For Rougemont, see his L"Homme et le Singe, Neuchatel, 1863 (also in German trans.). For Constantin James, see his Mes Entretiens avec l"Empereur Don Pedro sur la Darwinisme, Paris, 1888, where the papal briefs are printed in full. For the English attacks on Darwin"s Descent of Man, see the Edinburgh Review July, 1871 and elsewhere; the Dublin Review, July, 1871; the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, April, 1886. See also The Scripture Doctrine of Creation, by the Rev. T.
R. Birks, London, 1873, published by the S. P. C. K. For Dr. Pusey"s attack, see his Unscience, not Science, adverse to Faith, 1878; also Darwin"s Life and Letters, vol. ii, pp. 411, 412.
But it was noted that this second series of attacks, on the Descent of Man, differed in one remarkable respect--so far as England was concerned--from those which had been made over ten years before on the Origin of Species. While everything was done to discredit Darwin, to pour contempt upon him, and even, of all things in the world, to make him--the gentlest of mankind, only occupied with the scientific side of the problem--"a persecutor of Christianity," while his followers were represented more and more as charlatans or dupes, there began to be in the most influential quarters careful avoidance of the old argument that evolution--even by natural selection--contradicts Scripture.
It began to be felt that this was dangerous ground. The defection of Lyell had, perhaps, more than anything else, started the question among theologians who had preserved some equanimity, "WHAT IF, AFTER ALL, THE DARWINIAN THEORY SHOULD PROVE TO BE TRUE?" Recollections of the position in which the Roman Church found itself after the establishment of the doctrines of Copernicus and Galileo naturally came into the minds of the more thoughtful. In Germany this consideration does not seem to have occurred at quite so early a day. One eminent Lutheran clergyman at Magdeburg called on his hearers to choose between Darwin and religion; Delitszch, in his new commentary on Genesis, attempted to bring science back to recognise human sin as an important factor in creation; Prof.
Heinrich Ewald, while carefully avoiding any sharp conflict between the scriptural doctrine and evolution, comforted himself by covering Darwin and his followers with contempt; Christlieb, in his address before the Evangelical Alliance at New York in 1873, simply took the view that the tendencies of the Darwinian theory were "toward infidelity," but declined to make any serious battle on biblical grounds; the Jesuit, Father Pesch, in Holland, drew up in Latin, after the old scholastic manner, a sort of general indictment of evolution, of which one may say that it was interesting--as interesting as the display of a troop in chain armour and with cross-bows on a nineteenth-century battlefield.
From America there came new echoes. Among the myriad attacks on the Darwinian theory by Protestants and Catholics two should be especially mentioned. The first of these was by Dr. Noah Porter, President of Yale College, an excellent scholar, an interesting writer, a n.o.ble man, broadly tolerant, combining in his thinking a curious mixture of radicalism and conservatism. While giving great lat.i.tude to the evolutionary teaching in the university under his care, he felt it his duty upon one occasion to avow his disbelief in it; but he was too wise a man to suggest any necessary antagonism between it and the Scriptures.
He confined himself mainly to pointing out the tendency of the evolution doctrine in this form toward agnosticism and pantheism.
To those who knew and loved him, and had noted the genial way in which by wise neglect he had allowed scientific studies to flourish at Yale, there was an amusing side to all this. Within a stone"s throw of his college rooms was the Museum of Paleontology, in which Prof. Marsh had laid side by side, among other evidences of the new truth, that wonderful series of specimens showing the evolution of the horse from the earliest form of the animal, "not larger than a fox, with five toes," through the whole series up to his present form and size--that series which Huxley declared an absolute proof of the existence of natural selection as an agent in evolution. In spite of the veneration and love which all Yale men felt for President Porter, it was hardly to be expected that these particular arguments of his would have much permanent effect upon them when there was constantly before their eyes so convincing a refutation.
