The Warfare of Science with Theology by A. D. White

[_Maksutov]

Especially worthy of note is it that the great work of
Descartes, erroneous as many of its deductions were, and,
in view of the lack of physical knowledge in his time, must
be, had done much to weaken the old conception. His
theory of a universe brought out of all-pervading matter,
wrought into orderly arrangement by movements in accord-
ance with physical laws— though it was but a provisional
hypothesis — had done much to draw men's minds from the
old theological view of creation ; it was an example of intel-
lectual honesty arriving at errors, but thereby aiding the
advent of truths. Crippled though Descartes was by his
almost morbid fear of the Church, this part of his work was
no small factor in bringing in that attitude of mind which
led to a reception of the thoughts of more unfettered
thinkers.

Thirty years later came, in England, an effort of a differ-
ent sort, but with a similar result. In 1678 Ralph Cud-
worth published his Intellectual System of the Universe. To
this day he remains, in breadth of scholarship, in strength
of thought, in tolerance, and in honesty, one of the greatest
glories of the English Church, and his work was worthy of
him. He purposed to build a fortress which should protect
Christianity against all dangerous theories of the universe,
ancient or modern. The foundations of the structure were
laid with old thoughts thrown often into new and striking
forms; but, as the superstructure arose more and more into
view, while genius marked every part of it, features ap-
peared which gave the rigidly orthodox serious misgivings.
From the old theories of direct personal action on the uni-
I verse by the Almighty he broke utterly. He dwelt on the
action of law, rejected the continuous exercise of miraculous
I intervention, pointed out the fact that in the natural world
there are "errors" and ''bungles," and argued vigorously
in favour of the origin and maintenance of the universe as a
slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an
inward principle. The Balaks of seventeenth-century ortho-
doxy might well condemn this honest Balaam. '

Toward the end of the next century a still more profound
genius, Immanuel Kant, presented the nebular theory, giv-
ing it, in the light of Newton's great utterances, a consist-
ency which it never before had ; and about the same time
Laplace gave it yet greater strength by mathematical reason-
ings of wonderful power and extent, thus implanting firmly
in modern thought the idea that our own solar system and
others— suns, planets, satellites, and their various move-
ments, distances, and magnitudes— necessarily result from
the obedience of nebulous masses to natural laws.

Throughout the theological world there was an outcry
at once against "atheism," and war raged fiercely. Her-
schel and others pointed out many nebulous patches appar-
ently gaseous. They showed by physical and mathemat-
ical demonstrations that the hypothesis accounted for the
great body of facts, and, despite clamour, were gaining
ground, when the improved telescopes resolved some of the
patches of nebulous matter into multitudes of stars. The
opponents of the nebular hypothesis were overjoyed ; they
now sang paeans to astronomy, because, as they said, it had
proved the truth of Scripture. They had jumped to the
conclusion that all nebulae must be alike ; that, if some are
made up of systems of stars, all must be so made up ; that
none can be masses of attenuated gaseous matter, because
some are not.

[_Maksutov]

Science halted for a time. The accepted doctrine be-
came this : that the only reason why all the nebula are not
resolved into distinct stars is that our telescopes are not
sufficiently powerful. But in time came the discovery of
the spectroscope and spectrum analysis, and thence Fraun-
hofer's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited gaseous
body is non-continuous, with interrupting lines ; and Dra-
per's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited solid is con-
tinuous, with no interrupting lines. And now the spectro-
scope was turned upon the nebulas, and many of them were
found to be gaseous. Here, then, was ground for the infer-
ence that in these nebulous masses at different stages of con-
densation — some apparently mere patches of mist, some with
luminous centres — we have the process of development ac-
tually going on, and observations like those of Lord Rosse
and Arrest gave yet further confirmation to this view. Then
came the great contribution of the nineteenth century to
physics, aiding to explain important parts of the vast process
by the mechanical theory of heat.

Again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than
ever, and about 1850 the beautiful experiment of Plateau on
the rotation of a fluid globe came in apparently to illustrate
if not to confirm it. Even so determined a defender of ortho-
doxy as Mr. Gladstone at last acknowledged some form of a
nebular hypothesis as probably true.

