506 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



compelled, like the Ptolemaic astronomy before it, to interpolate some 

 very singular epicycles in its hypothesis. And while all these miracu- 

 lous interpositions were taking place in order to keep the organic king- 

 dom in a going condition, the Creator was not for a moment allowed by 

 the orthodox geologists to interfere in a similar manner in their own 

 particular domain of the inorganic processes. Their attitude was like 

 that of the French authorities who, a century earlier, suppressed the 

 " miraculous cures " of the Jansenist abbe at the church of St. Medard 

 in Paris, and, in a famous lampoon, were represented as posting the 

 following proclamation on the church doors : 



De par le roi, defense a Dieu 

 De faire miracle en ce lieu. 10 



So, in the ruling science of 1830-60, the only officially licensed place 

 (outside of Palestine) in which miracles might be performed by the 

 Creator was the domain of organic phenomena. Here, as a meas- 

 ure of compensation, the number of miracles scientifically sanctioned 

 had been materially increased. 11 



It was a further consequence of these changes in the scientific situa- 

 tion that the men who, in the name of orthodoxy but under the mantle 

 of science, attacked the pioneers of evolutionism, themselves taught 

 doctrines no less completely at variance with the usual — and with any 

 natural — interpretation of Scripture. Accommodations and forced 

 interpretations had, indeed, been devised in abundance, to " harmon- 

 ize " the new science with theology ; but if these could be invented to 

 justify geology, others could as well be, as they since have been, in- 

 vented to justify evolutionary biology. Any consistent scriptural be- 

 liever could make out as good a case of heresy against Cuvier, Owen, 

 Sedgwick, Agassiz, or Hugh Miller, as against the author of the 

 " Vestiges " or Herbert Spencer. These writers, therefore, occupied a 

 position of a strange and rather damaging incongruity, as Chambers 

 did not fail to point out: 



Strange to say, those who every day give views of physical cosmogony alto- 

 gether discrepant in appearance with that of Moses, apply hard names to my 

 book for suggesting an organic cosmogony in the same way liable to inconsid- 

 erate odium. . . . The views which I gave of this history of organization stand 

 exactly upon the same ground upon which the geological doctrines stood, fifty 

 years ago. ... If the men newly emerged from the odium which was thrown 

 upon Newton's theory of the planetary motions, had rushed forward to turn 

 that odium upon the patrons of the dawning science of geology, they would 

 have been prefiguring the conduct of several of my critics, hardly escaped from 



10 " By the king's order, God is hereby forbidden to perform miracles in 

 this place." 



11 The reader will find amusing examples of this inconsistency in President 

 Hitchcock's "The Religion of Geology," 1852, pp. 164-165, 339-340. Cf. also 

 Gray and Adams, "Elements of Geology," 1854, pp. 16 and 89. 



