Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot

by Philip Henry Gosse

Probably the majority of our ablest geologists, men who have devoted their lives to the study and elucidation of geological phenomena, are to be found among those who advocate this scheme of reconciling those phenomena with the statements of the Holy Scriptures. Thus one of the earliest cultivators of the science, the Rev. Dr. Conybeare:—

"I regard Gen. i. 1 as an universal proposition, intended to contradict all the heathen systems which supposed the eternity of matter or polytheism; and ver. 2 I regard as proceeding to take up our planet in a state of ruin from a former condition, and describing a succession of phenomena effected in part by the laws of nature (which are no more than our expression of God's observed method of working), and in part by the immediate exercise of Divine power in directing and creating."[18]

Dr. Hitchcock, President of Amherst College, U.S., gives in his adhesion to this principle. After summing up the evidence in favour of the earth's high antiquity, he inquires, "Who will hesitate to say that it ought to settle the interpretation of the first verse of Genesis, in favour of that meaning which allows an intervening period between the creation of matter and the creation of light? This interpretation of Genesis is entirely sufficient to remove all apparent collision between Geology and revelation. It gives the geologist full scope for his largest speculations concerning the age of the world. It permits him to maintain that its first condition was as unlike to the present as possible, and allows him time enough for all the changes of mineral constitution and organic life which its strata reveal. It supposes that all these are passed over in silence by the sacred writers, because irrelevant to the object of revelation; but full of interest and instruction to the men of science who should afterwards take pleasure in exploring the works of God.

"It supposes the six days' work of creation to have been confined entirely to the fitting up the world in its present condition, and furnishing it with its present inhabitants. Thus, while it gives the widest scope to the geologist, it does not encroach upon the literalities of the Bible; and hence it is not strange that it should be almost universally adopted by geologists, as well as by many eminent divines."[19]

Dr. Pye Smith, accepting the immense undefined interval between the event of the first verse, and the condition chronicled in the second, held the somewhat remarkable opinion that the term "earth" in that verse, and throughout the whole description of the six days, is "designed to express the part of our world which God was adapting for the dwelling of man and the animals connected with him." And that portion he conceived to have been "a part of Asia, lying between the Caucasian ridge, the Caspian Sea, and Tartary on the north, the Persian and Indian Seas on the south, and the high mountain ridges which run at considerable distances on the eastern and western flank."

The whole of the six days' creation was confined, on this hypothesis, to the re-stocking, with plants and animals, of this limited region after an inundation caused by its subsidence. The flood of Noah was nothing more than a second overflowing of the same region, by "an elevation of the bed of the Persian and Indian Seas, or a subsidence of the inhabited land towards the south."[20]

The author of "The Protoplast" has made the very original suggestion, that the geological periods may have occurred during the paradisaical condition of man, which he thinks was of an indefinitely protracted duration, human chronology commencing at the Fall.

"We have no data in Scripture from which to gather certain information, and Adam may have lived unfallen one day, or millions of years." The years of the first man's mortal life began to be reckoned when his immortality ceased. He was nine hundred and thirty years old:[21] he had been nine hundred and thirty years gradually decaying, slowly dying.

"It may, indeed, be said that no man could have survived those convulsions of nature, of which traces have been discovered in the earth's crust. I would reply to this;—First, that we have no reason to suppose that these changes affected the whole globe at once; they may have been partial and successive; and the world's Eden may have been a spot peculiarly exempted from their influence. Secondly, that Adam's body before the fall was not constituted as ours now are; it was incorruptible and immortal: physical phenomena could have had no deleterious effect upon him." "Why should we find any difficulty in supposing that the geological changes which appear to have passed upon the globe, after its creation, and before its curse, were to the first man sources of ever-renewing admiration, delight, and advantage?