British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV / July and October, 1871

by Various

Hugh Miller believed that the existence of the equatorial ring, in virtue of which the polar diameter of the earth is shorter than the equatorial, furnished explicit evidence that the planet once was molten.

'If our earth,' he wrote, 'was always the stiff, rigid, unyielding mass that it is now, a huge metallic ball, bearing, like the rusty ball of a cannon, its crust of oxide, how comes it that its form so entirely belies its history? Its form tells that it also, like the cannon-ball, was once in a viscid state, and that its diurnal motion on its axis, when in this state of viscidity, elongated it, through the operation of a well-known law, at the equator, and flattened it at the poles, and made it altogether the oblate spheroid which experience demonstrates it to be.'

In other planets, he urged, the same form is due manifestly to the action of the same law. Venus, Mars, Saturn, oblate spheroids all, have been similarly 'spun out by their rotatory motion in exactly the line in which, as in the earth, that motion is greatest.' In these, however, we can only approximately determine the lengths of the equatorial and polar diameters; 'in one great planet, Jupiter, we can ascertain them scarce less exactly than our own earth;' and Jupiter's equatorial diameter bears exactly that proportion to his polar diameter which 'the integrity of the law,' as exemplified in the relation between the equatorial and polar diameters of the earth demands. 'Here, then,' proceeds Miller, 'is demonstration that the oblate sphericity of the earth is a consequence of the earth's diurnal motion on its axis; nor is it possible that it could have received this form when in a solid state.'

Sir Charles Lyell holds that the excess of the equatorial diameter over the polar may be accounted for on uniformitarian principles. 'The statical figure,' he says, 'of the terrestrial spheroid (of which the longest diameter exceeds the shortest by about twenty-five miles), may have been the result of gradual and even of existing causes, and not of a primitive, universal, and simultaneous fluidity.' Miller denies this possibility; and we confess that the passage in which he assails the position of Sir Charles Lyell appears to us to have great force. Let us hear him:—

'The laws of deposition are few, simple, and well known. The denuding and transporting agencies are floods, tides, waves, icebergs. The sea has its currents, the land its rivers; but while some of these flow from the poles towards the equator, others flow from the equator towards the poles uninfluenced by the rotatory motion; and the vast depth and extent of the equatorial seas show that the ratio of deposition is not greater in them than in the seas of the temperate regions. We have, indeed, in the Arctic and Antarctic currents, and the icebergs which they bear, agents of denudation and transport permanent in the present state of things, which bring detrital matter from the higher towards the lower latitudes; but they stop far short of the tropics; they have no connection with the rotatory motion; and their influence on the form of the earth must be infinitely slight; nay, even were the case otherwise, instead of tending to the formation of an equatorial ring, they would lead to the production of two rings widely distant from the equator. And, judging from what appears, we must hold that the laws of Plutonic intrusion or upheaval, though more obscure than those of deposition, operate quite as independently of the earth's rotatory motion. Were the case otherwise, the mountain systems of the world, and all the great continents, would be clustered at the equator; and the great lands and great oceans of our planet, instead of running, as they do, in so remarkable a manner, from south to north, would range, like the belts of Jupiter, from west to east. There is no escape for us from the inevitable conclusion that our globe received its form, as an oblate spheroid, at a time when it existed throughout as a viscid mass.'

Accordingly, though admitting that 'there is a wide segment of truth embodied in the views of the metamorphists,' Miller declared his belief on the subject of central heat in these terms: 'I must continue to hold, with Humboldt and with Hutton, with Playfair and with Hall, that this solid earth was at one time, from the centre to the circumference, a mass of molten matter.' Hugh Miller saw the ninth edition of Sir Charles Lyell's 'Principles,' and seems to have had its reasonings in view in writing these and other passages; we cannot persuade ourselves that he would have recalled them if he had lived to see the tenth edition.

