The Warfare of Science with Theology by A. D. White

[_Maksutov]

THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE

WITH THEOLOGY.



CHAPTER I.

FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.

I. THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.

Among those masses of cathedral sculpture which pre-
serve so much of mediaeval theology, one frequently recur-
ring group is noteworthy for its presentment of a time-
honoured doctrine regarding the origin of the universe.

The Almighty, in human form, sits benignly, making the
sun, moon, and stars, and hanging them from the solid firma-
ment which supports the " heaven above " and overarches
the " earth beneath."

The furrows of thought on the Creator's brow show that
in this work he is obliged to contrive; the knotted muscles
upon his arms show that he is obliged to toil ; naturally,
then, the sculptors and painters of the mediseval and early
modern period frequently represented him as the writers
whose conceptions they embodied had done — as, on the
seventh day, weary after thought and toil, enjoying well-
earned repose and the plaudits of the hosts of heaven.

In these thought-fossils of the cathedrals, and in other
revelations of the same idea through sculpture, painting,
glass-staining, mosaic work, and engraving, during the Mid-
dle Ages and the two centuries following, culminated a be-
lief which had been developed through thousands of years,
and which has determined the world's thought until our
own time.

Its beginnings lie far back in human history ; we find
them among the early records of nearly all the great civiliza-
tions, and they hold a most prominent place in the various
sacred books of the world. In nearly all of them is revealed
the conception of a Creator of whom man is an imperfect
image, and who literally and directly created the visible
universe with his hands and fingers.

Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those
which controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The As-
syrian inscriptions which have been recently recovered and
given to the English-speaking peoples by La^^ard, George
Smith, Sayce, and others, show that in the ancient religions
of Chaldea and Babylonia there was elaborated a narrative
of the creation which, in its most important features, must
have been the source of that in our own sacred books. It
has now become perfectly clear that from the same sources
Avhich inspired the accounts of the creation of the universe
among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Phoenician,
and other ancient civilizations came the ideas which hold so
prominent a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In
the two accounts imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and
also in the account of which we have indications in the book
of Job and in the Proverbs, there is presented, often with
the greatest sublimity, the same early conception of the
Creator and of the creation — the conception, so natural in
the childhood of civilization, of a Creator who is an enlarged
human being working literally with his own hands, and of a
creation with^hich is " the work of his fingers." To supplement
this view there was developed the belief in this Creator as
one who, having

. . . "from his ample palm
Launched forth the rolling planets into space,"

sits on high, enthroned ''upon the circle of the heavens,"
perpetually controlling and directing them.

From this idea of creation was evolved in time a some-
what nobler view. Ancient thinkers, and especially, as is
now found, in Egypt, suggested that the main agency in
creation was not the hands and fingers of the Creator, but
his voice. Hence with^as mingled with the earlier, cruder be-
lief regarding the origin of the earth and heavenly bodies
by the Almighty the more impressive idea that *' he spake
and they were made " — that they were brought into exist-
ence by his word.'^

[_Maksutov]

Among- the early fathers of the Church this general view
of creation became fundamental ; they impressed upon
Christendom more and more strongly the belief that the
universe was created in a perfectly literal sense by the hands
or voice of God. Here and there sundry theologians of
larger mind attempted to give a more spiritual view regard-
ing some parts of the creative work, and of these were St.
Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine. Ready as they were
to accept the literal text of Scripture, they revolted against
the conception of an actual creation of the universe by the
hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this they were
followed by Bede and a few others; but the more material
conceptions prevailed, and we find these taking shape not
only in the sculptures and mosaics and stained glass of cathe-
drals, and in the illuminations of missals and psalters, but
later, at the close of the Middle Ages, in the pictured Bibles
and in general literature.

Into the Anglo-Saxon mind this ancient material concep-
tion of the creation was riveted by two poets whose works

* Among the many mediaeval representations of the creation of the universe, I
especially recall from personal observation those sculptured above the portals of
the cathedrals of Freiburg and Upsala, the paintings on the walls of the Campo
Santo at Pisa, and, most striking of all, the mosaics of the Cathedral of Monreale
and those in the Cappella Palatina at Palermo. Among peculiarities showing the
simplicity of the earlier conception the representation of the repose of the Almighty
on the seventh day is very striking. He is shown as seated in almost the exact
attitude of the "Weary Mercury" of classic sculpture — bent, and with a very
marked expression of fatigue upon his countenance and in the whole disposition of
his body.

