108. The Geology of the Bible; or, God Among the Rocks

The Geology of the Bible; or, God Among the Rocks

2Sa_6:6-7 : ’93And when they came to Nachon’92s threshing floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.’94

A band of music is coming down the road, cornets blown, timbrels struck, harps thrummed, and cymbals clapped, all led on by David, who was himself a musician. They are ahead of a wagon on which is the sacred box called the ’93Ark.’94 The yoke of oxen drawing the wagon imperiled it. Some critics say that the oxen kicked, being struck with the driver’92s goad, but my knowledge of oxen leads me to say that if on a hot day they see a shadow of a tree or wall, they are apt to suddenly shy off to get the coolness of the shadow. I think these oxen so suddenly turned that the sacred box seemed about to be upset and thrown to the ground. Uzzah rushed forward and laid hold of the ark to keep it upright. But he had no right to do so. A special command had been given by the Lord that no one, save the priest, under any circumstances should touch that box. Nervous and excited and irreverent, Uzzah disobeyed when he took hold of the ark, and he died as a consequence.

In all ages, and never more so than in our own day, there are good people all the time afraid that the Holy Bible, which is the sacred ark of our time, will be upset, and they have been a long while afraid that science, and especially geology, would overthrow it. While we are not forbidden to touch the Holy Book, and, on the contrary, are urged to cherish and study it, any one who is afraid of the overthrow of the Book is greatly offending the Lord with his unbelief. The oxen have not yet been yoked which can upset that ark of the world’92s salvation. Written by the Lord Almighty, he is going to protect it until its mission is fulfilled and there shall be no more need of a Bible, because all its prophecies will have been fulfilled, and the human race will have exchanged worlds.

A trumpet and a violin are very different instruments, but they may be played in perfect accord. So the Bible account of the creation of the world and the geological account are different. One story written on parchment and the other on the rocks, yet in perfect and eternal accord. The word ’93day,’94 repeated in the first chapter of Genesis, has thrown into paroxysms of criticism many exegetes. The Hebrew word ’93Yom’94 of the Bible means sometimes what we call a day, and sometimes, as Peter says, it may mean a thousand years (II. Peter, 3:8), and sometimes it means ages; it may mean twenty-four hours or a hundred million years. The order of creation as written in the Book of Genesis is the order of creation discovered by the geologist’92s crowbar. So many Uzzahs have been nervously rushing about for fear the strong oxen of scientific discovery would upset the Bible, that I went somewhat apprehensively to look into the matter, when I found that the Bible and geology agree in saying that first were built the rocks; then the plants greened the earth; then marine creatures were created, from minnow to whale; then the wings of the aerial choirs were colored, and then throats were tuned, and the quadrupeds began to bleat, and bellow, and neigh. What is all this fuss that has been filling the church and the world concerning a fight between Moses and Agassiz? There is no fight at all. But is not the geological impression that the world was millions of years building, antagonistic to the theory of one week’92s creation in Genesis? No. A great house is to be built. A man takes years to draw to the spot the foundation-stone and the heavy timbers. The house is about done, but it is not finished for comfortable residence. Suddenly the owner calls in upholsterers, gas-fitters, paper-hangers, and in one week it is ready for occupancy. Now, it requires no stretch of imagination to realize that God could have taken millions of years for the bringing of the rocks and the timbers of this world together and preparing them for their purpose, yet only one week more to make it habitable, and to furnish it for human residence. Remember, also, that all up and down the Bible the language of the times was used’97common parlance’97and it was not always to be taken literally. Just as we say every day that the world is round, when it is not round. It is spheroidal’97flattened at the poles and protuberant at the equator. Professor Snell, with his chain of triangles, and Professor Varin, with the shortened pendulum of his clock, found it was not round; but we do not become critical of any one who says the world is round. Let us deal as fairly with Moses or Job as we do with each other.

