Science
in Christian PerspectiveScience
in Christian Perspective
Science Falsely So-Called: Evolution
and Adventists in the Nineteenth
Century
RONALD L.NUMBERS
Department of the History of Medicine
University of Wisconsin
Madison WI 53706
From: JASA 27
(March 1975): 18-23.
Historians of science in America have known for some time now that within two
decades of the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 large
numbers of educated Americans had embraced some theory of organic evolution.1
They have also known that the nineteenth-century debate over evolution did not
focus on the question of Scriptural authority, like the
fundamentalist controversy
the following century, but rather centered on the possibility of successfully
harmonizing biological development with the popular doctrines of
natural theology.2
Yet scarcely anything is known about the response of the larger segment of the
population with little or no formal education, that element of the
citizenry which
several decades later filled the ranks of the fundamentalist army.
Did these people,
if indeed they had any knowledge of evolution at all, share the
concerns of their
better educated countrymen? Or were their attitudes more like those
of the twentieth-century
fundamentalists? In hope of finding a partial answer to these questions, I have
investigated the literature of the
Seventh-day Adventist church, a denomination active
in the crusade against evolution in the 1920s.3
Seventh-day Adventists
Seventh-day Adventists trace their origins hack to the Millerite
movement of the
1830s and early 1840s. Following the failure of Christ to appear either in 1843
or 1844, a number of disappointed Millerites returned to their Bibles to search
for new light. They concluded that the Second Coming was truly
imminent, but that
it would not occur until the world had been warned of the importance of keeping
the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week. In 1863 this group, led
by James and
Ellen White and Joseph Bates, formally organized itself as the
Seventh-day Adventist
church. At the time of organization the church consisted of about 3,500 members
and twenty-two ordained ministers, concentrated cast of the Missouri
River and
north of the Confederacy. Headquarters were set up at Battle Creek, Michigan.
By the end of the century the church had a worldwide membership of over 75,000,
with more than 500 ordained ministers .4 Only a handful of these
members had been
exposed to higher education.5
Unlike most of the leaders of the mainline Protestant churches of the
nineteenth
century, who even before 1859 had abandoned belief in the literality
of the Mosaic
story of creation, Adventist writers defended both the historical and
scientific
accuracy of the first chapters of Genesis. Their primary concern was
not harmonizing
science with natural theology but preserving the authority of the Scriptures.
Ellen White, a prophetess with approximately three years of
elementary' schooling
and the most influential voice among early Adventists, consistently relegated
scientific knowledge to a position much subordinate to that of
revealed knowledge.
'The Bible is not to be tested by men's ideas of science," she
wrote, "but
science is to he brought to the test of this unerring standard."
Since Moses
had written his account of creation "under the guidance of the Spirit of
God," any theory contradicting it was to be rejected out of hand. So far
as she was concerned, Moses had left no doubt that the days of
creation were six
in number and of twentyfour hours' duration, and that the mode of creation had
not involved the use of natural laws.6
The editors of the official church paper, the Review and Herald,
shared Mrs. White's
views on the relationship between science and religion. Early in 1859, several
months before the publication of the Origin of Species, they
reprinted an excerpt
from a non-Adventist source claiming that "while the Bible does not teach
science, when it does refer to science it is always correct." In support
of this claim the author ironically cited Biblical allusions to the
earth's rotundity.7
A couple years later the same periodical carried an article by a
youthful Adventist
evangelist, J. N. Loughborough, affirming the superior role of revealed
knowledge. God's will must be understood through a written revelation, argued
Loughhrough, because reason and nature are untrustworthy.8 This was a theme frequently repeated in Adventist'
literature.
The consequences of giving up one's belief in the literality of Genesis seemed to be immense, because the reliability of the entire Bible rested upon the truth of the creation story.
