Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

BIBLICAL SABBATHISM 77
could not give up the painful and slow conclusion
of five and twenty years' study of geology, and believe
that God has written on the rocks one enormous
and superfluous lie.' , . . My father could not
recover from amazement at having offended everybody
by an enterprise which had been undertaken
in the cause of universal reconciliation. . . . How
much devotion had he given . . . only to be left
storming around this red morass [the newly made
lawn where Gosse used wearily to exercise] with no
one in the world to care for him except one palefaced
child with its cheek pressed to the window."
Such was the typical and heart-breaking result of
literalism in religion clashing with literalism In science—for
there is literalism even In geology.
What
then? Are we to side with geology against Genesis?
The established results of modern geology,
so far as a growing science can boast of established
results, we do not question. But Is geology a form
of theology? No great geologist would say so;
none would make such a pretension. Geology does
not deal with "the beginning," but with the long
process of becoming. Genesis, too, speaks of the
process of becoming, but speaks as If it were brief.
Is there a contradiction here? Literally there is,
but not spiritually. Geology does not pretend to