Transcribed from the 1870 Macmillan and Co. edition by DavidPrice.
DARWINISM.
A LECTURE
DELIVEREDBEFORE
THE TORQUAY NATURAL HISTORYSOCIETY,
JAN. 31ST, 1870,
BY
THOMAS R. R. STEBBING, M.A.,
Late Fellow and Tutor ofWorcester College, Oxford.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1870.
BY T. COMBE,M.A., E. B. GARDNER, E. P. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A.,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
Darwinism implies almost throughoutthat no universal Deluge has drowned our globe, either within thelast ten thousand years, or even within a period indefinitelylonger. Let us speak with due respect of the contrarybelief. It seems to rest upon the testimony of aVolume the most precious in the world. It was taken forgranted till a few years back as much in science as inreligion. For a while, the arguments that began to beraised against it were met by counter-arguments so plausible, andthe objectors differed so widely among themselves, thatunscientific opinion had a kind of right and prudence in adheringto that which had been taught for centuries, and was still taughtwithout deviation in nursery, and school, and pulpit.
We should have asserted a better right and shown a higherprudence, had we waited, in a matter which concerned science fullas much as it concerned religion, till, by learning facts andweighing arguments, we had become able to form an opinion nolonger unscientific, or, at the very least, to appreciate thedifficulties involved in the ancient belief.
p. 6We areforced to take a controversy of this kind as it stands;otherwise, there is a simple principle which ought to make allcontroversy on the subject needless. All authors endowedwith common sense, let alone divine inspiration, use languagewhich their intended readers may be expected to understand, andlanguage appropriate to the scope and design of theirwritings. Unless, therefore, we suppose that the OldTestament writers proposed to teach natural science to the Hebrewnation, we ought to expect from them what we actually find: as tonatural phenomena, past and present, they use the language not offar-advanced knowledge and minute particular research, but simplythe language current in their own day and nation.
But, setting aside the general principle, in the presentinstance there is a second possibility of quashing thecontroversy, if it can be shown or made probable that the author,whose narrative is in question, never meant to imply that whichfor thousands of years has been held to be his meaning.
The whole point at issue is the universality of theNoachian Deluge, and the narrative has been thought to beuncompromising in its declarations that all the earth, to thevery mountain-tops, was indeed enveloped in water, and, exceptingthe handful rescued in the ark, that all men and cattle andcreeping things and fowls of the air were inexorablydestroyed. But to this view of the narrative there is morethan one objection up