How It Comes Out | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, May 12, 1885

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 19

How It Comes Out.

You will remember the “Cardiff Giant” excitement of a few years ago, and the amount of glee that was indulged in over what was supposed to be a demonstration of the incorrectness of the Mosaic record. The “giant” turns out to have been a manufactured affair, iron rods being used to hold its arms and legs in place. Will skeptics who made so much of it now hang their heads a little for shame?—Not at all. They hold their heads as high as ever, wag their tongues as loudly as before on every other unexplained hypothesis, and be just as ready for the “bell,” when it makes its appearance. For specimens of sublime credulity, “simon-pure,” and wholly undefiled, commend us to skeptics. The Religious Intelligencer (New Brunswick) of April 3, has the following:—

“The ‘Cardiff Giant’ furor of a few years ago is probably remembered by many of our readers. It was claimed by the enemies of the Bible that Bible chronology was destroyed, and that the Bible story and teaching went with it. The giant was burned recently, and this is the way an American paper sets off the whole affair: About twenty years ago, the so-called petrifaction giant known as the ‘Cardiff Giant,’ was a big hit in this country for showmen. This giant lived ages before the creation of man, according to Biblical chronology. This petrifaction was overwhelming proof of the falsity of the idea our earth is not more than six or eight thousand years old. It was covered with certificates to that effect from the most prominent of our Christian scientists. Many of them minutely studied the petrifying process, and the time it took, just as minutely as they tell us how this giant was made, and the time required for its making. The recent destruction of this petrifaction by fire, at Huron, Dakota, where it was on exhibition, revealed the astonishing anatomical fact, that, in the age when this giant lived, people were born with iron rods running from their hips to their feet, and from their shoulders into their heads, to hold their legs and arms together, and that these rods grew just as fast as the body grew! This gives us a wonderful amount of light something!