theologians of France on their
admirable attitude: "Instinctively," he says, "they still insist upon
deriving the fossils from Noah's Flood."(171) In 1875 the Abbe Choyer
published at Paris and Angers a text-book widely approved by Church
authorities, in which he took similar ground; and in 1877 the Jesuit
father Bosizio published at Mayence a treatise on Geology and the
Deluge, endeavouring to hold the world to the old solution of the
problem, allowing, indeed, that the "days" of Creation were long
periods, but making atonement for this concession by sneers at
Darwin.(172)

(171) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 472.

(172) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 478, and Bosizio, Geologie und die
Sundfluth, Mayence, 1877, preface, p. xiv.

In the Russo-Greek Church, in 1869, Archbishop Macarius, of Lithuania,
urged the necessity of believing that Creation in six days of ordinary
time and the Deluge of Noah are the only causes of all that geology
seeks to explain; and, as late as 1876, another eminent theologian of
the same Church went even farther, and refused to allow the faithful to
believe that any change had taken place since "the beginning" mentioned
in Genesis, when the strata of the earth were laid, tilted, and twisted,
and the fossils scattered among them by the hand of the Almighty during
six ordinary days.(173)

(173) See Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 472, 571, and elsewhere; also citations
in Reusch and Shields.

In the Lutheran branch of the Protestant Church we also find echoes
of the old belief. Keil, eminent in scriptural interpretation at the
University of Dorpat, gave forth in 1860 a treatise insisting that
geology is rendered futile and its explanations vain by two great facts:
the Curse which drove Adam and Eve out of Eden, and the Flood that
destroyed all living things save Noah, his family, and the animals in
the ark. In 1867, Phillippi, and in 1869, Dieterich, both theologians
of eminence, took virtually the same ground in Germany, the latter
attempting to beat back the scientific hosts with a phrase apparently
pithy, but really hollow--the declaration that "modern geology observes
what is, but has no right to judge concerning the beginning of things."
As late as 1876, Zugler took a similar view, and a multitude of lesser
lights, through pulpit and press, brought these antiscientific doctrines
to bear upon the people at large--the only effect being to arouse grave
doubts regarding Christianity