Here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theo-
logical views to science under the claim that science con-
curs with theology, which we have seen in so many other
fields : and, as typical, an example may be given, which, how-
ever restricted in its scope, throws light on the process by
which such surrenders are obtained. A few years since one
of the most noted professors of chemistry in the city of New
York, under the auspices of one of its most fashionable
churches, gave a lecture which, as was claimed in the public
prints and in placards posted in the streets, was to show
that science supports the theory of creation given in the
sacred books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assem-
bled, and a brilliant series of elementary experiments with
oxygen, hydrogen, and carbonic acid was concluded by the
Plateau demonstration. It was beautifully made. As the
coloured globule of oil, representing the earth, was revolved
in a transparent medium of equal density, as it became flat-
tened at the poles, as rings then broke forth from it and
revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings broke
into satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about
the central mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and
burst into rapturous applause.

Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the
thanks of the audience to the eminent professor for " this
perfect demonstration of the exact and literal conformity of
the statements given in Holy Scripture with the latest re-
suits of science." The motion was carried unanimously and
with applause, and the audience dispersed, feeling that a
great service had been rendered to orthodoxy. Sancta sim-
plicitas !

What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been
seen elsewhere with more distinguished actors and on a
broader stage. Scores of theologians, chief among whom
of late, in zeal if not in knowledge, has been Mr. Gladstone,
have endeavoured to " reconcile " the two accounts in Gene-
sis with each other and with the truths regarding the origin
of the universe gained by astronomy, geology, geography,
physics, and chemistry. The result has been recently stated
by an eminent theologian, the Hulsean Professor of Divinity
at the University of Cambridge. He declares, '' No attempt
at reconciling Genesis with the exacting requirements of
modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without
entailing a degree of special pleading or forced interpreta-
tion to which, in such a question, we should be wise to have
no recourse."^

[_Maksutov]

The revelations of another group of sciences, though
sometimes bitterly opposed and sometimes " reconciled " by

* For an interesting reference to the outcry against Newton, see McCosh, The
Religions Aspect of Evolution, New York, 1890, pp. 103, 104 ; for germs of an
evolutionary view among the Babylonians, see George Smith, Chaldean Account of
Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 74, 75 ; for a germ of the same thought in Lucretius,
see his De N^atura Renc?n, lib. v, pp. 187-194, 447-454 ; for Bruno's conjecture (in
1 591), see Jevons, Fnncipks of Science, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 299 ; for Kant's
statement, see his Natiirgeschichte dcs Hi?nmels ; for his part in the nebular hy-
pothesis, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. i, p. 266 ; for value of Pla-
teau's beautiful experiment, very cautiously estimated, see Jevons, vol. ii, p. 36 ;
also Elisee Reclus, The Earth, translated by Woodward, vol. i, pp. 14-18, for an
estimate still more careful ; for a general account of discoveries of the nature of
nebulae by spectroscope, see Draper, Conflict between Religion atid Science ; for a
careful discussion regarding the spectra of solid, liquid, and gaseous bodies, see
Schellen, Spectrum Atialysis, pp. 100 et seq. ; for a very thorough discussion of the
bearings of discoveries made by spectrum analysis upon the nebular hypothesis, •
ibid., pp. 532-537 ; for a presentation of the difficulties yet unsolved, see an article
by Plummer in the London Popular Science Review for January, 1875 ; for an ex-
cellent short summary of recent observations and thought on this subject, see T.
Sterry Hunt. Address at the Priestley Ceiitennial, pp. 7, 8 ; for an interesting
modification of this hypothesis, see Proctor's writings ; for a still more recent view,
see Lockyer's two articles on The Suns Place in Nature, in Nature for February
14 and 25, 1895.

theologians, have finally set the whole question at rest.
First, there have come the biblical critics — earnest Christian
scholars, working for the sake of truth — and these have
revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt the exist-
ence of at least two distinct accounts of creation in our book
of Genesis, which can sometimes be forced to agree, but
which are generally absolutely at variance with each other.
These scholars have further shown the two accounts to be
not the cunningly devised fables of priestcraft, but evidently
fragments of earlier legends, myths, and theologies, accepted
in good faith and brought together for the noblest of pur-
poses by those who put in order the first of our sacred
books.

Next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the
devoted students of ancient monuments and records ; of
these are such as Rawlinson, George Smith, Sayce, Oppert,
Jensen, Schrader, Delitzsch, and a phalanx of similarly de-
voted scholars, who have deciphered a multitude of ancient
texts, especially the inscriptions found in the great library
of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, and have discovered therein
an account of the origin of the world identical in its most
important features with the later accounts in our own book
of Genesis.