But a far more determined opponent was the Rev. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton; his anger toward the evolution doctrine was bitter: he denounced it as thoroughly "atheistic"; he insisted that Christians "have a right to protest against the arraying of probabilities against the clear evidence of the Scriptures"; he even censured so orthodox a writer as the Duke of Argyll, and declared that the Darwinian theory of natural selection is "utterly inconsistent with the Scriptures," and that "an absent G.o.d, who does nothing, is to us no G.o.d"; that "to ignore design as manifested in G.o.d"s creation is to dethrone G.o.d"; that "a denial of design in Nature is virtually a denial of G.o.d"; and that "no teleologist can be a Darwinian." Even more uncompromising was another of the leading authorities at the same university--the Rev. Dr. Duffield. He declared war not only against Darwin but even against men like Asa Gray, Le Conte, and others, who had attempted to reconcile the new theory with the Bible: he insisted that "evolutionism and the scriptural account of the origin of man are irreconcilable"--that the Darwinian theory is "in direct conflict with the teaching of the apostle, "All scripture is given by inspiration of G.o.d""; he pointed out, in his opposition to Darwin"s Descent of Man and Lyell"s Antiquity of Man, that in the Bible "the genealogical links which connect the Israelites in Egypt with Adam and Eve in Eden are explicitly given." These utterances of Prof.
Duffield culminated in a declaration which deserves to be cited as showing that a Presbyterian minister can "deal d.a.m.nation round the land"
ex cathedra in a fashion quite equal to that of popes and bishops. It is as follows: "If the development theory of the origin of man," wrote Dr. Duffield in the Princeton Review, "shall in a little while take its place--as doubtless it will--with other exploded scientific speculations, then they who accept it with its proper logical consequences will in the life to come have their portion with those who in this life "know not G.o.d and obey not the gospel of his Son.""
Fortunately, at about the time when Darwin"s Descent of Man was published, there had come into Princeton University "deus ex machina"
in the person of Dr. James McCosh. Called to the presidency, he at once took his stand against teachings so dangerous to Christianity as those of Drs. Hodge, Duffield, and their a.s.sociates. In one of his personal confidences he has let us into the secret of this matter. With that hard Scotch sense which Thackeray had applauded in his well-known verses, he saw that the most dangerous thing which could be done to Christianity at Princeton was to reiterate in the university pulpit, week after week, solemn declarations that if evolution by natural selection, or indeed evolution at all, be true, the Scriptures are false. He tells us that he saw that this was the certain way to make the students unbelievers; he therefore not only checked this dangerous preaching but preached an opposite doctrine. With him began the inevitable compromise, and, in spite of mutterings against him as a Darwinian, he carried the day.
Whatever may be thought of his general system of philosophy, no one can deny his great service in neutralizing the teachings of his predecessors and colleagues--so dangerous to all that is essential in Christianity.
Other divines of strong sense in other parts of the country began to take similar ground--namely, that men could be Christians and at the same time Darwinians. There appeared, indeed, here and there, curious discrepancies: thus in 1873 the Monthly Religious Magazine of Boston congratulated its readers that the Rev. Mr. Burr had "demolished the evolution theory, knocking the breath of life out of it and throwing it to the dogs." This amazing performance by the Rev. Mr. Burr was repeated in a very striking way by Bishop Keener before the Oec.u.menical Council of Methodism at Washington in 1891. In what the newspapers described as an "admirable speech," he refuted evolution doctrines by saying that evolutionists had "only to make a journey of twelve hours from the place where he was then standing to find together the bones of the muskrat, the opossum, the coprolite, and the ichthyosaurus." He a.s.serted that Aga.s.siz--whom the good bishop, like so many others, seemed to think an evolutionist--when he visited these beds near Charleston, declared: "These old beds have set me crazy; they have destroyed the work of a lifetime." And the Methodist prelate ended by saying: "Now, gentlemen, brethren, take these facts home with you; get down and look at them.