John Harvey Kellogg
One of the few warnings against an unreasoning dependence upon the
Bible in matters
of science came from a member of the small educated minority in the church, a
physician named John Harvey Kellogg, recently graduated from the
Bellevue Hospital
Medical College in New York City and serving as professor of physics
in the denomination's
newly founded Battle Creek College. Writing in 1879 in a small volume entitled
Harmony of Science and the Bible, Kellogg (better remembered by
Americans as the
inventor of peanut butter, corn flakes, and other dry cereals) listed as one of
the chief factors responsible for the recurring conflict between religion and
science the habit of religionists of "Holding the Bible as unimpeachable
authority on all subjects, as the universal test of truth, and
attaching all importance
to a particular interpretation of its language." Though Kellogg apparently
believed in a special creation, he expressed a willingness to
recognize the legitimacy
of science within its own sphere. "Science deals chiefly with one sort of
truths, religion with another class of truths." If only this division were
honored, all conflict would cease.9 The leaders of the church, especially Mrs.
White, did not look favorably upon the ambitious physician's habit of thinking
and operating independently, and eventually Kellogg and the Adventists parted
ways.10
Geology and Uniformity
As we have already mentioned, Adventists placed their faith
in the Bible rather than science because of a deep suspicion of human reason.
And nothing tended to confirm this suspicion better than the science
of geology,
which depended so crucially on the assumption of uniformity. Thus,
while the leaders
of American thought were discussing the merits of Darwinism,
Adventists were often
preoccupied with the real or imagined fallacies of geology, which they saw as
providing a foundation for organic evolution-both theories going "hand in
hand to destroy faith in the word of God.11 Seldom did they pass
up an opportunity
to point a scoffing finger at "the dreamy, incoherent utterances
of geologists
."12 Uriah Smith, editor of the Review and Herald, occasionally
led the attack
himself. Though he had never attended college, he had no fear of doing battle
with the Goliaths of the scientific world. Who, he asked, had "ever proven
or tried to prove" the validity of the uniformity principle?
"Nobody"
was the obvious answer. "Usually it is either 'presumed that the
reader will
he convinced' of the matter, or certain results are 'supposed to have
been effected
by such causes as are operating at present.' "13 The numerous
controversies
and lack of consensus within the geological community seemed to lend credence
to Smith's charges of unreliability. Even the foremost geological
authors of the
day-William Buckland, Hugh Miller, Charles Lyell, and Edward Hitchcock
frequently
contradicted one another. 14
Quite naturally Smith opened the pages of the Review and Herald to
other critics
of geology. The titles adequately reveal the recurring message:
"The Blunders
of Geologists," "The Uncertainty of Geological
Science," and "False
Theories of Geologists."15 Typical is the comment of George W.
Amadon, the
28-yearold editor of the Youth's Instructor, a periodical for Adventist young
people: "No class of scientific men are more hasty and rash in
making assertions
than some geologists." "As a science it is not demonstrative, and its
oracles are contradictory and clash with each other."16 Likewise,
the secretary
of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, C. M. Stone, warned that
"the guess-work of geologists is a very' unsafe foundation on
which to build
theories that go hack of the record of Moses," and then went on
to deny the
validity of the principle of uniformity.17
The editors of the Review and Herald regularly reprinted what they considered
to he devastating examples of the "extravagant pretensions" and the
"absurdity" of geology. In one of these a Reformed
Presbyterian minister
in Chicago, Robert Patterson, observed that to construct the earth's
history from
processes currently going on was like measuring "a youth of six feet high,
and finding that he grew half an inch last year, [concluding] thence
that he was
a hundred and forty-four years old."18 In another, President Joseph
F. Tuttle of Wabash College was said to have scored "a capital bit on that
popular farce and prime minister of skepticism, geological
guess-work," when
he suggested that fossils-particularly human ones-found in geological
formations
much lower and earlier than usually assigned to men had probably
dropped to that
level during earthquakes.19 On a third occasion, an article in
the Scientific
American estimating the age of the earth to be six hundred million
years elicited
the following critique:
The reader will see at once the basis of this wonderful conclusion: first, an
"estimate," then a "probability,"
then an "assumption," then a fact which is available
only if the assumption is correct, then another "assumption," then the grand "conclusion." And having thus positively
proved Moses to he five hundred and ninetynine millions, nine hundred
and ninety-four
thousand sears from the truth, they are happy! How nice it is to have such
clear
and positive knowledge about these
things 20
Alonzo T. Jones
Among the sizable group of Adventists to comment on geology, not one
had any first-hand
acquaintance with the science and few gave any evidence that they had read more
than popular accounts of what geologists did. A notable exception was the West
Coast minister Alonzo T. Jones, a self-taught ex-soldier converted
while stationed
at Fort \Valla Walla, Washington. Unlike many of his colleagues,
Jones took geology
seriously-at least seriously enough to read Archibald Geikie's Text Book of
Geology, one of the most authoritative works in the field, three
times through. All this study, however, merely convinced him of the
total unreliability
of geology, a theme he developed at length in a series of lead articles for the
Review and Herald in 1883.21 Here he accused geologists not only of beginning
their reasonings with an assumption, but of using circular arguments. The most
blatant instances of the latter were two statements by Geikie on
dating. "One
of these says that the relative age of the rocks' is determined by the fossils.