The Monreale mosaics are pictured in the great work of Gravina, and the Pisa
frescoes in Didron's Icotjogfaphie, Paris, 1843, p. 598. For an exact statement of the
resemblances which have settled the question among the most eminent scholars in
favour of the derivation of tlie Hebrew cosmogony from that of Assyria, see Jensen,
Die Kosmologie de)- Bahylonier, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 304, 306 ; also Franz Lukas,
Die Gritndbegriffe in den Kosmog7'aphien der altejt Volker, I eipsic, 1893, pp. 35-
46 ; also George Smith's Chaldean Genesis, especially the German translation with
additions by Delitzsch, Leipsic, 1876, and Schrader, Die Keilinschriften tmd das
Alte Testament, Giessen, 18S3, pp. 1-54, etc. See also Renan, Histoire du peuple
d' Israel, vol. i, chap, i, V antique influence bahylonienne. For Egyptian views re-
garding creation, and especially for the transition from the idea of creation by the
hands and fingers of the Creator to creation by his voice and his " word," see
Maspcro and Sayce, The Dazvft of Civilization, pp. 145-146.

appealed especially to the deeper religious feelings. In the
seventh century Casdmon paraphrased the account given in
Genesis, bringing out this material conception in the most
literal form ; and a thousand years later Milton developed
out of the various statements in the Old Testament, mingled
with a theology regarding " the creative Word " which had
been drawn from the New, his description of the creation by
the second person in the Trinity, than which nothing could
be more literal and material :

" He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe and all created things.
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, ' Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds :
This be thy just circumference, O world ! ' " *

So much for the orthodox view of the manner oi creation.

The next point developed in this theologic evolution had
reference to the matter of which the universe was made, and
it was decided by an overwhelming majority that no ma-
terial substance existed before the creation of the material
universe — that '* God created everything out of nothing."
Some venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning upon the
first verses of Genesis, hinted at a different view — namely,
that the mass, *' without form and void," existed before the
universe ; but this doctrine was soon swept out of sight.
The vast majority of the fathers were explicit on this point.
Tertullian especially was very severe against those who
took any other view than that generally accepted as ortho-
dox : he declared that, if there had been any pre-existing
matter out of which the world was formed. Scripture would
have mentioned it ; that by not mentioning it God has given
us a clear proof that there was no such thing ; and, after a
manner not unknown in other theological controversies, he
threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite view, with

* For Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and the general subject of the development
of an evolution theory among the Greeks, see the excellent work by Dr. Osborn,
From the Greeks to Darwin, pp. 33 and following ; for Ccedmon, see any edition —
I have used Bouter.wek's, Gutersloh, 1854; for Milton, see Paradise Lost, book vii,
lines 225-231.

[_Maksutov]

''the woe which impends on all who add to or take away
from the written word."

St. Augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-exist-
ence of matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by
the simple reasoning that, '' although the world has been
made of some material, that vei-y same material must have
been made out of nothing."

In the wake of these great men the universal Church
steadily followed. The Fourth Lateran Council declared
that God created everything out of nothing ; and at the
present hour the vast majority of the faithful— whether
Catholic or Protestant— are taught the same doctrine; on
this point the syllabus of Pius IX and the Westminster
Catechism fully agree."^

Having thus disposed of the manner and matter of crea-
tion, the next subject taken up by theologians was the time
required for the great work.

Here came a difficulty. The first of the two accounts
given in Genesis extended the creative operation through
six days, each of an evening and a morning, with much ex-
plicit detail regarding the progress made in each. But the
second account spoke of ''the day " in which " the Lord God
made the earth and the heavens." The explicitness of the
first account and its naturalness to the minds of the great
mass of early theologians gave it at first a decided advan-
tage ; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo, and Christ^ian think-
ers, like Origen, forming higher conceptions of the Creator
and his work, were not content with this, and by them was
launched upon the troubled sea of Christian theology the
idea that the creation was instantaneous, this idea being
strengthened not only by the second of the Genesis legends,
but by the great text, '' He spake, and it was done ; he com-
manded, and it stood fast "—or, as it appears in the Vulgate
and in most translations, '' He spake, and they were made ;
he commanded, and they were created."

