'Thus, too, the insurgent waters once o'erpowered,
As fables tell, and deluged many a state;
Till, in its turn, the congregated waves
By cause more potent conquered, heaven restrain'd
Its ceaseless torrents, and the flood decreased.'
Barbarism covered the whole Western world; neither in the 2000 years before Abraham, nor in the 2000 years afterward, have we any light reflected from these regions to the East. In this 4000 years, or in the somewhat longer period which probably will be ultimately settled as warranted by the record, we place hypothetically all the phenomena of the later mammalian age, including the introduction of man as a hunter, the first occupation of the caves by him also, the diluvial phenomena of the wide valleys, the oscillations and disturbances of the earth's crust, alterations in the coast-line, and physical settlement of the country; after this comes the second occupation of the caves. In short, if we say that, hypothetically, the whole first known human age occurred within 4000 years of the Christian era, no one can say that it is geologically impossible. Who can say that 1643 years is insufficient to comprise all the phenomena that occurred during a period confessedly characterized by more rapid and extensive action than at present—a period during which ruptures in the earth's crust, oscillations, and permanent uprising took place, and the intermittent action of violent floods caused the deposit and disturbance and resettlement of the gravels and brick-earth? There is nothing to interfere with the prevalent opinion that man was introduced here while the glacial period was dying out, and while it was still furnishing flood-waters sufficient to scour and re-sort the gravels of the valleys down which they flowed. This supposition may be extended to both the great continents."
To conclude: Our mode of reconciling the Mosaic history of antediluvian man with the disclosures of the gravels and caves would be to identify Palæocosmic man, or man of the mammoth age, with antediluvian man; to suppose that the changes which closed his existence in Europe as well as Western Asia were those recorded in the Noachian deluge; and that the second colonization of the diminished and shrunken Europe of the modern period was effected by the descendants of Noah. It may be asked—Must we suppose that the Adam of the Bible was of the type of the coarsely featured and gigantic men of the European caverns? I would answer—Not precisely so; but it is quite possible that Adam may have been Turanian in feature. We should certainly suppose him to have been a man well developed in brain and muscle. Such men as those found in the caves would rather represent the ruder "Nephelim," the "giants that were in those days," than Adam in Eden. Farther, the new colonists of Europe after the deluge would no doubt be a very rude and somewhat degenerate branch of Noachidæ, probably driven before more powerful tribes in the course of the dispersion. The higher races of both periods are probably to be looked for in Western Asia; but even there we must expect to find cave men like those whose remains were found by Tristram in the caves near Tyre, and like the Horim of Moses; and we must also expect to find the antediluvian age in the main an age of stone everywhere, and its arts, except in certain great centres of population, perhaps not more advanced than those of the Polynesians, or those of the agricultural American tribes before the discovery of America by Columbus.
As a geologist, and as one who has been in the main of the school of Lyell, and after having observed with much care the deposits of the more modern periods on both sides of the Atlantic, I have from the first dissented from those of my scientific brethren who have unhesitatingly given their adhesion to the long periods claimed for human history, and have maintained that their hasty conclusions on this subject must bring geological reasoning into disrepute, and react injuriously on our noble science. We require to make great demands on time for the prehuman periods of the earth's history, but not more than sacred history is willing to allow for the modern or human age.
CHAPTER XV.
COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS.
"Lo, these are but the outlines of his ways, and how faint the whisper which we hear of him—the thunder of his power who could understand?"—Job xxvi., 14.
In the preceding pages I have, as far as possible, avoided that mode of treating my subject which was wont to be expressed as the "reconciliation" of Scripture and Natural Science, and have followed the direct guidance of the Mosaic record, only turning aside where some apt illustration or coincidence could be perceived. In the present chapter I propose to inquire what the science of the earth teaches on these same subjects, and to point out certain manifest and remarkable correspondences between these teachings and those of revelation. Here I know that I enter on dangerous ground, and that if I have been so fortunate as to carry the intelligent reader with me thus far, I may chance to lose him now. The Hebrew Scriptures are common property; no one can fairly deny me the right to study them, even though I do so in no clerical or theological capacity; and even if I should appear extreme in some of my views, or venture to be almost as enthusiastic as the commentators of Homer, Shakespeare, or Dante, I can not be very severely blamed. But the direct comparison of these ancient records with results of modern science is obnoxious to many minds on different grounds; and all the more so that so few men are at once students both of nature and revelation. There are, as yet, but few even of educated men whose range of study has included any thing that is practical or useful either in Hebrew literature or geological science. That slipshod Christianity which contents itself with supposing that conclusions which are false in nature may be true in theology is mere superstition or professional priestcraft, and has nothing in common with the Bible; but there are still multitudes of good men, trained in the verbal and abstract learning which at one time constituted nearly the whole of education, who regard geology as a mass of crude hypotheses destitute of coherence, a perpetual battle-ground of conflicting opinions, all destined in time to be swept away. It must be admitted, too, that from the nature of geological evidence, and from the liability to error in details, the solidity of its conclusions is not likely soon to be appreciated as fully as is desirable by the common mind; while it is unfortunately true that the outskirts of science are infested with hosts of half-informed and superficial writers, who state these conclusions incorrectly, or apply them in an unreasonable manner to matters on which they have no bearing. On the other hand, the geologist, fully aware of the substantial nature of the foundations of the science of the earth, regards it as little less than absurd to find parallels to its principles in an ancient theological work. Still there are possible meeting-points of things so dissimilar as Bible lore and geological exploration. If man is a being connected on the one hand with material nature, and on the other with the spiritual essence of the Creator; if that Creator has given to man powers of exploring and comprehending his plans in the universe, and at the same time has condescended to reveal to him directly his will on certain points, there is nothing unphilosophical or improbable in the supposition that the same truths may be struck out on the one hand by the action of the human mind on nature, and on the other by the action of the Divine mind on that of man. The highest and most nobly constituted minds have ever been striving to scale heaven above and dive into the earth below, that they may extort from them the secret of their origin, and may find what are the privileges and destinies of man himself. They have learned much; and if through other gifted minds, and through his heaven-descended Word and Spirit, God has condescended to reveal himself, there must surely be much in common in that which God's works teach to earnest inquirers and that which he directly makes known. But few of our greatest thinkers, whether on nature or theology, have reached the firm ground of this higher probability; or if they have reached it, have dreaded the scorn of the half-learned too much to utter their convictions. Still this is a position which the enlightened Christian and student of nature must be prepared to occupy, humbly and with admission of much ignorance and incapacity, but with bold assertion of the truth that there are meeting-points of nature and revelation which afford legitimate subjects of study.
In entering on these subjects, we may receive certain great truths in reference to the history of the earth as established by geological evidence. In the present rapidly progressive state of the science, however, it is by no means easy to separate its assured and settled results from those that have been founded on too hasty generalization, or are yet immature; and at the same time to avoid overlooking new and important truths, sufficiently established, yet not known in all their dimensions. In the following summary I shall endeavor to present to the reader only well-ascertained general truths, without indulging in those deviations from accuracy for effect too often met with in popular books. On the other hand, we have already found that the Scriptures enunciate distinct doctrines on many points relating to the earth's early history, to which it will here be necessary merely to refer in general terms. Let us in the first place shortly consider the conclusions of geology as to the origin and progress of creation.