The other says that the relative age of the fossils is determined by
the rocks."
"What is this but reasoning in a circle?" asked Jones. This example
and others like it forced him to conclude that "the only certain
thing about
[geological science], is its uncertainty."22
Science Falsely So-Called
Seventh-day Adventists were understandably reluctant to admit having
any hostility
toward what they liked to call "true science," that is, science based
upon "facts" and in agreement with the Bible. Their criticisms were
directed solely at "science falsely so-called," hypothetical science
in conflict with revelation.23 Scientific theories and hypotheses regarding the
history of the earth were acceptable only under the severest restrictions. In
formulating them, scientists were not to "assume any condition
of the world,
the existence of any agents, or the occurrence of any events, the
reality of which
they cannot demonstrate; and all their assumptions and reasonings
must be consistent
with all the facts, and all the laws of nature, which the question
affects."24
It did not disturb Adventists that these stipulations also ruled out
as unscientific
all supernatural explanations of the creation of the world. They were happy to
remove the entire question of origins from the sphere of science to the realm
of faith. "It is by faith and not by exploration and observation, that we
understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,"
wrote R. F. Cottrell,
an Adventist author and minister. "The believer walks by faith,
not by sight.
In those things which are beyond his own observation he takes the word of God,
simply believing what God has said."25
In defending their extreme Baconian view of science, Adventists
revealed a deep-seated anti-intellectual prejudice, not uncommon among
overly-democratic and
under-educated
Americans. In 1872 the Review and Herald reprinted an address by the
Presbyterian
minister John Hall, in which he warmly thanked scientists for
collecting so many
useful facts, then denied them an exclusive right to interpret what
they had discovered.
"When they come to reason upon these facts," he said,
they use just the same kind of mind that God has given me; and I
endeavor to use
my mind upon these facts aright, just as truly as they claim to use their minds
upon the facts. Hence . . . I claim the right to reason upon them
just as truly
as they can claim it; and I do not think the less of myself it in
many instances
I draw conclusions from the facts that have thus became common
property that are
not the conclusions that they venture to draw!26
Adventists could not have agreed more .27
Conflict with Revelation
The heart of Adventist opposition to developmental theories, both organic and
inorganic, was not the uncertain status of these ideas; it was their apparent
conflict with revelation. The Bible clearly stated that the world was made in
"six natural days," and Adventists rebelled at the thought
of sacrificing
this divine truth "ml the altar of geological speculation."
Ellen White consistently relegated scientific knowledge to a position
much subordinate
to that of revealed knowledge.
The consequences of giving up one's belief in the literality of Genesis seemed
to them to be immense, because the reliability of the entire Bible rested upon
the truth of the creation story'. Few spelled out the implications more sharply
than David Nevins Lord, a New York millenarian and former editor of
the Theological
and Literary Journal. Genesis and geology, he asserted, are mutually
contradictory.