* For Tertullian, see Tertullian against Hermogenes, chaps, xx and xxii ; for St.
Augustine regarding " creation from nothing," see the De Genesi contra Manicluvos,
lib. i, cap. vi ; for St. Ambrose, see the Hcxameron, lib. i, cap. iv ; for the decree
of the Fourth Lateran Council, and the view received in the Church to-day, see
the article Creation in Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary.

6 FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.

As a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper
course was to believe literally both statements ; that in some
mysterious manner God created the universe in six days,
and yet brought it all into existence in a moment. In spite
of the outcries of sundry great, theologians, like Ephrem
Syrus, that the universe was created in exactly six days of
twenty-four hours each, this compromise was promoted by
St. Athanasius and St. Basil in the East, and by St. Augus-
tine and St. Hilary in the West.

Serious difficulties were found in reconcilinof these two
views, which to the natural mind seem absolutely contra-
dictory ; but by ingenious manipulation of texts, by dexter-
ous play upon phrases, and by the abundant use of meta-
physics to dissolve away facts, a reconciliation was effected,
and men came at least to believe that they believed in a
creation of the universe instantaneous and at the same time
extended through six days.*

Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were
so fruitful as to deserve especial record. The fathers, East-
ern and Western, developed out of the double account in
Genesis, and the indications in the Psalms, the Proverbs,
and the book of Job, a vast mass of sacred science bearing
upon this point. As regards the whole work of creation,
stress was laid upon certain occult powers in numerals.
Philo Judseus, while believing in an instantaneous creation,
had also declared that the world was created in six days
because " of all numbers six is the most productive"; he
had explained the creation of the heavenly bodies on the
fourth day by ''the harmony of the number four"; of the
animals on the fifth day by the five senses ; of man on the
sixth day by the same virtues in the number six which had
caused it to be set as a limit to the creative work ; and,
greatest of all, the rest on the seventh day by the vast mass
of mysterious virtues in the number seven.

[_Maksutov]

St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pro-
nounce the work of the second day "good " is to be found

* For Origen, see his Contra Ceisum, cap. xxxvi, xxxvii ; also his De Principi-
bus, cap. V ; for St. Augustine, see his De Genesl contra Manic/mos and De Genesi
ad Litteram^ passim ; for Athanasius, see his Discourses against the Arians, ii,
48, 49.

in the fact that there is something essentially evil in the
number two, and this was echoed centuries afterward, afar
off in Britain, by Bede.

St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church
in the following statement: " There are three classes of num-
bers — the more than perfect, the perfect, and the less than
perfect, according as the sum of them is greater than, equal
to, or less than the original number. Six is the first perfect
number : wherefore we must not say that six is a perfect
number because God finished all his works in six days, but
that God finished all his works in six days because six is a
perfect number."

Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the medige-
val Church until a year after the discovery of America,
when the Nuremberg CJironiele re-echoed it as follows : *' The
creation of things is explained by the number six, the
parts of which, one, two, and three, assume the form of a
triangle."

This view of the creation of the universe as instantaneous
and also as in six days, each made up of an evening and a
morning, became virtually universal. Peter Lombard and
Hugo of St. Victor, authorities of vast weight, gave it their
sanction in the twelfth century, and impressed it for ages
upon the mind of the Church.

Both these lines of speculation — as to the creation of
everything out of nothing, and the reconciling of the instan-
taneous creation of the universe with its creation in six days
— were still further developed by other great thinkers of the
Middle Ages.

St. Hilary of Poictiers reconciled the two conceptions
as follows : " For, although according to Moses there is an
appearance of regular order in the fixing of the firmament,
the laying hare of the dry land, the gathering together of
the waters, the formation of the heavenly bodies, and the
arising of living things from land and water, yet the creation >
of the heavens, earth, and other elements is seen to be the \
work of a single moment."

