YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE

MOSAIC COSMOGONY.

A CASE OF CONSCIENCE. '

OSCOTT. 1874.
Yale Divinity Library
attMtaUiKen, Conn.

X)K3G*

ON THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY.

Paul, a Catholic, who knows something of natural
science, but not much theology, is in the habit of
discussing the merits of geological systems, and the
question of the origin of the world, with his friends,
some of whom are non-Catholics. He insists that
it is quite clear the six days of Genesis are six
indeterminate periods, forasmuch as, on the one
hand, it is proved from the Scripture account that
they were in no wise natural days of twenty -four
hours (for the first three were in being before the
sun); and on the other, the geological strata re
cently discovered, in which the bones of reptiles,
fish, and birds are found — supposing their age to
be reckoned according to the rule of accretion result
ant from hitherto recorded observation — require an
extent of time far exceeding that of the common
chronology. As regards mankind, Paul protests that we must
by no means reject the view according to which
many generations were in existence for many ages
before Adam, especially taking into consideration
that the aforesaid strata contain notable traces of
man, to wit, his bones, and implements clearly of

human workmanship; and that these remains, from
the geological strata in which they are found, esta
blish their claim to an antiquity of not less than
fifteen or twenty thousand years. All that is re
quired, he urges, for the integrity of the Mosaic
doctrine, is the understanding that an universal
Preadamitic cataclysm destroyed the predecessors
of Adam. Pr. Peter having heard this and more like it,
and being considerably exercised in his mind,
turns the matter over and over, and queries —
I. Whether these views can in any measure -be
brought into accord with the Catholic Paith.
II. "Whether and in what points they hopelessly
impugn the Faith.
III. What system of Scriptural interpretation
should be laid down for dealing with such diffi
culties.

The interpretation of the six days of Creation
as something other than literal days is supported
by very ancient and very grave authority.
Philo1 says, ' It is a piece of clownish simplicity
to think that the world was made in six days or
in any fixed time.'
Origen2 sets himself against those who, 'inter
preting Scripture literally, say that six days were
taken up in the creation of the world.'
1 Lib. i. Alleg. 2 j^ vi- cont> Celgi

St. Athanasius3 argues that the 'verbum ante
omnia genitum' can be no creature, because 'no
creature was created before another, but all were
made at once by one fiat.'
St. Augustine4 upholds this view with all the
subtlety of his intellect and the wealth of his ima
gination. He regards the Mosaic account as repre
senting an order of nature from the simple to the
complex, not an order of time ; and again, as a leaf
taken from an angelic record, in which time, pro
perly speaking, has no place, but only the gradual
development of angelic knowledge and worship.
One would have thought that so mystical an
interpretation of what was regarded as one of the
historical books of Scripture would have been to,
the last degree distasteful to the Aristotelians of
the thirteenth century ; but some of the foremost
amongst them were carried away by the magnifi
cence of St. Augustine's exposition and the autho
rity of his name: Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas
distinctly gave it their adhesion. Albert5 calls it
' probabilior.' St. Thomas6 says that it is '.rationa-
bilior, magisque ab irrisione infidelium scripturas
defendens;' and again, 'hsec opinio plus mihi pla
cet.' However, in his latest work, the Summa,7
3 Cont. Arian. orat. ii. cap. xxi.
4 In Gen. ad Lit. passim, and elsewhere.
5 Sum. pars ii. tract, xi. qu. 46.
6 In 2 dist. 12, qu. 1.
7 Pars i. qu. 74, art. 2.