If the geologists are correct, the Mosaic record is false and God is
a liar. And
"it is impossible that God should not have spoken the
truth," The decision
to accept or reject
geology thus took on tremendous theological significance. "If founded n
just grounds, [geology] disproves the inspiration, not only of the
record in Genesis
of the creation, but of the whole of the writings of Moses, and thence, , . .
of the whole of the Old and New Testaments, and divests Christianity itself of
its title to be received as a divine institution."28
Compounding the difficulty of harmonizing any developmental view with the Bible
were the statements of Ellen White. Writing in Spiritual Gifts in
1864, she claimed
to have seen in vision the actual creation of the world. Specifically, she was
shown "that the first week, in which God performed the work of creation in
six days and rested on the seventh day, was just like every other
week ."29
For many Adventists, the rejection of her testimony would have been tantamount
to repudiating God's own word.
A Threat to Seventh-Day Sabbath
Adventists were especially fearful of anything that might weaken
their arguments
for observing the seventh-day Sabbath as a memorial of a six-day creation. And
theories of evolutionary development threatened to do just that, According to
Ellen White, "the infidel supposition, that the events of the first week
required seven vast, indefinite periods for their accomplishment,
strikes directly
at the foundation of the Sabbath of the fourth
commandment."30 Her husband,
James, a founding father of the denomination and president of the
General Conference,
also warned that any deviation from the traditional view of creation
would undermine
the doctrine of the Sabbath along with the rest of the Bible. If the
days of creation
were assumed to be long, indefinite stretches of time, then
the period of man's toils and cares before a day of rest, is also immense, covering millions of years. And if the last day of the first week, the day no which Jehovah rested from his work, was another immense indefinite period, the weekly Sabbath of the Old and New Testaments, which was made for man and commanded in the moral laws to be kept holy, is also an immense period of time.
Equally distressing was the thought that
if the six days of creation, as we are told, were six indefinite periods, each
covering millions of years, Adam, created so the early part of the
sixth immense
period, and dying at the age of nine hundred and thirty, leaving
millions of years
to reacts to the close of that sixth period, died without keeping a
single Sabbath.
Such ideas, making the Bible seem absurd, obviously could not be tolerated.31
The only accommodation to natural history Adventists were ever
willing to discuss
was the possibility of allowing an extended period of time between an initial
creation of inorganic matter 'in the beginning," depicted in the
first verse
of Genesis 1, and a later six-day creation about 6,000 years ago. In
the opinion
of at least one Adventist, a midwestern minister named J. P.
Henderson, this view
did "no violence to a single statement in the Bible."32 Yet, despite
its innocuousness, this idea never gained much popularity among Adventists. The
prevailing attitude was that expressed by the French-Canadian evangelist D. T.
Bourdeau. "Mark! the Bible says that God made the heaven and
earth, as well
as all that in them is, in six days," he wrote in the Review and Herald.
"It is in the beginning of the first day, therefore, that God created the
heaven and the earth, as spoken in Gen. i, I".33
Literal Reading of Genesis
Their strict adherence to a literal reading of Genesis prevented Adventists from
adopting even the most theistic of evolutionary ideas and thus separated them
from the mainstream of American thought. Well before 1859 educated
Americans had
reinterpreted Genesis to make room for the advancement of science. During
Among the sizable group to comment on geology, not one had any firsthand acquaintance with the science and few gave any evidence that they had read more than popular accounts of what geologists did.
