CHAPTER XXI.
APPLICATION OF THE SECOND HYPOTHESIS TO THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF CREATION—CONCLUSION.

Summary of the argument—Striking coincidence between the order of creation as set forth in the narrative of Moses and in the records of Geology—Comparison illustrated and developed—Scheme of adjustment between the periods of Geology and the days of Genesis—Tabular view of this scheme—Objections considered—It is not to be regarded as an established theory, but as an admissible hypothesis—Either the first hypothesis or the second is sufficient to meet the demands of Geology as regards the antiquity of the earth—Not necessary to suppose that the sacred writer was made acquainted with the long ages of geological time—He simply records faithfully that which was committed to his charge—The Mosaic history of creation stands alone, without rivals or competitors.

The results at which we have arrived by the long, and we fear tedious, line of argument pursued in the last Chapter, may be briefly summed up. First, many illustrious Fathers of the Church—Saint Augustine, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Saint Athanasius, and others—plainly declared against the opinion that the Days of Creation were days in the ordinary sense of the word; and, therefore, it is a mistake to suppose that this opinion is supported by the unanimous voice of Christian tradition. Secondly, the word Day is frequently used in Scripture for a long period of time, and sometimes for a period of indefinite duration. Thirdly, there is nothing in the language of Moses that forbids us to explain the word according to this sense, in the first chapter of Genesis. And fourthly, there is, at least, one grave consideration, derived from Holy Scripture itself, which distinctly points to such an interpretation. The Six Days of Creation are contrasted with the Seventh Day of God’s rest; and this Seventh Day of God’s rest is unquestionably a long period of undefined duration. From all this it is obvious to conclude, that we may fairly adopt this mode of interpreting the Mosaic Days, if it will assist us in reconciling the received conclusions of science with the truths of Revelation.

Now, there is a striking resemblance, in some important respects, between the order of Creation as exhibited in the successive days of the Sacred Record, and the order of Creation as manifested in the successive periods of Geological time. Three days are specially marked out by the Inspired Historian as distinguished by the creation of vegetable and animal life—the Third, the Fifth, and the Sixth. On the Third Day were created plants and trees; on the Fifth, reptiles, fish, and birds; on the Sixth, cattle, and the beasts of the earth, and, toward the end, man himself. Geologists, on the other hand, not influenced in the least degree by the Scripture narrative, but guided chiefly by the remains of animal and vegetable life which are preserved in the Crust of the Earth, have established three leading divisions of Geological time; the Palæozoic, or first age of organic life, the Mesozoic, or second great age of organic life, and the Kainozoic, or third great age of organic life. Here, no doubt, is a remarkable coincidence.

But it would be still more remarkable if we could recognize, in the three epochs of Geology, the same general characteristics of organic life as we find ascribed by Moses to the three successive days of the Bible narrative. And so we may, it is said, if we will only take the pains to examine for ourselves the organic remains of these geological epochs as they lie dispersed through the Crust of the Earth, or even as they are to be found collected and arranged for exhibition in our museums. The first great age of Geology is eminently distinguished for its plants and trees; the second, for its huge reptiles and great sea-monsters; the third, for its vast herds of noble quadrupeds. Nay, to complete the harmony between the two Records, as man is represented by the Inspired Writer to have been created toward the close of the last day, so, toward the close of the last Geological age, the remains of man and of his works are found, for the first time, laid by in the archives of the Earth.

Such is the coincidence which some ingenious writers fancy they can trace between the history that is set forth in the written Word of God, and the history that is so curiously inscribed upon His works. Our readers, perhaps, will not be unwilling to consider it a little more in detail. We read in the first chapter of Genesis, that on the Third Day God said: “Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth. And it was so done. And the earth brought forth the green herb, and such as yieldeth seed according to its kind, and the tree that beareth fruit, having seed each one according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”[169] Let us now turn to the Carboniferous Period of Geology, which occupies a large space in the great Palæozoic age. All writers agree that it was specially marked by a gorgeous and luxuriant vegetation: and as we contemplate the multitudinous remains of plants and trees which have been gathered so abundantly in our coal measures, and ranged with such striking effect along the walls of our museums, we can scarcely help thinking that we have before us a practical commentary on the text of Moses. The gifted Hugh Miller, who is universally allowed to have been one of the most practical and experienced Geologists of the modern school, gives a very picturesque and graphic sketch of the Carboniferous flora. “In no other age,” he says, “did the world ever witness such a flora: the youth of the earth was peculiarly a green and umbrageous youth,—a youth of dusk and tangled forests,—of huge pines and stately araucarians,—of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria, and the hirsute lepidodendron. Wherever dry land, or shallow lake or running stream appeared, from where Melville Island now spreads out its ice-wastes under the star of the pole, to where the arid plains of Australia lie solitary beneath the bright cross of the south, a rank and luxuriant herbage cumbered every footbreadth of the dank and steaming soil; and even to distant planets our earth must have shown, through the enveloping cloud, with a green and delicate ray.”[170] Such an age as this might well be described in history as the age in which the earth brought forth the green herb, and the fruit-tree yielding seed according to its kind.

