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which are widely different from those of Ussher. They differ most materially. Hales's system of chronology is certainly not the same as Ussher's. Ussher's was an ingenious calculation, but it is not to be accepted as part of the Bible. We have been so accustomed to see those figures 4004 put opposite to the first chapter of Genesis, in the account of the Creation, that we are considered to be almost abandoning our Bible if we do not accept them. A religious society, in publishing the "Commentary on the Bible," was bold enough to say that the early dates of the Bible did not seem to be sufficiently clearly established to warrant their insertion; and some remonstrances came from earnest men, who said, with alarm, "You are attacking the Bible.” This is the way in which a great amount of injury may be done to the cause of truth and of religion. We assume certain interpretations of the Bible with which we have been familiar, and we tell people "if you do not accept these, you cannot accept the doctrines of Redemption." That is a line of argument against which I must emphatically protest. I have referred to the monuments of Egypt as bearing upon the question of dates, and from these I cannot come to any other conclusion than that they afford a much greater antiquity for man's existence than 7,000 years. Then look at language.* Trace it in all its families and their connections as far as you can; and does not the form of those various tongues, with their peculiar characteristics and differences, require a longer time for growth than these few thousand years ? To my mind a very much longer time is required. It may be said that we have a dispersion of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel, but all I can say is, we cannot suppose that in that dispersion of tongues languages were divided out as we now have them, marks of gradual progress and gradual formation. we must argue upon things as we see them; and if we see traces of the progress and improvement of language by gradual stages, we are not to go back and say, all these could have been done miraculously at the building of the Tower of Babel. God does not work with His creatures in that way; He does not invent these things in order to cheat us, and give us historical evidence of what is not historical. Whether we examine the crust of the earth, or the history of language, or the monuments of Egypt, all we can do is to take them on the principle that we are to read their history and their progress in the same manner as we read the history and progress of what is before us. We need not maintain the strict uniformitarian system, that exactly the same rate of deposit was to be laid down every year. A great accumulation of worthless conjecture has been obtained by calculating the geological deposits that we have, and saying they must have taken 200,000 or 250,000 years to produce. All that is extremely vague conjecture, but it does not destroy the main evidence of the great broad facts; and I say look

for they all show the If we argue at all,

* These two points are treated on in the Transactions, Vol. III. p. 464, et seq.

at the great broad facts of the Mississippi again. You say that the Mississippi deposits did not occupy vast numbers of years; but I would ask, where is the theory which will account for these deposits, except by the assumption of a great number of years? I do not say any particular number of hundreds of thousands, but certainly a very large number. Let any one bring forward a counter theory if he can. I do not want to express the least disrespect to Professor Birks. He forms his own conclusions, and everybody knows that he is a great master of mathematics, and a vast accumulator of knowledge, but I would point out the importance, in a society of this kind, of refraining from putting forward such an argument as that no one is to hold a particular view on such a question as the antiquity of man, without being liable to the suspicion of denying the doctrines of redemption, and giving up the possibility of maintaining the truths of Christianity.

Rev. A. G. PEMBERTON.-I have listened with great interest to the reading of this paper, but I have drawn conclusions very opposite to those expressed by Dr. Currey. I thought it most valuable that so great an authority as Professor Birks, with great scientific knowledge, should grapple with these scientific questions. I did not gather from the paper that he contended for the accuracy of Archbishop Ussher's chronology, and I quite agree that we need not defend any such calculations. My Hebrew Bible has no chronological calculations at all. Hales's valuable work Hales's valuable work is simply a compilation of various systems of chronology. There can be no question that the range of knowledge which is knowable is, as that great intellect Newton pointed out, extremely limited, and man's ignorance is immense when compared with his knowledge. As Jeremy Taylor has said, the most learned pundit would find, if he came to compare his ignorance with his knowledge, that the ignorance immensely outweighed the knowledge. Then we must also remember that geology at present is only in its infancy, and I feel sure that as it grows and increases, our knowledge of the past, we shall find that there is no real antagonism between science and the Bible.* Now so far as natural religion goes, we know that it does not reveal a single syllable about -redemption through Christ. The whole of that sublime economy, which is as beautiful as it is sublime, entirely depends on the authenticity, genuineness, and inspiration of the Scriptures. Every man, therefore, who would grapple with the subject fairly, should inquire whether the Bible be an authentic document, whether it be genuine, and whether it be inspired, and if he do this, he will come to the conclusion which the great Grotius, a man as illustrious for the splendour of his genius as for the extent of his attainments, came to, when he wrote his remarkable book De Veritate. The acute-minded Le Clerc too, who, from being an unbeliever, became a believer, made objections to the Pentateuch he was answered, and, being an honest man, he went and studied the subject more deeply, and then wrote a refutation of his own objections; but Voltaire has copied the objections