the l830s and 1840s Edward Hitchcock of Amherst College influenced
many to embrace
a view similar to that advocated by Henderson above, with the
significant difference
that Hitchcock's disciples allowed for the appearance of a succession of plants
and animals prior to the Mosaic creation. In the following decades the educated
often found it more reasonable to assume that the six days spoken of by Moses
were not twenty-four hours in length but long intervals, a
compromise advocated by scientific notables like Yale's Benjamin Silliman and
James Dwight Dana and Princeton's Arnold Guyot. Either of these
interpretations
permitted the orthodox to adopt a theistic brand of evolution without seeming
to depart from the intended revelation.34
Intervention vs Providence
Adventists also ran counter to prevailing theological currents in
their insistence
upon miraculous special providcssces as the mode of creation. By the
second half
of the nineteenth century the religious leaders of America were
placing less emphasis
on supernatural interventions in the natural order and more on God's
general providence
through the secondary laws of nature. Thus they could without
difficulty explain
evolution simply as God's way of creating with natural lavs.35 The Adventists,
however, saw evolution as restricting, if not altogether abolishing, God's role
in the work of creation. It "is the last and most plausible
attempt of infidelity
to vote the throne of the adorable Creator vacant," wrote one
author in the
Review and Herald.36 Another described it as "only an attempt to
eject God,
and to postpone him, and to put him clear out of reach."37
Because of its impious tendencies, evolution was commonly labeled
"atheistic"
or "infidel," and its founders and supporters fared no
better. The Review
and Herald, for example, unapologetically published Thomas Carlyle's
description
of Darwin as an unintelligent atheist, and reprinted a statement that "All
the leading scientists who believe in evolution, without one
exception the world
over, are infidel."38 The fact that theistic evolution was widely held
in the Christian world-"almost all-pervading in the orthodox and
evangelical
churches, schools, and colleges"-carried
no weight with the Adventists. It was merely additional evidence of
the apostasy
afflicting the nation's leading churches, explained W. H. Littlejohn, the blind
president of Battle Creek College.39
Of special concern to many Adventists, as well as to
twentieth-century fundamentalists,
was the possible effect of evolutionary theories on the spiritual
lives of their
children. "This is a very serious matter," warned J. 0. Corliss in a
Sabbath-afternoon sermon to the Adventists of Battle Creek in 1880.
We are forced to see our children, before they are old
enough to carefully weigh these matters, and become enabled to
discriminate between truth and error, imbibe sentiments from text books at school, that,
despite time
religious influence at home, ripen them into skeptics and infidels at an early
age.40
To guard against this eventuality, Adventists turned increasingly to
the protection
of denominationally run schools, from the first grade through college.
Nontheological Considerations
Non-sociological considerations played a secondary, but significant,
role its the
Adventist resistance to organic evolution. Human vanity rebelled at
the prospect
of relinquishing an honored position at the head of created beings, only to be
herded together "with four-footed beasts and creeping
things," over which
man had formerly had dominion. Darwinism, complained
one unhappy critic, "tears the crown from our heads; it treats
us as bastards
and not sons, and reveals the degrading fact that man in his best estate-even
Mr. Darwin-is but a civilized, dressed up, educated monkey, who has
lost his tail."41
For those who believed they had been created in the image of God himself, the
demotion was indeed humiliating. The descendants of baboons are certainly not
entitled to pride, wrote Adolphus Smith, an Adventist layman from Grand Rapids,
Michigan.42
Though Adventists seldom took the scientific basis of evolution very seriously,
they always welcomed the opportunity to point out its supposed shortcomings in
this area. After all, Darwinism, like geology, had to he exposed as
"science
falsely so-called." The objections raised by P. H. Russel, whose writings
were reprinted in the Reeietv and Herald, are representative. He
maintained that
the present existence of lower forms of life was "fatal to the
whole theory,"
because if evolution had been occurring for millions of years, all life would
inevitably "climb the ladder of progress and pass into men," leaving
nothing but humanity on the face of the earth. Somewhat inconsistently, he also
regarded the absence of intermediate links as a weakness of Darwinism, If the
theory is true, he argued, "monkeys are naturally, gradually, and surely
passing into men," and the transitional forms should be seen everywhere.43
The Flood as Solution
Those who rejected the evolutionary history of life necessarily had to provide
an alternative explanation of the fossil record, and Adventists
invariably turned
to the Noachian flood for virtually all solutions to their geological
and paieontological
problems. Encouragement to do this came from Ellen White, who wrote
that if individuals
would only recognize "the size of men, animals and trees before the flood,
and . . . the great changes which then took place in the earth,"
they would
have no trouble accepting the "view that creation week was only
seven literal
days, and that the world is now only about six thousand years
old." She believed
that the recent findings of earth scientists were providential, designed by God
to "establish the faith of men in inspired history."44 Following her
lead, the editors of the Recime and herald widely publicized any new
discoveries
that might conceivably corroborate the occurrence of the flood. When
J. N. Loughborough
ran across a hook that "successfully [met] the objections which are raised
in regard to the flood," he had excerpts of it reprinted,
together with the
admonition to "preserve this article, for reference in case of an attack
on this point."45 Occasionally a writer was hopeful enough to suggest the
likelihood of scientific confirmation of the flood and thus of the
Biblical story
of creation. "A little further progress
in [geology]," wrote one optimist, "will probably show
that its teachings wonderfully harmonize with the scriptural statements on the
same subject.46 Unfortuuatelv, in this, as in their expectation of the Second
Coming, the Adventists faced continued disappointment.
