the air flew the giant pterodactyl; on the dry land stalked the ponderous megalosaurus; in the sea whole hosts of marine lizards pursued their carnivorous instincts. Huge turtles crept along the muddy coasts, and strange fishes swam in the deep ocean; but no man existed; no flocks fed upon the mountains; no birds carrolled in the groves. The lordly lion commanded not in the forest; the majestic eagle was not the king of birds. The master spirits were saurians, whose sway was universal; and this brings us to the third great era, that of the tertiary rocks. This third series of rocks contain fossils more and more nearly allied to existing plants and animals; we meet with mammals in considerable numbers, but by far the largest number of them are thick-skinned, and, as a rule, they were both more bulky and longer in the legs than those which now exist.

Coming at last to the age of man and existing species, we still find the work of creation has not ceased. Every new manufacture brings forth some new form of plant or animal, so that creative force can no more cease from operation than any other form of force. If God is the Creator he must create; there can be no _was_ or _has been_ with deity; deity must of necessity be always the universal _Now_, the great _I am_. Infinite love must always be loving, for love without loving is no longer love. Infinite power must always be potential, for to remit the potentiality of power is to lose the power. Power and force are not latent faculties, but active only. In man it is otherwise, because man, as man, has a beginning and therefore an end, and the works of such a creature must have the same limits; but power, as power, cannot possibly begin and end; if it has a beginning that beginning must be the result of _previous_ power, which is absurd; and if it has an end it is no longer power, which is a contradiction.

Man is the creature of a day, and when the day is over it can be said of man he _was_, and of the works of man they _once were_. As with man there is a past, so must there be a future. To every _was_ there must belong a _shall be_. Man, therefore, can be an inventor, a doer, a maker, and cease inventing, doing, making, as he can cease living, or exhaust the limit of his faculties; but God cannot be a creator one day and not another, a doer yesterday and not to-morrow, an agent at one time and not another, or his works would have a past, and if a past a future also; and whatever has a past and future must belong to time; nay more, whatever has a past and future must of necessity be finite, limited, and imperfect. If God is infinite, the great “I Am,” the “same yesterday, today, and for ever,” it can never be said of His operations they once were, but are now ended; He was once a Creator, but is so no longer; His power to create was once active in its potentiality, but has ever since been in abeyance. Every faculty of the infinite, every act and attribute must itself be infinite, with no remission, and no shadow of turning. To say that God ended His work of creation on the sixth day and ceased from His labour, is to predicate change in the unchangeable, limitation in the infinite, rest in activity, repose in motion. It is to humanise deity, mortalise immortality, temporise eternity, limit infinity, and make a past to the everlasting “Now.” It is to make God a man, differing only in degree; eternity time, differing only in extension; the ever present a mere _now_ between a “was” and a “will be.” Facts, therefore, as well as reflection must show the untruth of the dogma that for six days God was a creator, and then ended His work, and ceased from His labour.

(2.) _The Fall_.

As a supplement to the cosmogony, comes the legend of the Fall. Of course, the object of this tale is to account for the fancied imperfection of the works of God. The gist of the matter is this: Adam and Eve were commanded to abstain from a certain tree growing in Eden. This abstinence was to be the test of their obedience. The devil tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit, and Eve induced Adam to do the same. In consequence of this disobedience, God cursed the serpent whose form Satan had assumed;—he cursed the ground, causing it to bring forth thorns and thistles; cursed Eve in her instincts of love and maternal functions, and Adam in assigning him the toil of working for his daily bread. Over all came the sentence of death: “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Rom. v., 12).

