1888, | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 151 
So far as I can judge, this brief and incomplete study of the 
first chapter of Genesis shows that our rules of exegesis merely 
formulate its real character, the most literal history imaginable. 
It is wonderful how objections vanish, and agreements become 
visible, agreements with the science of to-day, not that of the 
times when the story was written. There may be conflict with 
certain theories of modern date, but nothing is more changeable 
than inchoate scientific theories. In such cases, the lesson of 
the past is: Wait. 
A poet, believing in one God, creator of all, might, perhaps, 
have woven into a hymn of creation, most of the things in this 
story. He could have spoken of land and water, and of plants 
and animals, of the heavens, of the expanse, of a beginning 
when light was not, and there was no day, and possibly he 
might have dreamed of an earth once covered with water, of an 
earth without form and void, of light and darkness—but could 
he have placed them each in its true order? 
A careful analysis shows more than thirty points where this 
story touches modern science. Unlike the statements in the 
Chaldean Genesis, they are not platitudes, or trifles, or absolute 
absurdities, but all are important, and the falsity of some, if it 
could be established, would be fatal to much of what we call 
science. 
Somehow it has happened (?) that Moses and modern science 
have each placed these thirty or more points in the same order. 
Could this have occurred by any human knowledge of the 
earth’s history, or by chance? 
I have made but a brief statement, a hint rather than a full 
development of the argument, yet I submit that even in this 
imperfect representation there is too much truth, too much 
accord with the order of science, to be answered by sneers at the 
flexibility of the Hebrew, or by assumption of errors which are 
the interpretations of commentators in their eagerness to make 
the story square with “ science,” or of scientific critics, in their 
desire to demolish an account which, if true, establishes the 
reality of a revelation and of miracles, for revelation is a 
miracle. 
A brief resumé of correspondences betwecn Genesis and Science. 
Genesis says: Science says 
1, In the beginning God created Science admits a creator, claims 
the heavens and the earth and the a once nebulous condition when 
earth was without form! and void. the earth was literally formless! 
and void. 
1“ Tohu” admits of several renderings, each of them more or less 
applicable to nebulous matter. The best result is obtained by taking 
