Galileo studied and found out the truth that the earth moves around the sun, and died recanting it.
Buffon, the great French naturalist, studied, and ascertained that the earth has been subject to changes which must have required millions of years. He wrote: "The waters of the sea have produced the mountains and valleys of the land--the waters of the heavens, reducing all to a level, will at last deliver the whole land over to the sea, and the sea, successively prevailing over the land, will leave dry new continents like those which we inhabit."
He was at once summoned before the Faculty of Theology in Paris to recant his opinions, saying, "I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact; _I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth_, and, generally, all which may be contrary to the narration of Moses."
A little more than a century later, at Kinnordy, Forfarshire, Scotland, a boy was born, Charles Lyell, who was destined not only to make geology as fascinating to the world as a novel, but to prove more fully and conclusively than any one had previously done that the world is not only six thousand years old, but perhaps six thousand million years old; and that man has lived here not for a few centuries only, but for thousands of centuries. Lyell knew and felt what the Christian world has come to feel, that truth must and will stand, and that there is no real conflict between science and religion.
Charles Lyell, the eldest of ten children, having two brothers and seven sisters, was born November 14, 1797. He had the early training of an educated and refined father, a man who had devoted himself to the study of botany, and written several works on Dante. The mother was a woman of practical common-sense, and from her, doubtless, Charles inherited that good judgment which characterized all his work and life.
At seven the child was sent to Ringwood, to a school kept by Rev. R. S. Davies. Here, being the youngest, and one of the gentlest, he was spared the roughness too often found in boys' schools. At ten he and his brother Tom were sent to a school in Salisbury, sixteen miles from Bartley Lodge, whither the family had moved from Kinnordy.