idea that our planet is less than six thousand years
old.

[Sidenote: The question is impersonally solved.] Not but that a
resistance was made. It was, however, of an indirect kind. The contest
might be likened rather to a partisan warfare than to the deliberate
movement of regular armies under recognized commanders. In its history
there is no central figure like Galileo, no representative man, no
brilliant and opportune event like the invention of the telescope. The
question moves on to its solution impersonally. A little advance is made
here by one, there by another. The war was finished, though no great
battle was fought. In the chapter we are entering upon there is,
therefore, none of that dramatic interest connected with the last.
Impersonally the question was decided, and, therefore, impersonally I
must describe it.

[Sidenote: Oriental and Western doctrines of the age of the earth.] In
Oriental countries, where the popular belief assigns to the creation of
man a very ancient date, and even asserts for some empires a duration of
hundreds of thousands of years, no difficulty as respects the age of the
earth was felt, there seeming to have been time enough for every event
that human researches have detected to transpire. But in the West, where
the doctrine that not only the earth, but the universe itself, was
intended for man, has been carried to its consequences with exacting
rigour, circumstances forbid us to admit that there was any needless
delay between the preparation of the habitation and the introduction of
the tenant. They also force upon us the conclusion that a few centuries
constitute a very large portion of the time of human existence, since,
if we adopt the doctrine of an almost limitless period, we should fall
into a difficulty in explaining what has become of the countless myriads
of generations in the long time so past, and, considering that we are
taught that the end of the world is at hand, and must be expected in a
few years at the most, we might seem to arraign the goodness of God in
this, that He has left to their fate immeasurably the larger proportion
of our race, and has restricted His mercy to us alone, who are living in
the departing twilight of the evening of the world.

[Sidenote: Correction of the European doctrine.] But in this, as in the
former case, a closer examination of the facts brings us to the
indisputable conclusion that we have decided unworthily and untruly;
that our gui