there is evidence that his liking for St. Augustine's
opinion had considerably cooled. He has no word
of preference for it ; he is only careful ' ut neutri
sententise prejudicetur.'
Cajetan and Canus put out views substantially
identical with St. Augustine, but they had hardly
any following. Petavius could say of the Augus-
tinian interpretation in his day : ' Communi fere
omnium consensu hodie repudiatur, patronum ha
bere desiit.'8
The schola of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries almost unanimously contended for the
literal interpretation of the Mosaic days. The
Jesuits took this side, as far as I am aware, with
out a single exception, until Frs. Pianciani and
Perrone wrote in the first half of the present cen
tury, after geology had come into the field, and at
tention had been drawn to its claims by Cardinal
Wiseman.9 The great mass of the Dominicans, from
Sylvius to Billuart, took the same side. Of course
there was an Augustinian writer or so like Cardinal
Noris and Berti, who could do no less than hold to
their master's view. To these last we may add the
brilliant but eccentric Dominican Serry, to whom
any stick was good enough to beat a Jesuit; and
indeed some of the writers of the Society, by their
unmeasured condemnation of St. Augustine, had
fairly laid themselves open to attack. Molina, for
8 De Op. S. D. lib. i. cap. v.
9 Science and Eevealed Eeligion, lect. v. 1839.

7
instance,10 suggests that St. Augustine exposes
Scripture to the derision of the infidel ; and Ar-
riaga11 goes so far as to say that, had it not been for
St. Augustine's name, his opinion would long ago
have been condemned as nothing short of heretical.
Even the rigidly decorous Suarez12 joins with his
brethren in protesting that God could never have
authorised Moses in using language calculated, if
the days are not natural days, so inevitably to de
ceive. It is hard not to smile, in spite of the com
mon danger, when we see the Jesuits of to-day
intrenching themselves against the attacks of geo
logy behind the battered walls of the position
their predecessors had been bombarding so assidu
ously and so lately. At the same time, 1 think it
must be admitted that, considering the state of
the question as it lay before them, the action of the
schola in rejecting St. Augustine's interpretation
was distinctly borne out by the principles of com
mon sense and sound theology. We may admire
the poetry and the unction of St. Augustine's ex
position ; we may be grateful for the liberty he has
done so much to secure for us against the exclusive
orthodoxy of the literalists ; we may deprecate the
attempt of certain Jesuit theologians to wall-up an
open door; but when we come to examine the
grounds on which St. Augustine considers himself
justified in forsaking the literal interpretation, we
10 Op. Sex Dierum, disp. i. n Op. S. D. torn. ii. disp. 28.
12 Op. S. D. lib. i. cap. xii.

8
can hardly wonder if the ' major et sanior pars' of
the schola declined to follow him. What is here
subjoined may be taken as a fair specimen of the
controversial positions of the two parties previously
to the rise of geology.
First objection to literal interpretation. It is un
worthy of Omnipotence to take time. Ergo :
Answer. Whatever popular force this objection
may have had in a Manichsean atmosphere, taken in
itself it surely is not worth much consideration.
At most it militates against the crude conception
of God creating all day, in the sense that until the
end of the day He had created nothing, as though
creation were a process admitting of stages. If it
be understood that God created in a moment one
thing, and then, either with or without an interval,
another thing, it is hard to see how this conception
is more derogatory to the Divine perfections than
the beginning to create at all. Again, assuming
that the objection is not wholly without force, we
concede what it really requires by admitting that
the seeds of all things were all created at once in
the beginning, still leaving intact the six days as
successive periods of secondary creation or pro
duction. It is quite gratuitous to insist with St.
Augustine that these periods are not chronologic
ally different from the beginning of creation.
Second objection. The days of Genesis could not
have been natural days; for the first three days
there was no sun to mete out the day.

Answer. Even if there was no sun or solar
system properly so called until the fourth day, still
the light of the first day was, in all probability,
concentrated in a spot round which the earth may
have begun to revolve, and in relation to which it
may have performed its diurnal revolution upon its
axis. But even precluding [from] all this, yet the
earth anyhow must have lived from the first a con
secutive life, and may well have continued in one
set of circumstances, a time equivalent to that of
its diurnal revolution,. and Moses may have stated
that equivalence.
Third objection. ' And there was evening and
morning the first day,' &c. Surely, it is urged,
if we were meant to understand these as natural
days, whether of twelve or twenty-four hours, it
would have been morning and evening, the begin
ning and end of day, or the two beginnings of day
and night.
Answer. I venture to think Molina's answer a
very sufficient one. He says (1. c.) that the sun,
or that light which in the first three days took its
place, was created in its meridian splendour. Prom
noon till evening it continued its course. Its first
great act was to set ; its second to rise. The second
day did not begin till the afternoon. This falls in
very well with the Jewish Sabbath, which lay be
tween evening and evening. The modern German
commentator Delitsch speaks to much the same effect,
although he reckons from morning to morning.