These men have had the courage to point out these facts
and to connect them with the truth that these Chaldean and
Babylonian myths, legends, and theories were far earlier
than those of the Hebrews, which so strikingly resemble
them, and which we have in our sacred books ; and they
have also shown us how natural it was that the Jewish
accounts of the creation should have been obtained at that
remote period when the earliest Hebrews were among the
Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew poetic accounts of
creation were drawn either from the sacred traditions of
these earlier peoples or from antecedent sources common to
various ancient nations.

In a summary which for profound thought and fearless
integrity does honour not only to himself but to the great
position which he holds, the Rev. Dr. Driver, Professor of
Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church at Oxford, has recently
stated the case fully and fairly\ Having pointed out the
fact that the Hebrews were one people out of many who
thought upon the origin of the universe, he says that they
'' framed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth
and man " ; that '* they either did this for themselves or bor-
rowed those of their neighbours"; that *' of the theories
current in Assyria and Phoenicia fragments have been pre-
served, and these exhibit points of resemblance with the
biblical narrative sufficient to warrant the inference that
both are derived from the same cycle of tradition."

After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation
tablets he says : " In the light of these facts it is difficult to
resist the conclusion that the biblical narrative is drawn
from the same source as these other records. The biblical
historians, it is plain, derived their materials from the best
human sources available. . . . The materials which with
other nations were combined into the crudest physical theo-
ries or associated with a grotesque polytheism were vivified
and transformed by the inspired genius of the Hebrew his-
torians, and adapted to become the vehicle of profound
religious truth."

Not less honourable to the sister university and to him-
self is the statement recently made by the Rev. Dr. Ryle,
Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. He says that
to suppose that a Christian " must either renounce his con-
fidence in the achievements of scientific research or abandon
his faith in Scripture is a monstrous perversion of Christian
freedom." He declares : " The old position is no longer
tenable ; a new position has to be taken up at once, prayer-
fully chosen, and hopefully held." He then goes on to
compare the Hebrew story of creation with the earlier
stories developed among kindred peoples, and especially
with the pre-existing Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and
shows that they are from the same source. He points out
that any attempt to explain particular features of the story
into harmony with the modern scientific ideas necessitates
'' a non-natural " interpretation ; but he says that, if we adopt
a natural interpretation, '' we shall consider that the Hebrew
description of the visible universe is unscientific as judged
by modern standards, and that it shares the limitations of
the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was com-
mitted to writing." Regarding the account in Genesis of
man's physical origin, he says that it *' is expressed in the
simple terms of prehistoric legend, of unscientific pictorial
description."

In these statements and in a multitude of others made by
eminent Christian investigators in other countries is indi-
cated what the victory is which has now been fully won
over the older theology.

[_Maksutov]

Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other
sources, it has come to be acknowledged by the most emi-
nent scholars at the leading seats of Christian learning that
the accounts of creation with which for nearly two thousand
years all scientific discoveries have had to be *' reconciled "
— the accounts which blocked the way of Copernicus, and
Galileo, and Newton, and Laplace — were simply transcribed
or evolved from a mass of myths and legends largely derived
by the Hebrews from their ancient relations with Chaldea,
rewrought in a monotheistic sense, imperfectly welded to-
gether, and then thrown into poetic forms in the sacred
books which we have inherited.

On one hand, then, we have the various groups of men
devoted to the physical sciences all converging toward the
proofs that the universe, as we at present know it, is the
result of an evolutionary process — that is, of the gradual
working of physical laws upon an early condition of matter ;
on the other hand, we have other great groups of men
devoted to historical, philological, and archaeological science
whose researches all converge toward the conclusion that
our sacred accounts of creation were the result of an evolu-
tion from an early chaos of rude opinion.

The great body of theologians who have so long resisted
the conclusions of the men of science have claimed to be
fighting especially for *' the truth of Scripture," and their
final answer to the simple conclusions of science regarding
the evolution of the material universe has been the cry,
" The Bible is true." And they are right — though in a sense
nobler than they have dreamed. Science, while conquering
them, has found in our Scriptures a far nobler truth than
that literal historical exactness for which theologians have
so long and so vainly contended. More and more as we
consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are
brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the
great sacred books of the world is found in their revelation
of the steady striving of our race after higher conceptions,
beliefs, and aspirations, both in morals and religion. Un-
folding and exhibiting this long-continued effort, each of the
great sacred books of the world is precious, and all, in the
highest sense, are true.) Not one of them, indeed, conforms
to the measure of what mankind has now reached in his-
torical and scientific truth ; to make a claim to such con-
formity is folly, for it simply exposes those who make it
and the books for which it is made to loss of their just in-
fluence.

