273 
already mentioned, but want of space requires me to relegate 
them, either to an Appendix, or to omit them altogether.* 
47. I therefore gladly turn to consider what is really the 
Cosmogony set forth *in the Hebrew Scriptures, and what the 
•Tews themselves believed on the subjects therein mentioned. 
It is necessary to be extremely careful in the examination of 
this question, for I think it is this want of care on the part of 
critics which has caused so much misunderstanding as to what 
the Bible really teaches on the subject of Cosmogony. I allude 
especially to the unfriendly criticisms of Bishop Colenso and 
Professor Huxley. I remember, when the former published the 
first part of his work on the Pentateuch, that Dr. Hermann 
Adler, son of the Chief Rabbi in London, published a letter in 
the Athenceum of December 6, 1862, asking, « Who but a 
smatterer in Hebrew would pervert the plain language of the 
text in the way Bishop Colenso has done?” And also, that 
the Rev. A. Levie, an English clergyman of the seed of 
Abraham, in a letter to the Record, stated, “ there can be no 
doubt of the fact that unbelieving Jews are scoffing at the 
recent whimsical display of ignorance and audacity on the part 
of an English bishop.” 
48. In a similar spirit Professor Huxley appears to have 
addressed the assembled clergy at Sion College on Novem- 
ber 21, 1867. “ You tell your congregations,” said he, “ that 
the world was made 6,000 years ago in the period of six days;f 
and teach that men of science, like myself, who deny this, 
* It should not, however, be forgotten that in all these cosmological tradi- 
tions, as supposed to be held by various nations, there is some degree of doubt 
as to how far the accounts handed down to us fairly represent the traditions 
so held ; e.g., Two writers in the present day might give very different 
accounts of the meaning of the various terms employed in Genesis to denote 
the Mosaic Cosmogony, as indeed, the papers read on this subject before the 
Institute bear ample evidence to this fact. 
f Mr. Warington, in a paper read before the Victoria Institute, June 4, 
1866, says : “Genesis teaches that the whole work of creation, in respect 
both to heaven and earth, was performed in the short space of six days.” — 
Transactions, vol. i. 88. I confess I have read these words with great sur- 
prise ; and still more to find that in the discussion which ensued no one 
called attention to this grave mistake, as to the meaning of what Moses 
really wrote. Professor Pluxley, however, is not always so destructive, of cos- 
mological theories as he appears to be when speaking of the Biblical Cosmo- 
gony. In his Lay Sermons, while advocating most earnestly his own 
idiosyncrasy respecting Protoplasm, he appears to defend warmly the 
materialistic theory of Kant, saying, “In his Natural History Kant 
expounds a complete cosmogony, or theory of the causes which led to the 
development of the universe, from diffused atoms of matter endowed with 
simple attractive and repulsive forces, saying, * Give me matter, and I will 
build the world ’ ” (p. 267). 