10
The light had been separated from the darkness ;
henceforth they were to divide creation between
them in regular alternations. The first day did not
begin with morning, for the first light did not
dawn, but was created or suddenly struck out of
darkness. Each day implies two alternations from
light to darkness — evening ; and from darkness to
light — morning. Light, so to speak, was put into
possession by the ' Fiat lux ;' it was partially dis
possessed by night; the act of its recovery ended
the first day.13
Delitsch points out that the supposed difficulty
of light without the sun has been dispelled by
modern science, which tells us that the sun is not
itself light nor the source of light, but, on the con
trary, a dark body owing what light it has to the
luminous atmosphere which invests it.
I have reproduced these arguments in order to
show that, until the rise of geology, the adherence
of the schola to the literal interpretation was most
rational, whatever imprudences individual theolo
gians may have been guilty of in their manner of
enforcing it. But how, it may be asked, is the or
thodoxy of the interpretation of the six days as in
determinate periods helped by proving the ortho
doxy of the interpretation that they are no time at
all ? Is not St. Augustine's view further removed
from that of modern science than is the common
13 Commentar iiber Genes. ; Keil und Delitsch. Compare
St. Basil, Horn. ii. in Hexaemeron ; edit. Ben. p. 20.

one of the schola? Granted ; the use of St. Au
gustine's view in the present controversy is mainly
to explode the exclusive orthodoxy of the literalists,
but it is presumable that a paling which admits of
being bent one way may be bent the other. It is in
this sense that modern theologians who have aimed
at harmonising orthodoxy and science have appealed
to St. Augustine.
I conceive that Paul is quite at liberty to hold
that the six days are six indeterminate periods. I
suppose his ' It is quite clear' may be let pass as a
faqon de parler. Cardinal Wiseman14 and Fr. Per-
rone15 allow the hypothesis as orthodox, and Fr.
Pianciani16 makes it his own. A host of modern re
ligious writers in France, Italy, and Germany have,
taken the same line. There are, however, some
sturdy dissentients amongst the Lutheran scholars
of Germany. Delitsch (1. c.) insists that the voices
of geology are a mere discordant babblement, with
out any consistent outcome whatever. With an ab
sence of the serpent's wisdom which must win Mr.
Huxley's heart, he would seem to exclaim,
' Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I !'
Aschermayer makes the grotesque suggestion that
the fossils never really lived, but were the abortive
attempts of the rebel angels to caricature the work
of creation, as mischievous urchins might scribble
14 Science and Eevealed Eeligion, lect. v.
15 De Op. Sex Dier.
16 Cosmogonia Nat. compar. col. Gen. 1862.

12
upon their master's blackboard figures which he
partially effaces with his sleeve in the progress of
his work.17 Delitsch, however, admits that the first three
days, though essentially natural as measured by the
revolution of the earth upon its axis, may yet have
been of an abnormal length, owing to the cumbrous
unspherical shape of the primeval earth, which only
gradually revolved itself into shape. I do not know
how far this may be open to special scientific ob
jections, but I am afraid it is altogether too puny a
tub to be thrown to the geological whale.
Cardinal Wiseman,18 whilst admitting that he
can see no ground, theological, philological, or criti
cal, for rejecting the hypothesis of the indeterminate
periods, yet does not ' deem it absolutely required.'
He is himself inclined to look for the geological
periods 'in an interval of indefinite length supposed
to occur between the first fiat of creation and the
production of light.'
This theory, first advocated in England by Dr.
Buckland, has obtained in Germany the name of
Eestitution-theory, inasmuch as it regards the hex-
aemeron as the record not of the first institution
of Kosmos, but of its restitution after an interval of
chaos, with a special view to the habitation of man.
On the other hand, the term Concordance-theory is
used to designate the schemes which aim at recon
ciling the geological periods recorded in the strata
17 See Delitsch, 1. c. 18 Lect. v.

