I am afraid there is little hope of converting a man who has held so stoutly by his notions “for nearly thirty years;” especially as, during that period, he has been acquainting himself with what writers such as Drs. Chalmers, Buckland, and Pye Smith have written on the other side. But for the demonstration which he asks, as I have conducted it, I beg leave to refer him to the seventeenth chapter of my little work, “First Impressions of England and its People.” I am, however, inclined to suspect that he is one of a class whose objections are destined to be removed rather by the operation of the laws of matter than of those of mind. For it is a comfortable consideration, that in this controversy the geologists have the laws of matter on their side;—“the stars in their courses fight against Sisera.” Their opponents now, like the opponents of the astronomer in the ages gone by, are, in most instances, men who have been studying the matter “for nearly thirty years.” When they study it for a few years longer they disappear; and the men of the same cast and calibre who succeed them are exactly the men who throw themselves most confidently into the arms of the enemy, and look down upon their poor silent predecessors with the loftiest commiseration. It is, however, not uninstructive to remark how thoroughly, in some instances, the weaker friends and the wilier enemies of Revelation are at one in their conclusions respecting natural phenomena. The correspondent of the Scottish Press merely regards the views of the author of the “Vestiges” as possessing “the advantage, in point of likelihood,” over those of the geologists his antagonists: his ally the Dean of York goes greatly further, and stands up as stoutly for the transmutation of species as Lamarck himself. Descanting, in his New System of Geology, on the various forms of trilobites, ammonites, belemnites, &c. Dean Cockburn says,—
“These creatures appear to have possessed the power of secreting from the stone beneath them a limy covering for their backs, and perhaps, fed partly on the same solid material. Supposing, now that the first trilobites were destroyed by the Llandeilo Slates, some spawn of these creatures would arise above these flags, and, after a time, would be warmed into existence. These molluscs,[!!] then, having a better material from which to extract their food and covering, would probably expand in a slightly different form, and with a more extensive mantle than what belonged to the parent species. The same would be still more the case with a new generation, fed upon a new deposit from some deeper volcano, such as the Caradoc or Wenlock Limestone, in which lime more and more predominates. Now, if any one will examine the various prints of trilobites in Sir R. Murchison’s valuable work, he will find but very trifling differences in any of them,[!!] and those differences only in the stony covering of their backs. I knew two brothers once much alike: the one became a curate with a large family; the other a London alderman. If the skins of these two pachydermata had been preserved in a fossil state, there would have been less resemblance between them than between an Asaphus tyrannus and an Asaphus caudatus.... A careful and laborious investigation has discovered, as in the trilobites, a difference in the ammonites of different strata; but such differences, as in the former case, exist only in the form of the external shell, and may be explained in the same manner.[!!] ... As to the scaphites, baculites, belemnites, and all the other ites which learned ingenuity has so named, you find them in various strata the same in all important particulars, but also differing slightly in their outward coverings, as might be expected from the different circumstances in which each variety was placed.[!!] The sheep in the warm valleys of Andalusia have a fine covering like to hair; but remove them to a northern climate, and in a few generations the back is covered with shaggy wool. The animal is the same,—the covering only is changed.... The learned have classed those shells under the names of terebratula, orthis, atrypa, pecten, &c. They are all much alike.[!!!] It requires an experienced eye to distinguish them one from another: what little differences have been pointed out may readily be ascribed, as before, to difference of situation.”[!!!]
The author of the “Vestiges,” with this, the fundamental portion of his case, granted to him by the Dean, will have exceedingly little difficulty in making out the rest for himself. The passage is, however, not without its value, as illustrative of the darkness, in matters of physical science, “even darkness which may be felt,” that is suffered to linger, in this the most scientific of ages, in the Church of Buckland, Sedgwick, and Conybeare.
[41] The common objection to that special view which regards the days of creation as immensely protracted periods of time, furnishes a specimen, if not of reasoning in a circle, at least of reasoning from a mere assumption. It first takes for granted, that the Sabbath day during which God rested was a day of but twenty-four hours; and then argues, from the supposition, that in order to keep up the proportion between the six previous working days and the seventh day of rest, which the reason annexed to the fourth commandment demands, these previous days must also have been days of twenty-four hours each. It would, I have begun to suspect, square better with the ascertained facts, and be at least equally in accordance with Scripture, to reverse the process, and argue that, because God’s working days were immensely protracted periods, his Sabbath must also be an immensely protracted period. The reason attached to the law of the Sabbath seems to be simply a reason of proportion;—the objection to which I refer is an objection palpably founded on considerations of proportion. And certainly, were the reason to be divested of proportion, it would be divested also of its distinctive character as a reason. Were it to run as follows, it could not be at all understood:—“Six days shalt thou labor, &c., but on the seventh day shalt thou do no labor, &c.; for in six immensely protracted periods of many thousand years each did the Lord make the heavens and earth, &c., and then rested during a brief day of twenty-four hours; therefore the Lord blessed the brief day of twenty-four hours, and hallowed it.” This, I repeat, would not be reason. All, however, that seems necessary to the integrity of the reason, in its character as such, is, that the proportion of six parts to seven should be maintained. God’s periods may be periods expressed algebraically by letters symbolical of unknown quantity, and man’s periods by letters symbolical of quantities well known; but if God’s Sabbath be equal to one of his six working days, and man’s Sabbath equal to one of his six working days, the integrity of proportion is maintained. When I see the palpable absurdity of such a reading of the reason as the one given above, I can see no absurdity whatever in the reading which I subjoin:—“Six periods (a=a=a=a=a=a) shalt thou labor, &c., but on the seventh period (b=a) shalt thou do no labor, &c.; for in six periods (x=x=x=x=x=x) the Lord made heaven and earth, &c., and rested the seventh period, (y=x;) therefore the Lord blessed the seventh period, and hallowed it” The reason, in its character as a reason of proportion, survives here in all its integrity. Man, when in his unfallen estate, bore the image of God, but it must have been a miniature image at best;—the proportion of man’s week to that of his Maker may, for aught that appears, be mathematically just in its proportions, and yet be a miniature image too,—the mere scale of a map, on which inches represent geographical degrees. All those week days and Sabbath days of man which have come and gone since man first entered upon this scene of being, with all which shall yet come and go, until the resurrection of the dead terminates the work of Redemption, may be included, and probably are included, in the one Sabbath day of God.
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