THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. 39 



the earth, for whose service alone all the rest of nature is 

 said to have been created. The former of these errors was 

 demolished by Copernicus' System of the Universe in the 

 beginning of the 16th century, the latter by Lamarck's 

 Doctrine of Descent in the beginning of the 19th century. 



Although the geocentric error of the Mosaic history was 

 demonstrated by Copernicus, and thereby its authority as 

 an absolutely perfect divine revelation was destroyed, yet it 

 has maintained, down to the present day, such influence, 

 that it forms in many wide circles the principle obstacle to 

 the adoption of a natural theory of development. Even 

 in our century, many naturalists, especially geologists, 

 have tried to bring the Mosaic theory into harmony 

 with the recent results of natural science, and have, for 

 example, interpreted Moses' seven days of creation as seven 

 great geological periods. However, all these ingenious 

 attempts at interpretation have so utterly failed, that they 

 require no refutation here. The Bible is no scientific book, 

 but consists of records of the history, the laws, and the 

 religion of the Jewish people, the high merit of which, as a 

 history of civilization, is not impaired by the fact that in all 

 scientific questions it has no commanding importance, and is 

 full of gross errors. 



"We may now make a great stride over more than three 

 thousand years, from Moses, who died about the year 1480 

 before Christ, to Linnaeus, who was born in the year 1707 

 after Christ. During this whole period no history of creation 

 was brought forward that gained any lasting importance, or 

 the closer examination of which would here be of any 

 interest. Indeed, during the last fifteen hundred years, 

 since Christianity gained its supremacy, the Mosaic history 