13
with the works of the six days recorded in Scrip
ture. The Eestitution-theory has recommended itself
to orthodox geologists not merely as a let-off for
the six days of Scripture, whose constitution as
literal days it leaves intact, but also as an escape
from the prima- facie difficulty besetting all attempts
to reconcile the six days with the geological periods,
viz. the Scripture partition into periods defined by
special productions, plants and animals for example,
whereas the earliest geological strata show some
admixture of animals.
According to the Eestitution-theory the earth is
described; to use the words of Dr. Molloy, as having
been 'peopled by countless tribes of plants and ani
mals, which, as age rolled on after age, came into
existence and died out, and were succeeded by new
creations.'19 When it is suggested that all this could
hardly have taken place without light, he answers :
'But in truth there is rio difficulty in supposing
that during such an interval light may have pre
vailed upon the earth, and air, and all the condi
tions of organic life, pretty much as they do at the
present day.' According to this theory the ' inanis
et vacua' is explained by the clean sweep antici
patory of a new creation, and the ' darkness upon
the face of the deep' by bad weather. Now I sub
mit that the six-period hypothesis or Concordance-
theory is a version of the Genesis account, pre-
19 Geology and Eevelation, p. 345.

14
serving at least the accent and proportions of the
original; whereas in the Eestitution-theory all accent
and proportion is lost. I am glad to see that Fr.
Pianciani20 rejects it as jarring too unpleasantly
with Genesis.
Dr. Molloy appeals confidently to both Fathers
and Schoolmen, as making admissions sufficiently
authorising the Eestitution-theory; but in fact these
authorisations cover very little of the ground. There
is sufficient authority — 1. for the simultaneous cre
ation of all substances in the beginning with the
heaven and the earth; 2. for a time which cannot
be defined between this creation, properly so called,
and the first Mosaic day ; 3. for the creation of the
sun and the other heavenly bodies in the beginning, .
as part of the primeval heaven; 4. for the light of the
first day being the light of the sun. It is true that
these admissions remove a certain number of ob
stacles from the path of the Eestitution-theory; but
the question remains, can any Father or Schoolman
be produced who does not hold — 1. that until the
first day there was no light upon the earth ; 2. that *
before the first day the earth's condition was one of
primeval emptiness ? It is true they do not define
the time of the earth's duration before the first day,
but they show that indefinite length is the last thing
in their thought: 'The briefest time,' says Pere-
rius;21 ' an order of time,' says Hugo of St. Victor,
' but no interval whatever between the one act and
20 Cosmog. Nat. p. 22. « In Gen. cap. i. v. 4, n. 80.

15
the other.'22 I cannot persuade myself that there
is a single Father or presentable Schoolman who
would not rend his garments were the Eestitution-
theory suggested to him.
The geological difficulty in the way of this theory
is most serious ; it forced Mr. Hugh Miller to aban
don it in favour of the Concordance-theory. He thus
states the reasons for his conversion :23 ' It is a great
fact, now fully established in the course of geologi
cal discovery, that between the plants which at the
present time cover the earth and the animals which
inhabit it, and the animals and plants of the later
extinct creations, there occurred no break or blank;
but that, on the contrary, many of the existing or
ganisms were contemporary during the morning of
their being with many of the extinct ones during
the evening of theirs.' After a variety of illustra
tions he concludes: ' In fine, in consequence of that
comparatively recent extension of geologic fact in
the direction of the later systems and formations,
through which we are led to know that the present
creation was not cut off abruptly from the preceding
one, but that, on the contrary, it dovetailed into it
at a thousand different points, We are led also to
know that any scheme of reconciliation which would
separate between the recent and the extinct exist
ences by a chaotic gulf of death and darkness is a
scheme which no longer meets the necessities of the
22 De Sacram. lib. i. pars i. cap. vi.
93 Testimony of the Eocks, p. 121 et seq.

