Genesis and Geology.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4230, 22 July 1882, Page 2

Genesis and Geology.

' (To the Editor of .the Evening Stab.) Sib, —With your kind permission, I should in a future issue refer to some of the main questions raised by geolopy, spontaneous generation, &c. At present, I wish to lay before your readers this thought : Geology is a comparatively young science, and at the time the Book of Genesis was written even the learned, so far as w^b know, weie ignorant of the simplest facts of geology. It seems, then, not a little remarkable that the order of creation as given by Genei-is should correspond so closely with what we find the "testimony of rocks "to be. Even granting that the first of Genesis n< ver was intended to teach geology, but is simply, as the Song of Songs also is in some degree, an example of that allegorical writing by which the ancients loved to express spiritual truths, yet that this allegorising should hare a natural basis so closely substantiated by a modern science surely implies that the writer or writers must have cither been acquainted with the facts of geology, or else those facts were in some extraordinary way made known to them. Here is how the well-known geologist Principal Dawson, F.R.S., represents the matter :— ,

BIBLICAL AEONS. GEOLOGIC PERIODS. The Beginning. Creation of Hatter. Ist Day: Earth mantled Condensation of planetary by the vaporous deep. bodies from a nebulProduction of light. ous mass. Hypothesis of original incandescence. 2nd Day : Earth covered Primitive universal ocean, by the waters. For- and establishment of mation of the atmos- atmospheric equiliphere. briuni. 3rd Day: Emergence of Elevation of the land dry land. Introduc- which furnished the tion of vegetation. . materials of the oldest Kocks. Eozoic period (?) 4th Day: Completion of Metamorphism of eozoie the arrangements of rocks, and disturbthe solar system. ances preceding the Cambrian epoch. Present arrangement of seasons. Dominion of " Existing Causes " begins. sth Day: Invertebrates & Palaeozoic Period—Reign fishes, and afterwards of invertebrates and '. reptiles and great fishes. Mesozoic bii'ds created., Period—Reign of reptiles. 6th Day: Introduction of Tertiary Period—Reign of mammals. Creation mammals. Post-Ter-of man and Edenic tiary—Existing mamgroup of animals. mals and man. 7th Day: Cessation of Period of human history, work of creation. Pall aud redemption of man. - Bth Day: New heaven aud earth to succeed the human epoch. " The Rest" of Heb. IV., 9 v., and 2 Peter. 3, 13. We may make the, Bth day, for which Dawson gives no corresponding Geologic Period, coincide with Denton's " Future of our Planet." The only very noticeable difference in the two accounts is where Dawson puts a query at the Eoroic Period. Genesis inverts the order of Geology, placing earth products before the products of water.—Yours, &c, XY.Z.