[_Maksutov]

That to which the great sacred books of the world con-
form, and our own most of all, is the evolution of the high-
est conceptions, beliefs, and aspirations of our race from its
childhood through the great turning-points in its history.
Herein lies the truth of all bibles, and especially of our own.
Of vast value they indeed often are as a record of historical
outward fact ; recent researches in the East are constantly
increasing this value ; but it is not for this that we prize
them most : they are eminently precious, not as a record of
outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart, mind,
and soul of man. They are true because they have been
developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolu-
tion of truth in human history, and because in poem, chroni-
cle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this
development of what is best in the onward march of human-
ity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say
that a flower or a tree or a planet is not(true); to scoff at
them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding to-
gether into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis,
or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the
great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration,
whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Persia, the
compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a
possession ever becoming more and more precious ; and
modern science, in substituting a new heaven and a new
earth for the old — the reign of law for the reign of ca-
price, and the idea of evolution for that of creation— has
added and is steadily adding a new revelation divinely in-
spired.

In the light of these two evolutions, then — one of the
visible universe, the other of a sacred creation-legend — sci-
ence and theology, if the master minds in both are wise,
may at last be reconciled. A great step in this reconciliation
was recently seen at the main centre of theological thought
among English-speaking people, when, in the collection of
essays entitled Lux Mundi, emanating from the college estab-
lished in these latter days as a fortress of orthodoxy at Ox-
ford, the legendary character of the creation accounts in our
sacred books was acknowledged, and when the Archbishop
of Canterbury asked, '' May not the Holy Spirit at times
have made use of myth and legend ? " *

[_Maksutov]

In one of the windows of the cathedral at Ulm a medie-
val glass-stainer has represented the Almighty as busily en-
gaged in creating the animals, and there has just left the
divine hands an elephant fully accoutred, with armour, har-
ness, and housings, ready for war. Similar representations
appear in illuminated manuscripts and even in early printed
books, and, as the culmination of the whole, the Almighty
is shown as fashioning the first man from a hillock of clay
and extracting from his side, with evident effort, the first
woman.

This view of the general process of creation had come
from far, appearing under varying forms in various ancient
cosmogonies. In the Egyptian temples at Philse and Den-

* For the first citations above made, see The Cosmogony of Genesis, by the
Rev. S. R. Driver, D. D., Canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of He-
brew at Oxford, in The Expositor for January, 1886 ; for the second, series of cita-
tions, see The Early Narratives of Genesis, by Herbert Edward Ryle, Hulsean
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, London, 1892. For evidence that even the
stiffest of Scotch Presbyterians have now come to discard the old literal biblical
narrative of creation and to regard the declaration of the Westminster Confession
thereon as a " disproved theory of creation," see Principal John Tulloch, in Con-
temporary Review, March, 1877, on Religious Thought in Scotland — especially
page 550.

derah may still be seen representations of the Nile gods
modelling lumps of clay into men, and a similar work is
ascribed in the Assyrian tablets to the gods of Baby-
lonia. Passing into our own sacred books, these ideas be-
came the starting point of a vast new development of the-
ology.

The fathers of the Church generally received each of the
two conflicting creation legends in Genesis literally, and
then, having done their best to reconcile them with each
other and to mould them together, made them the final test
of thought upon the universe and all things therein. At the
beginning of the fourth century Lactantius struck the key-
note of this mode of subordinating all other things in the
study of creation to the literal text of Scripture, and he en-
forces his view of the creation of man by a bit of philology,
saying the final being created *' is called man because he is
made from the ground.'' *

[_Maksutov]

In the second half of the same century this view as to
the literal acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by
St. Ambrose, who, in his work on the creation, declared that
" Moses opened his mouth and poured forth what God had
said to him." But a greater than either of them fastened
this idea into the Christian theologies. St. Augustine, pre-
paring his Commentary on the Book of Genesis, laid down in
one famous sentence the law which has lasted in the Church
until our own time : " Nothing is to be accepted save on the
authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than
all the powers of the human mind." The vigour of the sen-
tence in its original Latin carried it ringing down the cen-
turies : ''Major est Scriptiirce anctoritas quani oninis kumani
ingenii capacitasT

Through the mediaeval period, in spite of a revolt led
by no other than St. Augustine himself, and followed bv a



