Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/100

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EAN STANLEY selected for his sermon the words of the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis: "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The sermon was, in fact, a discourse on the religious aspect of geology.

The words of the text, the dean said, have a sense wider than the mere literal transcript. They express the transition from that gulf which the Greeks called chaos, to the order of the universe which a modern philosopher described under the head of "cosmos." The words in the original, which portray the formless void of the earth, convey most precisely the image of warring elements, while the words used for the moving of the Divine Spirit on the face of the waters express the gentle brooding, as it were, of a bird of peace. The language, however poetic, childlike, parabolical, and unscientific, impresses upon us the principle which applies, in both the moral and in the material world, that the law of the divine operation is the gradual, peaceful, progressive development of discord into harmony, confusion into order, darkness into light.

It chanced that within the short month of February, by a most unusual coincidence of mortality, twice had the gates of the abbey been opened to pay the last honors to two men widely apart in all else, but alike in the share they took in unfolding and exemplifying this divine law, the one the acknowledged chief of the English musicians of our time, the other the acknowledged head of those who, whether here or elsewhere, have devoted their talents to the study of the history of our mother earth. Of all the branches of art and letters, none more reveals the hidden capacities of the human soul, or the fearful and wonderful structure of the human frame, than the slow process through which, from the most barbarous sounds, the spirit which brooded over the harp of David, and inspired the genius of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, has gained its majesty and glory.

This passing allusion to a great musician, this indication of the latent capacities for spiritual emotion brought out by abstract and inanimate things, elements seemingly without form and void, was no unfitting prelude to the consideration of the study of Nature, of which he who has just gone was so bright an example.

It is well known that, when the study of geology first arose, it was involved in interminable schemes of reconciliation with the letter of Scripture. There were and are two modes of reconciliation, which have each totally and deservedly failed. The one attempts to wrest the words of the Bible from their real meaning, and force them to