St. Thomas Aquinas drew from St. Augustine a subtle
distinction which for ages eased the difificulties in the case :
he taught in effect that God created the substance of things
in a moment, but gave to the work of separating, shaping,
and adorning this creation, six days.*

[_Maksutov]

The early reformers accepted and developed the same
view, and Luther especially showed himself equal to the
occasion. With his usual boldness he declared, first, that
Moses " spoke properly and plainly, and neither allegorically
nor figuratively," and that therefore "■ the world with all
creatures was created in six days." And he then goes on
to show how, by a great miracle, the whole creation was
also instantaneous.

Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created
out of nothing and in a mysterious way, both in an instant
and in six days, citing the text : " He spake, and they were
made."

Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and
laid especial stress on the creation in six days : having called
attention to the fact that the biblical chronology shows the
world to be not quite six thousand years old and that it is
now near its end, he says that " creation was extended
through six days that it might not be tedious for us to
occupy the whole of life in the consideration of it."

Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring: '* So im-
portant is it to comprehend the work of creation that we see
the creed of the Church take this as its starting point.
Were this article taken away there would be no original sin,
the promise of Christ would become void, and all the vital
force of our religion would be destroyed." The West-
minster divines in drawing up their Confession of Faith



* For Philo Judaeus, see his Creation of the World, chap, iii ; for St. Augustine
on the powers of numbers in creation, see his De Genesi ad Litter-am, iv, chap, ii ;
for Peter Lombard, see the Sententice, lib. ii, dist. xv, 5 ; and for Hugo of St. Vic-
tor, see De Sacramentis, lib. i, pars i ; also, Annotat. Elucidat. in Pentateuchtim,
cap. V, vi, vii ; for St. Hilary, see De Trinitate, lib. xii ; for St. Thomas Aquinas,
see his Summa Theologica, quest. Ixxxiv, arts, i and ii ; the passage in the N'urein-
berg Chronicle, 1493, is in fol. iii ; for Bossuet, see his Discows sur VHistoire Uni-
verselle ; for the sacredness of the number seven among the Babylonians, see espe-
cially Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, pp. 21, 22 ; also
George Smith et al. ; for general ideas on the occult powers of various numbers,
especially the number seven, and the influence of these ideas on theology and sci-
ence, see my chapter on astronomy. As to mediaeval ideas on the same subject,
see Detzel, Christliche Ikonographie, Freiburg, 1894, pp. 44 and following.

specially laid it down as necessary to believe that all things
visible and invisible were created not only out of nothing-
but in exactly six days.

Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the
Protestant reformers regarding the necessity of holding
closely to the so-called Mosaic account of creation. As late
as the middle of the eighteenth century, when Buffon at-
tempted to state simple geological truths, the theological
faculty of the Sorbonne forced him to make and to publish
a most ignominious recantation which ended with these
words : " I abandon everything in my book respecting the
formation of the earth, and generally all which may be con-
trary to the narrative of Moses."

Theologians, having thus settled the manner of the crea-
tion, the matter used in it, and the time required for it, now
exerted themselves to fix its date.

[_Maksutov]

The long series of efforts by the greatest minds in the
Church, from Eusebius to Archbishop Usher, to settle this
point are presented in another chapter. Suffice it here that
the general conclusion arrived at by an overwhelming
majority of the most competent students of the biblical ac-
counts was that the date of creation was, in round numbers,
four_thousand years before our era; and in the seventeenth
century, in his great work, Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chan-
cellor of the University of Cambridge, and one of the most
eminent Hebrew scholars of his time, declared, as the result
of his most profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures,
that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were
created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of
water," and that " this work took place and man was created
by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B. c, at nine o'clock in
the morning."

Here was, indeed, a triumph of Lactantius's method, the
result of hundreds of years of biblical study and theological
thought since Bede in the eighth century, and Vincent of
Beauvais in the thirteenth, had declared that creation must
have taken place in the spring. Yet, alas ! within two cen-
turies after Lightfoot's great biblical demonstration as to i
the exact hour of creation, it was discovered that at that
hour an exceedingly cultivated people, enjoying all the
fruits of a highly developed civilization, had long been
swarming in the great cities of Egypt, and that other na-
tions hardly less advanced had at that time reached a high
development in Asia.*

But, strange as it may seem, even after theologians had
thus settled the manner of creation, the matter employed in
it, the time required for it, and the exact date of it, there
remained virtually unsettled the first and greatest question
of all ; and this was nothing less than the question, Who
actually created the universe ?