Summary
This brief look at the Adventist response to developmental theories reveals
the extent to which the debate over evolution spread in nineteenth-century American society.
It suggests
that many uneducated Christians, sometimes ill-informed and not
always very visible,
were indeed aware of the challenges presented by evolutionary ideas
to their traditional
beliefs. Not surprisingly, these people reacted in much the same way
as the fundamentalists
of the early twentieth century.47 While the nation's more learned
religious communities
were attempting to reconcile organic evolution with the doctrines of
natural theology,
the less sophisticated were fighting to preserve the authenticity and
literality
of the Mosaic record and agonizing over the prospect of kinship with the apes.
They, like the later fundamentalists, turned their hacks on worldly knowledge
to defend divine revelation against the encroachments of science and to protect
their children from its insidious influence. Clearly, the
fundamentalist controversy
of the 1920s was not, as one historian has recently claimed,
"merely a continuance
of the conflict first precipitated within theological circles after
the appearance
of Darwin's theory in the last half of the nineteenth century."48 It was
rather a natural outgrowth of the much different debate begun in the nineteenth
century by Adventists and other fundamentalist foes of "science
falsely so-called."
I wish to thank Mr. Tom Gammon for his assistance ill the preparation of this
study.
REFERENCES
1Bert James Loewenberg, in his pioneering work on Darwinism in
America, concluded
that by 1873 evolution "was almost universally accepted as a
working hypothesis"
by American scientists; "The Impact of the Doctrine of Evolution
on American
Thought" (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University,
1933), p. 274.
More recently, Michael Giffert has emphasized "the remarkably rapid
adjustment of substantial sections of Protestant thought to
evolution"; "Christian
Darwinism: The Partnership of Asa Gray and George Frederick Wright,
18741881"
(Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1958), P. 3. Another study of
American attitudes toward Darwinism shows that the incorporation of
Darwin's
ideas ''into traditional patterns of thought- was accomplished within twenty
years; Edward J. Pfeifer, "The Reception of Darwinism in the
United States,
1859-1880 (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1957), p. 192. See
also George Daniels (ed. ), Darwinism Comes to America (Waltham,
Mass.: BlaisrIell
Publishing Co.. 1968), 1). 95.
2Among those who have made this point are A. Hunter Dupree, Asa
Gray, 1810-1888
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 266-69; and B. J.
Wilson (ed.), Darwinism and the American Intellectual (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey
Press, 1967),
pp. 3-4, 39-40.
3The Seventh-day Adventist teacher George MeGready Price
was "the one scientific authority most frequently cited by
anti-evolutionists,
and other Adventist leaders, notably Francis D. Niehot and Alonzo L.
Baker, participated
in public debates; Willard B. Gatewood, Jr. (ed. ), Gontroersij in
the Twenties:
Fit iidallieiitelisin, Ttioderiiismn, and Evolution (Nashville:
Vanderbilt University
Press, 1969). mi. 141, 263. It should be noted, however, that on nonscientific
issues other fundamentalists sometimes shied away from the Millerite Adventists;
see Ernest R. Sandeco, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and
American Milleniumism 1800-1931 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 150.
4Don F. Neufield.), Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia
''Commentary Reference Series," Vol. X; Washington: Review and
herald Publishing
Association, 1966), pp. 929-41, 1180-82.