This is the watch that was under the steam hammer--the doctrine of evolution; and this steam hammer is the wonderful deposit of the Ashley beds." Exhibitions like these availed little. While the good bishop amid vociferous applause thus made comically evident his belief that Aga.s.siz was a Darwinian and a coprolite an animal, scientific men were recording in all parts of the world facts confirming the dreaded theory of an evolution by natural selection. While the Rev. Mr. Burr was so loudly praised for "throwing Darwinism to the dogs," Marsh was completing his series leading from the five-toed ungulates to the horse. While Dr.
Tayler Lewis at Union, and Drs. Hodge and Duffield at Princeton, were showing that if evolution be true the biblical accounts must be false, the indefatigable Yale professor was showing his cretaceous birds, and among them Hesperornis and Ichthyornis with teeth. While in Germany Luthardt, Schund, and their compeers were demonstrating that Scripture requires a belief in special and separate creations, the Archaeopteryx, showing a most remarkable connection between birds and reptiles, was discovered.
While in France Monseigneur Segur and others were indulging in diatribes against "a certain Darwin," Gaudry and Filhol were discovering a striking series of "missing links" among the carnivora. In view of the proofs acc.u.mulating in favour of the new evolutionary hypothesis, the change in the tone of controlling theologians was now rapid. From all sides came evidences of desire to compromise with the theory. Strict adherents of the biblical text pointed significantly to the verses in Genesis in which the earth and sea were made to bring forth birds and fishes, and man was created out of the dust of the ground. Men of larger mind like Kingsley and Farrar, with English and American broad churchmen generally, took ground directly in Darwin"s favour. Even Whewell took pains to show that there might be such a thing as a Darwinian argument for design in Nature; and the Rev. Samuel Houghton, of the Royal Society, gave interesting suggestions of a divine design in evolution.
Both the great English universities received the new teaching as a leaven: at Oxford, in the very front of the High Church party at Keble College, was elaborated a statement that the evolution doctrine is "an advance in our theological thinking." And Temple, Bishop of London, perhaps the most influential thinker then in the Anglican episcopate, accepted the new revelation in the following words: "It seems something more majestic, more befitting him to whom a thousand years are as one day, thus to impress his will once for all on his creation, and provide for all the countless varieties by this one original impress, than by special acts of creation to be perpetually modifying what he had previously made."
In Scotland the Duke of Argyll, head and front of the orthodox party, dissenting in many respects from Darwin"s full conclusions, made concessions which badly shook the old position.
Curiously enough, from the Roman Catholic Church, bitter as some of its writers had been, now came argument to prove that the Catholic faith does not prevent any one from holding the Darwinian theory, and especially a declaration from an authority eminent among American Catholics--a declaration which has a very curious sound, but which it would be ungracious to find fault with--that "the doctrine of evolution is no more in opposition to the doctrine of the Catholic Church than is the Copernican theory or that of Galileo."
Here and there, indeed, men of science like Dawson, Mivart, and Wigand, in view of theological considerations, sought to make conditions; but the current was too strong, and eminent theologians in every country accepted natural selection as at least a very important part in the mechanism of evolution.
At the death of Darwin it was felt that there was but one place in England where his body should be laid, and that this place was next the grave of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. The n.o.ble address of Canon Farrar at his funeral was echoed from many pulpits in Europe and America, and theological opposition as such was ended. Occasionally appeared, it is true, a survival of the old feeling: the Rev. Dr. Laing referred to the burial of Darwin in Westminster Abbey as "a proof that England is no longer a Christian country," and added that this burial was a desecration--that this honour was given him because he had been "the chief promoter of the mock doctrine of evolution of the species and the ape descent of man."
Still another of these belated prophets was, of all men, Thomas Carlyle.
