Genesis Not a Record of Fact 253 



With the most voluminous detail, he proceeds to shew 

 that there is no possible relation between the order 

 implied by the narrative and the order as revealed b}' 

 science. I^et us sum up, by two quotations, the result 

 of the whole controversy. First, the literal meaning 

 is untenable. 



" The question whether the earth and the immediate pro- 

 genitors of its present living population were made in six 

 natural days or not is no longer one on which two opinions 

 can be held. The fact that it did not come so into being 

 stands upon as sound a basis as any fact of history whatever. 

 It is not true that existing plants and animals came into being 

 within three days of the creation of the earth out of nothing, 

 for it is certain that innumerable generations of other plants 

 and animals lived upon the earth before its present population. 

 And when, Sunday after Sunday, men who profess to be our 

 instructors in righteousness read out the statement, ' In six 

 days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in 

 them is,' in innumerable churches, they are either propagating 

 what they may easily know, and, therefore, are bound to 

 know, to be falsities ; or, if they use the words in some non- 

 natural sense, they fall below the moral standard of the much 

 abused Jesuit." 



The attenuated meaning equally must be given up. 



"Even if they (the reconcilers) now allow that the words 

 ' the evening and the morning ' have not the least reference to 

 a natural day, but mean a period of any number of millions of 

 years that may be necessary ; even if they are driven to admit 

 that the word 'creation,' which so many millions of pious 

 Jews and Christians have held, and still hold, to mean a sud- 

 den act of the Deity,. signifies a process of gradual evolution of 

 one species from another, extending through immeasurable 

 time ; even if they are willing to grant that the asserted co- 

 incidence of the order of nature with the 'fourfold order' 

 ascribed to Genesis is an obvious error instead of an established 

 truth, they are surely prepared to make a last stand upon the 

 conception which underlies the whole, and which constitutes 



