"[240]
But while these attempts to preserve the old theory as to fossil
remains of lower animals were thus pressed, there appeared upon
the geological field a new scientific column far more terrible
to the old doctrines than any which had been seen previously.
For, just at the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, geologists began to examine the caves and beds of drift
in various parts of the world; and within a few years from that
time a series of discoveries began in France, in Belgium, in
England, in Brazil, in Sicily, in India, in Egypt, and in
America, which established the fact that a period of time much
greater than any which had before been thought of had elapsed
since the first human occupation of the earth. The chronologies
of Archbishop Usher, Petavius, Bossuet, and the other great
authorities on which theology had securely leaned, were found
worthless. It was clearly seen that, no matter how well based
upon the Old Testament genealogies and lives of the patriarchs,
all these systems must go for nothing.
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