16
case.' Considering that Dr. Molloy quotes Mr. Hugh
Miller as one of his main authorities, I must confess
my surprise that, ignoring the whole of this argu
ment, he should assume (p. 325) the perfect com
patibility of the two theories.
The Concordance-theory, first popularised among
us by the clever word-painting of Mr. Hugh Miller,
had been previously advocated by distinguished
writers in Germany. Mr. Miller meets the difficulty
of the overlapping of various classes of plants and
animals in the geological strata — which classes seem
to be distinguished in Scripture as each the ex
clusive work of a particular day — by the following
scheme of adjustment. He begins by striking out
the first, second, and fourth days as irrelevant to
the geological question, since their work consisted
merely in the preparation of a habitat for the various
vegetable and animal creations. Three periods of
production, recorded in Scripture as third, fifth, and
sixth days, remain to be dealt with. These he pro
ceeds to harmonise with the three great geological
periods, the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Kain-
ozoic, the distinguishing features of which are re
spectively — 1. plants, 2. reptiles (winged and un-
winged), 3. mammals. He points out that these
general features, in which geology and Scripture
agree, remain undisturbed by the partial anticipa
tion in one period of classes which are to be the
characteristic features of a subsequent period. This
concordance is based upon the notion that the process

17
of the Mosaic cosmogony was not delivered to Moses
as a record or narration of what had actually taken
place, but that it passed before his eyes in a series
of visions, by which the characteristic features, not
the correct details, of the various periods were im
pressed upon his mind, and so recorded. I may
observe that some authorisation may be found for
this line of interpretation, in the very analogous
way in which some theologians have dealt with the
creation of light and of the sun, which they think
were then first said to have been created when their
influence first predominated.
The Concordance-theory has of late years ousted
the Eestitution-theory, I think with good reason,
but it is itseK obnoxious to various objections. First
of all, it is impossible not to feel that there is some
thing rather forced in the way in which certain
features are brought out in each period for the sake
of correspondence, whilst others are sunk into the
shade. This is the topic upon which Mr. Goodwin
principally dwells in his critique upon Mr, Hugh
Miller in Essays and Reviews. Professor Eeusch
of Bonn, who had in the earlier editions of his Bibel
und Natur upheld a form of the Concordance-theory
differing but slightly from Mr. Hugh Miller's, in
his third edition, 1870, has abandoned it altogether
in favour of what he calls the Idealistic^theory.
The main difficulties to which he yields, so far as I
can make him out, are the following: 1st, the work
of the fourth day, pn which the earth entered into

18
her present relations with the heavenly bodies,
which must in reality have produced the most
marked change in the earth's products, has abso
lutely no place in the Concordance-theory ; 2d, the
phrase, ' God saw that it was good,' marking the
complete carrying out of a Divine idea— whence
its omission at the end of the second day, the firma
ment not being ideally complete until the fourth
day — is inconsistent with a creation overlapping the
periods so marked out. According to the Idealistic-
theory the six consecutive days are simply a parable
for six logically, but not chronologically, distinct
and successive points of creative activity, sometimes
chronologically succeeding one another with enor
mous intervals between the beginnings of creation, ¦
sometimes simultaneous, sometimes actually occur
ring in a chronological order the reverse of the
logical, and so of the order recorded. This is in
substance St. Augustine's theory, unsaddled with
St. Augustine's very unnecessary assertion as to the
simultaneity of all creation, primary and secondary.
The notion that the creation was communi
cated to Moses in a series of partial visions would
seem to be at variance with what we are told of
God's intercourse with him.24 God spoke to Aaron
and Miriam, and said : ' Hear My words : if there
be among you a prophet of the Lord, I will ap
pear to him in a vision, or I will speak to him in
a dream. But it is not so with My servant Moses,
who is most faithful in all My house. For I will
24 Numb. xii. 6.