Soured and embittered, in the same spirit which led him to find more heroism in a marauding Viking or in one of Frederick the Great"s generals than in Washington, or Lincoln, or Grant, and which caused him to see in the American civil war only the burning out of a foul chimney, he, with the petulance natural to a dyspeptic eunuch, railed at Darwin as an "apostle of dirt worship."
The last echoes of these utterances reverberated between Scotland and America. In the former country, in 1885, the Rev. Dr. Lee issued a volume declaring that, if the Darwinian view be true, "there is no place for G.o.d"; that "by no method of interpretation can the language of Holy Scripture be made wide enough to re-echo the orang-outang theory of man"s natural history"; that "Darwinism reverses the revelation of G.o.d"
and "implies utter blasphemy against the divine and human character of our Incarnate Lord"; and he was pleased to call Darwin and his followers "gospellers of the gutter." In one of the intellectual centres of America the editor of a periodical called The Christian urged frantically that "the battle be set in array, and that men find out who is on the Lord"s side and who is on the side of the devil and the monkeys."
To the honour of the Church of England it should be recorded that a considerable number of her truest men opposed such utterances as these, and that one of them--Farrar, Archdeacon of Westminster--made a protest worthy to be held in perpetual remembrance. While confessing his own inability to accept fully the new scientific belief, he said: "We should consider it disgraceful and humiliating to try to shake it by an ad captandum argument, or by a clap-trap platform appeal to the unfathomable ignorance and unlimited arrogance of a prejudiced a.s.sembly.
We should blush to meet it with an anathema or a sneer."
All opposition had availed nothing; Darwin"s work and fame were secure.
As men looked back over his beautiful life--simple, honest, tolerant, kindly--and thought upon his great labours in the search for truth, all the attacks faded into nothingness.
There were indeed some dark spots, which as time goes on appear darker.
At Trinity College, Cambridge, Whewell, the "omniscient," author of the History of the Inductive Sciences, refused to allow a copy of the Origin of Species to be placed in the library. At mult.i.tudes of inst.i.tutions under theological control--Protestant as well as Catholic--attempts were made to stamp out or to stifle evolutionary teaching. Especially was this true for a time in America, and the case of the American College at Beyrout, where nearly all the younger professors were dismissed for adhering to Darwin"s views, is worthy of remembrance. The treatment of Dr. Winch.e.l.l at the Vanderbilt University in Tennessee showed the same spirit; one of the truest of men, devoted to science but of deeply Christian feeling, he was driven forth for views which centred in the Darwinian theory.
Still more striking was the case of Dr. Woodrow. He had, about 1857, been appointed to a professorship of Natural Science as connected with Revealed Religion, in the Presbyterian Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina. He was a devoted Christian man, and his training had led him to accept the Presbyterian standards of faith. With great gifts for scientific study he visited Europe, made a most conscientious examination of the main questions under discussion, and adopted the chief points in the doctrine of evolution by natural selection. A struggle soon began. A movement hostile to him grew more and more determined, and at last, in spite of the efforts made in his behalf by the directors of the seminary and by a large and broad-minded minority in the representative bodies controlling it, an orthodox storm, raised by the delegates from various Presbyterian bodies, drove him from his post. Fortunately, he was received into a professorship at the University of South Carolina, where he has since taught with more power than ever before.
This testimony to the faith by American provincial Protestantism was very properly echoed from Spanish provincial Catholicism. In the year 1878 a Spanish colonial man of science, Dr. Chil y Marango, published a work on the Canary Islands. But Dr. Chil had the imprudence to sketch, in his introduction, the modern hypothesis of evolution, and to exhibit some proofs, found in the Canary Islands, of the barbarism of primitive man. The ecclesiastical authorities, under the lead of Bishop Urquinaona y Bidot, at once grappled with this new idea. By a solemn act they declared it "falsa, impia, scandalosa"; all persons possessing copies of the work were ordered to surrender them at once to the proper ecclesiastics, and the author was placed under the major excommunication.
