# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1862_S146
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

146 Volcanism.

but to have become a poor man, and the most wretched one; that the Holy Spirit gave us a book in place of his Word, in which he — like some silly fool and madman, indeed like an unholy and impure spirit — turned our proud reason's little tales, trivial and contemptible occurrences, into the history of heaven and of God. 1 Cor. 1:25. — — that this faith uncovers all our own actions and the noblest fruits of human virtue as nothing other than the scratches of the finest pen under a magnifying glass, or the most delicate skin, discloses under the same view; that it is therefore impossible, without faith in God — whom his Spirit works — and in the merit of the one Mediator, to love ourselves and our neighbor; in short, one must be a true Christian in order to be an honest father, an honest child, a good citizen, a right patriot, a good subject, indeed a good master and servant; and that, in the strictest sense of the word, every good thing is impossible without God, indeed that he alone is its author.

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Volcanism.

Concerning this theory — that the earth cannot have arisen from water (Neptunism) but must have arisen from fire — Andreas Wagner writes as follows in the Ev. Kirchenzeitung of Feb. 5, in an essay entitled "The Appeal to Natural Science as a Witness against the Mosaic Account of Creation":

All the textbooks of geology, in whatever language they may be written, unanimously present the fiery origin of the earth as the undoubted result of scientific research; nevertheless I stand by my assertion, and it is easy for me to demonstrate it scientifically and intelligibly for everyone. It is well known that the dispute between Neptunism and Volcanism is an old one. At the beginning of our century Werner brought the former into general acceptance, at least in Germany, though he did not succeed in the same way in England and France. From those countries there arose instead an ever more decided opposition to Werner's doctrine, which also found its way into Germany, until in a short time the volcanistic theory attained sole and unconditional dominance in geology. It therefore came as no small surprise to the geologists when, in the year 1837, Nepomuk Fuchs threw down the gauntlet before them with the declaration that, from the chemical standpoint, the assumption of a fiery origin for quartz — and likewise for all the rock formations, such as granite, in which quartz forms a constituent — was simply inadmissible, and that only the opposite, namely formation by a wet process, could be accepted. With this, then, the assumption of a fiery origin of the earth was rejected as erroneous. This declaration, given by one of the most celebrated mineralogists and chemists, put the geologists, most of whom with the