V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 171 



taken as unquestionable evidence of the exist- 

 ence of birds, they are not known to occur in 

 rocks earlier than the Trias, while indubitable 

 remains of birds are to be met with only much 

 later. Hence it follows that natural science 

 does not " affirm " the statement that birds 

 were made on the fifth day, and "everything 

 that creepeth on the ground " on the sixth, 

 on which Mr. Gladstone rests his order; for, 

 as is shown by Leviticus, the " Mosaic writer " 

 includes lizards among his " creeping things." 



Perhaps I have given myself superfluous 

 trouble in the preceding argument, for I find 

 that Mr. Gladstone is willing to assume (he does 

 not say to admit) that the statement in the 

 text of Genesis as to reptiles cannot "in all 

 points be sustained " (p. 16). But my position is 

 that it cannot be sustained in any point, so 

 that, after all, it has perhaps been as well to 

 go over the evidence again. And then Mr. 

 Gladstone proceeds as if nothing had happened 

 to tell us that 



There remain great unshaken facts to be weighed. First, the 

 fact that such a record should have been made at all. 



As most peoples have their cosmogonies, this 

 " fact " does not strike me as having much value. 



Secondly, the fact that, instead of dwelling in generalities, it 

 has placed itself under the severe conditions of a chronological 

 order reaching from the first nisus of chaotic matter to the 