But all this opposition may be reckoned among the last expiring convulsions of the old theologic theory. Even from the new Catholic University at Washington has come an utterance in favour of the new doctrine, and in other universities in the Old World and in the New the doctrine of evolution by natural selection has a.s.serted its right to full and honest consideration. More than this, it is clearly evident that the stronger men in the Church have, in these latter days, not only relinquished the struggle against science in this field, but have determined frankly and manfully to make an alliance with it. In two very remarkable lectures given in 1892 at the parish church of Rochdale, Wilson, Archdeacon of Manchester, not only accepted Darwinism as true, but wrought it with great argumentative power into a higher view of Christianity; and what is of great significance, these sermons were published by the same Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge which only a few years before had published the most bitter attacks against the Darwinian theory. So, too, during the year 1893, Prof. Henry Drummond, whose praise is in all the dissenting churches, developed a similar view most brilliantly in a series of lectures delivered before the American Chautauqua schools, and published in one of the most widespread of English orthodox newspapers.
Whatever additional factors may be added to natural selection--and Darwin himself fully admitted that there might be others--the theory of an evolution process in the formation of the universe and of animated nature is established, and the old theory of direct creation is gone forever. In place of it science has given us conceptions far more n.o.ble, and opened the way to an argument for design infinitely more beautiful than any ever developed by theology.(24)
(24) For the causes of bitterness shown regarding the Darwinian hypothesis, see Reusch, Bibel und Natur, vol. ii, pp. 46 et seq. For hostility in the United States regarding the Darwinian theory, see, among a mult.i.tude of writers, the following: Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton, monograph, What is Darwinism? New York, 1874; also his Systematic Theology, New York, 1872, vol. ii, part 2, Anthropology; also The Light by which we see Light, or Nature and the Scriptures, Vedder Lectures, 1875, Rutgers College, New York, 1875; also Positivism and Evolutionism, in the American Catholic Quarterly, October 1877, pp. 607, 619; and in the same number, Professor Huxley and Evolution, by Rev. A.
M. Kirsch, pp. 662, 664; The Logic of Evolution, by Prof. Edward F. X.
McSweeney, D. D., July, 1879, p. 561; Das Hexaemeron und die Geologie, von P. Eirich, Pastor in Albany, N. Y., Lutherischer Concordia-Verlag, St. Louis, Mo., 1878, pp. 81, 82, 84, 92-94; Evolutionism respecting Man and the Bible, by John T. Duffield, of Princeton, January, 1878, Princeton Review, pp. 151, 153, 154, 158, 159, 160, 188; a Lecture on Evolution, before the Nineteenth Century Club of New York, May 25, 1886, by ex-President Noah Porter, pp. 4, 26-29. For the laudatory notice of the Rev. E. F. Burr"s demolition of evolution in his book Pater Mundi, see Monthly Religious Magazine, Boston, May, 1873, p. 492. Concerning the removal of Dr. James Woodrow, Professor of Natural Science in the Columbia Theological Seminary, see Evolution or Not, in the New York Weekly Sun, October 24, 1888. For the dealings of Spanish ecclesiastics with Dr. Chil and his Darwinian exposition, see the Revue d"Anthropologie, cited in the Academy for April 6, 1878; see also the Catholic World, xix, 433, A Discussion with an Infidel, directed against Dr. Louis Buchner and his Kraft und Stoff; also Mind and Matter, by Rev.
james Tait, of Canada, p. 66 (in the third edition the author bemoans the "horrible plaudits" that "have accompanied every effort to establish man"s brutal descent"); also The Church Journal, New York, May 28, 1874.
For the effort in favour of a teleological evolution, see Rev. Samuel Houghton, F. R. S., Principles of Animal Mechanics, London, 1873, preface and p. 156 and elsewhere. For the details of the persecutions of Drs. Winch.e.l.l and Woodrow, and of the Beyrout professors, with authorities cited, see my chapter on The Fall of Man and Anthropology.