:

*See Professor Dawson's remarks, Preface to Vol. XI.-ED.

without the answers into his Philosophical Dictionary. The infidelity which has arisen in the present day is peculiarly injurious to the young, because it assumes what is false, that there is an antagonism between true science and religion, whereas there is really none. I myself have not the leisure or the opportunity to go deeply into all the questions which are raised by the paper of Professor Birks, but I am glad to find so able an advocate coming forward, with learning, great powers of mind, and accuracy of thought, to go into the depths of the subject, and to show that those men who differ from the Scriptures as to inspiration and as to the doctrines of our redemption through our Lord Jesus Christ, are in the wrong, and ground all their objections upon mere supposition and conjecture, without a line of history or an atom of real proof to support them.

Rev. J. J. COXHEAD.--The existence of an ice age, of which we find many traces, being acknowledged, it appears to me that we are bound to accept Mr. Croll's hypothesis, which seems probable, until a more satisfactory one is substituted for it. (Dissent.) I think that the existence of an ice age and the finding of supposed human implements in the Drift are arguments in favour of the antiquity of man.

A MEMBER.—But the periods of the Ice age and of the Drift have to be ascertained.

Mr. T. K. CALLARD.-Dr. Currey has told us that he could not see what bearing the learned paper we have listened to has upon the question of Man's Antiquity. It might be that Dr. Currey expected more than was proposed by the author. I do not think that Professor Birks supposed that, after reading his paper, we should leave to-night, certain that there did not exist a great antiquity of man, but if he has succeeded in removing one of the strongest arguments that has hitherto been used for assigning to man such great antiquity, I think he has done all that could be expected from him in one evening (Hear, hear), and I think he has very successfully done this. It has been accepted by most of our leading geologists, that man first appeared on the globe some 200,000 or 210,000 years ago. But how was that period arrived at? It was by accepting that as the time of the Glacial epoch; for, as Professor Birks says in his second paragraph, "Human deposits are thought to occur in quaternary strata or drift, directly after the close of a great ice period." If that great ice period, then, was 200,000 years back, and the human deposits occur immediately after its close, you have the case proven that man lived 200,000 years ago. But there is nothing whatever, either in astronomy or geology, to fix that as the date of the Glacial epoch, except the excentricity of the earth's orbit, which was so great at that period. Now, if Professor Birks has made it clear to your minds, in answer to Mr. James Croll's hypothesis, that neither the excentricity of the earth's orbit, nor the changes produced by the precession of the equinoxes, nor the altered obliquity of the ecliptic; that none of these astronomical changes, nor all of them put together, would have produced an ice age; if he has made that clear, we then must give up the