19
speak to him mouth to mouth; and plainly, and not
by riddles and figures, doth he see the Lord.'
According to the Idealistic-theory God may have
spoken openly and literally to Moses, as Christ
spoke to His disciples; but He delivered this parable
of the Creation to hrm for the instruction of the
people. The noblest of the Jewish schoolmen, re
presented by Philo, and several of the Christian
Fathers have, as we have seen, taken this view.
II.
I now come to the second point : Was Paul or
thodox in maintaining that man existed before
Adam? The first formal exponent of the Preadamite
doctrine was a certain Calvinist physician named
La Peyrere, in the seventeenth century. He main
tained that the descendants of the Preadamites
still exist ; that many of the races now inhabiting
the world are no sons of Adam. With a truly Cal-
vinistic notion of the requirements of orthodoxy, he
insisted that although these Nonadamites could not
have inherited Adam's sin, yet that it was imputed
to them as if by a singular privilege. After pub
lishing his fat book, as Serry calls it, he went to
Eome to Pope Alexander VII., recanted, and was
received into the Church. He ended his days in the
French Oratory.
No doubt Preadamitism, held as La Peyrere
held it, is heresy, contradicting as it does the doc-

20
trine of the Church concerning the universal here
ditary transmission of original sin.1 But Paul pre
serves this doctrine intact by his admission that
the Preadamites became extinct before Adam. At
most his view could be stigmatised as temerarious
and scandalous. I must, however, confess that this
view seems to me to do little more violence to
Genesis and to patristic tradition than the Eestitu
tion-theory, of which it is the natural development.
I should be inclined to suggest, that if so rash an
hypothesis is to be risked at all, it would be better
to let the Preadamites perish quietly in the Deluge
instead of inventing a Preadamite cataclysm. They
would certainly help to explain some very difficult
texts ; for instance that which speaks of Cain's fear
'lest any one who finds me should kill me;' the
city that he built ; the daughters of men whom the
sons of God took to themselves as wives. I am not
of course saying that these and other like passages
do not admit of a sufficient explanation on the ordi
nary theory ; but merely that little is gained on the
score of orthodoxy, and much lost on the score of
convenience, by destroying the Preadamites before
the Deluge.
As to the argument drawn from the discovery
of human remains and implements imbedded in
ancient formations, it may suffice to appeal to Mr.
Prestwich's paper, published in the Philosophical
Transactions for 1864, 'on the geological position
1 Cone. Trident, sess. v.

21
and age of the flint-implement-bearing beds.' Pro
fessor Owen2 admits Mr. Prestwich to be their most
experienced investigator. This paper is the result
of a long and careful investigation of the Somme
Valley deposits, which are very fruitful in kelts,
and are generally admitted to be more ancient than
any of the refuse heaps, caves, &c. in which flint
tools and other human relics have been found. It
is true Mr. Prestwich believes that the existence of
these implements where they are necessitates a con
siderable extension of our chronology; but at the
same time his admissions as to the actual scientific
data constitute, I think, a very sufficient demurrer
to Paul's rash assertions. He admits — 1st, that
these flint implements — the human origin of which
he regards as indisputable — occupy a definite geo
logical position always above the boulder-clay or
glacial drift which overlies the tertiary deposit;
2d, that the brick-earth associated with these
gravels is not a separate deposit, but an accumula
tion formed in the quieter portions of the same
streams that carried down the gravels; 3d, that
these gravel banks are the product of river action
far more powerful than the present, and of period
ical floods. As to their age, he allows that these
gravel banks are absolutely silent. ' The accumu
lation of sand, gravel, and shingle along the course
of rivers is so irregular — sometimes very rapid, at
other times slow ; what is done one year being un-
2 Palseontol. p. 440.

