> 
18 80. ] The Critics of Evolution. 413 
It is difficult to realize that within our own memory a similar 
battle raged between the advocates of what was called the “sacred 
theory of the earth” and the views of geologists, and that anath- 
ema, styled arguments, were used in the nineteenth century simi- 
lar to those hurled at science in the middle ages. In our own 
day geology has been declared “ not a subject of lawful inquiry,” 
and denounced as a “ dark art, dangerous and disreputable,” as 
“infernal artillery,” and as “an awful evasion of the testimony of 
revelation.’ 
There have been many other battle fields, equally instructive, 
in which theologians have opposed the progress of the age and 
blindly fought against the good of mankind. Fanning mills were 
at one time denounced as contrary to the text, “the wind bloweth 
where it listeth” and as leaguing with Satan, who is “ the prince 
of the powers of the air,” and as sufficient cause for excommuni- 
cation from the Scotch church? The railroad and the telegraph 
have been denounced from a noted pulpit as “ heralds of Anti- 
Christ !!” 
But perhaps the most ridiculous proposal to prove that “ it is 
supreme folly to talk of accommodating Christianity to Darwin- 
ism,” is that announced in the Church Journal, by a reviewer of 
Dr. Hodge’s book against Darwinism, which is as follows: “ If 
we have all, men and monkeys, women and baboons, oysters and 
eagles, all ‘developed’ from an original monad and germ, then 
St. Paul’s grand deliverance, ‘ All flesh is not the same flesh. 
There is one kind of flesh of men, another of beasts, another of 
fishes and another of birds; there are bodies celestial and bod- 
ies terrestrial ’—may be still very grand in our funeral service but 
very untrue to fact.” Oh sad! sad! that any man supposed to- 
be sane could give forth such an utterance as argument! What 
good can possibly result to mankind from the opposition of 
ignorant men who stand upon high places “screaming in wrath 
at the advance of science.” In every case this ecclesiastical war, 
during its continuance, has tended to drive multitudes of thought- 
ful men away from religion, and theologians have to answer for 
this result, ` 
In all this long warfare the victory has invariably been with 
science, and “ the whole civilized world now declares that it was 
1 See « Geology and Scripture,” by Pye Smith, D.D., pp. 156, 157: 168, 169. 
2e Burtons’ History of Scotland,” Vol. vill, p. 511. 