5A study of biographical sketches of 315 prominent Adventists
born between 1790 and 1870 yields the following data:
Ministers Educators Physicians
Others
(203) (30)
(23) (59)
Attended no college
68.5% 26.7%
---- 72.9%
Attended SDA
college
27.1% 36.7%
4.3% 20.3%
Attended non-SDA college
4.4% 36.7%
95.6% 6.8%
If the lending Adventists had so little education, we can safely
assume that the
vast majority of the rank and file had no college experience whatever. And whether
or not the nineteenth-century "proto-Fundamentalists were frequently men in
high esteem in their own denominations and communities," as
Ernest R. Sandeen
claims ["Toward a Historical Interpretation of the Origins of
Fundamentalism,"
Church History, XXXVI (March, 1967), 83], they certainly do not appear to have
been well educated.
6Ellen C. White, "Science and Revelation," The Signs of the
Times, X
(March 13, 1884), 161; Spiritual Gifts: Important Facts of Faith, in Connection
with the History of Holy Men of Old (Battle Creek, Mich.; Seventh-day Adventist
Publishing Association, 1864), p. 93.
7Science and the Bible," Advent Review and Sabbath Herald,
XIV (February 24, 1859), 107. This statement is attributed to a Dr. Gumming,
probably Dr. John Gumming the Scottish divine known for his studies
of Biblical
prophecies, Hereafter the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, better known as the
Review and Herald, will he cited as R&H.
8J.N. Loughborough. 'Guidance of Nature," R&H, XVIII (November 5, 1861), 177.
9J. H. Kellogg, Harmony of Science and the Bible on the Nature
of the Soul and the Doctrine of the Resurrection (Battle Creek, Mich.: Review
and Herald Publishing Association, 1879), pp. 10-11, 28-29. Later Kellogg seems
to have become a theistic evolutionist. See Richard N. Schwartz, John Harvey
Kellogg, M.D. (Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1970), p. 190.
10See Schwartz John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., pp. 174-92.
11A. T. Jones, "The Uncertainty of Geological Science," R&H,
LX (August 21, 1883), 530.
12"Geolngy and the Bible," R&H XXVI (October 17, 1865), 157.
13(Uriah Smith], "False Theories of Geologists," R&H.
LIX (September
5, 1882), 568. Smith had attended Phillips Exeter Academy for several
years, but
financial considerations had prevented him from going on to college.
l4(Uriah Smith), "Geology," R&H, XIII (December 16,
1858), 28.
15"The Blunders of Geologists," R&H, XXVI (October 24,
1865), 161-62;
Jones, "The Uncertainty of Geological Science," p. 529;
[Smith], "False
Theories of Geologists," p. 568.
16[G.W. Amadon], "The Skeptic Met," R&H, XVI
(September 4, 1860),
121.
17[C. MI. Stone], "A Coin Imbedded in a Rock," R&H, XLIX (March
1, 1877), 72.
18Geological Chronology, R&H, XXXV (February 8, 1870),
51. Reprinted,
with an introduction, from an article by Patterson in the Family Treasury.
19"That Old Skull," /1&H, XXXVI (October 25, 1870),
146. Reprinted
from a work by Tuttle.
20 "A Specimen of Knowledge," B&H, LIII (Slay 15, 1879), 156.
21T. Jones, "The Uncertainty of Geological Science," R&H,
LX (August 7, 1883), 497-98; (August 14, 1883), 51314; (August 21,
1883), 529-30.
The following year Jones published another series on '' 'Evolution'
and Evolution,"R&H, LXI (March 11, 1884), 162-63; (March 18, 1884), 178-79; (March 25,
1884), 194-95.
22Jones, "The Uncertainty of Geological Science,` pp. 513, 531).
23O. Corliss, "Geologists vs. the Mosaic Record,"
R&H, LV (February
19, 1880), 116-17; Ellen C. White, "Science and the Bible in
Education,"
The Signs of the Times, X (March 21), 1884), 177; Stephen Pierce,
"Dues the
Bible Agree with Science?" R&H, XXXVIII (October 3, 1871), 121 and Jones,
"'Evolution' and Evolution,'' p. 195.
24[N. Lord], ''The Structure of the Earth," R&H, LV (February 12, 1880), 99.