22
done another — that we are entirely without even
the few data by which we are approximately guided
in ordinary sedimentary strata. The thickness of
the deposits affords no criterion of the time required
for their accumulation. They rarely exceed twenty
feet, and are more frequently not above ten to
twelve feet thick. It is well known that recent
inundations have covered valleys with sand and
gravel to the depth in places of four, six, or even
ten feet in the course of a few days.'
What Mr. Prestwich says of the gravel depo
sits, the ' major et sanior pars' of geologists, repre
sented in this country by savants like Sir Eoderick
Murchison and Professor Phillips, admit with re
gard to the stalagmite, peat, and other formations
in which human remains have been found. These
formations afford no time-gauge whatever by which
we may approximate to the date of their contents.
Several remarkable instances of rapid formation are
given,8 the following amongst others : some coins
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were
found imbedded in flint, for the formation of which
geologists require at least several thousand years.
Some coins of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen
turies were found in a -bed of hard conglomerate
ten feet below the surface. Certainly there are
ample geological authorities and data for maintain
ing, against Lyell and his school, that the activity
of nature is not uniform, but, on the contrary, varies
3 Ap. Eeusch, p. 504, and Molloy, p. 84.

23
enormously according to circumstances, the law of
whose action we have not as yet been able to de
tect. At the same time we must not ignore the
fact that there are a large and increasing number of
scientific momenta, as well geological as ethnologi
cal and philological, whatever may be their precise
value, indicating that man has been an inhabitant of
the earth far longer than had been supposed. Paul's
fifteen or twenty thousand years, as a geological
hypothesis, is modest enough; his rashness consists
in assuming that such an addition to our chrono
logy has been proved necessary.
The admission of the Septuagint chronology will
put the date of man back another 1300 years ; and
if this is not sufficient, it may be worth while con
sidering how far the omission of generations like
the omission in St. Matthew's Gospel, only on a
larger scale, throughout Scripture history may be
entertained. However, it cannot be said that we
are as yet reduced to the alternative of this or the
Preadamite hypothesis.
Mabillon, in his critique of Vossius, remarks :
' de setate mundi non videtur quid quid statuendum,
quia Latina Ecclesia lxx. interpretum calculum
quatuor primis sseculis secuta est, eundemque etiam
nuncEomana Ecclesia retinet in martyrologio suo ad
natalem Domini.'4 Fr. Bellink, S. J., says,5 ' There is
no chronology in the Bible. The genealogies of
our sacred books, from which we have derived a
4 Ap. Eeusch, p. 443, footnote.
5 In the Etudes Eeligieuses, ap. Eeusch, p. 444.

24
series of dates, are full of gaps. How many years
have been let fall in this broken series one cannot
say. Science is at liberty to throw back the Deluge
as many centuries as it may find necessary.'
III.
As regards the system of Scripture interpreta
tion to be adopted in such cases, it is certain that
both St. Augustine and St. Thomas on the subject of
Genesis warn us most emphatically of the inadvis-
ability of scandalising scientific men by contradict
ing the results of their experiments, lest, on the one
hand, we should close to them the way of salvation,
and, on the other, be found to have canonised for
Scripture our own whims.1
We are to interpret Scripture by reason, not
reason by Scripture. St. Augustine :2 ' Si ratio
contra Divinarum Scripturarum auctoritatem red-
ditur, quamlibet acuta sit, fallitur verisimilitudine,
nam vera esse non potest : rursus si manifestse cer-
tseque rationi velut sanctarum Scripturarum objicitur
auctoritas, non intelligit qui hoc facit, et non scrip-
turse sensum, ad quern penetrare non potuit, sed
suum potius objicit veritati, nee quod in ea sed
quod in se ipso velut pro ea invenit, opponit.'
Henry of Ghent, one of the most illustrious School
men of the thirteenth century, thus enforces the
same lesson.8 He is speaking of the highest de-
1 De Gen. ad Lit. lib. i. cap. xviii. et xix. Sum. pars i.
qu. 68, art i. 2 Ep. vii. ad Marcel. s Sum. qu. 2, fol. 74.

