436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with " the woe which impends on all who add to or take away 

 from the written word.'^ 



St. Augustine, who shows signs of a belief in a pre-existence of 

 matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple 

 reasoning that, "although the world had been made of some 

 material, that very same material must have been made out of 

 nothing." 



In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily 

 followed. The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created 

 everything out of nothing; and at the present hour the great 

 majority of the faithful whether Catholic or Protestant are 

 taught the same doctrine. On this point the syllabus of Pius IX 

 and the Westminster Catechism fully agree.* 



The other point of which there came a great theological de- 

 velopment referred to the time occupied by the Almighty in the 

 creation. The natural tendency of theology was, of course, more 

 and more to glorify the great miracle ; and, as a result of this 

 tendency, it began to be held that the so-called Mosaic account of 

 the creation in six days must be subordinated to the text, " He 

 spake, and they were made," and that in some mysterious manner 

 God created the universe in six days, yet brought all things into 

 existence in a moment. Origen and Athanasius especially pro- 

 moted this view in the East, and St. Augustine in the West. 



Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views, 

 which to the natural mind seemed absolutely contradictory ; but 

 by ingenious use or supjDression of facts, by dexterous play upon 

 phrases, and by plentiful metaphysics a reconciliation was effected, 

 and men came at least to believe that they believed in a creation 

 of the universe instantaneous and at the same time in six days.f 



Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so 

 fruitful as to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and 

 Western, developed out of the double account in Genesis, with 

 the indications of the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the book of Job, 

 a vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point. As re- 

 gards the whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain oc- 

 cult powers in numerals. Philo Judseus had declared that the 

 world was created in six days because " of all numbers six is the 

 most productive " ; he had explained the creation of the heavenly 



* For Tertullian, see Tertullian against Hermogenes, chaps, xx and xxii ; for St. 

 Augustine regarding " creation from nothing," see the De Geuesi contra Manichteos, lib. 

 i, cap. vi ; for St. Ambrose, see the Ilexameron, lib. i, cap. iv ; for the decree of the 

 Fourth Lateran Council, and the view received in the Church to-day, see the article Crea- 

 tion in Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary. 



f For Origen, see his Contra Celsum, cap. xxxvi, xxxvii ; also his Do Principibus, cap. 

 v; for St. Augustine, see his De Genesi contra Manichseos and De Gencsi ad Litteram, 

 passim ; for Athanasius, see his Discourses against the Arians, ii, 48, 49. 