Various theories more or less nebulous, but all centred
in texts of Scripture, had swept through the mind of the
Church. By some theologians it was held virtually that the
actual creative agent was the third person of the Trinity,
who, in the opening words of our sublime creation poem,
" moved upon the face of the waters." By others it was
held that the actual Creator was the second person of the
Trinity, in behalf of whose agency many texts were cited
from the New Testament. Others held that the actual
Creator was the first person, and this view was embodied in
the two great formulas known as the Apostles' and Nicene
Creeds, which explicitly assigned the work to " God the Fa-
ther Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." Others, finding
a deep meaning in the words " Let t^s make," ascribed in
Genesis to the Creator, held that the entire Trinity directly
created all things ; and still others, by curious metaphysical
processes, seemed to arrive at the idea that peculiar com-
binations of two persons of the Trinity achieved the creation.

[_Maksutov]

In all this there would seem to be considerable courage

* For Luther, see his Commentary on Genesis, 1545, introduction, and his com-
ments on chap, i, verse 12 ; the quotations from Luther's commentary are taken
mainly from the translation by Henry Cole, D. D., Edinburgh, 1858 ; for Melanch-
thon, see Loci Theologici, in Melanchthon, Opera, ed. IJretechneider, vol. xxi, pp.
269, 270, also pp. 637, 638 — in quoting the text (Ps. xxiii, 9) I have used, as does
Melanchthon himself, the form of the Vulgate ; for the citations from Calvin, see
his Commentary on Genesis {Opera omnia, Amsterdam, 1671, tom. i, cap. ii, p. 8) ;
also in the Institutes, AWen's translation, London, 1838, vol. i, chap, xv, pp. 126,
127 ; for Peter Martyr, see his Commentary on Genesis, cited by Zockler, vol. i, p.
690 ; for the articles in the Westminster Confession of Faith, see chap, iv ; for
Buffon's recantation, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, chap, iii, p. 57. For Light-
foot's declaration, see his works, edited by Pitman, London, 1822.

in view of the fearful condemnatigns launched in the Athana-
sian Creed against all who should "confound the persons"
or " divide the substance of the Trinity."

These various stages in the evolution of scholastic the-
ology were also embodied in sacred art, and especially in
cathedral sculpture, in glass-staining, in mosaic working,
and in missal painting.

The creative Being is thus represented sometimes as the
third person of the Trinity, in the form of a dove brooding
over chaos ; sometimes as the second person, and therefore
a youth ; sometimes as the first person, and therefore fa-
therly and venerable ; sometimes as the first and second per-
sons, one being venerable and the other youthful; and
sometimes as three persons, one venerable and one youthful,
both wearing papal crowns, and each holding in his lips a
tip of the wing of the dove, which thus seems to proceed
from both and to be suspended between them.

Nor was this the most complete development of the
mediceval idea. The Creator was sometimes represented
with a single body, but with three faces, thus showing that
Christian belief had in some pious minds gone through sub-
stantially the same cycle which an earlier form of belief had
made ages before in India, when the Supreme Being was
represented with one body but with the three faces of
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.

But at the beginning of the modern period the older
view in its primitive Jewish form was impressed upon Chris-
tians by the most mighty genius in art the world has known ;
for in 1 5 12, after four years of Titanic labour, Michael
Ano-elo uncovered his frescoes within the vault of the Sistine
Chapel.

They had been executed by the command and under the
sanction of the ruling Pope, Julius II, to represent the con-
ception of Christian theology then dominant, and they re-
main to-day in all their majesty to show the highest point
ever attained by the older thought upon the origin of the
visible universe.

In the midst of the expanse of heaven the Almighty Fa-
ther—the first person of the Trinity— in human form, august
and venerable, attended by angels and upborne by mighty
winds, sweeps over the abyss, and, moving through success-
I've compartments of the great vault, accomplishes the work
of the creative days. With a simple gesture he divides the
light from the darkness, rears on high the solid firmament,
gathers together beneath it the seas, or summons into exist-
ence the sun, moon, and planets, and sets them circling
about the earth.

