564 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[September 



on the patience of your readers longer than 

 to give a mere outline of the contents of 

 the book,) presents the general considera- 

 tions and the special scientific processes by 

 which the Humboldts, Prichard, Bunsen, 

 Linnaeus, Cuvier, Lepsius and Owen, have 

 been brought to the conclusion, fully agree- 

 ing with the established sentiment of Chris- 

 tendom, that men, under all varieties, are 

 but of one stock — that the human race is in 

 fact one family — from a' common ancestry, 

 in accordance with the Mosaic account of 

 the origin of the race, and the great truth 

 declared by Paul to the Athenians nearly 

 2,000 years ago, " that God hath made of 

 one blood all nations who dwell on all the 

 face of the earth." 



The alternative doctrine, that men were 

 created in nations and not by descent from 

 a single pair, (see Types of Mankind, p. 

 82,) is fully met, the learned doctors of this 

 theory not agreeing among themselves, or to 

 the number of parent stocks, p. 67. " Vi- 

 rez supposing he had ascertained two species, 

 Desmoulins eleven, Borey thirteen, and others 

 a still greater number of original kinds 

 among men." 



u The Chronology of Creation," the 3rd. 

 subject treated by the author, presents the 

 grounds on which it is now conceded that 

 the Bible does not fix the age of the earth, 

 nor the length of time, (humanly speaking) 

 in which the Almighty was engaged in the 

 work of creation. The rigidly literal mode 

 of Scripture interpretation which some would 

 insist upon, as only consistent with a becom- 

 ing reverence for the Bible as the word of 

 God, is the same by which the grand ideas 

 of Columbus and Galileo were in their day 

 opposed. 



"Of the evils occasioned by errors of this 

 kind," he says, " the considerate inquirer is well 

 aware. How they prejudice men of mere sci- 

 ence against the Bible, and men of exclusive 

 piety against science ; and furnish the excuse of 

 perplexity to the uninformed and indifferent on 

 either side. To guard against such harm, there- 

 fore, he deems a duty of supreme importance. 

 Hence, in the great question, now pending be- 

 tween the record of creation as read from the 

 rocks and that given in Genesis, as commonly 

 understood, he regards it as a serious obligation 

 to trace, if possible, the whole truth, that its har- 

 mony may be discerned, and its excellence vin- 

 dicated. What, then, the monumental masses 

 "beneath his feet, freely and fairly examined, and 



what the inspired narrative, thoroughly studied, 

 really do teach, severally and unitedly, respect- 

 ing the antiquity of our world, and the course of 

 its pre-Adamite changes, becomes to him an in- 

 quiry of deep s-ignificancy. 



''The very nature and history of the question 

 at once satisfy him that its edequate solution is 

 not to be reached by any superficial views, hasty 

 conclusions, vague generalizations, or arrogant 

 dicta as to the meaning of Scripture, or of the 

 rocky archives of the world. A faithful and 

 large induction is, he well knows, the only key 

 that can open the secrets of the earth's primeval 

 history. Everything short of this, therefore, he 

 promptly rejects. The Scripture language, he 

 also sees, must be phenomenal, in order to be 

 true always and for all men, since the great ap- 

 pearances appeal to all senses alike, while phil- 

 osophic expression must vary with degree of 

 culture; yet so constructed must that language 

 at the same time be, he cannot but judge, since 

 truth cannot be at war with truth, as essentially 

 to violate no ultimate disclosure of science. To 

 trace under the phenomenal form this deeper 

 construction, so as to find the true meaning, as 

 evinced in its being every way consistent, is a 

 task not to be performed, he is sure, by an im- 

 patient, unfurnished, or fanciful mind. From 

 such guidance he instinctively turns in seeking 

 the truth. He sees the largest, freest, best fur- 

 nished men mainly agreed respecting the rank 

 and conclusions of geological science. The Cu- 

 viers and Brogniarts, the Chalmerses and Pye 

 Smiths, the Bucklands and Lyells,the Sedgwicks 

 and Murchesons, the Mantells, Sillimans, Agas- 

 sizes, and Hugh Millers, most of them equally 

 eminent as Christians and as explorers of natu- 

 ral truth. Individuals of less callibre and at- 

 tainments, he finds, either admitting their own 

 ignorance while depreciating geology, or exhib- 

 iting in extravagant schemes of reconciliation 

 between it and assumed meanings of Scripture, 

 strange deficiency of knowledge and judgment 

 To the dicta of these, however positive* his 

 mind cannot satisfactorily yield. He is obliged 

 to look for something more clearly and consis- 

 tently adequate. And the question recurs with 

 redoubled force, What is true on the subject? 

 What is the consistent and reliable explanation of 

 the petrified and of the inspired documents'? 



" The simple answer is, in our judgment, con- 

 tained in the period-day reading of Genesis i 

 We believe that the six periods (Heb. Yoms) of 

 the creative history, are really intended to be 

 read not as <! days,'''' but as " ages.''' This read_ 



