HOW LIFE APPEARED ON EARTH 129 



Divine Revelation, the fact which every scientist 

 now admits, that light existed in the universe be- 

 fore the sun, moon and stars shone in the firma- 

 ment of heaven ? The full meaning of this revela- 

 tion, we may well suppose, remained even then a 

 mystery for him. He, like others, received it as 

 the simple revelation of a fact accepted on un- 

 questionable authority. Yet the sages of his day 

 might well have scoffed at it, judging it by their 

 shallow knowledge, while the incredulous might 

 have pointed to it as an impossibility until science 

 herself came to explain the truth. On this sub- 

 ject Col. Turton says : 



The writer of Genesis places the formation of the sun after 

 that of light. This must have appeared when it was written, 

 and for thousands of years afterwards, an obvious absurdity, 

 since everyone could see that the sun was the source of light. 

 We now know that it is correct. But is it likely that the writer 

 of Genesis had any human means of knowing this; or is it 

 likely that without such means, he should have made such a 

 wonderfully lucky guess? Either alternative seems most im- 

 probable, and yet there is no other, unless we admit that the 

 knowledge was divinely revealed. 4 



We now know, by science as well as by Scrip- 

 ture, that light preceded the sun, although the de- 

 tails of this knowledge are still most doubtful. 

 After the creation of matter, after the first im- 

 pulse given to the atoms in their vast ethereal 

 spaces, the most primitive of all phenomena is by 

 all held to have been the production of light. 



"The Truth of Christianity," p. 154. 



