These facts which geology unquestionably demonstrates have thrown sectarian theologians into dismay. The dogmas concerning the creation formulated with so much pomp and circumstance by the apostate churches of Christendom, respectable only for their antiquity, are going to pieces before the facts discovered by geologists and churchmen, or theologians, call them which you will, are filled with alarm lest all confidence be lost in revelation; and many of them are making frantic efforts to harmonize the facts of revelation with the facts of science. Unfortunately, however, some of these proceed on lines which result the same as the efforts of some to harmonize the theory of evolution with the gospel--as the latter efforts end in the destruction of the gospel, so the former end in denying the inspiration of scripture, in relegating it to the realms of poetry, which means kicking it contemptuously out of the domains of fact, of history. "We affirm," say they, "that it cannot be history--it may be poetry."[E] [Footnote E: Kitto's Biblical Literature, Vol. I., p. 486. Such also were the views of the late Henry Ward Beecher, and in fact all of his school, which I am sorry to say is rapidly increasing in numbers, both in the United States and England. For the continental countries I cannot speak.] There is nothing in the Bible, however, which drives believers in revelation to those straights--straights in which they throw overboard, practically, the word of God; discard it, or, in other words, degrade it to the level of romance--making it nothing better than the idle coinage of the half frenzied brains of day-dreamers. If the dogmas of apostate Christendom respecting the creation were given over as a romance instead of the revelations of God, and those revelations were re-examined, and especially if re-examined under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, it would then be found that there is nothing in the scriptures requiring the believer in revelation to accept the idea of recent or instantaneous creation of the earth. There is no more warrant in the Bible for the doctrine that the earth was begun and completed--created--about six thousand years ago, and that instantly, at the word of God, than there is that it was made out of nothing. On the other hand there is very much to lead one to believe the contrary.