* For representations of Egyptian gods creating men out of lumps of clay, see
Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of History, p. 156; for the Chaldean legends of
the creation of men and animals, see ibid., p. 543 ; also George Smith, Chaldean
Account of Genesis, Sayce's edition, pp. 36, 72, and 93 ; also for similar legends in
other ancient nations, Lenormant, Origines de PHistoire, pp. i-jetseq.; for mediae-
val representations of the creation of man and woman, see Didron, Ico7iographie,
pp. 35, 178, 224, 537.

series of influential churchmen, contending, as we shall here-
after see, for a modification of the accepted view of creation,
this phrase held the minds of men firmly. The great Do-
minican encyclopaedist, Vincent of Beauvais, in his Mirror
of Nature, while mixing ideas brought from Aristotle with a
theory drawn from the Bible, stood firmly by the first of the
accounts given in Genesis, and assigned the special virtue of
the number six as a reason why all things were created in
six days ; and in the later Middle Ages that eminent author-
ity, Cardinal d'Ailly, accepted everything regarding crea-
tion in the sacred books literally. Only a faint dissent is
seen in Gregory Reisch, another authority of this later pe-
riod, who, while giving, in his book on the beginning of
things, a full length woodcut showing the Almighty in the
act of extracting Eve from Adam's side, with all the rest of
new-formed Nature in the background, leans in his writings,
like St. Augustine, toward a belief in the pre-existence of
matter.

At the Reformation the vast authority of Luther was
thrown in favour of the literal acceptance of Scripture as
the main source of natural science. The allegorical and mys-
tical interpretations of earlier theologians he utterly rejected.
*' Why," he asks, " should Moses use allegory when he is
not speaking of allegorical creatures or of an allegorical
world, but of real creatures and of a visible world, which
can be seen, felt, and grasped ? Moses calls things by their
right names, as we ought to do. ... I hold that the animals
took their being at once upon the word of God, as did also
the fishes in the sea."

[_Maksutov]

Not less explicit in his adherence to the literal account
of creation given in Genesis was Calvin. He warns those
who, by taking another view than his own, " basely insult
the Creator, to expect a judge who will annihilate them."
He insists that all species of animals were created in six
days, each made up of an evening and a morning, and that
no new species has ever appeared since. He dwells on the
production of birds from the water as resting upon certain
warrant of Scripture, but adds, " If the question is to be
argued on physical grounds, we know that water is more
akin to air than the earth is." As to difficulties in the scrip-
tural account of creation, he tells us that God '' wished by
these to give proofs of his power which should fill us with
astonishment."

The controlling- minds in the Roman Church steadfastly
held this view. In the seventeenth century Bossuet threw
his vast authority in its favour, and in his Discourse on Uni-
versal History, which has remained the foundation not only
of theological but of general historical teaching in France
down to the present republic, we find him calling atten-
tion to what he regards as the culminating act of creation,
and asserting that, literally, for the creation of man earth
was used, and " the finger of God applied to corruptible
matter."

The Protestant world held this idea no less persistently.
In the seventeenth century Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chan-
cellor of the University of Cambridge, the great rabbinical
scholar of his time, attempted to reconcile the two main leg-
ends in Genesis by saying that of the '' clean sort of beasts
there were seven of every kind created, three couples for
breeding and the odd one for Adam's sacrifice on his fall,
which God foresaw " ; and that of unclean beasts only one
couple was created.

[_Maksutov]

So literal was this whole conception of the work of crea-
tion that in these days it can scarcely be imagined. The
Almighty was represented in theological literature, in the
pictured Bibles, and in works of art generally, as a sort of
enlarged and venerable Nuremberg toymaker. At times
the accounts in Genesis were illustrated with even more
literal exactness ; thus, in connection with a w^ell-known pas-
sage in the sacred text, the Creator was shown as a tailor,
seated, needle in hand, diligently sewing together skins of
beasts into coats for Adam and Eve. Such representations
presented no difficulties to the docile minds of the Middle
Ages and the Reformation period ; and in the same spirit,
when the discovery of fossils began to provoke thought,
these were declared to be ''models of his works approved
or rejected by the great Artificer," ''outlines of future cre-
ations," " sports of Nature," or " objects placed in the strata
to bring to naught human curiosity " ; and this kind of ex-
planation lingered on until in our own time an eminent natu-
ralist, in his anxiety to save the literal account in Genesis,
has urged that Jehovah tilted and twisted the strata, scat-
tered the fossils through them, scratched the glacial furrows
upon them, spread over them the marks of erosion by water,
and set Niagara pouring— all in an instant— thus mystifying
the world ''for some inscrutable purpose, but for his own
glory." ^

The next important development of theological reason-
ing had regard to the divisions of the animal kingdom.