For more liberal views among religious thinkers regarding the Darwinian theory, and for efforts to mitigate and adapt it to theological views, see, among the great ma.s.s of utterances, the following: Charles Kingsley"s letters to Darwin, November 18, 1859, in Darwin"s Life and Letters, vol. ii, p. 82; Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin, December 24, 1859, see ibid., vol. ii, pp. 356-359; the same to Miss Gerard, January 2, 1860, see Sedgewick"s Life and Letters, vol. ii, pp. 359, 360; the same in The Spectator, London, March 24, 1860; The Rambler, March 1860, cited by Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 30; The Dublin Review, May, 1860; The Christian Examiner, May, 1860; Charles Kingsley to F. D.
Maurice in 1863, in Kingsley"s Life, vol. ii, p. 171; Adam Sedgwick to Livingstone (the explorer), March 16, 1865, in Life and Letters of Sedgwick, vol. ii, pp. 410-412; the Duke of Argyll, The Reign of Law, New York, pp. 16, 18, 31, 116, 117, 120, 159; Joseph P. Thompson, D. D., LL.D., Man in Genesis and Geology, New York, 1870, pp. 48, 49, 82; Canon H. P. Liddon, Sermons preached before the University of Oxford, 1871, Sermon III; St. George Mivart, Evolution and its Consequences, Contemporary Review, Jan. 1872; British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1872, article on The Theory of Evolution; The Lutheran Quarterly, Gettysburg, Pa., April, 1872, article by Rev. Cyrus Thomas, a.s.sistant United States Geological Survey on The Descent of Man, pp. 214, 239, 372-376; The Lutheran Quarterly, July, 1873, article on Some a.s.sumptions against Christianity, by Rev. C. A. Stork, Baltimore, Md., pp. 325, 326; also, in the same number, see a review of Dr. Burr"s Pater Mundi, pp.
474, 475, and contrast with the review in the Andover Review of that period; an article in the Religious Magazine and Monthly Review, Boston, on Religion and Evolution, by Rev. S. R. Calthrop, September, 1873, p. 200; The Popular Science Monthly, January, 1874, article Genesis, Geology, and Evolution; article by Asa Gray, Nature, London, June 4, 1874; Materialism, by Rev. W. Streissguth, Lutheran Quarterly, July, 1875, originally written in German, and translated by J. G. Morris, D. D., pp. 406, 408; Darwinismus und Christenthum, von R. Steck, Ref.
Pfarrer in Dresden, Berlin, 1875, pp. 5,6, and 26, reprinted from the Protestantische Kirchenzeitung, and issued as a tract by the Protestantenverein; Rev. W. E. Adams, article in the Lutheran Quarterly, April, 1879, on Evolution: Shall it be Atheistic? John Wood, Bible Antic.i.p.ations of Modern Science, 1880, pp. 18, 19, 22; Lutheran Quarterly, January, 1881, Some Postulates of the New Ethics, by Rev.
C. A. Stork, D. D.; Lutheran Quarterly, January, 1882, The Religion of Evolution as against the Religion of Jesus, by Prof. W. H. Wynn, Iowa State Agricultural College--this article was republished as a pamphlet; Canon Liddon, prefatory note to sermon on The Recovery of St. Thomas, pp. 4, 11, 12, 13, and 26, preached in St. Paul"s Cathedral, April 23, 1882; Lutheran Quarterly, January 1882, Evolution and the Scripture, by Rev. John A. Earnest, pp. 101, 105; Glimpses in the Twilight, by Rev.
F. G. Lee, D. D., Edinburgh, 1885, especially pp. 18 and 19; the Hibbert Lectures for 1883, by Rev. Charles Beard, pp. 392, 393, et seq.; F.
