MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 791 



its kind, and the gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the sand-lizard, and the 

 chameleon. These are they which are unclean to you among all that creep (v. 

 29-31). 



The merest Sunday-school exegesis therefore suffices to prove that 

 •when the "Mosaic writer" in Genesis i, 24, speaks of "creeping 

 things" he means to include lizards among them. 



This being so, it is agreed on all hands that terrestrial lizards, and 

 other reptiles allied to lizards, occur in the Permian strata. It is fur- 

 ther agreed that the Triassic strata were deposited after these. More- 

 over, it is well known that, even if certain footprints are to be taken 

 as unquestionable evidence of the existence of bii'ds, they are not 

 known to occur in rocks earlier than the Trias, while indubitable re- 

 mains of birds are to be met with only much later. Hence it follows 

 that natural science does not " affirm " the statement that birds were 

 made on the fifth day, and " everything that creepeth on the ground " 

 on the sixth, on which Mr. Gladstone rests his order ; for, as is shown 

 by Leviticus, the " Mosaic writer " includes lizards among his " creep- 

 ing things." 



Perhaps I have given myself superfluous trouble in the preceding 

 argument, for I find that Mr. Gladstone is willing to assume (be does 

 not say to admit) that the statement in the text of Genesis as to rep- 

 tiles can not " in all points be sustained " (p. 629). But my position is 

 that it can not be sustained in any point, so that, after all, it has per- 

 haps been as well to go over the evidence again. And then Mr. Glad- 

 stone proceeds, as if nothing had happened, to tell us that — 



There remain great unshaken facts to be weighed. First, the fact that such a 

 record should have been made at all. 



As most peoples have their cosmogonies, this "fact" does not 

 strike me as having much value. 



Secondly, the fact that, instead of dwelling in generalities, it has placed itself 

 under the severe conditions of a chronological order reaching from the first nisus 

 of chaotic matter to the consummated production of a fair and goodly, a fur- 

 nished and a peopled world. 



This " fact " can be regarded as of value only by ignoring the fact 

 demonstrated in my previous paper, that natural science does not con- 

 firm the order asserted so far as living things are concerned ; and by 

 upsetting a fact to be brought to light presently, to wit, that, in regard 

 to the rest of the Pentateuchal cosmogony, prudent science has very 

 little to say one way or the other. 



Thirdly, the fact that its cosmogony seems, in the light of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, to draw more and more of countenance from the best natural philosophy. 



I have already questioned the accuracy of this statement, and I do 

 not observe that mere repetition adds to its value. 