But, for years, good people feared geology, and, without any imploration on their part, apprehended that the rocks and mountains would fall on them, until Hugh Miller, the elder of St. John’92s Presbyterian Church in Edinburgh, and parishioner of Dr. Guthrie, came forth and told the world that there was no contradiction between the mountains and the church, and O. M. Mitchell, a brilliant lecturer before he became brigadier-general’97dying at Beaufort, S. C, during our Civil War’97took the platform and spread his map of the strata of rock in the presence of great audiences, and Prof. Alexander Winchell, of Michigan University, and Prof. Taylor Lewis, of Union College, showed that the ’93without form and void’94 of the first chapter of Genesis was the very chaos out of which the world was formulated, the hands of God packing together the land, and tossing up the mountains into great heights, and flinging down the seas into their great depths. Before God gets through with this world there will hardly be a book of the Bible that will not find confirmation, either in archaeology or geology. Exhumed Babylon, Nineveh, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Egyptian hyeroglyphics are crying out in the ears of the world: ’93The Bible is right! All right! Everlastingly right!’94 Geology is saying the same thing, not only confirming the truth about the original creation, but confirming so many passages of the Scriptures that I can only slightly refer to them.

But you do not really believe that story of the deluge and the sinking of the mountains under the wave? Tell us something we can believe. ’93Believe that,’94 says Geology, ’93for how do you account for those sea-shells and seaweeds and skeletons of sea animals found on the top of some of the highest mountains? If the waters did not sometime rise about the mountains, how did those sea-shells and seaweeds, and skeletons of sea animals get there?’94

But, now, you do not really believe that story about the storm of fire and brimstone whelming Sodom and Gomorrah, and enwrapping Lot’92s wife in such saline encrustations that she halted, a sack of salt? For the confirmation of that story, the geologist goes to that region, and after trying in vain to take a swim in the lake, so thick with salt he cannot swim it’97the lake beneath which Sodom and Gomorrah lie buried’97one drop of the water so full of sulphur and brimstone that it stings your tongue, and for hours you cannot get rid of the nauseating drop’97he digs down and finds sulphur on top of sulphur, brimstone on top of brimstone, while all around there are jets, and crags, and peaks of salt, and if one of them did not become the sarcophagus of Lot’92s wife, they show you how a human being might in that tempest have been halted and packed into a white monument that would defy the ages.

But, now, you do not really believe that New Testament story about the earthquake at the time Christ was crucified, do you? Geology digs down into Mount Calvary and finds the rocks ruptured and aslant, showing the work of an especial earthquake for that mountain, and an earthquake which did not touch the surrounding region. Go and look for yourself, and see there a dip and cleavage of rocks as nowhere else on the planet, Geology thus announcing an especial earthquake for the greatest tragedy of all the centuries’97the assassination of the Son of God.

But you do not really believe that story of the burning of our world at the last day? Geology digs down and finds that the world is already on fire, and that the centre of this globe is incandescent, molten, volcanic; a burning coal, burning out towards the surface; and the internal fires have in some places so far reached the outside rim that I do not see how the world is to keep from complete conflagration until the prophecies concerning it are fulfilled. The lava poured forth from the mouths of Vesuvius, Etna, and Cotopaxi, and Kilauea is only the regurgitation from an awful inflammation thousands of miles deep. There are mines in Pennsylvania and in several parts of the world that have been on fire for many years. These coal mines burning down and the internal fires of the earth burning up, after a while these two fires, the descending and the ascending, may meet, and then will occur the universal conflagration of which the Bible speaks when it says: ’93The elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’94 Instead of disbelieving the Bible story about the final conflagration, since I have looked a little into geology, finding that its explorations are all in the line of confirmation of that prophecy, I wonder how this old craft of a world can keep sailing on much longer. It is like a ship on fire at sea, the fact that the hatches are kept down the only reason that it does not become one complete blaze’97masts on fire, ratlins on fire, everything, from cutwater to taffrail, on fire. After Geology has told us how near the internal fires have already burnt their way toward the surface, it ought not to be a surprise to us at any time to hear the ringing of the fire-bells of a universal conflagration.