W. Farrar, D. D., Canon of Westminster, The History of Interpretation, being the Bampton Lectures for 1885, pp. 426, 427; Bishop Temple, Bampton Lectures, pp. 184-186; article Evolution in the Dictionary of Religion, edited by Rev. William Benham, 1887; Prof. Huxley, An Episcopal Trilogy, Nineteenth Century, November, 1887--this article discusses three sermons delivered by the bishops of Carlisle, Bedford, and Manchester, in Manchester Cathedral, during the meeting of the British a.s.sociation, September, 1887--these sermons were afterward published in pamphlet form under the t.i.tle The Advance of Science; John Fiske, Darwinism, and Other Essays, Boston, 1888; Harriet Mackenzie, Evolution illuminating the Bible, London, 1891, dedicated to Prof.
Huxley; H. E. Rye, Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, The Early Narratives of Genesis, London, 1892, preface, pp. vii-ix, pp. 7, 9, 11; Rev. G. M. Searle, of the Catholic University, Washington, article in the Catholic World, November, 1892, pp. 223, 227, 229, 231; for the statement from Keble College, see Rev. Mr. Illingworth, in Lux Mundi.
For Bishop Temple, see citation in Laing. For a complete and admirable acceptance of the evolutionary theory as lifting Christian doctrine and practice to a higher plane, with suggestions for a new theology, see two Sermons by Archdeacon Wilson, of Manchester, S. P. C. K.. London, and Young & Co., New York, 1893; and for a characteristically lucid statement of the most recent development of evolution doctrines, and the relations of Spencer, Weismann, Galton, and others to them, see Lester F. Ward"s Address as President of the Biological Society, Washington, 1891; also, recent articles in the leading English reviews. For a brilliant glorification of evolution by natural selection as a doctrine necessary to then highest and truest view of Christianity, see Prof.
Drummond"s Chautauqua Lectures, published in the British Weekly, London, from April 20 to May 11, 1893.
CHAPTER II. GEOGRAPHY.
I. THE FORM OF THE EARTH.
Among various rude tribes we find survivals of a primitive idea that the earth is a flat table or disk, ceiled, domed, or canopied by the sky, and that the sky rests upon the mountains as pillars. Such a belief is entirely natural; it conforms to the appearance of things, and hence at a very early period entered into various theologies.
In the civilizations of Chaldea and Egypt it was very fully developed.
The a.s.syrian inscriptions deciphered in these latter years represent the G.o.d Marduk as in the beginning creating the heavens and the earth: the earth rests upon the waters; within it is the realm of the dead; above it is spread "the firmament"--a solid dome coming down to the horizon on all sides and resting upon foundations laid in the "great waters" which extend around the earth.
On the east and west sides of this domed firmament are doors, through which the sun enters in the morning and departs at night; above it extends another ocean, which goes down to the ocean surrounding the earth at the horizon on all sides, and which is supported and kept away from the earth by the firmament. Above the firmament and the upper ocean which it supports is the interior of heaven.
The Egyptians considered the earth as a table, flat and oblong, the sky being its ceiling--a huge "firmament" of metal. At the four corners of the earth were the pillars supporting this firmament, and on this solid sky were the "waters above the heavens." They believed that, when chaos was taking form, one of the G.o.ds by main force raised the waters on high and spread them out over the firmament; that on the under side of this solid vault, or ceiling, or firmament, the stars were suspended to light the earth, and that the rains were caused by the letting down of the waters through its windows. This idea and others connected with it seem to have taken strong hold of the Egyptian priestly caste, entering into their theology and sacred science: ceilings of great temples, with stars, constellations, planets, and signs of the zodiac figured upon them, remain to-day as striking evidences of this.
In Persia we have theories of geography based upon similar conceptions and embalmed in sacred texts.
From these and doubtless from earlier sources common to them all came geographical legacies to the Hebrews. Various pa.s.sages in their sacred books, many of them n.o.ble in conception and beautiful in form, regarding "the foundation of the earth upon the waters," "the fountains of the great deep," "the compa.s.s upon the face of the depth," the "firmament,"