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200,000 years as the date of the Ice age, and also as the date of the men who left the "human deposit " referred to in the gravel drift. I think a great step has been taken to-night if Professor Birks has established this one point. I reached the same conclusion as the author of the paper has done, when the hypothesis of Mr. James Croll was first published, and feel honoured by Professor Birks' reference to my pamphlet, and I scarcely need say that the conclusion I then reached has been greatly strengthened by to-night's paper. There may be, as stated by Dr. Currey, other reasons for believing in the great antiquity of man, most of which reasons will be no doubt brought under consideration when Professor McKenny Hughes (Woodwardian Professor of Geology) reads his paper upon the subject; but there are no other reasons that can be produced, except those to which Professor Birks has replied, that will fix 200,000 years as the period of man's introduction to the earth. I would like now to offer a remark or two upon the "human deposits" of the drift; they are described by Professor Birks as flints, which " are affirmed to have been plainly fashioned into tools, spears, or hatchets by the hands of savage men." If the affirmation is correct, the antiquity of the savage men who fashioned them is not proven, unless the age of the drift in which they are found is also proven : but if, on the other hand, there should be reasonable doubt about the human fashioning of these flints into tools, spears, or hatchets, the evidence for man's antiquity will be considerably reduced. I will confine my remarks to the affirmed implements, &c., of the gravel drift; those from Brixham Cave were, in my judgment, satisfactorily disposed of in a paper read by Mr. Whitley before this Institute. But the implements of the gravel drift demand more careful consideration. I have seen that beautiful collection in Blackmore Museum, Salisbury; and some of the still finer specimens in the possession of Mr. John Evans, the President of the Anthropological Society. I have looked at them until I have been hardly able to doubt the human origin claimed for them. But then I have to bear in mind that these are very choice specimens, virtually selected from some thousands of other broken flints that bear more or less resemblance to these chosen ones. I have seen about a thousand together at the residence of the late M. Boucher de Perthes, at Abbeville; they were collected from the implement-bearing gravel in that neighbourhood, but I do not think that there is any one present who would not at once dismiss two-thirds of them as simply flints that had met with accidental fracture, yet all bearing a certain resemblance to the better forms. Here is a very fine specimen of the spearhead type [Mr. Callard produced a specimen, which was handed round the room for inspection]; it was found in the gravel-bed of Moulin Quignon, and no believer in drift implements would question the human fashioning of this specimen. But here is a broken flint which I took out of the same gravel-pit [the specimen was shown] which I do not think that any member of this Institute would claim for a human implement; but when the other side of the flint is presented to you, it exhibits the same outline as the accepted spear

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head. I also, from the same gravels, obtained this specimen [another specimen shown], which bears not the faintest resemblance to spear-head, hatchet, or to any other implement, but you will observe that the surface is covered with the minute chipping and flaking, that, had it occurred on the other specimen with a spear-head outline, it would certainly have been received as one of the implements fashioned by the hands of Palæolithic man. I will now show you a flint which I obtained in the neighbourhood of Marlborough Downs [specimen exhibited]; it has not yet been out of its matrix, therefore could not have received its form from the hand of man ; it is incased in silicious sandstone, and it has so happened that the blow given to the stone by the mason has split the flint longitudinally, which affords a good opportunity of examining its natural form, and if you compare it with the accepted implement from the gravel-bed of Moulin Quignon, you will observe that both in size and shape they are identical; in addition to which, the exposed part of the flint is covered with facets. As there is no collateral evidence whatever to support the claim of these chipped flints being the work of man, the evidence of their being such resting exclusively upon their form and chipping, and seeing that nature does produce similar forms, which by natural causes can get similarly chipped, I think we may be justified in some hesitation in accepting these flints, however remarkable they may appear, as the workmanship of Paleolithic man. To say the least, they appear too doubtful to be made the basis to support the theory of man's great, antiquity.*

* The greater or lesser antiquity of the earth in no respect affects the question of the antiquity of man. No scientific man has thought of placing man farther back than the Miocene period, and but few would claim for man a greater antiquity than that of the Gravel Drift. The reasons which would lead to claiming a great antiquity for the former are totally different to those that are adduced for the antiquity of the latter.-(T. K. C.)

With respect to certain well-known theories requiring vast epochs for geological changes. In a work just published, Recent Researches in Physical Science, Professor P. G. Tait says that the Uniformitarian theories of geologists are "totally inconsistent with modern physical knowledge as to the dissipation of energy"; he then speaks of "the Law of the Dissipation of Energy, discovered by Sir W. Thomson," and remarks, "It enables us distinctly to say, that the present order of things has not been evolved through infinite past time by the agency of laws now at work, but must have had a distinct beginning a state beyond which we are totally unable to penetrate, a state which must have been produced by other than the now (visibly) acting causes.' And, arguing from our present knowledge of radiation, against the claims of " Lyell and others, especially of Darwin, who tell us that even for a comparatively brief portion of recent geological history three hundred millions of years will not suffice," Professor Tait quotes Sir W. Thomson's three lines of argument, and urges, "Ten million years is the utmost we can give to geologists for their speculations as to the history even of the lowest orders of fossils" and "for all the changes that have taken place on the earth's surface since vegetable life of the lowest known form was capable of existing there." Of course, it remains to be seen how far future researches may induce others to modify the above statements (vol. x. p. ii.).—ED.

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