1892 FURTHER CONTROVERSY ON GENESIS 211 



long been familiar, as twenty years before he had, at 

 Dr. Kaliscb's request, gone over the proofs of his 

 Gommentary on Leviticus. 



The letter of February 3 is as follows : — 



While desirous to waste neither your space nor my 

 own time upon mere misrepresentations of what I have 

 said elsewhere about the relations between modern science 

 and the so-called " Mosaic " cosmogony, it seems needful 

 that I should ask for the opportunity of stating the case 

 once more, as briefly and fairly as I can. 



I conceive the first chapter of Genesis to teach — (1) 

 that the species of plants and animals owe their origin to 

 supernatural acts of creation ; (2) that these acts took 

 place at such times and in such a manner that aU the 

 plants were created first, all the aquatic and aerial 

 animals (notably birds) next, and all terrestrial animals 

 last. I am not aware that any Hebrew scholar denies 

 that these propositions agree with the natural sense of 

 the text. Sixty years ago I was taught, as most people 

 were then taught, that they are guaranteed by Divine 

 authority. 



On the other hand, in my judgment, natxu-al science 

 teaches no less distinctly — (1) that the species of animals 

 and plants have originated by a process of natural evolu- 

 tion ; (2) that this process has taken place in such a 

 manner that the species of animals and plants, respectively, 

 have come into existence one after another throughout the 

 whole period since they began to exist on the earth ; that 

 the species of plants and animals known to us are, as a 

 whole, neither older nor younger the one than the other. 



The same holds good of aquatic and aerial species, as 

 a whole, compared ^dth terrestrial species ; but birds 

 appear in the geological record later than terrestrial 

 reptiles, and there is every reason to believe that they 

 were evolved from the latter. 



