The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences

by Edward Hitchcock

The first point to be ascertained in this investigation will be, what the Bible teaches on this subject.

In the first place, it distinctly informs us that the death which man experiences, came upon him in consequence of sin.

The declaration of Paul on this subject is as distinct as language can be. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. This corresponds with the original threatening respecting the forbidden fruit. We know that our first parents ate of it; we know, also, that they died; and the apostle places these two facts in the relation of cause and effect.

In the second place, the Bible does not inform us whether the death of the inferior animals and plants is the consequence of man’s transgression.

In order to prove this statement, it is necessary to show that the language of the Bible, which distinctly ascribes the introduction of death into the world, is limited to man. The first part of the sentence from Paul, just quoted, is indeed very general, and may include all organic natures. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. What terms more general or explicit than these could be used? Yet the remainder of the sentence shows that the apostle had man mainly in his eye; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. The death here spoken of is limited expressly to man; and, therefore, it is not necessary to show that the same terms, in the first part of the sentence, had a more extended meaning. Death is spoken of here as the result of sin, and cannot, therefore, embrace animals and plants, which are incapable of sin. But after all, the first part of the sentence may intend to teach a general truth respecting the origin of every kind of death in the world. It will be seen in the sequel, that to such a meaning I have no objection, if it can be established.

Another very explicit passage on the introduction of death into the world is found in Corinthians: Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Here, too, the last clause of the sentence limits the meaning to the human family. For no one will doubt that Christ is the man here spoken of, by whom came the resurrection of the dead. Now, unless the inferior animals and plants will share in a resurrection in consequence of what Christ has done, and in the redemption wrought out by him too, they cannot be included in this passage. And if neither of the texts now quoted extend in their application beyond the human race, I know of no other passage in the Bible that teaches, directly or inferentially, that death among the inferior animals or plants resulted from man’s apostasy. I do not deny that there may be a connection between these events; certainly the Scriptures do not teach the contrary. But they appear to me rather to leave the question of such a connection undecided, and open for the examination of philosophers. If so, we may reason concerning the dissolution of animals, except men, without reference to the Scriptures.

Under the second part of this investigation, I shall endeavor to show that geology proves violent and painful death to have existed in the world long before man’s creation.

In the oldest of the sedimentary rocks, the remains of animals occur in vast numbers; nor will any one, I trust, of ordinary intelligence, doubt but these relics once constituted living beings. Through the whole series of rocks, six miles in thickness, we find similar remains, even increasing in numbers as we ascend; but it is not till we reach the very highest stratum, the mere superficial coat of alluvium, that we find the remains of man. The vast multitudes, then, of organized beings that lie entombed in rocks below alluvium, must have yielded to death long before man received his sentence, Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return. Will any one maintain that none of these animals preceded man in the period of their existence? Then why are the remains of men not found with theirs? for his bony skeleton is as likely to be preserved and petrified as theirs. Moreover, so unlike to man and other existing tenants of the globe are many of these ancient animals, that the sure laws of comparative anatomy show us, that both races could not live and flourish in a world adapted to the one or the other. If the temperature had been warm enough for the fossil tribes, and all the circumstances of food and climate congenial to their natures, they would have been unsuited to the present races; and if adapted to the latter, the former must have perished. The difference between the animals and plants dug out of the rocks in this latitude, and those now inhabiting the same region of country, is certainly as great as that between the animals and plants of the torrid and temperate zones; in most cases it is greater. Now, suppose that the animals and plants of the temperate zones were to change places with those between the tropics. A few species might survive, but the greater part would be destroyed. Hence, a fortiori, had the living beings now entombed in the rocks been placed in the same climate with those now alive upon the globe, the like result would have followed. I say a fortiori; that is, for a stronger reason, the greater number must have perished; and the stronger reason is, the greater difference between fossil and living species, than between the latter in torrid and temperate latitudes. It is true that man is among the species capable of being acclimated to great extremes. And yet no physiologist will imagine that even his nature could have long survived in such a climate as formerly existed, when probably the atmosphere was loaded with carbonic acid and other mephitic gases, and with moisture and miasms, the result of a rank vegetation, and of a temperature higher than now exists in equatorial countries.

This argument, furnished by comparative anatomy, to show that man and the fossil animals could not have been contemporaries, will probably seem to have little force to those who are not familiar with the history of organic life on the globe, and the distribution of species. It is not generally known that both animals and plants are usually confined to a particular district, and that a removal beyond its boundaries, or the access of a few more degrees of cold, or heat, than is common in the place assigned them by nature, will destroy them. To him who understands this curious history, the argument under consideration is perfectly satisfactory, to prove the existence and consequent dissolution of myriads of living beings, anterior to man. “Judging by these indications of the habits of the animals,” says the distinguished anatomist, Sir Charles Bell, “we acquire a knowledge of the condition of the earth during their period of existence; that it was suited at one time to the scaly tribe of the lacertæ, with languid motion; at another, to animals of higher organization, with more varied and lively habits; and finally, we learn that at any period previous to man’s creation, the surface of the earth would have been unsuitable to him. Any other hypothesis than that of a new creation of animals, suited to the successive changes in the inorganic matter of the globe, the condition of the water, atmosphere, and temperature, brings with it only an accumulation of difficulties.”—The Hand, its Mech., &c. pp. 31 and 115.

But when arguing with those who do not feel the force of this argument, I would fall back upon that derived from the fact, that of the ten thousand species of animals dug out of the rocks beneath alluvium, no relic of man has been found; and ask them whether they can explain such a fact, except by the supposition that man was not their contemporary.