146 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [APR. 2, 
verse the statement widens, and God is said to have created 
“every living creature,” ete., those then coming into existence 
and those surviving from an earlier epoch. 
In the same way, we note that, in the sixth period, God com- 
mands the earth to bring forth certain creatures—not all or 
every creature—but in the next verse it says: God made those, 
and also ‘‘every moving creature.” Whether I am right or 
wrong as to the purpose and value of that word “ every,” the 
fact remains that Genesis does not deny the existence of floras 
and faunas earlier than those which it mentions. 
By chance, or otherwise, the variation in the wording of these 
verses makes them in accord with the story of geology. 
There are other matters in regard to which, it is said, that 
science proves Genesis in the wrong. Each has been a point of 
attack on the ground that here Genesis contradicts known phys- 
ical truth. I pass over the science which was sure that Gene- 
sis was not from God, because it speaks of light as existing 
before the sun, an argument which will never again be ad- 
vanced. Nor need we spend any time upon those, if such there 
yet be, who reject this account because they think it teaches 
that the heavenly bodies are held up by some kind of a firm 
crystalline dome, for this has been exploded by an examination 
of the Hebrew. 
The principal questions yet in dispute are the ‘‘ days,” the 
work of the fourth period, man’s creation, and the teaching of 
this chapter in relation to evolution. 
Reversing the order of these questions, I would say in refer- 
ence to evolution that Genesis states facts, but presents no theo- 
ries, and offers no explanations. As to the how and the why, it is 
silent, except to attribute everything to God acting through 
nature. The earth brings forth the plants; the waters swarm 
with living creatures, and the air with fowl; the land produces 
its creatures, and the only explanation offered is that God made 
them all. Evolution, or production from antecedent forms, 
may or may not have been God’s method, Moses saying nothing 
about it, but silence is not denial. 
There is, it is true, an appearance of abruptness, as if the 
plants or animals came suddenly into being, a thing quite in 
opposition to Mr. Darwin’s belief in gradual evolution. One 
cannot but admire the flexibility of science (to borrow Professor 
Huxley’s fling at Genesis in his New York lecture), when now 
he reads in Professor Huxley’s lay sermons that. Mr. Darwin 
unnecessarily hampered himself by insisting upon gradual evo~ 
lution. The evidence of geology is overwhelming (evolution- 
ists admit it), that from causes which science does not under- 
stand, there were times of exceptionally rapid development of 
