NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 445 



declared that such researches led to infidelity and atheism, and are 

 " nothing less than to depose the Almighty Creator of the universe 

 from his office." The poet Cowper, one of the mildest of men, was 

 also roused by these dangers, and in his most elaborate poem wrote : 

 " Some drill and boro 



The solid earth, and from the strata there 



Extract a register, by which we learn 



That he who made it, and revealed its date 



To Moses, was mistaken in its age I " 



Howard summoned England to oppose "those scientific systems 

 which are calculated to tear up in the public mind every remaining 

 attachment to Christianity." * 



While this great attack upon geological science by means of the 

 dogma of Adam's fall was kept up, the more general attack by the 

 literal interpretation of the text was continued. The legendary husks 

 and rinds of our sacred books were insisted upon as equally precious 

 and nutritious with the great moral and religious truths which they 

 envelop. Especially precious were the six days — each " the evening 

 and the morning " — and the exact statements as to the time when each 

 part of creation came into being. To save these the struggle became 

 more and more desperate. 



Difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many now 

 living the battle was still raging most fiercely in England, and both 

 kinds of artillery usually brought against a new science were in full 

 play, and filling the civilized world with their roar. 



About forty years ago, the Rev. J. Mellor Brown, the Rev. Henry 

 Cole, and others, were hurling at all geologists alike, and especially at 

 such Christian divines as Dr. Buckland and Dean Conybeare and Pye 

 Smith, and such religious scholars as Professor Sedgwick, the epithets 

 of " infidel," " impugner of the sacred record," and " assailant of the 

 volume of God." f 



The favorite weapon of the orthodox party was the charge that the 

 geologists were " attacking the truth of God." They declared geology 

 "not a subject of lawful inquiry," denouncing it as "a dark art," as 

 "dangerous and disreputable," as "a forbidden province," as "infernal 

 artillery," and as " an awful evasion of the testimony of revelation." % 



This attempt to scare men from the science having failed, various 

 other means were taken. To say nothing about England, it is humili- 

 ating to human nature to remember the annoyances, and even trials, 

 to which the pettiest and narrowest of men subjected such Christian 

 scholars in our own country as Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitch- 

 cock and Louis Agassiz. 



But it is a duty and a pleasure to state here that one great Chris- 



* See Lyell, " Introduction." 



\ For these citations, see Lyell, " Principles of Geology," introduction. 



X See Pye Smith, D. D., "Geology and Scripture," pp. 156, 157, 1G8, 169. 



