Part 1 (2/2)

When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did in the beginning.

One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict went forth.

As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India Islands, especially along the sea-sh.o.r.e, where it becomes the natural _habitat_ of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its sp.a.w.n or ”spat” upon the extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is manifestly an error, and belongs to the same cla.s.s of fallacies as the common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish, as we have said, a natural _habitat_ for the oyster, and as the salt sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long thin-sh.e.l.led oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without the presence of sp.a.w.n, just as they do when old oyster-sh.e.l.ls are dumped along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped sh.e.l.ls oysters will be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and not in consequence of the presence of ”spat.” Oysters have little, if any, locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent cl.u.s.ters from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes its appearance.

There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in bulk. And the late Henry D. Th.o.r.eau, in his ”Excursions,” says that they will not stand one such s.h.i.+pment to Europe, and that every acorn that does not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.

Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications in the cla.s.sification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical text; as, for instance, the _Trilobites_, occurring so abundantly in what is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance, whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil, characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much in time and place as in extended localities and conditions--indicating the presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one of these periods or systems? His reply was curt and pertinent: ”It took long enough, young man!” That satisfied us at the time, and we have never asked the question since. It is prying beyond scientific depth, and the ablest scholars in the world will so regard it in the end.

All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of ”_similia similibus gignuntur_”--similar conditions producing similar forms--obtains universally. The _Graptolites_, occurring in the bituminous shales of the Silurian sandstone period, afford only another instance of the same law to which we have called the attention of our readers. In fact, the annals of natural history abound in the most conclusive proofs, as well in the fossilized as the living world, of what the paramount text of the Bible teaches us.

When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished cla.s.sifiers of minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was ”a great invisible rock-and earth-forming life in nature,” he came pretty near enunciating a great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the induction of ”environing conditions” and the sequence of life therefrom, he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will be seen that we had been gathering the material for ”Life: Its True Genesis” for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.

When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his paper on the _ArchA

opterix_, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplis.h.i.+ng a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to attain success.

It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings upon the Matterhorn!

Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's ”sky-mist” or any other mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the ”Thesaurus” of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that period appeared not only synchronously in time and s.p.a.ce, but also in physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were expended in the propagation, of species on the ”two-pair” theory of our materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while, and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial?

Remember that we are not ”musing on the Matterhorn” as was the gifted English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and pondering the works of G.o.d as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took G.o.d to lift the towering Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the ”red snow,”

unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps, is as much a proof of G.o.d's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.

When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r, of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other inst.i.tution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman ”still lives”) that the first command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation, not from ”seed” distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the ”rock-and earth-forming life” or power of life in matter.

That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now a.s.serts they originally came from.

And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the ”rock-and earth-forming” power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis changes. It is no longer ”Let the earth bring forth,” but let the Divine energy intervene!

”Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image”--after our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. G.o.d breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a ”living soul.” This is the record--brief, grand, historic. No ”evolution,” no ”involution,” no word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of G.o.d and the light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!

In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge over which is flung the living garment of G.o.d, and angelic hosts may pa.s.s it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It takes man out of the category of a ”beast of the earth,” and places him where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will.

Let him read the ”Student,” by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly Voltaire escaped becoming a ”Reformer” in the Church of England, instead of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France.

We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circ.u.mstances and conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career for good or for evil.

We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to _The National Quarterly Review_, for the captious manner in which it treated us after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been ”hailed, by a cla.s.s of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and enormities,” it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put several questions to us, such as ”When and where the great Evolutionist had taught any such doctrine as this?” we ventured to reply as courteously as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had handsomely accorded to us the credit of ”searching the fields of natural science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics, materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare the most severely.” But we had no thought of using these offensive adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not so use them; however ”unscrupulous” our methods may have been in other respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our ”exhaustive Reviewers,” and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a ”scientific critic,”

was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the writer's own face.

But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to our original purpose of making this a ”Bible Genesis,” as _The National Quarterly Review_ speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.

If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it; if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter for them to regret, and for us to deplore.

To those who have spoken kindly of ”Life: Its True Genesis,” we return our thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:

”Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again, Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been All rudely trampled on by hostile foe, Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain The long night through, and wake at early dawn To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!”

R. W. Wright.

West Ches.h.i.+er, Conn., _Oct_. 12, 1883.

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