Science of the Bible

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 11, 1870

Science of the Bible.

THE LESSON OF THE CARDIFF GIANT.

The best geologists and archæologists of the State examined the Cardiff humbug. Some of them pronounced it a petrifaction of a once living man. Others pronounced it a “very high work of art,” and declared, “upon scientific principles,” that it must have been buried there by some unknown race, anterior to the history of the State, etc. Now, after such scientific humbug as this, in the name of common sense, we would like to ask those sage inspectors of fossils, if they expect us to throw away our Bibles upon such testimony as their science renders.

We happen to know one of these worshipers of “infallible science.” We have looked at some pictures in his book, which are said to represent bits of human skeletons fifty or one hundred thousand years old. Now, from their appearance to our dull eyes, and from the lesson of the Cardiff giant, we can but question whether they were more human than he, and whether their origin may not, after all, have been almost as recent as “His Highness from Fort Dodge.” Natural science is in its incipiency; and we may say of it as the Indian said of the white men, It is “mighty uncertain.” Thanks to the giant for this lesson; and let us keep our Bibles a little longer.

Ever since the modern revival of natural science, the Bible has been the object of periodical assault by the students of nature, and in the providence of God the force of these attacks has always been broken by later discoveries of men in their own ranks. Indeed, natural science in its developments has proved to be a “comedy of errors.” Some new thing is found in the bowels of the earth; some high priest of nature at once arises and announces with proud assurance the “unerring law of nature,” and draws some amazing conclusion, which overturns Moses’ account of the recent creation and unity of the human race. Soon another savant arises, institutes fresh researches, exposes the fallacious foundation of the former theory, and down comes the whole superstructure, like the “baseless fabric of a vision.” Eighty theories of natural science have from time to time been approved by the French Academy, all of which are now condemned by that association of nature’s interpreters.

The Bible cannot tally with all the theories of natural science; and it is really one presumptive proof of its divinity, that it does not perfectly tally with any. Some geologists hold that the universe at first consisted of matter in a gaseous or nebular state. Others, as eminent, reject the theory. Some fill the earth with molten matter in furious combustion; others with gas; and still others have lately assured us that granite, hitherto considered of igneous formation, and the oldest rock is of comparative recent origin, that it was elaborated with water, and that there is no more heat at the center of the earth than at the surface.

Graphite, magnetic iron, and even fossils, have been found in granite, which could not be if it were of igneous formation. Moreover, it is found that the temperature diminishes as you approach the center of the earth, in some places, as in Chicago, which facts are held to evince that, though fire exists near the surface in various parts, the great central portion of the earth is not in a state of combustion. If this be true, every modern system of geology must be modified or abandoned.

Dr. Robert Patterson, of Chicago, has adduced a large number of interesting blunders of geologists which bear upon the alleged antiquity of man. He might now add that of the Cardiff Giant. He says:

“These men seem to be like men who dream, or as if their imaginations have become so accustomed to ages and milleniums that they are incapable of sober calculations of years and days. When they venture on such calculation for the future, they are almost invariably disappointed. For instance, when in 1820 the Russian philosopher, Dr. Hamel, and his party, were swept along the grand plateau of Mt. Blanc by an avalanche of snow, carrying three of his guides into a crevasse, where they perished, he alluded to the possibility of the re-appearance of their remains, by the slow action of the glacier, after an interval of some thousands of years. In August, 1861, they were discovered and recognized upon the surface of the glacier. From the correctness of this calculation of a future date, we may infer the accuracy of geological chronology of the unknown past.

“Peat bogs, in which human remains have been found at the depth of twelve feet, whence a great antiquity was inferred, have been found to grow a foot in five years. In thirty-six hours a green tree is converted into a fossil in California, and into lignite in a week; while before your eyes you behold the hardest porphyry converted into potter’s clay, and the hardest granite so softened by the acidulated atmosphere that you can crush or cut it as easily as unbaked bread. I have seen this metamorphic action affecting all the strata of the Nepa Valley. Vegetation runs riot amid this excess of carbonic acid. This discovery at once accelerates the formation of the carboniferous plants many milleniums, besides showing the folly of Lyell’s calculations of the slow erosion of lavas by streams in Auvergne.

On the coast of England, flints have been found, the stony covering of which has so completely the aspect of ancient rock, as to warrant the conclusion that they were the growth of countless ages; but on removing the flinty matrix you find a coin bearing the head of an Edward, a James, even a George; or a bolt or an anchor bearing the mark of some existing firm. We have had men counting the successive thin layers of delta and sedimentary deposits as indications of so many floods; but we know now that these give no such traces, as a mass of fine clay deposited in quiet water will stratify in a few hours, into dozens of layers.

The best modern geologists now prove that the river beds were not excavated by the existing rivers, and some of them not by rivers at all, but that they are earthquake chasms.

Lyell, and a score of other savants, gravely cite the researches of Herner, who bored down seventy feet into the soil of Egypt for bits of brick and pottery, and calculated that the Nile had been depositing that seventy feet of mud over them during the last thirty thousand years. The matter was solemnly reported to the British Association, and the French Institute, and not one of these learned men had common sense enough to put the question in its proper form, namely, How long will a brickbat require to sink seventy feet into a mud bank? The whole valley of the Nile is only a vast mud bed every year during the inundation; and the brickbats probably reach their bed in one season. At any rate, bricks of the reign of Mohammed Ali have been found deeper than Herner’s.

Such facts as these, which are frequently occurring, should teach us the uncertainty of science, and the folly of allowing its transient theories to shake our faith in the sure word of God. We close by simply stating them, with a word of counsel for each case.

1. The meaning of the Bible may be obscure, and the revelation of science may be clear. Then let science interpret the Bible.

2. Science may be obscure, and the Bible clear. Now let the Bible interpret science.

3. If both Bible and science should appear clear and contradictory, hold on to the Bible, and wait for further developments in science.—Selected.