LIFE OF JAMES DWIGHT DANA 



its teachings, and afraid of its destructive influences. 

 Silliman carried on a controversy with Moses Stuart, of 

 Andover, respecting the time during which creation 

 made its progress, the former claiming that the " days " 

 of Genesis were long and undefined " ages," the other 

 claiming, on the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures, that 

 " days " meant periods of twenty-four hours. The col- 

 lege preacher, Dr. Fitch, in a sermon before the students, 

 enforced the doctrine that " days" meant solar days. 

 Some of the orthodox claimed that marine fossils, found 

 on lofty summits remote from seas, were evidences of the 

 universal deluge. It was even suggested, by one person, 

 that they were placed there by the Devil to confound the 

 wise. When Dana and his wife were at Saratoga in 1844, 

 they listened to a sermon which contained statements 

 never forgotten and often referred to in future years. 

 The clergyman declared that the world was created a 

 plain, and that all mountains were the result he did not 

 explain in what manner of Adam's fall! A celebrated 

 Presbyterian clergyman of New York, in a lecture before 

 a theological seminary, which one of his hearers now dis- 

 tinctly recalls, made this same declaration that the up- 

 heaval of mountains was a consequence of the fall of 

 man. Another minister asserted that the dislocation of 

 the rocks occurred at the Crucifixion. 



In January, 1857, Professor Dana made a lecturing 

 tour, for the first and only time. Writing from Utica, he 

 says: 



" Last evening, at George's [his brother], I read my 

 other lecture to the families and a few others, by special 

 request, and had the parlors hung with the legs and 

 bones of the various wild beasts of which the lecture 



treats. All passed off satisfactorily, they say. Mr. , 



of the Dutch church, was present. After I had finished, 

 his questions showed him to be quite a heretic. He was 

 quite sure that there was no death in the world until the 



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