Lord was an evangelical editor, known for his writings on science and religion
and on the fulfillment of Biblical prophecies.
Those who rejected the evolutionary history of life -necessarily had to provide an alternative explanation of the fossil record, and Adventists invariably turned to the Noachian flood for virtually all solutions to their geological and paleontological problems.
25R. F. Cisttrell, "The Antiquity of Man," R&H, XLV (January
21, 1875), 29. See also Jones, "The Uncertainty of Geological
Science,"
p. 530.
26"Turning the Tables," R&H, XXXIX (April 9, 1872),
130. This article
was taken from an address by the Rev. John Hall, a Presbyterian
minister and writer.
27See, for example, "Too Knowing for Faith," R&H, LX
(November 8, 1877), 148; and Corliss, "Geologists vs.
the Mosaic Record," p. 116.
28[Lnrd], "The Structure of the Earth," p. 98. Uriah Smith
made an equally strong pronouncement in "Giving Way,"
R&H, LX (October
23, 1883), 664.
29Ellen C. White, Spiritual Gifts, p. 90.
30Ibid., p. 91. E. J. Waggoner, an Adventist physician and
minister, repeats Mrs. White's views in The Literal Week
("Apples of Gold Library," No. 18; Oakland, Calif.: Pacific
Press Publishing
Cu., 1894), p. 2.
31James White], "The First Week of Time," R&H, LV
(February 12, 1880), 104-105.
32J. P. Hendersusn, "The Bible.-No. 7," R&H LXIV
(July 5, 1887),
419. In 1860 the editors of the R&H reprinted a passage from The
Bible True
by the Presbyterian minister William Plniner, advocating a similar
interpretation;
"Geology," Rhhl, XVI (July 3, 1860), 49. Dr. Kellogg, in
his early years,
also seems to have leaned toward this view; see Harmony of Science
and the Bible,
p. 20.
33 T. Bordeau, ''Geology and the Bible; Or, a Pre-Adamic Age
of Our World
Doubtful," B&H, XXIX (February 5, 1867), 98. See also
"The Creation
of Light," R&H, XXXIV (September 28, 1869), 112.
34See. Ronald L. Numbers, ''The Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought,"
(Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1969), Ch. VII: "The Mosaic Account of Creation."
35Ibid., Ch. VI: "Design and Providence."
36 R, Russel, "Darwinism Examined," R&H, XLVII
(May 18, 1876),
153.
37DeWitt 'Talmager, "Evolution: ,Anti-Bihslr', Anti-Science,
Anti-Commonsense,"
R&H, LX( April 24, 1883), 261. Talmage was an immensely popular
and controversial
minister in the Presbyterian church
38Carlyle on Darwin,'' R&H, LI (January 17, 1878), 19; Talmagc, "Evolution,"
p. 261.
39W. H. Littlejohn, "The Temple in Heavens," R&H, LXII
February 24, 1885), 116. Uriah Smith explained the "defection of leading
Christians ... to the ranks of the evolutionists'' as being the
result of Satanic
influence; "Giving Way," p. 664. On the widespread teaching
of evolution
in American colleges, see ''Do Our Colleges Teach Evolution?" Independent,
XXXI ( December 18, 1879), 14-15.
40 Corliss, "Geologists vs. the Mosaic Record," p. 116.
41 Russel, ''Dawinism Examined," p. 153.
42Adolphuss South, "Science, Falsely So Called (Judy 8, 1873), 31.
43Russell, ''Darwinisim Examined," p. 153.
44Ellenen C. White, Spiritual Gifts, pp. 92-9.5. See also
Waggoner, The Literal Week, p. 3.
45 N. Loughborough, ''Scripture Account of the Flood, Vindicated,"
B&H,
XVIII (October 29., 1861), 173. The recommended work was the first volume of
Horne's Introduction of the the Study of the Bible.
46[Plummerr] , "Geology," p. 49.
47For a survey of fundamentalist attitudes toward evolution, see the
"Introduction"
to Gatewood, Controversy in the Twenties, pp. 3-4.}
48Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan:
The Last Decade, 1915-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965),
p. 261).