I am glad that Geology has been born! Astronomy is grand, because it tells us about other worlds; but I am more interested in our world than in any other world, and Geology tells us all about what was its cradle, and what will be its grave. And this glorious Geology is proving itself more and more the friend of Theology. Thank God for the testimony of the rocks; the Ten Commandments announced among the split rocks of Sinai; the greatest sermon of Christ preached on the basaltic rocks of the Mount of Beatitudes; the Saviour dying on the rocks of Golgotha and buried amid the limestone rocks of Joseph’92s sepulchre; the last day to be ushered in with a rending of rocks, and our blessed Lord suggestively entitled the ’93Rock of Ages.’94 I this day proclaim the banns of a marriage between Geology and Theology, the rugged bridegroom and the fairest of brides. Let them join their hands, and ’93whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder.’94

If anything in the history or condition of the earth seems for the time contradictory of anything in Geology, you must remember that Geology is all the time correcting itself, and more and more coming into harmonization with the great Book. In the last century, the ’93French Scientific Association’94 printed a list of eighty theories of geology which had been adopted and afterward rejected. Lyell, the scientist, announced fifty theories of Geology that had been believed in and afterwards thrown overboard. Meanwhile the story of the Bible has not changed at all, and if Geology has cast out between one and two hundred theories which it once considered established, we can afford to wait until the last theory of Geology antagonizing divine revelation shall have been given up.

Now, in this discourse upon the Geology of the Bible, or God among the Rocks, I charge all agitated and affrighted Uzzahs to calm their pulses about the upsetting of the Scriptures. Let me see! For several hundred years the oxen have been jerking the ark this way and that, and pulling it over rough places and trying to stick it in the mud of derision, and kicking with all the power of their hoofs against the sharp goads, and trying to pull it into the cool shade out of the heats of retribution from a God ’93who will by no means clear the guilty.’94 Yet have you not noticed that the Book has never been upset? The only changes made in it were those verbal ones in the English translation of it, by its learned friends in the Revision of the Scriptures. The Book of Genesis has been thundered against by the mightiest batteries, yet you cannot today find in all the earth a copy of the Bible which has not the fifty chapters of the first copy of the Book of Genesis ever printed, starting with the words, ’93In the beginning God,’94 and closing with Joseph’92s coffin. Fierce attack on the Book of Exodus has been made because they said it was cruel to drown Pharaoh and that the story of Mount Sinai was improbable. But the Book of Exodus remains intact, and not one of us, considering the cruelties which Pharaoh would have continued among the brickkilns of Egypt, would have thrown him a plank if we had seen him drowning. And Mount Sinai is today a pile of tossed and tumbled basalt, recalling the cataclysm of that mountain when the law was given. And, as to those Ten Commandments, all Roman law, all German law, all English law, all American law worth anything is squarely founded on them. So mighty assault for centuries has been made on the Book of Joshua. It was said that the story of the detained sun and moon is an insult to modern astronomy, but that Book of Joshua may be found today in the chapel of every university in America, in defiance of any telescope projected from the roof of that university. The Book of Jonah has been the target of ridicule for the small wit of ages; but there it stands, with its four chapters inviolate, while Geology puts up in its museums remains of sea monsters capable of doing more than the one which swallowed the recreant prophet. There stand the eleven hundred and eighty-nine chapters of the Bible, notwithstanding all the attacks of ages, and there they will stand until they shrivel up in the final fires, which geologists say are already kindled and glowing hotter than the furnaces of an ocean steamer as it puts out from New York Narrows for Hamburg or Southampton. I should not wonder if from the crypt of ancient cities the inspired manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in their own chirography, may yet be taken, and the epistles which Paul dictated to his amanuensis, as well as the one in the apostle’92s own handwriting. At the same ratio of archaeological and geological confirmation of the Scriptures, the time will come when the truth of the Bible will no more be doubted than the common almanac, which tells you the days and the months of the year, and the unbelievers will be accounted harmless lunatics. Forward the telescope and the spectroscope and the chemical batteries, and critically examine the ostracoids of the ocean depths and the bones of the great mammals on the gravely hill-tops! And the mightier and the grander and the deeper and the higher the explorations, the better for our cause. As sure as the thunderbolts of the Almighty are stronger than the steel pens of agnostics, the ark of God will ride on unhurt, and no modern Uzzah need fear any disastrous upsetting. The apocalyptic angel flying through the midst of heaven, proclaiming to all nations and kindred and people and tongues the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ is mightier than the shying off of a yoke of oxen.

