But let us descend to matters of fact. We will take geology, which seems just now to be regarded as the most formidable weapon against the Christian religion. Well, what has geology done? It has by its researches proved an antiquity of the earth and of man on the earth which is far greater than is admissible by the chronology of the Holy Scriptures. It has thus disproved the chronology of the Bible; therefore it has disproved the divine inspiration of the Bible, and therefore, again, the truth of the Christian dogmas, which have no other authority than that inspiration. But have you, geologists, really proved what you pretend? You have discovered certain facts, fossils, etc., which, if some half a dozen possible suppositions are true, not one of which you have proved or in the nature of the case can prove, render it highly probable that the earth is somewhat more than six thousand years old, and that it is more than five thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven years since the creation of man. As to the antiquity of man, at least, you have not proved what you pretend. Your proofs, to be worth anything, must destroy all possible suppositions except the one you adopt, which they do not do, for we can suppose many other explanations of the undisputed facts besides the one you insist on our accepting. Moreover, the facts on which you rely, if fairly given by Sir Charles Lyell in his Antiquity of Man, by no means warrant his inductions. Suppose there is no mistake as to facts, which is more than we are willing to concede, especially as to the stone axes and knives, which, according to the drawings given of them, are exactly similar to hundreds which we have seen when a boy strewing the surface of the ground, the logic, by which the conclusion is obtained is puerile, and discreditable to any man who has had the slightest intellectual training.
But suppose you have proved the antiquity of the earth and of man on it to be as you pretend, what then? In the first place, you have not proved that the earth and man on it were not created, that God did not in the beginning create the heavens and the earth, and all things therein. You leave, then, intact both the formula and the dogma which presupposes and reasserts it as a truth of revelation as well as of science. But we have disproved the chronology of the Bible. Is it the chronology of the Bible or chronology as arranged by learned men that you have disproved? Say the chronology as it actually is in the Bible, though all learned men know that that chronology is exceedingly difficult if not impossible to make out, and we for ourselves have never been able to settle it at all to our entire satisfaction, is it certain that the Scriptures themselves even pretend that the date assigned to the creation of the world is given by divine revelation and is to be received as an article of faith? There is an important difference between the chronology given in the Hebrew Bible and that given in the Septuagint used by the apostles and Greek fathers, and still used by the united as well as by the non-united Greeks, and we are not aware that there has ever been an authoritative decision as to which or either of the two chronologies must be followed. The commonly received chronology certainly ought not to be departed from without strong and urgent reasons; but, if such reasons are adduced, we do not understand that it cannot be departed from without impairing the authority of either the Scriptures or the church. We know no Christian doctrine or dogma that could be affected by carrying the date of the creation of the world a few or even many centuries further back, if we recognize the fact of creation itself. Our faith does not depend on a question of arithmetic, as seems to have been assumed by the Anglican Bishop Colenso. Numbers are easily changed in transcription, and no commentator has yet been able to reconcile all the numbers as we now have them in our Hebrew Bibles, or even in the Greek translation of the Seventy.
Supposing, then, that geologists and historians of civilization have found facts, not to be denied, which seem to require for the existence of the globe, and man on its face, a longer period than is allowed by the commonly received chronology, we do not see that this warrants any induction against any point of Christian faith or doctrine. We could, we confess, more easily explain some of the facts which we meet in the study of history, the political and social changes which have evidently taken place, if more time were allowed us between Noah and Moses than is admitted by Usher's chronology; it would enable us to account for many things which now embarrass our historical science; yet whether we are allowed more time or not, or whether we can account for the historical facts or not, our faith remains the same; for we have long since learned that, in the subjects with which science proposes to deal, as well as in revelation itself, there are many things which will be inexplicable even to the greatest, wisest, and holiest of men, and that the greatest folly which any man can entertain is that of expecting to explain everything, unless concluding a thing must needs be false because we know not its explanation is a still greater folly. True science as well as true virtue is modest, humble indeed, and always more depressed by what it sees that it cannot do than elated by what it may have done.
