14 
supposed to be tbe oldest rocks, were found to be, so far as 
they had been examined in Europe, without any fossil traces of 
organic remains. Geology, in fact, unfortunately undertook 
to prove a negative, and affirmed it had succeeded in a some- 
what positive manner. 
But Sir Charles Lyell tells us, in his Bath address, that “late 
discoveries in Canada have at last demonstrated that certain 
theories founded in Europe on mere negative evidence were 
altogether delusive .” 
“ It has been shown, he says, that northward of the river St. Lawrence, 
there is a vast series of stratified and crystalline rocks of gneiss, mica- 
schist, quartzite, and limestone, about 40,000 feet in thickness, which are more 
ancient than the oldest fossiliferous strata of Europe, to which the term primor- 
dial had been rashly assigned and “ in this lowest and most ancient system 
of crystalline strata, a limestone, about 1,000 feet thick, has been observed, 
containing organic remains.” He adds, “We have every reason to suppose that 
the rocks in which these animal remains are included are of as old a date as 
any of the formations named Azoic in Europe, if not older, so that they pre- 
ceded in date rocks once supposed to have been formed before any organized beings 
had been created .” 
Now, notwithstanding these frank admissions by Sir Charles 
Lyell, which were publicly made by him as President of the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science at Bath, 
in 1864 ; and although Bishop Colenso was present and heard 
that address delivered, the Bishop did not hesitate on the 16th 
of May, 1865, to use the language I have already quoted, in 
which he makes it a boast that he had done his best while in 
his diocese — that is, upwards of three years previously — to 
secure that the simple facts revealed by modern science should 
not be kept back from the heathen with whom his lot had been 
cast in the district of Natal! Nay, he quotes a recent utter- 
ance of Dr. Temple (I believe while preaching in Whitehall 
Chapel), as agreeing with himself, that these facts are utterly 
irreconcilable with Scripture statements ! Can it be that these 
“ educators of the world ” do not read, or hear, or understand, 
or know what they are saying ? Why, when Bishop Colenso 
taught what he calls “ the simple facts revealed by modern 
science,” to the Zulus, — or what he more specifically describes 
as “the elementary truths of geological science,” which “flatly , 
contradict the accounts of the creation and the deluge 91 in 
Holy Scripture, — he must have taught the nebulous theory, and 
that there were azoic ages of enormous duration before living 
creatures were created, as Mr. Goodwin did in his Essay ! He 
must have then taught as “ simple facts 99 or “ elementary 
truths of geological science,” what he has himself heard Sir 
Charles describe as theories altogether delusive, and what — if 
