At Home: A Short History of Private Life

by Bill Bryson

Many devout people simply couldn’t accept that the Earth was as ancient and randomly enlivened as all the new ideas indicated. One leading naturalist, Philip Henry Gosse, produced a somewhat desperate alternative theory called “prochronism” in which he suggested that God had merely made the Earth look old, to give people of inquisitive minds more interesting things to wonder over. Even fossils, Gosse insisted, had been planted in the rocks by God during his busy week of Creation. Gradually, however, educated people came to accept that the world was not just older than biblically supposed but also much more complicated, imperfect, and confused. Naturally, all this undermined the confident basis on which clergymen like Mr. Marsham operated. In terms of their preeminence, it was the beginning of the end.