628 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the Mosaic writer, as interpreted by me, with the facts and presump- 

 tions of science, as I have endeavored to extract them from the best 

 authorities, I answer that I have not endeavored to show either that 

 any accordance has been demonstrated, or that more than a substan- 

 tial accordance — an accordance in principal relevant particulars — is to 

 be accepted as shown by probable evidence. 



In the cosmogony of the Proem, which stands on a distinct footing 

 as lying wholly beyond the experience of primitive man, I am not 

 aware that any serious flaw is alleged ; but the nebular hypothesis 

 with Avhich it is compared appears to be, perhaps from the necessity 

 of the case, no more than a theory ; a theory, however, long discussed, 

 much favored, and widely accepted in the scientific world. 



In the geological part, we are liable to those modifications or dis- 

 placements of testimony which the future progress of the science may 

 produce. In this view its testimony does not in strictness pass, I sup- 

 pose, out of the category of probable into that of demonstrative 

 evidence. Yet it can hardly be supposed that careful researches, and 

 reasonings strictly adjusted to method, both continued through some 

 generations, have not in a large measure produced what has the char- 

 acter of real knowledge. With that real knowledge the reader will 

 now have seen how far I claim for the Proem to Genesis, fairly tried, 

 to be in real and most striking accordance. 



And this brings me to the point at which I have to observe that 

 Mr. Huxley, I think, has not mastered, and probably has not tried to 

 master, the idea of his opponent as to what it is that is essentially em- 

 braced in the idea of a Divine revelation to man. 



So far as I am aware, there is no definition, properly so called, of 

 revelation either contained in Scripture or established by the general 

 and permanent consent of Christians. In a word polemically used, of 

 indeterminate or variable sense, Professor Huxley has no title to im- 

 pute to his opponent, without inquiry, anything more than it must of 

 necessity convey. 



But he seems to assume that revelation is to be conceived of as if 

 it were a lawyer's parchment, or a sum in arithmetic, wherein a flaw 

 discovered at a particular point is ipso facto fatal to the whole. Very 

 little reflection would show Professor Huxley that there may be those 

 who find evidences of the communication of Divine knowledge in the 

 Proem to Genesis as they read it in their Bibles, without approaching 

 to any such conception. There is the uncertainty of translation ; 

 translators are not inspired. There is the difficulty of transcription ; 

 transcribers are not inspired, and an element of error is inseparable 

 from the work of a series of copyists. How this works in the long 

 courses of time we see in the varying texts of the Old Testament, 

 with rival claims not easy to adjust. Thus the authors of the recent 

 Revision * have had to choose in the Massoretic text itself between 

 * Preface to the Old Testament, p. vi. 



