Take for example the argument most commonly used—that which asserts the vast antiquity of the earth—a thing in itself every way likely, and not at all contrary to Scripture, if it could be scientifically proved. But how does our Infidel geologist set about his work of proving that the earth is any given age, say six thousand millions of years? A scientific demonstration must rest upon facts—well ascertained facts. It admits of no suppositions. Now what are the facts given to solve the problem of the earth's age? The geologist finds a great many layers of rocks, one above the other, evidently formed below the water, some of them out of the fragments of former rocks, containing bones, shells, and casts of fishes, and tracks of the feet of birds, made when these rocks were in the state of soft mud, and altogether several miles thick. He has a great multitude of such facts before him, but they are all of this character. Not one of them gives him the element of time. They announce to him a succession of events, such as successive generations of fishes and plants; but not one of them tells how long these generations lived. The condition of the world was so utterly different then, from what it is now, that no inference can be drawn from the length of the lives of existing races, which are generally also of different species. The utmost any man can say, in such a case, is, I suppose, for there is no determinate element of time in the statement of the problems, and so no certain time can appear in the solution.
Here is a problem exactly similar. A certain house is found to be built with ten courses of hewn stone in the basement, forty courses of brick in the first story, thirty-six courses in the second, thirty-two in the third; with a roof of nine inch rafters covered with inch boards, and an inch and a half layer of coal tar and gravel; how long was it in building? Would not any school-boy laugh at the absurdity of attempting such a problem? He would say, "How can I tell unless I know whence the materials came, how they were conveyed, how many workmen were employed, and how much each could do in a day? If the brick had to be made by hand, the lumber all dressed with the hand-saw and jack-plane, the materials all hauled fifty miles in an ox-cart, the brick carried up by an Irishman in a hod, and the work done by an old, slow-going, jobbing contractor, who could only afford to pay three or four men at a time, they would not get through in a year. But if the building stone and sand were found in excavating the cellar, if the brick were made by steam and came by railroad, a good master builder, with steam saw and planing mills, steam hoists, and a strong force of workmen, would run it up in three weeks."
So our geologist ought to say; "I do not know either the source of the materials of the earth's strata, nor the means by which they were conveyed to their present positions; therefore I can not tell the time required for their formation. If the crust of the earth was created originally of solid granite, and the materials of the strata were ground down by the slow action of frost and rain, and conveyed to the ocean by the still slower agencies of rivers and torrents—hundreds of millions of ages would not effect the work. But if the earth was created in such a shape as would rationally be considered the best adapted for future stratification; if its crust consisted of the various elements of which granite and other rocks are composed; if these materials were ejected in a granular or comminuted form, and in vast quantities by submarine volcanoes generated by the chemical action of these elements upon each other; and if, after being diffused by the currents of the ocean, and consolidated by its vast pressure, the underlying strata were baked and melted and crystallized into granite[361]—a very few centuries would suffice. Until these indispensable preliminaries are settled, geology can make no calculations of the length of time occupied by the formation of the strata."
But instead of saying so, he imagines that God chose to make the earth out of the most impossible materials, by the most unsuitable agencies, and with the most inadequate forces; and that therefore a long time was needed for the work. In short, to revert to our illustration of the house-building, he supposes that Almighty God built the earth with the ox-team, and employed only the same force in erecting the building, which he now uses for doing little jobbing repairs. Almost all geological computations of time are made upon the supposition that only the same agents were at work then which we see now, that they only wrought with the same degree of force, and that they produced just the same effects in such a widely different condition of the earth as then prevailed. It takes a year say to deposit mud enough at the bottom of the sea to make an inch of rock now; and if mud was deposited no faster when the geological strata were formed, they are as many years old as there are inches in eight or nine miles depth of strata. But this is not the scientific proof we were promised. How does he prove that mud was deposited at just the same rate then as now? The very utmost he can say is that it is a very probable supposition. I can prove it a very improbable supposition. But it is enough for my present purpose to point out that, probable or improbable, it is only supposition. No proof is given or can possibly be given for it. Any conclusion drawn from such premises can be only a supposition too. And so the whole fabric of geological chronology, upon the stability of which so many Infidels are risking the salvation of their souls, and beneath which they are boasting that they will bury the Bible beyond the possibility of a resurrection, vanishes into a mere unproved notion, based upon an if.
