p. 69 | THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN by R. F. Cottrell

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 12, 1880

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

By R. F. Cottrell

By chance, or by providence, I lately went into a church. I omit to give the denomination, because it is a rule with me to treat all with equal courtesy, and to say nothing prejudicial to any particular one. The minister gave notice that on the next Sunday evening he would give a lecture on the antiquity of man, in which he would prove that Adam was not the first man, but that men had existed on the earth two hundred and eighty thousand years at least. What a strange annunciation from the pulpit by a professed minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But the Spirit expressly testified that in the last days it would be so. "They shall turn away their ears from the truth, and be turned unto fables."

I heard the lecture. It was attempted to prove, from profane historians, that certain kingdoms of the earth had existed forty thousand years, more or less; and secondly, by deductions from geological investigations, that men had existed on earth for hundreds of thousands of years. From the announcement of the subject, when the appointment was given, I had anticipated the drift of the argument; and at the close of the lecture, having before asked the privilege, I was kindly permitted to make the following remarks:—

The apostle Paul says, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." No greater miracle can be thought of than the bringing into existence of the whole material universe; hence there can be no greater act of faith than that which believes the statement that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Therefore, the apostle, in Heb. 11, where he specifies many of the great acts and achievements of faith, places this at the head of the list.

"The worlds were framed by the word of God." Says the sweet singer of Israel, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth." Again, "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." Accordingly it is said, "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light."

A person whose faith is bold enough to accredit these statements of the Scriptures sees no necessity for the creative work to occupy a longer period of time than that given in the first chapter of Genesis. The days of the record were such days as an evening and a morning—a night and a day—constitute, that is, days of twenty-four hours. Otherwise the record is utterly unreliable, and calculated to mislead. They were such days as the sun, to which it was given to rule the day, marks off for the inhabitants of the earth. To him who could speak the word, and countless worlds would spring into existence out of nothing the time is amply sufficient; but if nature had to create itself, eternity itself would be too short a period in which to accomplish it.

It is by faith, and not by exploration and observation, that we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." The believer walks by faith, not by sight. In those things which are beyond his own observation he takes the word of God, simply believing what God has said.

We speak of geological formations; but the earth did not make itself. We speak of certain portions of the earth as made lands, alluvial soils, the soil having been removed by the flowing of water and deposited in a new locality. This takes time; but the creation of the material itself is quite another thing. The earth did not create itself; and it cannot tell us how old it is. We cannot tell how long a time it has taken to accomplish certain changes in the earth. Hence the confident assertions of many geologists is merely guess-work. And when men's guesses conflict with the revelation which God has given us, we hope to be excused though we choose to believe the latter.

After these remarks I read in conclusion the following article by Pres. Tuttle, entitled, "That Old Skull," which I think is a capital hit on that popular farce and prime minister of skepticism, geological guess-work.

A few weeks ago, a society of scientific men met in the city of Chicago, to discuss a great variety of questions pertaining especially to the natural sciences. Pure mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, botany, geology, and some other sciences furnished themes for some truly learned papers and discussions.

It was a noticeable fact that in some of the discussions—such as astronomy and chemistry—the lecturers were very positive, as if aware their footing was sure; while in some others they were subdued and modest in tone, as though not so sure that all they said was true. The spirit and deportment of the association were worthy of men exploring God's secret things in nature.

One lecture was noteworthy. It was read by Prof. Whitney, in the elegant Baptist church on Wabash Avenue. The lecturer had his blackboard and crayon, to illustrate the geological character of the place in which was found the fragment of a skull which has become famous all over the scientific world. Aside from the skull itself, the lecture was charming in the definiteness with which it described places and phenomena of a truly extraordinary character. No one could surmise that the lecturer had any theory or pet notion to be cared for, so carefully and candidly did he state all he had learned about the locality, the strata, the mining-shaft, who owned it, who found the skull, and when, what was done with it and said about it, how it came into his hands—and, indeed, as candid and dispassionate a statement of all he knew about the relic as he could have made concerning a proposition in geometry.

The general fact thus stated and evidently believed by the professor was that this skull of a human being was found in a much lower and earlier geological formation than is usually assigned to man. He did not make the inference, but others did, that, inasmuch as human bones have at last been found in this early geological formation, they must have been there long prior to the date usually assigned as the origin of the race. The usual account, in harmony with the records of Moses, asserts that man was created about six thousand years ago; and the weight of scientific testimony thus far has been in favor of this account. Now, if human remains are found in the tertiary—when the usual account can be justified by finding them only in the post-tertiary—then we shall be compelled to give up that common theory, and with it the first and second chapters of the book of Genesis. It is a grave matter.

Some of the learned gentlemen at Chicago quite put the blush on the common theory of six thousand years as defining the time of man's origin; and talked of thirty, forty, and even seventy thousand years in place of six.

Meanwhile, that old skull sat ghastly and silent on the table at the lecturer's side. Not a word did it speak; and yet I fancied I detected a smile on its unclothed cheek-bones and jaws, to hear what the credulous savans—not the lecturer—were saying about it, as having come down from such a distant age to tell them "Moses did not know what he wrote about."

Yes, that old skull, found down in tertiary in that volcanic region, could not have got there by any little eccentricities of the earthquakes' cracking the strata of the earth, to let it down where it did not belong. There it belonged, and nowhere else; and, therefore, etc.

Speaking of earthquakes. In 1755 occurred that which destroyed Lisbon. When it began to rock the earth, and the solidest buildings began to fall, thousands of the affrighted people rushed to "the marble quay which had just been constructed at great expense. It suddenly sunk with them, like a ship foundering at sea. But, when the water closed over the place, no fragments of the wreck, none of the vessels and boats near by that were drawn into the whirlpool, and not one of the thousands of bodies carried down, reappeared upon the surface. Over the spot the water stood six hundred feet deep, and beneath this, locked in the fissured rocks, in chasms of unknown depths, lie the relics of what was the life and wealth of this portion of the earth in the middle of the eighteenth century. These rocks are the clayey and other comparatively soft strata of the tertiary formation. When, in some future epoch, they are raised again to the surface by a convulsion of the same nature of that which engulfed them, the vestiges they contain may re-appear, converted, in part or wholly, into stone, like fossils entombed when the strata were deposited."

There sat the silent old skull on the lecturer's table, and seemed to me to be trying to say: "By-and-by, a few hundred years hence, some diver or miner will find an old skull down in the tertiary under where Lisbon quay sunk in 1755; and some very wise men, meeting in Chicago, will say, 'Here it is in the tertiary! It is at least seventy thousand years old! Moses wrote what he did because he did not know any better.' And yet, gentleman savans, that skull belonged to a live man on the 1st of November, 1755, who sunk down in an instant into the tertiary from as good post-tertiary as what you now stand on! Do not be deceived, gentleman, for Moses will yet beat you all!"

Who knows but Prof. Whitney's California skull found its resting-place in the same way, and as quickly? In that awful earthquake, last spring, at one of the Sandwich Islands, as our missionary, Pogue, declares, a huge volume of red mud was thrown out of the crater, at the rate of a mile a minute, three miles, and buried a whole village, in an instant, fifty feet deep. Perhaps it was tertiary mud; and by-and-by some miner may find under it some old skull, seventy thousand years old, to bear testimony against Moses! Who knows?

R. F. COTTRELL.