Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 17:68 (Oct 1860)
Article: The Religion Of Geology
Author: Anonymous

BSac 17:68 (Oct 1860) p. 673

The Religion Of Geology1

Every important discovery in art, science, or theology, is met with incredulity, and often persecution, by the world; and the unfortunate discoverers are exposed to ridicule and penury, if not, like Galileo, to imprisonment. Some have learned wisdom by experience, and have refused to announce to the world important truths they have subsequently discovered. Those who have sought to illustrate the text and doctrines of our most holy Bible from the fields of science, have too often been met by the smile of derision, or the spirit of denunciation. But when discoveries have been finally appreciated, the public have seized upon them enthusiastically, as if there had never been any odium connected with their propounding. So the church is beginning, more and more, to appreciate the value of science as auxiliary to interpretation, and theologians cannot now pass through the curriculum of study, without devoting much attention to the connection between science and religion.

Yet there are three classes of opinions upon this sub-

BSac 17:68 (Oct 1860) p. 674

ject in the community. The first and most numerous embrace those who receive the Bible as a book inspired to teach the absolute essence of scientific as well as religious truth; who regard the language of inspiration as strictly scientific; and who therefore denounce all attempts to modify the interpretation of the Bible by science as infidel. Some of this class have entered upon a crusade, as it were, against geologists; inundating the religious world with invincible books, pamphlets, and articles in quarterlies. None of them are practically acquainted with geology, but they have read geological works, chiefly with a view to their refutation; and, therefore, have imperfect and one-sided views of the phenomena. Hence their revised theories, to explain these phenomena, are very crude. For example: some of them are shrewd enough to see that, if they allow that the accumulations of gravel and pebbles lying upon the surface of the earth were deposited by water, they must admit the conclusions of geologists as to the great length of time required for the formation of all the stratified rocks. Therefore they assign to them an igneous origin; that is, that they were thrown up from beneath the surface, like lava from volcanoes.

Another writer, apparently more advanced, is willing to admit that the earth was once in a state of igneous fusion; for, says he, there are proofs that the surface was once soft. It was so yielding that birds walked upon it; their tracks remaining to this day to attest it. In other words, these wonderful animals — huge birds, reptiles, and batrachians, as well as small insects — walked over ...