PROEM TO GENESIS. 619 



In order to institute with profit the comparison, now in view, the 

 very first thing necessary is to determine, so far as the subject-matter 

 allows, what it was that the Pentateuchal or Mosaic writer designed to 

 convey to the minds of those for whom he wrote. The case is, in 

 more ways than one, I conceive, the direct reverse of that which the 

 Professor has alleged. It is not bringing Science to be tried at the 

 bar of Religion. It is bringing Religion, so far as it is represented by 

 this part of the Holy Scriptures, to be tried at the bar of Science. 

 The indictment against the Pentateuchal writer is, that he has written 

 what is scientifically untrue. We have to find then in the first place 

 •what it is that he has written, according to the text, not an inerrable 

 text, as it now stands before us. 



First, I assume there is no dispute that in Genesis i. 20-27 he has 

 represented a fourfold sequence or succession of living organisms. 

 Aware of my own inability to define in any tolerable manner the 

 classes of these organisms, I resorted to the general phrases — water- 

 population, air-population, land-population. The immediate purpose 

 of these phrases was not to correspond with the classifications of Sci- 

 ence, but to bring together in brief and convenient form the larger and 

 more varied modes of expression used in verses 20, 21, 24, 25 of the 

 Chapter. 



I think, however, I have been to blame for having brought into a 

 contact with science, which was not sufficiently defined, terms that 

 have no scientific meaning : water-population, air-population, and 

 (twofold) land-population. I shall now discard them and shall substi- 

 tute others, which have the double advantage of being used by geolo- 

 gists, and perhaps of expressing better than my phrases what was in 

 the mind of the Mosaic WTiter. These are the words — 1, fishes ; 2, 

 birds ; 3, mammals ; * 4, man. By all, I think, it will be felt that the 

 first object is to know what the Pentateuchal writer means. The rela- 

 tion of his meaning to science is essential, but, in orderly argumenta- 

 tion, subsequent. The matter now before us is a matter of reasonable 

 and probable interpretation. What is the proper key to this her- 

 meneutic work? In my opinion it is to be found in a just estimate of 

 the purpose with which the author wrote, and with which the Book of 

 Genesis was, in this part of it, either composed or compiled. 



If this be the true point of departure, it opens up a question of ex- 

 treme interest, at which I have but faintly glanced in my paper, and 

 which is nowhere touched in the reply to me. What proper place has 

 such a composition as the first Chapter of Genesis in such a work as 

 the Scriptures of the Old Testament ? They are indisputably written 

 with a religious aim ; and their subject-matter is religious. We may 

 describe this aim in various ways. For the present purpose, suffice it 

 to say they are conversant with belief in God, with inculcation of du- 



* I wish to be understood as speaking here of the higher or ordinary mammals, 

 which alone I assume to have been probably known to the Mosaic writer. 



