MAN—TWO MINUTES OLD!

NZ Truth, Issue 253, 30 April 1910, Page 4

MAN— TWO MINUTES OLD!

■Twenty years ago last Sunday, VV. W. Coili^s delivered his first nationalist leci;*:ie m Clnistchurch, when the title cJ the ac'iiii-ss was, "How the Wuild Was Made." On Sunday he gave Uie same lecture, illustrated by lantern slides, but found it unnecessary, owing to the advancement of modern thought, to devote any. time to the quaint story of Genesis, which mentioned that the" world was made m six days. Scientific research shows that our elderly planet evolved from a spinning gaseous sphere hundreds of millions of years before it had cooled sufficiently to sustain life, and hundreds of millions of years passed again before the most • primitive forms of life gave place to the age of man. Allowing 24 hours as the span of the ditterent ages, the age of man, m comparison with the others, has occupied two minutes of the time of the globe. And this age o£ man does not cover the few thousand years mentioned by the Bible or other publications, but the vast period of man's existence revealed by his fossil remains. Twenty years ago these scientific facts jarred considerably upon local religious beliefs, but %viih the advancement of education the idea that tlie world, which is still m the making, took six days to manufacture, isn' t adhered to with enthusiasm. Also, the small blob that this earth turns out to be m the universe, and knowledge of the millions of suns and planets that exist therein, tend to discourage the conceit that the firmament and its contents were specially created for the delectation of man.