446 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



tian scholar did honor to religion and to himself by quietly accepting 

 the claims of science and making the best of them, despite all these 

 clamors. That man was Nicholas Wiseman, better known afterward 

 as Cardinal "Wiseman. The conduct of this pillar of the Roman 

 Catholic Church contrasts admirably with that of timid Protestants, 

 who were filling England with shrieks and denunciations.* 



And here let me note that one of the most interesting skirmishes 

 in this war was made in Xew England. Professor Stuart, of Andover, 

 justly honored as a Hebrew scholar, declared that to speak of six 

 periods of time for the creation was flying in the face of Scripture ; 

 that Genesis expressly speaks of six days, each made up of "the even- 

 ing and the morning," and not six periods of time. 



To him replied a professor in Yale College, James Kingsley. In 

 an article admirable for keen wit and kindly temper, he showed that 

 Genesis speaks just as clearly of a solid firmament as of six ordinary 

 days, and that, if Professor Stuart had got over one difiiculty and ac- 

 cepted the Copernican theory, he might as well get over another and 

 accept the revelations of geology. The encounter was quick and 

 decisive, and the victory was with science and our own honored Yale.f 



But j^erhaps the most singular attempt against geology was made 

 by a fine specimen of the English Don — Dean Cockburn, of York — to 

 scold its champions out of the field. Having no adequate knowledge 

 of geology, he opened a battery of abuse. He gave it to the world at 

 large by pulpit and press ; he even inflcited it upon leading statesmen 

 by private letters.^ From his pulpit in York Minster, Mary Somer- 

 ville was denounced coarsely, by name, for those studies in physical 

 geography which have made her honored throughout the world.* 



But these weapons did not succeed ; they Avere like Chinese gongs 

 and dragon-lanterns against rifled cannon, and we are now to look at 

 a very different chapter in this war. This chapter will form the next 

 subject of our study. 



* Wiseman, " Twelve Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Re- 

 ligion," first American edition. New York, 1837. As to the comparative severity of the 

 struggle regarding astronomy, geology, etc., in Catholic and Protestant countries, see 

 Lecky, "England in the Eighteenth Century," chap, ix, p. 525. 



•f See "Silliman's Journal," vol. xxx, p. 114, 



X Professor Goldwin Smith informs me that the papers of Sir Robert Peel, yet unpub- 

 lished, contain very curious specimens of these epistles. 



»See "Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville," Boston, 1874, pp. 139 and 376. 

 Compare with any statement of his religious views that Dean Cockburn was able to make, 

 the following from 5Irs. Somerville : " •S^'othing has afforded me so convincing a proof of 

 the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science 

 which have been, by slow degrees, vouchsafed to man — and are still granted in these lat- 

 ter times by the differential calculus, now superseded by the higher algebra— all of which 

 must have existed in that sublimely omniscient mind from eternity." (See " Personal 

 Recollections," pp. 140, 141.) 