Again, the work of the Fifth Day is thus described in the Sacred Narrative:—“God also said: Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature having life, and the fowl that may fly over the earth under the firmament of Heaven. And God created the great whales, and every living and moving creature which the waters brought forth, according to their kinds, and every winged fowl according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”[171] And in this case, as in the former, we may find the counterpart of the Bible story in the records of Geology. “The secondary age of the geologist,” says the eminent writer from whom we have already quoted, “possessed, like the earlier one, its herbs and plants, but they were of a greatly less luxuriant and conspicuous character than their predecessors, and no longer formed the prominent trait or feature of the creation to which they belong. The period had also its corals, its crustaceans, its molluscs, its fishes, and, in some one or two exceptional instances, its dwarf mammals. But the grand existences of the age,—the existences in which it excelled every other creation, earlier or later,—were its huge creeping things,—its enormous monsters of the deep,—and, as shown by the impressions of their footprints stamped upon the rocks, its gigantic birds. It was peculiarly the age of egg-bearing animals, winged and wingless. Its wonderful whales, not however as now, of the mammalian, but of the reptilian class—ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and cetiosaurs—must have tempested the deep; its creeping lizards and crocodiles, such as the teleosaurus megalosaurus, and iguanodon,—creatures some of which more than rival the existing elephant in height, and greatly more than rivalled him in bulk,—must have crowded the plains, or haunted by myriads the rivers of the period; and we know that the foot-prints of, at least, one of its many birds, are fully twice the size of those made by the horse or camel. We are thus prepared to demonstrate that the second period of the geologist was peculiarly and characteristically a period of whale-like reptiles of the sea, of enormous creeping reptiles of the land, and of numerous birds, some of them of gigantic size.”[172]

Once more, it is written that, on the Sixth Day, “God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so done. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and cattle and every thing that creepeth on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good.”[173] And again Geology seems to confirm the truth of the Inspired narrative, and to fill up the details of the picture. “The Tertiary period,” continues Hugh Miller, “had also its prominent class of existences. Its flora seems to have been no more conspicuous than that of the present time; its reptiles occupy a very subordinate place; but its beasts of the field were by far the most wonderfully developed, both in size and numbers, that ever appeared upon the earth. Its mammoths and its mastodons, its rhinoceri and its hippopotami, its enormous dimotherium and colossal megatherium, greatly more than equalled in bulk the greatest mammals of the present time, and vastly exceeded them in number. The remains of one of its elephants (Elephas primigenius) are still so abundant amid the frozen wastes of Siberia, that what have been not inappropriately termed ‘ivory quarries’ have been wrought among their bones for more than a hundred years. Even in our own country, of which, as I have already shown, this elephant was for long ages a native, so abundant are the skeletons and tusks, that there is scarcely a local museum in the kingdom that has not its specimens, dug out of the Pleistocene deposits of the neighborhood. And with this ancient elephant there were meetly associated in Britain, as on the northern continents generally all around the globe, many other mammals of corresponding magnitude. ‘Grand indeed,’ says an English naturalist, ‘was the fauna of the British islands in those early days. Tigers as large again as the biggest Asiatic species lurked in the ancient thickets; elephants nearly twice the size of the largest individuals that now exist in Africa or Ceylon roamed in herds: at least two species of the rhinoceros forced their way through the primeval forests; and the lakes and rivers were tenanted by hippopotami as bulky, and with as great tusks, as those of Africa.’ The massive cave-bear and large cave-hyæna belong to the same formidable group, with at least two species of great oxen, with a horse of smaller size, and an elk that stood ten feet four inches in height. Truly this Tertiary age—this third and last of the geologic periods—was peculiarly the age of great ‘beasts of the earth after their kind, and of cattle after their kind.’”[174]