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CONSTANCE L. MAYNARD 01» 



for our Kepler, but meanwhile we can no more go back to the 

 catastrophic view of Creation than the astronomers of those days 

 could forsake Copernicus and go back to the old Ptolemaic 

 theories. That is impossible. 



This is hardly the place to enter on this vast subject, but 

 because it was to my own life the very watershed, the cross-roads, 

 the division of thought, which, if accepted, all else followed 

 naturally, I may perhaps be excused for dwelling for a few 

 moments on the magnificent record in Genesis i. There it lies 

 before us, a firm framework of truth, patient of interpretation, 

 like ruled lines that we may fill in by our ignorance or our 

 knowledge as we will. Milton filled it in with brilliant and 

 grotesque designs, picturing full-grown lions and sheep coming 

 clambering out of the earth, and we may fill it in with our 

 Science. It bears both equally well, for the Bible was not given 

 to, save us trouble by teaching us Natural Science. 



If you read the ancient Cosmogonies of other lands, whether 

 Hindu, Chaldean, Greek, or Scandinavian, you will find they 

 cannot go beyond the first sentence without falling into errors, 

 most of them absurd enough and even the best of them wholly 

 insufficient, while in this our scanty record given us by the Spirit 

 of God, the narrative is carried through to the very close, true 

 and unblemished by even the least mistake. 



Israel knew no more Science than any other nation, and con- 

 ceived of the solid earth as floating on an abyss of water, with 

 sun, moon and stars set in a crystal dome above ; yet the Spirit 

 of God has guided the hand of the scribe to steer between his 

 mental errors into the narrow safety of truth. 



In the first verse you have what Science demands as the five 

 necessary presuppositions of Creation — 



^ I. Time — In the beginning. 



2. Force— God. 



3. Energy — Created. 



4. Space — The heavens. 



5. Matter — And the earth. 



The first day's work is the sweeping together of the wreaths 

 of cosmic (liist into fiery streams; heat is not observable 

 to a spectator, so it is only the Light that is mentioned. The 

 second day's work is the completion of the shape of the earth, 

 when the dateless, formless ages are over, and the records of 

 Geology can begin to tell their tale. Thus it goes on ; the whole 

 of the inorganic world is in good \vorking order before life is 

 introduced, and of the two great lorms of life, it is that of the 

 vegetable that first reaches to size and power. Of animal life, 

 it is the lower and cold-blooded forms that prevail first, and only 



