aring and fanciful." Such
attempts have been variously classified, but the fact regarding them
all is that each mixes up more or less of science with more or less of
Scripture, and produces a result more or less absurd. Though a few men
here and there have continued these exercises, the capitulation of the
party which set the literal account of the Deluge of Noah against the
facts revealed by geology was at last clearly made.(165)

(165) For Fairholme, see his Mosaic Deluge, London, 1837, p. 358. For a
very just characterization of various schemes of "reconciliation," see
Shields, The Final Philosophy, p. 340.

One of the first evidences of the completeness of this surrender has
been so well related by the eminent physiologist, Dr. W. B. Carpenter,
that it may best be given in his own words: "You are familiar with a
book of considerable value, Dr. W. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. I
happened to know the influences under which that dictionary was
framed. The idea of the publisher and of the editor was to give as much
scholarship and such results of modern criticism as should be compatible
with a very judicious conservatism. There was to be no objection
to geology, but the universality of the Deluge was to be strictly
maintained. The editor committed the article Deluge to a man of very
considerable ability, but when the article came to him he found that
it was so excessively heretical that he could not venture to put it in.
There was not time for a second article under that head, and if you look
in that dictionary you will find under the word Deluge a reference to
Flood. Before Flood came, a second article had been commissioned from a
source that was believed safely conservative; but when the article came
in it was found to be worse than the first. A third article was then
commissioned, and care was taken to secure its 'safety.' If you look
for the word Flood in the dictionary, you will find a reference to Noah.
Under that name you will find an article written by a distinguished
professor of Cambridge, of which I remember that Bishop Colenso said
to me at the time, 'In a very guarded way the writer concedes the whole
thing.' You will see by this under what trammels scientific thought has
laboured in this department of inquiry."(166)

(166) See Official Report of the National Conference of Unitarian and
other Christian Churches held at Saratoga, 1882, p. 97.

A similar surrender was seen when from a