According to this legend, “death is the wages of sin.” It was Adam’s apostacy that brought both sin and death into the world, but neither sin nor death can possibly be due to such a cause. Adam’s apostacy could not bring “sin” into the world. _The very act of disobedience is a proof that_ “_sin_” _already existed_. The sin preceded the overt act, was the cause of it, and the cause must inevitably exist before its effect. It was sin that produced apostacy, and not apostacy which produced sin. Take the case of Cain: It is said that Cain slew his brother Abel. What would be thought of the logician who should affirm that because Cain slew Abel, hatred was introduced into the heart of man, and that death should follow as a perpetual punishment? Should we not reply, it was because Cain hated Abel that he rose up and slew him? The passion of hatred preceded the act of murder. It was malice aforethought, and if anything resulted from the misdeed, it was not hatred but contrition, not thoughts of evil but thoughts of bitter grief. Hatred was the cause of murder, and murder the parent of sorrow. So with Adam and Eve. If there had not been already “an evil heart of unbelief,” there never would have been an act of disobedience. Eve sinned, not because she was innocent, but because she was sinful. She disobeyed, not because she was obedient, but because her heart “was not right with God.” The bare act was nothing, the sin was there already, and if she had never eaten of the tree, the thought of her heart would have been sin. It is not true, therefore, that sin is the consequence of Adam’s apostacy, inasmuch as it produced the apostacy itself. By one man’s disobedience sin did _not_ enter into the world, neither is it true that death is “the wages of sin.”

Below the surface of the earth for the depth of some six or eight miles, thousands and millions of once living creatures lie buried in the rocks; creatures which lived and died before man had any being. Of these creatures, myriads were carnivorous; and one specimen, at least, has been disinterred of a fossil animal inclosed in the body of another, by whom it had been devoured for food.

Hence, death existed long, long before the very creation of man; millions upon millions of animals were buried in the rocks before Eve was made of the sleeper’s rib. So says geology, and what is the testimony of physiology?

Every leaf and blade of grass, every drop of water, and even the invisible air, are crowded with insects and animalcules; insomuch that not a leaf can be eaten, not a drop of water can be drank, not a gasp of air can be inhaled, without destroying the life of some insect creatures. If, however, only one insect or animalcule died before the Fall; if by the effect of earthquake or volcano, the force of tempest, the rending of rocks, the slip of an avalanche, the fall of a tree, or even by accident, one animal lost its life, the point is proved; for that one animal at least died, and therefore death was not the consequence of a disobedience not yet incurred.

Again, it is well known that carnivorous beasts and birds of prey have an anatomy adapted to their predacious habits. Their teeth or beak, their paws or talons, their whole structure and digestive organs, prove that they live on carrion, and a lion could no more eat straw like an ox, than an ox could eat carrion like a lion. If, therefore, there was no death before the Fall, we are reduced to one or other of these dilemmas: Either there were no animals that lived on prey, or else at the Fall all predacious animals were wholly recreated, their teeth and jaws were re-constructed, their beaks and talons, their organs of deglutition and digestion; in short, their entire anatomical structure. A gratuitous assertion wholly incapable of proof, and contradicted by every animal fossil in the pre-Adamite world.

(3.) _The Noachian Flood_.

What we said of the cosmogony we repeat under this head also: it is not our intention to enter upon this subject at any length. It has been proved to demonstration that no single trace of such a cataclysm can be detected in the rocks or features of the earth; but all these rocks and all these features bear their testimony against such an event.

No doubt the stratified rocks speak of the agency of water, but that agency was not the deluge. No doubt the gravel and the boulders found so extensively accumulated over the northern hemisphere were carried from their native places by the force of water; but that water was not the flood. No doubt traces of marine animals may be discovered on every high mountain, no matter how far that mountain may be distant from the main ocean; but these fossils were not deposited there by the breaking up of the great deep and the 40 days of incessant rain which fell upon the ark. These fossils extend downwards for some six or eight miles in depth, and how could a flood of some few months in duration make such a deposit? The fossils of the rocks are all deposited in the nicest order; those of one period are never mixed with the fossils of another. No antiquarian could sort his specimens with more order. No museum could observe more method in its arrangements. A deluge would sweep down everything in confusion and bury plants, animals, and minerals in one common ruin; such is not the character of the rocks—every fossil reveals the rocks from which it was dug, and every rock will tell the searcher what fossils he may expect to find there.

We are told that the animals taken into the ark were the same as those which existed on the earth when the flood came, and that the animals preserved by Noah were the parents of existing species; but the fossils of the rocks are wholly different to any existing specimens of plant or animal. Shell fish are found upon inland mountains, but not the shell fish of our present system. Bones of animals are found far from the native haunts of the living creatures, but they are altogether strange bones, and never belonged to the animals of the ark. They are all relics of extinct species, and amongst all the fossils no trace of man can be detected. No trace of the houses built by Cain and his offspring. No trace of the iron and brass instruments forged by Tubal-Cain and his descendants. We find traces of the most delicate leaves of plants, traces of birds, and beasts, and creeping things; but none of man, or of the works of man. If the same flood swept away both man and beast, bird and fish, reptile and insect, tree and boulder, how is it we never find them buried in the same bed—overwhelmed in the same grave? Demonstration could not go further. The whole earth from its lowest depth to its surface denies the universality of the flood, and not one particle of proof can be pointed out in confirmation of the legend.