The geology of the Bible shows that our religion is not a namby-pamby, nerveless, dilettantish religion. It was projected and has been protected by the God of the Rocks. Religion a balm? Yes. Religion a soothing power? Yes. Religion a beautiful sentiment? Oh, yes! But we must have a God of the Rocks, a mighty God to defend, an omnipotent God to achieve, a force able to overcome all other forces in the universe. Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valley is he, combination of all gentleness and tenderness and sweetness? Oh, yes! But if the mighty forces now arrayed for the destruction of the nations are to be met and conquered, we must have a God of the Rocks’97the ’93Lion of Judah’92s Tribe,’94 as well as the ’93Lamb who was slain.’94 One hundred and thirty times does the Bible speak of the Rock as defense, or fortress, as refuge, as overpowering strength. David, the psalmist, lived among the rocks, and they reminded him of the Almighty, and he ejaculates: ’93The Lord liveth; blessed be my rock.’94 ’93Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.’94 And then, as if his prayer had been answered, he feels the strength come into his soul, and he cries out: ’93The Lord is my rock;’94 ’93He shall set me upon a rock.’94 Would the Bible present a sublime picture of motherly desperation in defense of her children’97it shows us Rizpah on the rock for three months, with disheveled hair and wild screams, fighting back vultures and jackals from the corpses of her sons. Would the Bible set forth the hardness of the heart and the Gospel’92s power to overcome it’97it tells us of the ’93hammer that breaketh the rocks in pieces.’94 Would our Lord represent the durability of his church against all assault’97he says: ’93Upon this Rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’94 Would he close his Sermon on the Mount with a peroration that would resound through centuries, standing on a rock so high that it overlooks Lake Galilee to the right, and on a clear day overlooks the Mediterranean to the left, I hear him stamp his foot on the rock beneath him as he cries to the surging multitudes at the base of that rock: ’93Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.’94 We want a swarthy, a stalwart, a brawny religion. We have a great many good people who can sit and gently rock the cradle of their infantile hopes, and can faintly smile when good is accomplished, and walk softly through a sickroom, and live inoffensive lives, and manage to tread on no one’92s prejudices; and their religion is at the best when the wind is from the northwest and the thermometer at 70 degrees Fahrenheit; and they have their spheres, and may God prosper them. But we want in this great battle for God against the allied forces of perdition some John Knoxes, some Martin Luthers’97men of nerve and faith and prowess, like the Huguenots and the Pilgrim Fathers and the Dutch at Leyden keeping back the enemy until the tides of the sea came in. Lord, God of the Rocks! help us in this awful struggle, in which heaven or hell is bound to beat. It is a mighty thing to have all heaven for reinforcement.

How much the rocks have had to do with the cause of God in all ages! In the wilderness God’92s Israel were fed with honey out of the rock. How the Rock of Horeb paid Moses back in gushing, rippling, sparkling water for the two stout strokes with which he struck it! And there stands the rock with name’97I guess the longest word in the Bible’97sela-hammah-lekoth’97and it was worthy of a resounding, sesquipedalian nomenclature, for at that rock Saul was compelled to quit his pursuit of David and go home and look after the Philistines, who were making a flank movement. There were the rocks of Bozez and Seneh, between which Jonathan climbed up and sent flying in retreat the garrison of the uncircumcised. And yonder see David and his men hidden in the rocks of Adullam and En-gedi!

