558 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Simpson wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to defend the blessing 

 which he brought into use ; but the battle seemed about to be lost, 

 when he seized a new weapon. " My opponents forget," said he, 

 " the twenty-first verse of the second chapter of Genesis. That is 

 the record of the first surgical operation ever performed, and that text 

 l^roves that the Maker of the universe, before he took the rib from 

 Adam's side for the creation of Eve, caused a deep sleep to fall on 

 Adam." 



This was a stunning blow ; but it did not entirely kill the oppo- 

 sition. They had strength left to maintain that "the deep sleep of 

 Adam took place before the introduction of pain into the world in 

 the state of innocence." ^ But now a new champion intervened 

 Thomas Chalmers. With a few pungent arguments he scattered the 

 enemy forever, and the greatest battle of science against sufiering 

 was won." 



But was not the victory won also for religion ? Go to yonder 

 monument, in Boston, to one of the discoverers of anaesthesia. Read 

 this inscription from our sacred volume : " This also cometh from the 

 Lord of hosts which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working." 



I now ask you to look at another part of the great warfare, and I 

 select it because it shows more clearly than any other how Protestant 

 nations, and in our own time, have suffered themselves to be led into 

 the same errors that have wrought injury to religion and science 

 in other times. We will look very briefly at the battle-fields of 

 Geology. 



From the first lispings of this science there was war. The prevail- 

 ing doctrine of the Church was, that " in the beginning God made the 

 heavens and the earth," that " all things were made at the beginning 

 of the world," and that to say that stones and fossils have been made 

 since " the beginning," is contrary to Scripture. The theological sub- 

 stitutes for scientific explanations ripened into such as these that 

 the fossils are "sports of Nature," or " creations of plastic force," or 

 " results of a seminal air acting upon rocks," or " models " made by 

 the Creator before he had fully decided upon the best manner of cre- 

 ating various beings. But, while some latitude was allowed among 

 these theologico-scientific explanations, it was held essential to believe 

 that they were placed in all the strata, on one of the creation-days, by 

 the hand of the Almighty; and that this was done for some myste- 

 rious purpose of his own, probably for the trial of human faith. 



In the sixteenth century Fracastoro and Palissy broached the true 

 idea, but produced little efiect. Near the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century De Clave, Bitaud, and De Villon, revived it ; straightway 

 the Theologic Faculty of Paris protested against the doctrine as 

 unscriptural, destroyed the ofiendiiig treatises, banished the authors 



1 See Duns, "Life of Sir J. Y. Simpson," pp. 256-259. 



= " Ibid.," p. 260 ; also " Worlis of Sir J. Y. Simpson," ubi supra. 



