in THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE 95 



that Moses may have used older materials in his 

 compilation of the earlier parts of the Pentateuch. 



But, practically, the five books included under 

 that name, were believed to have been written by 

 Moses under divine authority. The statement in 

 Genesis that God made the universe and its contents, 

 both living and non-living, in six days of twenty- 

 four hours each, was explicit. Thus interpreted, as 

 their plain meaning warranted, Archbishop Ussher 

 made his famous calculation as to the time elapsing 

 between the creation and the birth of Christ. Dr 

 White, in his important Warfare of Science with 

 Theology, gives an amusing example of the applica- 

 tion of Ussher's method in detail. A seventeenth- 

 century divine, Dr. Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of 

 Cambridge University, computed that * man was 

 created by the Trinity on 23rd October 4004 B.C., 

 at nine o'clock in the morning.' The same theo- 

 logian, who, by the way, was a very eminent Hebrew 

 scholar, following the interpretation of the great 

 Fathers of the Church, ' declared, as the result of 

 profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures, 

 that " heaven and earth, centre and circumference, 

 and clouds full of water, were created all together, 

 in the same instant." ' 



The story of the Deluge was held to furnish 

 sufficing explanation of the organic remains yielded 

 by the rocks ; but failing this, a multitude of 

 fantastic theories were at hand to explain the 

 fossils. They were said to be due to a * forma- 

 tive quality' in the soil ; to its 'plastic virtue' ; to a 

 * lapidific juice ' ; to the ' fermentation of fatty 

 matter' ; to ' the influence of the heavenly bodies,' 



