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thei^e were found, as Mr. Billings told us a few evenings ago, the im- 

 print or remains of figures in the rocks which strongly resembled the 

 oiganic structure of plants and animals. To account for these apparent 

 remnants of life, various conjectures were advanced, the one most 

 generally acceptable among theologians for a time being the great flood 

 of Noah as recorded in the Book of Genesis, which was a sufficient ex- 

 planation, and the organic remains found in the rocks bore testimony to 

 the fact that such a great deluge had really taken place. As the work of 

 geological investigation proceeded it soon became evident that the gen- 

 erally conceived idea of creation, as found in the Mo-aic records was 

 not in accordance with facts, and that a different interpretation was 

 necessary in order to reconcile the apparently conflicting records, one of 

 the difficulties being the existence of organic remains so deeply embedded 

 in the rocks, that it was utterly impossible to conceive how they could 

 have been placed in such a position in the short period of six days, 

 or how a temporary flood existing less than one year could bring about 

 such tremendous changes in the surface of the earth. 



Hugh Miller, the Scotch geologist, in his work entitled the 

 " Testimony of the Rocks," written about forty years ago, makes an at- 

 tempt to reconcile the geology of the Pentateuch with the geology of 

 nature by the hypothesis, that the days mentioned in the first chapter 

 of the book of Genesis do not represent the actual duration of the sue* 

 cessive periods of creation, but only the time occupied by God in un- 

 rolling a panoramic vision of these periods before the eyes of Moses on 

 the Mount. Another form of reconciliation advanced and very generally 

 accepted by believers in the scientific accm-acy of the Mosaic records, 

 and which it is maintained the original text fully warrants, is that the 

 days mentioned in the book of Genesis were not days of twenty-four 

 hours each, and that the Hebrew word translated into the word day in 

 our common English version of the Bible is used in other places to 

 signify a period of time which might be indefinitely prolonged. 



The Hon. W. E. Gladstone very recently undertook to show that 

 the order of creation as recorded by Moses was in complete harmony 

 with the order recorded in the rocks and that there was no conflict be- 

 tween religion and science. He attempts to show that there were four 

 periods of time in which all organic life appeared upon the earth, and 