[_Maksutov]

In this sublime work culminated the thought of thou-
sands of years ; the strongest minds accepted it or pretended
to accept it, and nearly two centuries later this conception,
in accordance Avith the first of the two accounts given in
Genesis, was especially enforced by Bossuet, and received a
new lease of life in the Church, both Catholic and Protestant."

But to these discussions was added yet another, which,
beginning in the early days of the Church, was handed
down the ages until it had died out among the theologians
of our own time.

In the first of the biblical accounts light is created and
the distinction between day and night thereby made on the
first dav, while the sun and moon are not created until the
fourth day. Masses of profound theological and pseudo-
scientific reasoning have been developed to account for this
— masses so great that for ages they have obscured the sim-
ple fact that the original text is a precious revelation to us
of one of the most ancient of recorded beliefs — the belief
that light and darkness are entities independent of the heav-
enly bodies, and that the sun, moon, and stars exist not
merely to increase light but to " divide the day from the
night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and
for years," and '* to rule the day and the night."

* For strange representations of the Creator and of the creation by one, two, or
three persons of the Trinity, see Didron, Iconographie Chr^ticnne, pp. 35, 178,
224, 483, 567-580, and elsewhere ; also Detzel as already cited. The most naïve of
all survivals of the mediaeval idea of creation which the present writer has ever
seen was exhibited in 1894 on the banner of one of the guilds at the celebration of
the four-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Munich Cathedral. Jesus
of Nazareth, as a beautiful boy and with a nimbus encircling his head, was shown
turning and shaping the globe on a lathe, which he keeps in motion with his foot.
The emblems of the Passion are about him, God the Father looking approvingly
upon him from a cloud, and the dove hovering between the two. The date upon
the banner was 1727.

Of this belief we find survivals among the early fathers,
and especially in St. Ambrose. In his work on creation he
tells us : " We must remember that the light of day is one
thing and the light of the sun, moon, and stars another — the
sun by his rays appearing to add lustre to the daylight.
For before sunrise the day dawns, but is not in full reful-
gence, for the sun adds still further to its splendour." This
idea became one of the '' treasures of sacred knowledge
committed to the Church," and was faithfully received by
the Middle Ages. The mediaeval mysteries and miracle
plays give curious evidences of this: In a performance of
the creation, when God separates light from darkness, the
stage direction is, '' Now a painted cloth is to be exhibited,
one half black and the other half white." It was also given
more permanent form. In the mosaics of San Marco at
Venice, in the frescoes of the Baptistery at Florence and of
the Church of St. Francis at Assisi, and in the altar carving
at Salerno, we find a striking realization of it — the Creator
placing in the heavens two disks or living figures of equal
size, each suitably coloured or inscribed to show that one
represents light and the other darkness. This conception
was without doubt that of the person or persons who com-
piled from the Chaldean and other earlier statements the
accounts of the creation in the first of our sacred books. "

Thus, down to a period almost within living memory, it
was held, virtually " always, everywhere, and by all," that
the universe, as we now see it, was created literally and

* For scriptural indications of the independent existence of light and darkness,
compare with the first verses of the first chapter of Genesis such passages as Job
xxxviii, 19, 24 ; for the general prevalence of this early view, see Lukas, Kosmo-
gonie, pp. 31, 33, 41, 74, and passim ; for the view of St. Ambrose regarding the
creation of light and of the sun, see his Hcxameron, lib. 4, cap. iii ; for an excellent
general statement, see Huxley, Mr. Gladstone and Genesis, in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury, 1886, reprinted in his Essays on Controverted Questions, London, i8q2, note,
pp. 126 et seq. ; for the acceptance in the miracle plays of the scriptural idea of
light and darkness as independent creations, see Wright, Essays on Archceological
Subjects, vol. ii, p. 178 ; for an account, with illustrations, of the mosaics, etc.,
representing this idea, see Tikkanen, Die Genesis-tnosaiken von San Marco, Hel-
singfors, 1889, pp. 14 and 16 of text and Plates I and II. Very naïvely the Salerno
carver, not wishing to colour the ivory which he wrought, has inscribed on one disk
the word "LUX" and on the other " NOX." See also Didron, Iconographies
p. 482.

directly by the voice or hands of the Ahnighty, or b}^ both
— out of nothing — in an instant or in six days, or in both —
about four thousand years before the Christian era — and for
the convenience of the dwellers upon the earth, which was
at the base and foundation of the whole structure.