Moses says that the fountains of the great deep were broken up (Gen. vii., 11). He believed that there was a subterranean abyss of water under the earth, {14a} and the Rev. William Kirby, in one of the “Bridgewater Treatises,” {14b} actually attempts to justify this notion. It would be an insult to the understanding of our reader to waste arguments on such a hypothesis. It is enough to state it, and it must fall with the weight of its own worthlessness.

Again. Moses says, “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered” (Gen. vii., 19, 20). Moses says the depth of the water was 15 cubits, and that all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Of course the writer was ignorant of that simple principle, known now to every schoolboy, that water finds its level. He supposed that it would follow the irregularities of the earth’s surface, here investing a mountain and there dipping into the valleys, so that a uniform depth was preserved throughout, the highest hills being covered with a depth of 15 cubits like the valleys. We must, per force, believe this, or we are driven to the more unlikely hypothesis, that Moses supposed a level of some 30 feet deep of water would suffice to cover the loftiest mountains. {15} Whichever solution is taken, the inference is the same—that the statement is wholly irreconcilable with science.

Once more. After the waters had prevailed for about a year, Noah sent forth a dove, and the dove came back to the ark with an “olive leaf plucked off” (Gen. viii., 11). This olive tree withstood the pelting rain, withstood the rush of the subsiding water, withstood the wind that drove the waters back to their abyss; but what is stranger still, it blossomed under water, and when its head was left towering above the flood which enveloped its trunk, its branches had put forth leaves. Probably the grass was not injured by the flood, as the beasts were dismissed from the ark to find their own food. Strange that trees and herbs, covered with a depth of 30 feet of water, should grow just as well as in the sunshine; but small inconsistencies of this sort are as nothing to the glaring impossibility of the whole legend.

Many other examples of a similar contrariety might be added, but the mere multiplication of evidence can serve no useful purpose when enough has been brought forth to establish the point in question. We might refer to the miracle of Joshua (x., 12.) in proof of the vulgar notion that it is the sun which moves over the earth, not the earth round the sun; we might direct attention to Gen. ix., 13, in proof that Moses supposed the rainbow to be a miraculous exhibition of God’s power in confirmation of his covenant with Noah; or we might dwell on the 2nd Epistle of Peter (iii., 10–12) to show that the prince of the Apostles believed that the heavens could be burnt with fire, like the roof of a house, and the elements be melted by fervent heat. We might cite a whole host of verses to prove that the Scripture writers believed the earth to be a vast plane with an abyss, and the whole rigidly fixed on a solid foundation wholly immovable.

Or we might turn to the physiological notions of the Bible writers to show that they were no more in advance of the period than their notions of astronomy, geology, and general history. They referred intellectual operations to the kidneys or reins:—“My reins instruct me in the night season” (Ps. xvi., 7). The affections they ascribe to the heart, and bodily pain to the bones. They believed epilepsy to result from demoniacal possession; that mandrakes provoked fecundity in women (Gen. xxx., 14–16; Cant. vii., 13.); that peeled withes, placed before pregnant ewes, would affect the colour of their lambs (Gen. xxx., 37.); that ants eat corn and lay up for themselves a store for winter (Prov. v., 6.); that bees can be generated from a dead carcase (Judges xiv., 8.); that falling meteors or stars prognosticate evil (Ezek. xxxii., 7.; Matt, xxiv., 29.); that spittle contains a charm to cure blindness and other maladies (John ix., 6, 7.; Mark vii., 33–35.; viii., 23, 24.); and that the stars exercise an influence on the lot of our life (Judges v., 20). But to enumerate all the instances of contrariety between Scripture and science would occupy more than all the pages of the present pamphlet; suffice it to say, that every false notion of the age is endorsed as an inspired fact, and no single error is corrected, or new truth brought to light. We must now leave this part of our subject and proceed to the next division.