It is truly astonishing, that any sober-minded person should allow himself to be shaken in his religious convictions by the alleged results of a science so unformed and imperfect, as geologists themselves acknowledge their favorite science to be. "The dry land upon our globe occupies only one-fourth of its whole superficies. All the rest is sea. How much of this fourth part have geologists been able to examine? and how small seems to be the area of stratification which they have explored? We venture to say not one fiftieth part of the whole."[362] "Abstract or speculative geology, were it a perfect science, would present a history of the globe from its origin and formation, through all the changes it has undergone, up to the present time; describing its external appearance, its plants and animals at each successive period. As yet, geology is the mere aim to arrive at such knowledge; and when we consider how difficult it is to trace the history of a nation, even over a few centuries, we can not be surprised at the small progress geologists have made in tracing the history of the earth through the lapse of ages. To ascertain the history of a nation possessed of written records is comparatively easy; but when these are wanting, we must examine the ruins of their cities and monuments, and judge of them as a people from the size and structure of their buildings, and from the remains of art found in them. This is often a perplexing, always an arduous task; much more so is it to decipher the earth's history."[363] "The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat bogs afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of some Roman emperor; the ancient encampments indicate the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing military defenses; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of ancient Egypt. This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it constitutes a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies; whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason we must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond the reach of history."[364] "There are no calculations more doubtful than those of the geologist."[365] In fact, no truly scientific geologist pretends that it stands on the same level with any authentic history, much less with the Bible record; inasmuch as the discovery of a single new fact may overturn the whole theory. "It furnishes us with no clew by which to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of creation. These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us in our presumptuous rebellion. A stray splinter of cone bearing wood—a fish's skull or tooth—the vertebra of a reptile—the humerus of a bird—the jaw of a quadruped—all, any of these things, weak and insignificant as they may seem, become in such a quarrel too strong for us and our theory—the puny fragment in the grasp of truth forms as irresistible a weapon as the dry bone did in that of Samson of old; and our slaughtered sophisms lie piled up, 'heaps upon heaps,' before it."[366]
The history of the progress of geology furnishes abundant proof of the truth of these admissions of weakness and fallibility. In almost every instance when we have had the opportunity of testing geological calculations of time they have proved to be erroneous; and sometimes grossly erroneous. The lake dwellings of Switzerland, which were once alleged to be at least fifteen thousand years old, are found surrounded by heaps of burnt corn; illustrating Cæsar's account of the burning of their corn by the Helvetians, preparatory to the invasion of Gaul, which he repelled. The peat bogs of Denmark, surrounding stumps of oak, beech, and pine, claimed to be successive growths, and at least twelve thousand five hundred years old, have been compared with a piece of primeval bog and forest, on the Earl of Arran's estate, in Scotland, which corresponds perfectly to the Danish bog; but which shows the three growths not successive, but contemporaneous, at different levels; the bog growing as well as the trees. And the frequent discovery of Danish remains of the stone and bronze ages in the old Danish forts and battle-fields of Ireland fixes their historical period at the era of the Danish invasion; some of these stone and bronze weapons being found on the battle-field of Clontarf, dating A. D. 827. Skeletons of warriors with gold collars, bronze battle-axes, and flint arrow heads are quite common in the Irish bogs. The absence of iron, on which so great a theory of the stone, bronze, and iron ages as successive developments of civilization has been raised, is easily accounted for by the perishable nature of iron when exposed to moisture. But that this Celtic race used iron also, as well as bronze and stone, is proved incontestably by the discovery, in 1863, of the slag of their iron furnaces, among a number of flint weapons, and Celtic skulls, at Linhope, in Northumberland; the iron itself having perished by rust.[367] The pottery, glass, and handmills found beside these skulls show that their owners were by no means the degraded savages supposed to represent the so-called stone age.
Horner's Nile pottery, discovered at a depth of sixty feet, and calculated to be twelve thousand years old, and fragments found still deeper in this deposit, and calculated at thirty thousand years, were found to be underlaid by still deeper layers, producing Roman pottery; and in the deepest boring of all, at the foot of the statue of Rameses II., the discovery of the Grecian honeysuckle, marked on some of these mysterious fragments, which they had claimed as pre-historic, proved that it could not be older than the Greek conquest of Egypt. Sir Robert Stephenson found in the neighborhood of Damietta, at a greater depth than Mr. Horner reached, a brick bearing the stamp of Mohammed Ali.[368] The shifting currents of all rivers flowing through alluvial deposits bury such things in a single season of high water.
The raised beaches of Scotland are quite conspicuous geological features of the Highlands, and have furnished themes for calculations of their vast antiquity. Here and there human remains had been discovered in them, but no link could be had to connect them otherwise than geologically with history. Geologists, accordingly, with their visual generosity of time, assigned them to the pre-Adamite period. But recently the missing link has been found, and these progenitors of Tubal Cain, and the pre-Adamites generally, are found to have been in the habit of supping their broth out of Roman pottery!
Lyell, the acknowledged prince of geologists, is famous for his chronological blundering; of which his calculations of the age of the delta of the Mississippi is a very good American example. He calculates the quantity of mud in suspension in the water, and the area and depth of the delta, and says it must have taken sixty-seven thousand years for the formation of the whole; and if the alluvial matter of the plain above be two hundred and sixty-four feet deep, or half that of the delta, it must have required thirty-three thousand five hundred years more for its accumulation, even if its area be estimated at only equal to the delta, whereas it is in fact larger.[369] He makes no allowance for tidal deposits.
But Brig. Gen. Humphrey, of the United States Surveying Department, goes over Lyell's calculations, and shows that instead of 3,702,758,400 cubic feet of mud brought down by the Mississippi, as estimated by Lyell, the actual amount is 19,500,750,000,000; that the rate at which the delta is now advancing into the gulf is fifty feet per annum, and that the age of the delta and alluvial deposit is four thousand four hundred, instead of Lyell's one hundred thousand five hundred years.[370] We might go on and give a dozen such instances of geological miscalculations of time did space permit; but these are enough to disabuse us of any faith in such calculations.