[Transcriber's note: All footnotes are renumbered and moved to the end of the text before the index.]

THE

ORIGIN OF THE WORLD,

ACCORDING TO

REVELATION AND SCIENCE.

By J. W. DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S.,

PRINCIPAL AND VICE-CHANCELLOR OF M'GILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL; AUTHOR OF
"ACADIAN GEOLOGY," "THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN," "LIFE'S DAWN ON
EARTH," ETC.

"Speak to the Earth, and it shall teach thee."
—Job.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1877.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY
THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF DUFFERIN,
K.P., K.C.B., ETC.,
GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF CANADA,

This Work is Respectfully Dedicated,

AS A SLIGHT TRIBUTE OF ESTEEM TO ONE WHO GRACES THE
HIGHEST POSITION IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY HIS
EMINENT PERSONAL QUALITIES, HIS REPUTATION AS
A STATESMAN AND AN AUTHOR, AND HIS KIND
AND ENLIGHTENED PATRONAGE OF EDUCATION,
LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE.

PREFACE.

The scope of this work is in the main identical with that of "Archaia," published in 1860; but in attempting to prepare a new edition brought up to the present condition of the subject, it was found that so much required to be rewritten as to make it essentially a new book, and it was therefore decided to give it a new name, more clearly indicating its character and purpose.

The intention of this new publication is to throw as much light as possible on the present condition of the much-agitated questions respecting the origin of the world and its inhabitants. To students of the Bible it will afford the means of determining the precise import of the biblical references to creation, and of their relation to what is known from other sources. To geologists and biologists it is intended to give some intelligible explanation of the connection of the doctrines of revealed religion with the results of their respective sciences.

A still higher end to which the author would gladly contribute is that of aiding thoughtful men perplexed with the apparent antagonisms of science and religion, and of indicating how they may best harmonize our great and growing knowledge of nature with our old and cherished beliefs as to the origin and destiny of man.

In aiming at these results, it has not been thought necessary to assume a controversial attitude or to stand on the defensive, either with regard to religion or science, but rather to attempt to arrive at broad and comprehensive views which may exhibit those higher harmonies of the spiritual and the natural which they derive from their common Author, and which reach beyond the petty difficulties arising from narrow or imperfect views of either or both. Such an aim is too high to be fully attained, but in so far as it can be reached we may hope to rescue science from a dry and barren infidelity, and religion from mere fruitless sentiment or enfeebling superstition.

Since the publication of "Archaia," the subject of which it treats has passed through several phases, but the author has seen no reason to abandon in the least degree the principles of interpretation on which he then insisted, and he takes a hopeful view as to their ultimate prevalence. It is true that the wide acceptance of hypotheses of "evolution" has led to a more decided antagonism than heretofore between some of the utterances of scientific men and the religious ideas of mankind, and to a contemptuous disregard of revealed religion in the more shallow literature of the time; but, on the other hand, a barrier of scientific fact and induction has been slowly rising to stem this current of crude and rash hypothesis. Of this nature are the great discoveries as to the physical constitution and probable origin of the universe, the doctrine of the correlation and conservation of forces, the new estimates of the age of the earth, the overthrow of the doctrine of spontaneous generation, the high bodily and mental type of the earliest known men, the light which philology has thrown on the unity of language, our growing knowledge of the uniformity of the constructive and other habits of primitive men, and of the condition of man in the earlier historic time, the greater completeness of our conceptions as to the phenomena of life and their relation to organizable matters—all these and many other aspects of the later progress of science must tend to bring it back into greater harmony with revealed religion.

On the other side, there has been a growing disposition on the part of theologians to inquire as to the actual views of nature presented in the Bible, and to separate these from those accretions of obsolete philosophy which have been too often confounded with them. With respect to the first chapter of Genesis more especially, there has been a decided growth in the acceptance of those principles for which I contended in 1860. In illustration of this I may refer to the fact that in 1862 it was precisely on these principles that Dr. McCaul conducted his able defence of the Mosaic record of creation in the "Aids to Faith," which may almost be regarded as an authoritative expression of the views of orthodox Christians in opposition to those of the once notorious "Essays and Reviews." Equally significant is the adoption of this method of interpretation by Dr. Tayler Lewis in his masterly "Special Introduction" to the first chapter of Genesis, in the American edition of Lange's Commentary, edited by Dr. Philip Schaff; and the manifest approval with which the lucid statement of the relations of Geology and the Bible by Dr. Arnold Guyot, was received by the great gathering of divines at the Convention of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, in 1873, bears testimony to the same fact. The author has also had the honor of being invited to illustrate this mode of reconciliation to the students of two of the most important theological colleges in America, in lectures afterwards published and widely circulated.

The time is perhaps nearer than we anticipate when Natural Science and Theology will unite in the conviction that the first chapter of Genesis "stands alone among the traditions of mankind in the wonderful simplicity and grandeur of its words," and that "the meaning of these words is always a meaning ahead of science—not because it anticipates the results of science, but because it is independent of them, and runs as it were round the outer margin of all possible discovery." [1]

In the Appendix the reader will find several short essays on special points collateral to the general subject, and important in the solution of some of its difficulties, but which could not be conveniently included in the text. More especially I would refer to the summaries given in the Appendix of the present state of our knowledge as to the origin of life, of species, and of man—topics not discussed in much detail in the body of the work, both because of the wide fields of controversy to which they lead, and because I have treated of them somewhat fully in a previous work, "The Story of the Earth and Man," in which the detailed history of life as disclosed by