Naturally, one of the first divisions which struck the in-
quiring mind was that between useful and noxious creatures,
and the question therefore occurred. How could a good
God create tigers and serpents, thorns and thistles? The
answer was found in theological considerations upon sin.
To man's first disobedience all woes were due. Great men
for eighteen hundred years developed the theory that before
Adam's disobedience there was no death, and therefore nei-
ther ferocity nor venom.

Some typical utterances in the evolution of this doctrine
are worthy of a passing glance. St. Augustine expressly
confirmed and emphasized the'view that the vegetable as
well as the animal kingdom was cursed on account of man's
sin. Two hundred years later this utterance had been
echoed on from father to father of the Church until it was
caught by Bede ; he declared that before man's fall animals
were harmless, but were made poisonous or hurtful by
Adam's sin, and he said, '' Thus fierce and poisonous animals
were created for terrifying man (because God foresaw that

* For the citation from Lactantius, see Divin. Instit., lib. ii, cap. xi, in Migne,
tome vi, pp. 311, 312 ; for St. Augustine's great phrase, see the De Genes, ad lift.,
ii, 5 ; for St. Ambrose, see lib. i, cap. ii ; for Vincent of Beauvais, see the Specu-
lum Naturale, lib. i, cap. ii, and lib. ii, cap. xv and xxx ; also Bourgeat, Ehidex sur
Vincent de Beauvais, Paris, 1856, especially chaps, vii, xii, and xvi ; for Cardinal
d'Ailly, see the Iiriago Mundi, and for Reisch, see the various editions of the Mar-
garita Philosophica ; for Luther's statements, see Luther's Schriften, ed. Walch,
Halle, 1740, Commentary on Genesis, vol. i ; for Calvin's view of the creation of the
animals, including the immutability of species, see the Comm. in Gen., tome i of
his Opera omnia, Amst., 1671, cap. i, v, xx, p. 5, also cap. ii, v, ii, p. 8, and else-
where ; for Bossuet, see his Discours sur V Histoire universale (in his (Euvres, tome
v, Paris, 1846) ; for Lightfoot, see his works, edited by Pitman, London, 1822 ; for
Bede, see the Hexa;meron, lib. i, in Migne, tome xci, p. 21 ; for Mr. Gosse's mod-
ern defence of the literal view, see his Omphalos^ London, iSs7, passim.

he would sin), in order that he might be made aware of the
final punishment of hell."

In the twelfth century this view was incorporated by
Peter Lombard into his great theological work, the Sentences,
which became a text-book of theology through the middle
ages. He affirmed that " no created things would have been
hurtful to man had he not sinned ; they became hurtful for
the sake of terrifying and punishing vice or of proving and
perfecting virtue ; they were created harmless, and on ac-
count of sin became hurtful."

[_Maksutov]

This theological theory regarding animals was brought
out in the eighteenth century with great force by John Wes-
ley. He declared that before Adam's sin " none of these
attempted to devour or in any wise hurt one another " ; " the
spider was as harmless as the fiy, and did not lie in wait
for blood." Not only Wesley, but the eminent Dr. Adam
Clarke and Dr. Richard Watson, whose ideas had the very
greatest weight among the English Dissenters, and even
among leading thinkers in the Established Church, held
firmly to this theory ; so that not until, in our own time,
geology revealed the remains of vast multitudes of carnivor-
ous creatures, many of them with half-digested remains of
other animals in their stomachs, all extinct long ages before
the appearance of man upon earth, was a victory won by
science over theology in this field.

A curious development of this doctrine was seen in the
belief drawn by sundry old commentators from the con-
demnation of the serpent in Genesis — a belief, indeed, per-
fectly natural, since it was evidently that of the original
writers of the account preserved in the first of our sacred
books. This belief was that, until the tempting serpent was
cursed by the Almighty, all serpents stood erect, walked,
and talked.

This belief was handed down the ages as part of '' the
sacred deposit oi the faith " until Watson, the most prolific
writer of the evangelical reform in the eighteenth century
and the standard theologian of the evangelical party, de-
clared : " We have no reason at all to believe that the animal
had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until its trans-
formation ; that he was then degraded to a reptile to go
upon his belly imports, on the contrary, an entire loss and
alteration of the original form." Here, again, was a ripe
result of the theologic method diligently pursued by the
strongest thinkers in the Church during nearly two thou-
sand years ; but this " sacred deposit " also faded away
when the geologists found abundant remains of fossil ser-
pents dating from periods long before the appearance of man.