Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/680

652 that he had been vastly embarrassed by the discovery that many strata of lava, each covered deeply with earth, overlaid each other on the mountain-side. "Moses," said he, "hangs like a dead weight upon me, for I have not the conscience to make the mountain so young as that prophet makes the world." "The bishop," adds Brydone, "who is strenuously orthodox—for it is an excellent see—has warned him to be on his guard, and not to pretend to be a better historian than Moses."

The worthy Bishop of Catania was not alone in his views. Nearer home it was the generally-received opinion that to doubt the literal accuracy of the chronology supposed to be involved in the Mosaic account was a grave impiety. The poet Cowper, mildest of men, became fiercely satirical under the provocation of geology. Though few people read "The Task" nowadays, the lines will no doubt be remembered:

Fortunately, it is no longer considered impious to try and "extract a register" from the earth. Those who were inclined to be afraid that the Mosaic record would be discredited have long since laid aside their fears. It has been found that, far from being upset by scientific inquiry, the Bible account of the Creation accords in a very remarkable manner with modern discoveries; and long before Max Müller put the feeling into words, it was felt that only "by treating our own sacred books with neither more nor less mercy than the sacred books of other nations, they could retain their position and influence."

When once the plunge was made, it was soon found, as might have, been expected, that the fault was not in the oracle, but in the interpretation; and it is very remarkable in how many and unexpected directions the testimony of Moses has been strengthened by the criticism, not always friendly, which it has received. Of course, when the anciently-accepted date of the Creation was proved to be incorrect, and chronology was, as it were, thrown open to the public, there was nothing to prevent philosophers from allowing the freest scope to their imagination. In proportion as the six thousand years formerly assigned as the age of created matter was too small, the reaction of opinion claimed for it an antiquity which workers in other branches of physics feel it impossible to concede; and at the present moment there is among scientific men a revolt against the extreme views of the geologists. The latter affirmed with truth that creation in six solar days was demonstrably untrue, not because God could not create the world at a stroke, but because the world bears ample evidence that he did not so exercise his power. It was inconsistent