25
gree of reason: 'Cui si litera Scripturse videatur
esse contraria, hoc non est nisi quia male est in-
tellecta, et tunc magis credendum est rationi natu-
rali quam auctoritati Scripturee quoad ilium sensum
quern litera prsetendit contrarium rationi, et quse-
rendus est alius quousque inveniatur ille qui rationi
congruit.' When writers like Mr. Huxley are so persist
ently charging the Church with shuffling and
changing front .in the face of modern science, it is
important to point out that, in regard to Scripture
and reason, her system was precisely the same at a
time when natural science had not cut its teeth. At
the same time we must, of course, remember that
we are bound by the general rule laid down in the
Council of Trent, not to interpret Scripture ' contra
unanimem sensum Patrum in rebus fidei et morum
ad sedificationem doctrinse Christianse pertinentium.'
Barbosa, commenting on this rule, and referring to
Vasquez and Bannes, points out that an interpreta
tion '¦propter unanimem sensum Patrum' is not for
bidden. I should be inclined to add, that in all
matters of history and science not belonging to the
'substantia fidei et morum,' an interpretation
founded upon fresh data, even if impossible to har
monise with the unanimous sense of the Fathers,
might be fairly considered as prater rather than
contra. Except on some such principle, it is difficult to
see how we can be free to hold that the sun did not
c

26
pass from a state of motion to a state of rest at the
command of Josue. There is not a Father who does
not so understand the text.
I think it not unreasonable to suppose that, for
the most part, the sacred writers saw rather than
heard; that words were not dictated to them, but
that they were told to set down what they saw;
whilst it was divinely secured that the words they
used should faithfully convey what they saw to the
minds of those they were, addressing. I think this
may apply to the historical portions of the Scrip
tures, and even to events of which the sacred
writers had been eye-witnesses, as well as to the
prophets' visions ; for is not memory a vision and
another exercise of the same power, the imagina
tion, which gives the prophetic vision? Nay, the
didactic and ascetic parts of Scripture, like the Epis
tles and Psalms, may have received their motive in
a vision. This theory seems to me to explain many diffi
culties. The hiatuses become foreshortenings, the
discrepancies the result of different angles of vision.
You may stand upon Calvary in vision as in reality,
where you can see one thief or both. Yon caravan
crossing the desert in single file, according as you
look at it in front or sideways, is a spot or a line.
The line is the fuller representation of what is ac
tually there; but from where the painter is standing
it is a spot, and to paint it otherwise would be to
destroy the truth of the picture.

27
The innermost core of Scripture is the moral
and religious truth, or the fact in the history of the
relations between God and man which was intended
to be revealed ; and this of course is conveyed with
absolute fidelity. The outermost skin is the lan
guage, the style of the writer, and this admits of a
variety of imperfections corresponding to his mental
condition. Between these two lies the debateable
ground. Are all combinations of subject and predi-,
cate to be regarded as of the substance of Scripture,
or may some of these be relegated to the human
clothing, and if so, which may be so relegated ? I see
no difficulty in holding that illustrations which are
appeals to popular notions may fail in correctness,
e. g. in the region of natural history; but they would
not be mistakes, because the intention was to ap
peal to a popular notion, not to a fact. If the phoenix
had been a belief in Palestine, it could have been
most fairly, and naturally, and truthfully used as an
illustration. On the same principle, descriptions of
events in which language is used having its origin
in unscientific, and so far untrue, conceptions, such
as Josue's staying the sun, may occur without any
deflection from truth. Again, although any direct
statement that such and such events happened in
such an order, or that such and such places stand
in such and such relations to one another, must be
true, yet it does not follow from this that an inverted
order or a simple letting drop of intervals of time
and space involves error. Historical portraits may

28
be arranged upon some other principle than that of
chronological order. Some portraits may be trans-.
posed and some omitted, in order to bring into relief
certain relations of cause and effect. To particular
points to which it is meant to direct attention every
other point in the picture presented to the sacred
writer's mind is subordinated, and in deference to
the same scope other points which have a real ex
istence do not appear in the picture at all.
To conclude: the following incident related by
Serry4 is worth remembering. When the Inqui
sition, with Bellarmine at its head, was trying
Galileo, Clement VIII. asked Baronius what Holy
Scripture obliged us to believe upon the matter.
Baronius answered, ' Spiritui Sancto sacris in li-
teris fuisse consilium docere nos, non quomodo
coelum eat, sed quomodo sit eundum in ccelum.'
4 Tom. iv. tract. 2, p. 46.

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