(149) Wiseman, Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science and
Revealed Religion, first American edition, New York, 1837. As to the
comparative severity of the struggle regarding astronomy, geology, etc.,
in the Catholic and Protestant countries, see Lecky's England in the
Eighteenth Century, chap. ix, p. 525.
And here let it be noted that one of the most interesting skirmishes in this war occurred in New England. Prof. Stuart, of Andover, justly honoured as a Hebrew scholar, declared 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 "the evening and the 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 surmounted one difficulty and accepted the Copernican theory, he might as well get over another and accept the revelations of geology. The encounter was quick and decisive, and the victory was with science and the broader scholarship of Yale.(150)
(150) See Silliman's Journal, vol. xxx, p. 114.
Perhaps the most singular attempt against geology was made by a fine survival of the eighteenth century Don—Dean Cockburn, of York—to SCOLD its champions off the field. Having no adequate knowledge of the new science, he opened a battery of abuse, giving it to the world at large from the pulpit and through the press, and even through private letters. From his pulpit in York Minster he denounced Mary Somerville by name for those studies in physical geography which have made her name honoured throughout the world.
But the special object of his antipathy was the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He issued a pamphlet against it which went through five editions in two years, sent solemn warnings to its president, and in various ways made life a burden to Sedgwick, Buckland, and other eminent investigators who ventured to state geological facts as they found them.
These weapons were soon seen to be ineffective; they were like Chinese gongs and dragon lanterns against rifled cannon; the work of science went steadily on.(151)
(151) Prof. Goldwin Smith informs me that the papers of Sir Robert Peel,
yet unpublished, contain very curious specimens of the epistles of Dean
Cockburn. See also Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville, Boston,
1874, pp. 139 and 375. Compare with any statement of his religious views
that Dean Cockburn was able to make, the following from Mrs. Somerville:
"Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the Deity as these
purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which
have been, by slow degrees, vouchsafed to man—and are still granted
in these latter times by the differential calculus, now superseded by
the higher algebra—all of which must have existed in that sublimely
omniscient mind from eternity." See also The Life and Letters of Adam
Sedgwick, Cambridge, 1890, vol. ii, pp. 76 and following.