We wish to state in the clearest terms that, though we have stated some of the evidence which supports the ordinary geological doctrine of central heat, we do not adduce that evidence as absolutely conclusive. All we argue for is, that the question be not looked upon as decided in favour of the uniformitarians. It may be that more minute and comprehensive observation on the age of the crystalline rocks and on the phenomena of metamorphism will demonstrate that the condition of no system of rocks known to us can be traced to the influence of an originally molten state of the planet. It may be that what seems at present the unanimous opinion of astronomers, that 'the whole quantity of Plutonic energy must have been greater in past times than the present,' is a mistake; it may be, in the last place, that the primeval fusion of the planet ceased to act upon those parts of the crust which are accessible to geological observation before those causes came into operation to which their present state is due. But we deny that these positions are established. A writer in the Edinburgh Review declared, so recently as last year, that M. Durocher, in his 'Essay on Comparative Petrology,' has produced 'absolute proof that the earth was an incandescent molten sphere, before atmospheric and aqueous agencies had clothed it with the strata so familiar to our eyes.' Sir Roderick Murchison, who, as a student not only of books and museums, but of the rock-systems of the world in their own vast solitudes, is an authority as high as any living man, holds that 'the crust and outline of the earth are full of evidences that many of the ruptures and overflows of the strata, as well as great denudations, could not even in millions of years have been produced by agencies like those of our own time.' These statements may be correct or the reverse; but they prove, we submit, that the controversy respecting central heat is not at an end.

Those who hold that Hugh Miller's views as to the connection between an originally molten state of the planet and the most ancient rocks known to us, have been finally disposed of by Sir Charles Lyell, must, we think, admit that his interpretation of the six days' work can no longer be maintained. On the other hand, if his conception of the mode in which the crystalline rocks were formed can be shown to be substantially correct, we see not how any one can refuse to grant that those correspondences between the day-periods of Genesis and successive stages in the geological history of the globe, which he pointed out, are highly remarkable. Ten thousand omissions of detail go for nothing, if it can be proved that, although light existed in space, the condition of the atmosphere of this world prevented the sun's rays for myriads of ages from reaching the surface; that the same atmospheric conditions which excluded light from the planet favoured the development of vegetation in the Carboniferous epoch; that the day-period during which the sun and moon are stated in Genesis to have been set to rule the day and the night coincides with that geological era when light was first poured in clear radiance on our world; that the times of the Oolite and the Lias exhibited an enormous development of reptilian and ornithic existence inevitably suggestive of the creeping things, and fowls, and great sea-monsters of the fifth day-period; and that the predominance of mammalian life, of 'the beast of the earth after his kind, the cattle after their kind,' distinguished alike the latest of the great geological periods and the sixth day of the Mosaic record. Assuming the correctness of his fundamental conception of geological progression, Miller might challenge the geologist—confining himself to the number of words used by the Scriptural writers—to name phenomena, belonging to the successive geological epochs, more distinctive, impressive, and spectacular than those mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis. Admitting that life existed in the planet millions of years before the time which he assigns to the third day, Miller might ask whether the darkness, and the slow separation of cloud from wave, were not the unique and universal phenomena of those primeval ages. Granting that there was an important flora, as well as a large development of ichthyic life, in the Devonian epoch, he might ask whether, at any earlier period, the earth possessed forests comparable with those of the Carboniferous epoch; and if it were urged that the Carboniferous flora, consisting as it did in an immense proportion of ferns, cannot be regarded as corresponding to the 'grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself,' of the Mosaic record, he might still reply that the fact of vegetation, apart from botanical distinctions, was then the most conspicuous among the phenomena of the planet. In like manner, while granting that life—animal and vegetable, of many forms—existed in the Oolitic and Liassic ages, he might ask whether the presence in the planet of at least four unique orders of reptilia, to wit; Ichthyosauria, Plesiosauria, Pterosauria, Dinosauria, and perhaps, as Professor Huxley says, 'another or two,' was not the circumstance which a geologist would select as distinctive, and if so, whether the coincidence between these and the creeping things and great sea-monsters of the fifth Mosaic day is not striking. As we formerly remarked, Miller's geological interpretation of the fifth and succeeding day is independent of any theory as to the originally molten state of the planet. On the sixth day-period, both in Genesis and in the geological history of the world, we have a great development of mammalian life, and, finally, the appearance of man. There was a Tertiary flora, but it was not strongly marked off from other floras; there were Tertiary reptiles, but their place was subordinate; in respect of their beasts of the field, and in respect of the presence of man, the Tertiary ages stand alone. The mammoths and mastodons, the rhinoceri and hippopotami, 'the enormous dinotherium and colossal megatherium,' elephants whose bones, preserved in Siberian ice, have furnished 'ivory quarries,' unexhausted by the working of upwards of a hundred years, tigers as large again as the largest Asiatic species, distinguish the Tertiary times from all others known to the geologist. In stating his views, Miller availed himself of the hypothesis, put forward by Kurtz and others, that the phenomena of the geological ages passed before the eyes of Moses by way of panoramic vision. This, we need hardly say, is a pure hypothesis, favourable to pictorial description, but not essentially connected with the logic of the question. Perhaps, the weakest point in Miller's theory—always presuming him to be right as to the originally molten state of the planet—is the apportionment of the present time to the seventh Mosaic day and to the Sabbatic rest of the Creator. Geologists would now, with one voice, refuse to admit that any essential alteration can be traced in the processes by which the face of the earth, and the character of its living creatures, are modified in the present geological epoch, as compared with those of, at least, the two or three preceding epochs. Man, doubtless, effects changes in the aspect of the world on a far greater scale than any other animal. He can reclaim wide regions from the sea, he can arrest the rains far up in the mountains, and lead them to water his terraces, he can temper climates, he can people continents with new animals and plants. It is allowable in Goethe, talking poetically, to style him 'the little god of earth.' But his entire activity, and its results, depend not upon a suspension of the laws and processes of nature—not upon a withdrawal of creative energy—but upon his capacity, as an observing, reasoning being, to ascertain the processes of nature, and use them for his own advantage.

