EBOOK CONTINENTAL MONTHLY ***
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THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
VOL. V.--APRIL, 1864.--No. IV.
SIR CHARLES LYELL ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.[1]
When Thomas Chalmers, sixty years ago, lecturing at St. Andrews,
ventured to announce his conviction that 'the writings of Moses do not
fix the antiquity of the globe,' he startled and alarmed, to no small
degree, the orthodoxy of the day. It was a statement far in advance of
the religious thinking of the time. That massive breadth and
comprehensiveness of intellect which soon placed him, _facile princeps_,
at the head of the clergy of Scotland, joined with a candor, and
ingenuous honesty, which made him admired and beloved by all, could not
fail to perceive, and would not hesitate to acknowledge, the force of
the evidence then for some time slowly but steadily and surely
accumulating from the investigations and discoveries of geological
science, which has forced back the origin of the earth to a vast and
undated antiquity.
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