Among the relics of the Franklin expedition brought home from the arctic regions by M'Clintock was a pocket-chronometer in excellent preservation; it had stopped at four o'clock. The owner probably had done with time ere that.
Translated from Revue Génétale, Brussels.
Catholic Doctrine and Natural Science.
M. D'Omalius D'Halloy, in a discourse recently delivered at a general annual meeting of the class of sciences of the Royal Academy of Belgium (December 16th, 1866), treated the question which has frequently and seriously occupied learned minds. Director of an order which has for the past fifty years been signalized by assiduous labors and patient researches, he has once again attested, with that superior authority which none can deny, that "the pretence is shameful, that our religious teachings are in opposition to the progress of natural science." We receive, with respect and attention, this frank declaration as the testimony of a noble mind surrounded with the double glory of science and faith. After the exordium, the speaker thus pursued his demonstration:
If we commence with that which related to the creation, we shall see, on the one side, those men who, not wishing to forsake the ideas which were formed in their early years, have profited by their influence in religious matters to condemn others who do not desire to follow their conclusions in regard to the phenomena of the natural development of the world; meanwhile, on the other side, those men who, inflated by their pride, or prompted by their desire to divest themselves of the restraint that religion imposes upon their passions, have profited all they could in whatever they found obscure or contradictory in the explanations of their adversaries to deny divine inspiration to the sacred books, and consequently to the fundamental principles of our religious belief.
I am, on the contrary, led to believe that we can see nothing in the cosmogony of the book of Genesis but the consecration of several grand principles; namely, the existence of an all-powerful God anterior to matter, and its creation by him. I acknowledge that our minds conceive with difficulty these two principles, but it is more difficult to conceive the existence of the universe and its admirable arrangement without the pre-existence of [an] omnipotent being; one against whom neither science nor reason could raise an objection, or refuse to admit the existence of its two component principles. When we say that God inspired our sacred books, we mean to convey that he has caused certain men to understand the great truths which they contain; we do not wish to assert that he has endowed these men with a complete scientific knowledge. Besides, to comprehend all that study has revealed to modern savans, they should speak or understand the rude language of the age in question; even at this period, though civilization and the art of printing have greatly increased the instruction of the masses, we find astronomers speaking of the rising and the setting of the sun.
We should not take the sacred writings for other than what they really are; namely, as the medium through which we are to understand the great principles which form the basis of our religious belief; and not as treatises upon natural science.
The long periods, the existence of which has been revealed by the study of the terrestrial globe, have also been placed in opposition to the recent period which we find named in the Bible as the epoch of the creation. But it is to be remarked, in the first place, that the term translated day has been erroneously rendered; the seven successive periods indicated in the Bible as the limits of events were not confined to twenty-four hours; and, in the second place, that the calculations derived from the age and genealogy of the patriarchs should not be regarded as imperative; first, because we do not possess the positive value of the expression translated as year, and, further, because it appears that a portion of the terms of the genealogical series has been lost in the lapse of time.
The question of the deluge has also given rise to numerous contradictions; but it seems to me that we can say, on the one side, that these contradictions support themselves upon the susceptible hypotheses of discussion, and, on the other, upon the interpretations of modified nature which they will eventually acknowledge. It is thus that, while there exist in geology schools which deny the great cataclysms, there are others which admit them; and we cannot deny that the theory which attributes the origin of our high mountains to swellings of the crust of the earth relatively recent, destroys the objections raised against the return of the waters upon the materials forming the summits of our most elevated plateaux. Notwithstanding the objections which anthropologists make against the opinion that all mankind are descended from Noah, which agrees with pure hypothesis, can we not say that the contrary opinion is founded upon but one interpretation of Genesis, which cannot be very exact? Indeed, it appears to me that the book, after the account of the creation, which should be applied to the entire universe, does, while it always teaches the power of God and the origin of things, assume: an especial character; namely, it becomes a history of a people whom God had chosen to serve him in a particular manner. Thus the history of the Bible does not relate to any other people than the Hebrews, although these people had relations with the most powerful races on the earth; the races that are willing to admit that the deluge of which they speak submerged all the countries known to the Hebrews, but not all the terrestrial globe. They object in this manner to see that the book of Genesis gives to the deluge the title of universal; but is not this one of those expressions often employed to designate something understood? Do we not often say, All the world was united, all Europe is afraid, all the world listens? Expressions of this kind are very common in the florid style of the orientals; and, without leaving the sacred books, do we not read of the Pentecost, that there were in the assembly who listened to the apostles "Jews of all the nations under heaven;" and in the enumeration of the countries from which they came, "Rome was the most distant?"