The strongest objection in some minds to this scheme of reconciliation between Genesis and geology will be that it does not harmonise with the general method of Scripture. Miller was abreast of his time as a geologist, but from his complete unacquaintance with the original languages of Scripture and with the history of the canon, he could form a judgment only at secondhand on fundamental questions in theology. That the Bible is inspired—that it is pervaded by a Divine breathing—we have upon apostolic authority. In no part of Scripture, however, is the nature of this Divine breathing explained to us, or information given as to what it implies and what it does not imply. Without question, the inspired writers were neither turned into machines nor wholly disconnected from the circumstances, the prevailing scientific ideas, the modes of expression, of their time. It would seem, therefore, to be in contradiction to the analogy of Scripture that one of the most ancient books of the Bible should contain an elaborately correct presentation, by means of its cardinal facts, of the history of the world for hundreds of millions of years.

Many, therefore, while cherishing the firmest assurance that the Bible is the religious code of man, the inspired Word which authoritatively supplements man's natural light of reason and conscience, will believe that the first chapter of Genesis is a sublime hymn of creation, ascribing all the glory of it to God, wedding the highest knowledge of the primitive age in which it was written to awe-struck reverence for the Almighty Creator, but not containing any scientific account of the processes or periods of creation. To many it will convey the impression that its simplicity, childlike though sublime, and its grouping of natural phenomena, exceedingly noble and comprehensive but naïve and unsophisticated, are not inspired science, but inspired religion. It will appear to them that, looking out and up into the universe, feeling that it infinitely transcended the little might of man, thrilling with the inspired conviction that God had made it all, the poet-sage of that ancient time named in succession each phenomenon, or group of phenomena, which most vividly impressed him, and said or sang that God had called it into being. The beginning he threw into the darkness of the unfathomable past. What first arrested and filled his imagination in the present order of things, was that marvel of beauty and splendour which bathes the world at noontide, and lies in delicate silver upon the crags and the green hills at dawn, that mystery of radiance which is greater than the sun, or moon, or stars, greater than them and before them; and he uttered the words, 'God said, Let there be light, and there was light.' Then he thought of the dividing of the land from the sea, and of the separation between those waters which float and flow and roll in ocean waves and those waters which glide in filmy veils along the blue expanse, and in which God gently folds up the treasure of the rain. The sun and the moon he knew to be those natural ministers which mark off for man day and night, summer and winter, and he told how God had assigned to them this office. The creatures that inhabit the world were grouped for him, as for the young imagination in all ages, into the living things of the earth, cattle, and creeping things, and wild beasts; the living things of the sea, fish and mysterious monsters; the living things of the air, birds; and that vegetable covering which clothes the earth with flower and forest. All these, he said, owed their being to God. Man he discerned to be above nature. Shaped by God like other animals, he alone had the breath, of the Almighty breathed into his nostrils, and the image of his Maker stamped upon his soul. So be it. Such recognitions leave the religious character and authority of the Divine record untouched.