GEOLOGY IJV GENESIS.— If. 81 



• 

 not believe in God and reverently worship him. Men are too apt to look upon 

 this class as sole representatives of scientific thought, and all belief in evolution is 

 condemned because of the supposed heterodoxy of this one school. The other, 

 which embraces no inconsiderable part of the scientific world, believe in evolu- 

 tion as the work of God and his nifthod of creation. Geology furnishes abundant 

 evidence — though not conclusive — that God's plan of creation was by some form 

 of evolution. Now if we are ever forced by facts revealed in jiature to accept this 

 or some other mode of creation which we had not foreseen and which is not in 

 harmony with our previous belief and habits of thought, will it not be God''s ivorh 

 itill? If it be said that these changes in nature take place without any aid of 

 Divine power, I most emphatically object. " God upholds all things by the word 

 of his power." "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not any- 

 thing made that was made?" But if it be said that evolution or development is 

 God's plan of creation, I must confess that I see no reason for denial or objection 

 and no cause for fear of the consequences. That this is or is not his plan, how- 

 ever, neither science nor Scripture has yet positively assured u''. Whatever may 

 have been God's method of creation, it ill becomes shortlived and short "^sighted 

 man to suggest what to his mind would have been a better method of procedure. 

 I have used the word "day" thus far without any reference to the length of 

 time the word is meant to indicate. Bible students and geologists now agree that 

 the creative days were not twenty-four hours in length, but indefinite periods of 

 time. This is one among the many instances in which a knowledge of nature 

 has changed our interpretation of Scripture. That geology teaches this has been 

 incidentally, though I trust sufficiently, demonstrated in the great length of time 

 required for the stupendous changes of which there are abundant evidences in 

 the structural history of our earth. That Scripture teaches it, is abundantly estab- 

 lished in various ways. It is enough for our purpose merely to refer to the differ- 

 ent senses in which the word day is used in different parts of the Bible : " Oi;e 

 day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day,'" 

 "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday, when it is past, and as a 

 watch i?i the night." It is derogatory to the infinite God to restrict him and his 

 ways — his days of work and his day of rest — to the narrow limits of our ways and 

 times. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than 

 your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Prof. Dana has said: "A 

 Deity working in creation, like a day-laborer, by earth-days of twenty-four hours, 

 resting at night, is a belittling conception, and one probably never in the mind of 

 the sacred penman." God had no need of rest after the labor of the creative 

 days. "The Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary."" 

 He simply ceased from creative work and now, in his long seventh day, devotes 

 himself, so far as our earth is concerned, to works of love and mercy for the 

 further benefit of the favored beings for whose abode he had created the earth. 

 The creative days were "God divided days and nights in distinction from sun- 

 divided" — (Cocker). Even in the first two chapters of Genesis we find several 



VIII— 6 



