Page:Chronologies and calendars (IA chronologiescale00macdrich).pdf/37

 33. Another authority scornfully says, 'Modern ingenious theorisers in development, who would have men recognise in the reptiles of their museums the remote ancestors of their race, consistently believe that they find in the savage a type of the primeval state of man.' And half a century ago Hugh Miller wrote, 'The six thousand years of human history forms but a portion of the geologic day that is passing over us. They do not extend into the yesterday of the globe, far less touch the myriads of ages spread out beyond.' And he added, prophetically one may say, for it has come to pass, 'What I believe now all theologians, even the weakest, will be content to believe 50 years hence.' In section 48 I deal with the term 'Age' in detail.

34. But the chronologist, dealing with historic facts, must neglect those cipher-laden totals which represent the evolutionist's anno mundi in the closing decade of the nineteenth century. Contrasting these later views with those at the end of last century, a well-known authority, Mr. A. C. White, says that 'until the beginning of the present century theories of the earth were of the most fantastic and speculative nature. Imaginary and supernatural agencies, extraordinary and alarming catastrophies, were freely called upon to explain phenomena which could not be rationally elucidated without violating the fixed belief in the literal interpretation of Scriptural accounts of the Creation and the Flood. The pages of romance do not contain more whimsical notions than do the writings of the pioneers of geology. Glimmers of truth now and then appeared in these early works, but not until Hutton published his