Science, it is further said, has exploded the Christian doctrine of the unity and the Adamic origin of the species, and therefore the doctrines of Original Sin, the Incarnation, the Redemption, indeed the whole of Christianity so far as it is a supernatural system, and not a system of bald and meagre rationalism. Some people perhaps believe it. But science is knowledge, either intuitive or discursive; and who dares say that he knows the dogma of the unity of the human species is false, or that all the kindreds and nations of men have not sprung from one and the same original pair? The most that can be said is that the sciences have not as yet proved it, and it must be taken, if at all, from, revelation.
Take the unity of the species. The naturalists have undoubtedly proved the existence of races or varieties of men, like the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Malayan, the American, and the African, more or less distinctly marked, and separated from one another by greater or less distances; but have they proved that these several races or varieties are distinct species, or that they could not all have sprung from the same original pair? Physiologists, we are told, detect some structural differences between the negro and the white man. The black differs from the white in the greater length of the spine, in the shape of the head, leg, and foot and heel, in the facial angles, the size and convolutions of the brain. Be it so; but do these differences prove diversity of species, or, at most, only a distinct variety in the same species? May they not all be owing to accidental causes? The type of the physical structure of the African is undeniably the same with that of the Caucasian, and all that can be said is, that in the negro it is less perfectly realized, constituting a difference in degree, indeed, but not in kind.
But before settling the question whether the several races of men belong to one and the same species or not, and have or have not had the same origin, it is necessary to determine the characteristic or differentia of man. Naturalists treat man as simply an animal standing at the head of the class or order mammalia, and are therefore obliged to seek his differentia or characteristic in his physical structure; but if it be true, as some naturalists tell us, that the same type runs through the physical structure of all animals, unless insects, reptiles, and crustacea form an exception, it is difficult to find in man's physical structure his differentia. The schoolmen generally define man, a rational animal, animal rationale, and make the genus animal, and the differentia reason. The characteristic of the species, that which constitutes it, is reason or the rational mind, and certainly science can prove nothing to the contrary. Some animals may have a degree of intelligence, but none of them have reason, free will, moral perceptions, or are capable of acting from considerations of right and wrong. We assume, then, that the differentia of the species homo, or man, is reason, or the rational soul. If our naturalists had understood this, they might have spared the pains they have taken to assimilate man to the brute, and to prove that he is a monkey developed.
This point settled, the question of unity of the species is settled. There may be differences among individuals and races as to the degree of reason, but all have reason in some degree. Reason may be weaker in the African than in the European, whether owing to the lack of cultivation or to other accidental causes, but it is essentially the same in the one as in the other, and there is no difference except in degree; and even as to degree, it is not rare to find negroes that are, in point of reason, far superior to many white men. Negroes, supposed to stand lowest in the scale, have the same moral perception and the same capacity of distinguishing between right and wrong and of acting from free will, that white men have; and if there is any difference, it is simply a difference of degree, not a difference of kind or species.
But conceding the unity of the species, science has, at least, proved that the several races or varieties in the same species could not have all sprung from one and the same original pair. Where has science done this? It can do it only by way of induction from facts scientifically observed and analyzed. What facts has it observed and analyzed that warrant this conclusion against the Adamic origin of all men? There are, as we have just said, no anatomical, physiological, intellectual, or moral facts that warrant such conclusion, and no other facts are possible. Wherever men are found, they all have the essential characteristic of men as distinguished from the mere animal; they all have substantially the same physical structure; all have thought, speech, and reason, and, though some may be inferior to others, nothing proves that all may not have sprung from the same Adam and Eve. Do you say ethnology cannot trace all the kindreds and nations of men back to a common origin? That is nothing to the purpose; can it say they cannot have had a common origin? But men are found everywhere, and could they have reached from the plains of Shinar continents separated from Asia by a wide expanse of water, and been distributed over America, New Holland, and the remotest islands of the ocean, when they had no ships or were ignorant of navigation? Do you know that they had, in what are to us antehistorical times, no ships and no knowledge of navigation, as we know they have had them both ever since the first dawn of history? No? Then you allege not your science against the Christian dogma, but your ignorance, which we submit is not sufficient to override faith. You must prove that men could not have been distributed from a common centre as we now find them before you can assert that they could not have had a common origin. Besides, are you able to say what changes of land and water have taken place since men first appeared on the face of the earth? Many changes, geologists assure us, have taken place, and more than they know may have occurred, and have left men where they are now found, and where they may have gone without crossing large bodies of water. So long as any other hypothesis is possible, you cannot assert your own as certain.