Unborn Billions.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 7, 9 January 1904, Page 4

Unborn Billions.

\'ery appropriately to the season, writes Chi-i.sUiuirr.lv Truth, a controversy is raging in a IHinedin newspaper on the vexi-d question of the ilate of the Creation. As one of the disputants lemarks, with great truth and solemnity, "Creation is a wold of large menirti'iig, and wide sigMlicninee." llow large and how Signdieaivt becomes dimly apparent from the following numerical nightiti'are furnished by a correspondent, who said he was "grieved to see I*'ople having a hit at the Bible":— ' 'The anti-Bi'blieal self-styled scientists say the human race has lived 50,000 to millions of years. if we take Sir Charles Lylle's fancy term 50,000, and allow 2<JO years for the period in which tile number of people on earth do'itblcd, the original two l>ecume fuur, in (>OO years eight, and so on. Continue this to the present (WJOO, and wlvat do we have msUaid of the 1,000,000,000 ? We have 2,533,301,200,150,458,802,<<;>y_ 100,410, i ;>2. Hotild there be starnli'D'S room for this almost infinite Number 7" In the shadow of these maje.dic numerals one realises the state of mind of the man who loved to gaze at Muirnl Cook for the pleasure of "fteli'ng hoiv small he felt." I')\OTV admitting t'Uat the world is O'li'ly 6000 years old, it will, unless Something unforeseen happens, be eventually millions of years old. Calculating on the basis quoted above we figure that about 3000 A.D. they will have to erect fences round the sea coasts to fceep tlve population Ironi falling oil, and in 6,000,000 A.D. the crowd wo*ild be i\s[H"ese"ntid by a line of ligures l-oac'hing from here to London. in view of this vast hoirle that is beaj'ing <lown on us from the dim future, sometWnK energetic ought t<j be tfime at race. I