[_Maksutov]

But there had been implanted along through the ages
germs of another growth in human thinking, some of them
even as early as the Babylonian period. In the Assyrian
inscriptions we find recorded the Chaldeo-Babylonian idea
of an evolution of the universe out of the primeval flood or
''great deep," and of the animal creation out of the earth
and sea. This idea, recast, partially at least, into mono-
theistic form, passed naturally into the sacred books of the
neighbours and pupils of the Chaldeans — the Hebrews ; but
its growth in Christendom afterward was checked, as we
shall hereafter find, by the more powerful influence of other
inherited statements which appealed more intelligibly to the
mind of the Church.

Striking, also, was the effect of this idea as rewrought
by the early Ionian philosophers, to whom it was probably
transmitted from the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians.
In the minds of lonians like Anaximander and Anaximenes
it was most clearly developed : the first of these conceiving
of the visible universe as the result of processes of evolution,
and the latter pressing further the same mode of reasoning,
and dwelling on agencies in cosmic development recognised
in modern science.

This general idea of evolution in Nature thus took strong
hold upon Greek thought and was developed in many
ways, some ingenious, some perverse. Plato, indeed, with-
stood it; but Aristotle sometimes developed it in a manner
which reminds us of modern views.

Anions: the Romans Lucretius caught much from it, ex-
tending the evolutionary process virtually to all things.

In the early Church, as we have seen, the idea of a crea-
tion direct, material, and by means like those used by man,
was all-powerful for the exclusion of conceptions based on
evolution. From the more simple and crude of the views
of creation given in the Babylonian legends, and thence in-
corporated into Genesis, rose the stream of orthodox thought
on the subject, which grew into a flood and swept on
through the Middle Ages and into modern times. Yet here
and there in the midst of this flood were high grounds of
thought held by strong men. the Supreme Court Erigena and Duns
the Supreme Court, among the schoolmen, bewildered though they were,
had caught some rays of this ancient light, and passed on to
their successors, in modified form, doctrines of an evolu-
tionary process in the universe.

[_Maksutov]

In the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolu-
tionary theories seemed to take more definite form in the
mind of Giordano Bruno, who evidently divined the funda-
mental idea of what is now known as the '' nebular hypothe-
sis"; but with his murder by the Inquisition at Rome this
idea seemed utterly to disappear— dissipated by the flames
which in 1600 consumed his body on the Campo dei Fiori.

Yet within the two centuries divided by Bruno's death
the world was led into a new realm of thought in which an
evolution theory of the visible universe was sure to be rap-
idly developed. For there came, one after the other, five
of the greatest men our race has produced — Copernicus,
Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton— and when their
work was done the old theological conception of the uni-
verse was gone. "The spacious firmament on high " — " the
crystalline spheres " — the Almighty enthroned upon " the
circle of the heavens," and with his own hands, or with
angels as his agents, keeping sun, moon, and planets in mo-
tion for the benefit of the earth, opening and closing the
" windows of heaven," letting down upon the earth the " wa-
ters above the firmament," "setting his bow in the cloud,"
hanging out "signs and wonders," hurling comets, "casting
forth lightnings " to scare the wicked, and " shaking the
earth " in his wrath : all this had disappeared.

These five men had given a new divine revelation to the
world ; and through the last, Newton, had come a vast new
conception, destined to be fatal to the old theory of crea-
tion, for he had shown throughout the universe, in place of
almighty caprice, all-pervading law. The bitter opposition
of theology to the first four of these men is well known ; but
the fact is not so widely known that Newton, in spite of his
deeply religious spirit, was also strongly opposed. It was
vigorously urged against him that by his statement of the
law of ofravitation he '' took from God that direct action on
his works so constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and
transferred it to material mechanism," and that he " sub-
stituted gravitation for Providence." But, more than this,
these men gave a new basis for the theory of evolution as
distinguished from the theory of creation.