The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences

by Edward Hitchcock

Hence man was not in existence during all the period in which these six miles of strata were in a course of deposition, and he has existed only during the comparatively short period in which the one hundred feet of alluvium have been formed; nay, during only a small part of the alluvial period. His bones, having the same chemical composition as the bones of other animals, are no more liable to decay; and, therefore, had he lived and died in any of the periods preceding the alluvial, his bones must have been mixed with those of other animals belonging to those periods. But they are not thus found in a single well-authenticated instance, and, therefore, his existence has been limited to the alluvial period. Hence he must have been created and placed upon the globe—such is the testimony of geology—during the latter part of the alluvial period.

I might include in this example nearly all the other species of existing animals and plants, since it is only a very few of these that are found fossil, and such species are limited to the tertiary strata. But since this might make some confusion in the argument, and since man is confessedly at the head of the existing creation, I prefer to let his case stand out alone, and to regard it instar omnium.

Here, then, we have a case in which geology can lay her finger upon the precise epoch, in the revolutions of our globe, in which the most complicated, perfect, and exalted being that ever dwelt upon its surface first began to be. It was not the commencement of a mere zoöphyte, or cryptogamean plant, in which we see but little superiority to unorganized matter, except in their possession of a low degree of vitality. But we have a being complicated enough to contain a million of parts, endowed with the two great attributes of life, sensibility and contractility, in the highest degree, and, above all, possessing intellect and moral powers far more wonderful than organization and animal life.

As to the period when the creation of such a being, by the most astonishing of all miracles, took place, I believe there is no diversity of opinion. At least, all agree that it was very recent; nay, although geology can rarely give chronological dates, but only a succession of events, she is able to say, from the monuments she deciphers, that man cannot have occupied the globe more than six thousand years.

Now, if it was difficult to conceive how successive races of the inferior animals and plants could have originated in the laws of nature, without the special interference of the Deity, that difficulty increases in a rapid ratio as we ascend on the scale of organization and intellect, and attempt in the same manner to account for the origin of man without the miraculous agency of Deity. The thorough-going materialist, however, does not shrink from the effort. “Thought,” says Bory de St. Vincent, “being the necessary result of a certain kind of organization, wherever this order is established, thought is necessarily derived from it; and it is no more possible for the molecules of matter, arranged in a certain manner, not to produce thought, than for brass, when smitten, not to return a sound, or for creatures formed by this matter, after such and such laws, not to walk, not to breathe, not to reproduce; in a word, not to exercise any of the faculties which result from their peculiar mechanism of organization.”—Dict. Clas. D. Hist. Nat. art. Matière.

This may seem, upon a superficial view, to be settling this matter at once. But it merely shifts the difficulty from one part of the subject to another. Admitting the premises of the materialist to be correct, it does indeed show us the proximate cause of thought. But the mind immediately inquires how a certain organization became possessed of such wonderful power. Is it inherent in matter, or is it a power communicated to organization by a supreme Being? If the latter, it is just what the Theist contends for; if the former, then there is just as much necessity for the original interposition of the Deity, in order to give matter such an astonishing power, as there is, on the theory of the immaterialist, to impart a spiritual and immortal principle to matter. The materialist will, indeed, say that matter has possessed this power from eternity. But this supposition, evidently absurd, does in fact invest matter with the attributes of Deity; since those attributes, and those alone, are sufficient to account for the phenomena. And besides, how is the fact to be explained that this power was not exerted till six thousand years ago?

But with the exception of the materialist, I am sure that most reasoning minds will feel as if the creation of the human family was one of the most stupendous, perhaps the most stupendous, exercise of infinite power and wisdom which the universe exhibits. If any change whatever demands a Deity for its accomplishment, it must be this; and, therefore, geology presents, in the case of man, the most striking example which nature could furnish of a beginning of organic and intellectual life on the globe. It shows us that there was a time, and that not remote, when the first link of the curious chain of the human family, now constantly lengthening by inflexible laws, was created.

I might now refer to certain recent discoveries in astronomy, which have the same bearing upon the general argument as the examples that have been quoted from geology, although less decisive. After the famous demonstration of the eternity of the universe by La Grange, provided the present laws of gravity alone control it, we could hardly expect that, so soon, even astronomy would furnish proof of a disturbing cause, which must ultimately and inevitably bring ruin among the heavenly bodies, if some counteracting agency be not exerted. Yet such a source of derangement exists in the supposed medium extending through all space, which has already shown its retarding influence upon Enke’s, Biela’s, and Halley’s comets. And who can say that some of the vast periods which geology discloses may not have been commensurate with those intervening between catastrophes among the heavenly bodies as the result of the universal resisting ether? At present, however, we can say only that we know such long periods have existed in geology, and probably in astronomy. And their mere existence is fatal to the idea of the eternity of the world in its present state.

If, then, geology can clearly demonstrate the present state of the globe to have had a beginning; if she can show us the period, by fair induction, when one liquid, fiery ocean enveloped the whole earth; if she can show us five or six economies of organic life successively flourishing and passing away; if she can trace man back to his origin at a comparatively recent date; if, in fact, she can show us that the most important operations on the globe, and the most complicated and exalted organic races, had a beginning; and if astronomy affords glimpses of similar changes,—then why may we not safely leave the subject of the world’s eternity an undecided question, consistently with the most perfect Theism? If we can prove that the power, the wisdom, and the benevolence of the Deity have again and again interfered with the regular sequence of nature’s operations, and introduced new conditions and new and more perfect beings, by using the matter already in existence, what though we cannot, by the light of science, run back to the first production of matter itself? What though the atheist should here be allowed to maintain his favorite theory that matter never had a beginning? What doctrine of natural religion is thereby unfavorably affected, if we can only show the interposition of the Deity in all of matter’s important modifications? Such an admission would not prove matter to be eternal, but only that science has not yet placed within the reach of man the means of proving its non-eternity. And really, such an admission would be far more favorable to the cause of truth than to rely, as theologians have done, on metaphysical subtilties to prove that matter had a beginning. For the sceptical mind will not merely remain unconvinced by such arguments, but be very apt to draw the sweeping inference that all the doctrines of natural and revealed religion rest on similar dreamy abstractions.

But is natural theology in fact destitute of all satisfactory proof that the matter of the universe had a beginning? Such proof, it seems to me, she will seek in vain in the wide fields of physical and mathematical science; and the solution of the question which metaphysics offers, as we have seen, does not satisfy. But there are sources of evidence on this point which seem to me of the most satisfactory kind.