But while I go on with my study of the Geology of the Bible, or God among the Rocks, I get a more intelligent and helpful idea of Divine deliberation. These rocks, the growth of thousands of years’97and Geology says, of millions of years’97ought to show the prolongation of God’92s plans, and cure our impatience because things are not done in short order. Men, without seeing it, become critical of the Almighty and think ’93Why does he not do this and do that, and do it right away?’94 We feel sometimes as if we could not wait. Well, I guess we will have to wait. God is never in a hurry, except about two things. His plans, sweeping through eternity, are beyond our comprehension. They have such wide circle, such vastness of revolution, such infinitude, that we cannot compass them. Indeed, he would not be much of a God whom we could thoroughly understand. That would not be much of a father who had no thoughts or plans larger than his babe of one year could compass. If God takes millions of years to make one rock, do not let us become critical if he takes twenty years, or a century, or several centuries to do that which we would like to have done immediately. Do not repeat the folly of those who conclude there is no God, or that he is not in sympathy with the right and the good because he does not do certain things in the time we set apart for their performance. Do not let us hold up our little watch with its tiny hour hand and minute hand, and by it try to correct the clock of the universe, its pendulum taking five hundred years to swing this way, and five hundred years to swing that way. Do not let us set up our little spinning-wheel beside the loom in which God weaves sunrises and sunsets and auroras. We have the best of authority for saying that ’93one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’94 Do not expect that Uzzah’92s oxen, even if they do not shy off, but go straight ahead, can keep up with the fire-shod lightnings.

But that was not a slip of the tongue when I said that God is never in a hurry except in two things. Those two things are, when he goes to save a repentant sinner and comfort a praying mourner. The one divine hurry was set forth in the parable of the prodigal son, when it says, ’93the father ran.’94 He was old, and I suppose he had as much as he could do to walk, but the sight of his bad boy coming home limbered the stiff knees and lengthened the shortened pace of the old man into an athletic stride. ’93The father ran!’94 Put it into your oratorios. Sound it with full orchestra. Repeat it through all heavens: ’93The father ran!’94 O, soul farthest off, come back! and God, your Father, will come out to meet you at full run! The other time when God is in a hurry is when a troubled soul calls for comfort. Then the Bible represents the divine gait and swing and velocity by the reindeer, saying: ’93Be thou like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Bether.’94 That parenthesis I put in, thinking that there may be some repentant sinner who wants to find pardon or some mourning soul who needs comfort, and therefore I mention the two things about which God is in a great hurry.

But concerning all the vast things of God’92s government of the universe, be patient with the carrying out of the plans beyond our measurement. Naturalists tell us that there are insects that are born and die within an hour, and that there are several generations of them in one day; and if one of those July insects of an hour should say: ’93How slow everything goes! I was told in the chrysalis state by a wondrous instinct that I would find in this world seasons of the year’97spring, summer, autumn, and winter. But where are the autumnal forests upholstered in fire, and where are the glorious springtimes, with orchards waving their censers of perfume before the altars of the morning? I do not believe there are any autumns or springtimes;’94 if then a golden eagle, many years old, in a cage nearby, heard the hum of that complaining insect, it might well answer: ’93O, summer insect of an hour, though your life is so short that you cannot see the magnificent turn of the seasons, I can testify to their reality, for I have seen them roll. When I was young, and before I was imprisoned in this cage, I brushed their gorgeous leafage and their fragrant blossoms with my own wing. You live an hour: I have lived thirty years. But in one of my flights high up, the gate of heaven open for a soul to go in or a seraph to come out, I heard the choirs chanting, ’91From everlasting to everlasting thou art God!’92 And it was an antiphonal in which all heaven responded, ’91From everlasting to everlasting thou art God!’92’93 O man! O woman! so far as your earthly existence is concerned, only the insect of an hour, be not impatient with the workings of the Omnipotent and the Eternal.

And now, for your solace and your safety, I ask you to come under the shelter, and into the deep clefts, and the almighty defense of a Rock that is higher than you, higher than any Gibraltar, higher than the Himalayas’97the ’93Rock of Ages,’94’97that will shelter you from the storm, that will hide you from your enemies, that will stand when the earthquakes of the last day get their pry under the mountains and hurl them into seas boiling with the fires which are already burning their way out from red-hot centres toward the surfaces, which are already here and there spouting with fire amid the quaking of the mountains, under the look and touch of him, of whom it is said in the sublimest sentence ever written: ’93He looketh upon the mountains, and they tremble: He toucheth the hills and they smoke!’94

Hie you one and all to the Rock of Ages! And now, as before this sermon on the Rocks I gave out the significant and appropriate hymn, ’93How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord,’94 I will give out after this sermon on the Rocks, the significant and appropriate hymn:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in thee!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage