IS DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS SUFFICIENT? 



99 



Then the earth is " without form," without the order which it subse- 

 quently assumed; and "void," that is, without inhabitant. Light 

 appears, and an alternation of day and night. There is a separation 

 of the lighter matter from the grosser, of the aerial expanse from the 

 earth proper. Then a separation of the sea from the land. Life now 

 appears, and we have grass and trees. As yet the sun and moon have 

 not appeared as formed bodies. Now, on the fourth day, they might 

 be seen, and become dividers of times and regulators of seasons. All 

 this is in accordance with science, which says that the earth is older 

 than the sun ; that the earth was formed out of an original matter 

 and that there must have been light before the sun was condensed 

 into its present form. Animals now appear first in the waters, swarm- 

 ing creatures and'fishes, then reptiles and birds. On the sixth day 

 we have animals herbivorous and carnivorous. Finally, we have 

 man. All this is very much the same order as is disclosed in geology, 

 and was written there in that volume three thousand years before 

 geology made its discoveries. 



But we are most concerned with what, after all, is the most im- 

 portant to us, and that is the creation of man. There is a twofold 

 record, the parts not contradictory but supplementary the one of the 

 other. Chapter ii. V : " And the Lord God formed man of the dust 

 of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 

 he became a living soul." This is expanded in a passage full of mean- 

 ing: Psalm cxxxix. 15, "My substance was not hid from thee when 

 I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the 

 earth," seeming to indicate a process and a preparation ; " thine eyes 

 did see my substance being yet imperfect, and in thy book all my 

 members were written while yet there was none of them." Such is 

 the one side, the animal side. But then we have the other side, chap- 

 ter i. 26 : " And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our 

 image, after our likeness. So God created man in his own image, in 

 the image of God created he .them." All this corresponds to our ex- 

 perience. We feel that we have an animal part cleaving to the dust, 

 and allying lis to the brutes. But we feel also that we have a divine 

 nature, a power of distinguishing between good and evil, a longing 

 for something higher, a seeking after God. The Bible tells, thirdly, 

 that this image of God has been defaced. These truths have been 

 combined in an eloquent passage by the profound Pascal : " The great- 

 ness and the misery of man being alike conspicuous, religion, in order' 

 to be true, must necessarily teach us that he has in himself some noble 

 principles of greatness, and at the same time some profound source of 

 misery. . . . The philosophers never furnish men with sentiments suit- 

 able to these two states. They inculcated a notion either of absolute 

 grandeur or of hopeless degradation, neither of wdiich is the true con- 

 dition of man. ... So manifest is it that we were once in a state of 

 perfection from which we are now unhappily fallen. It is astonishing 



