Denying the Record of the Flood
By George McCready Price
Few are aware that until about the year 1830 many of the best geologists believed that the flood was the real cause of the chief geological changes. Such men as Granville Penn and Dr. George Young boldly defended this idea, and explained all the known facts in accordance with this view. Others, such as De la Beche, the first director general of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and Buckland, the professor of geology at Oxford, took rather neutral ground, and believed the deluge to have been one of the great catastrophes of the past. But with the coming of Sir Charles Lyell, the doctrine of uniformity began to prevail, and of course inevitably developed into the general evolution doctrine; for the essence of this doctrine is in this uniformity. When uniformitarian geology began to prevail, and it was being said that there had been immense ages of time with only gradual and imperceptible changes from one to the other, the Protestant churches soon saw that here was a very direct conflict with the first chapters of Genesis. How was this to be met? At first, as we have seen, many still believed the record of the flood; but when it became almost universally taught that these long ages were a fact, and a fact that could not be commensurated or equated with the record of a universal deluge, the church people hit on the idea that possibly all these geological changes had taken place some time before the creation of our world, perhaps about the point indicated in the second verse of Genesis 1, where it speaks of the earth’s being “without form, and void.” Such men as Chalmers and Cardinal Wiseman long taught this “interval theory,” as it was sometimes called because it assigned the geological changes to the interval between the original creation of the earth (Gen. 1:1) and the creation of the present order of things as indicated in the rest of the chapter. It was also called the “restitution theory,” because it would be by a restitution of the old order of things that the present condition of the world was brought about. A thing that very materially assisted this view, in fact the only real excuse for its ever having been propounded, was that Cuvier and all the great scientists of that time taught that all the fossils were extinct; that is, that the fossils all belonged to an older state of the world so different from our own that not a single species represented in the rocks is now alive in our modern world. Cuvier had taught a long series of catastrophes; and said that the last of these was the Bible deluge, though the one just before the Bible deluge had been much greater; and like most of the ones that went before had made an absolutely clean sweep of the whole earth, a complete tabula rasa of organic creation, so that no species survived from one of these stages of the world to the other. With this idea prevailing, one can easily see how the church could assign the chief geological changes to the supposed chaotic state immediately preceding the creation of our present world. This view had also this splendid fact in4its favor, that it took the days of creation as literal days, such as we now see. But as it began to be evident that the fossils were not so different from the modern forms, as almost every form in our modern world was seen to have its duplicate in the rocks, this idea of Cuvier’s had to be given up, and with it all hope of maintaining the “interval” or “restitution” theory. Strange enough, however, we have a belated book appearing now and then that still teaches this view. But what was the church to do now? So fearful of being thought ignorant or unscientific, the people of that time began to accept these long ages of the geologists, and to try to harmonize these ages with the days of creation. Thus there was invented what is called the “day-period” theory, where the days of the first chapter of Genesis were interpreted as “periods,” or ages, corresponding to the immense periods of time demanded by the geologists. I am not quite sure just who first put this idea forward; but Rev. Pye Smith, Hugh Miller, and Sir William Dawson helped to make it very popular during the middle of the nineteenth century. Gladstone undertook to defend this view in his famous debate with Huxley; but each of these two giants demolished the arguments of the other, Gladstone refuting the philosophy and agnosticism of the scientist, and Huxley pulverizing the science of the theologian. From this point onward the day-period theory gradually fell away before the rising tide of the evolution doctrine, so that very few of the modern churches attempt to show any close parallel between the days of creation and the periods of geology. The Hugh Millers and Danas and Dawsons are all dead; and their place is now taken by those who do not hesitate to call themselves “Christian evolutionists.” With this historical outcome, we can better appreciate the very clear and convincing statement given so many years ago in “Patriarchs and Prophets:”— “The assumption that the events of the past week required thousands upon thousands of years, strikes directly at the foundation of the fourth commandment. It represents the Creator as commanding men to observe the week of literal days in commemoration of vast, indefinite periods. It makes indefinite and obscure that which he has made very plain. It is infidelity in its most insidious and hence most dangerous form; its real character is so disguised that it is held and taught by many who profess to believe the Bible.”
In the light of modern scientific discoveries it is evident that the only safe Bible position is to say that the flood was the cause of the chief geological changes. And this position is absolutely impregnable in view of the wonderful way in which recent geological discoveries are refuting former theories long supposed to stand in the way of such an interpretation. One after another these theories of false science have broken down before more accurately ascertained facts, until now we have an absolute demonstration that there must have been a vast world catastrophe, such as the Bible calls the flood; that the ages of the geologists are wholly without foundation; and that back of this period of disorder recorded in the rocks, there must have been a real literal creation as the Bible records.