310 
and we often find unscientific people regarding such working theories as the 
accepted results of scientific inquiry. 
The Chairman. — A thought has occurred to me in the course of this debate 
which seems in accord with the remarks made by Mr. Coxhead, whether 
there is such a thing as a Hebrew cosmogony at all. We know that the 
ancient philosophers accounted for the state of the universe by suggesting 
some hypothesis with which it might seem to accord. We need not enter 
into the various strange hypotheses brought forward by the Eastern nations, 
although we must remember that in those hypotheses they were not so extra- 
vagant as may appear to ordinary Englishmen ; because, no doubt the expres- 
sions which they used had a symbolical meaning in them, and probably a 
more abstruse and philosophical sense than may at first sight appear. But 
while so many have thus endeavoured to devise cosmogonical theories, I do 
not discover such an attempt in the books of Moses, and I think we should 
be cautious in speaking of any cosmogony as authorized by Scripture. There 
are certain hints given in the Book of Genesis, but what we really get is the 
great fact that a personal God created all things and all persons ; all that 
exists in heaven and on earth ; and although that creation is narrated in a 
certain order, it is not, to my mind, at all necessary to suppose that Moses 
intended to dwell very much upon the distinct order in which those several 
objects were called into being. For whatever has been said with regard to 
the creation of light independent of the luminous body* — the sun — there is 
certainly great difficulty in the supposition. There is great difficulty in sup- 
posing the creation of luminiferous ether in one day, and in supposing the 
creation of the sun the day after, especially if there was, as some say, an 
enormous break in the tertiary period, and so on. But geological evidence 
will show that during the tertiary period and the secondary period also, a sun 
must have existed, for the fossils have visual organs similar to those which 
animals now possess, fitted, like theirs, to receive the rays of the sun ; nor 
can we conceive a vehicle of light (luminiferous ether) without the light 
which it is to convey. I read the opening chapters of Genesis as a 
* “ With respect to the creation of ‘ the greater light ’ and ‘ lesser light ’ 
on the fourth day, it is to be observed that the principle of the narrative 
demanded that their existence should date . . . from the time when they 
began to determine days, and months, and seasons, and years .... Still, 
it is to be said that scientific reasons might be given for dating the visible 
existence of the luminaries from the fourth day, if physical science, inclusive 
of the science of geology, were in such an advanced state as to allow of de- 
termining the forces and the operations whereby successive changes in the 
earth, the sea, and the atmosphere were produced in the geological epochs. 
(I have made some attempts in this direction in pp. 40-43 of my work.) In 
any case, however, an argument for the truth of the Scripture cosmogony 
may be drawn from the creation of the sun being assigned to the fourth day 
after it had been said that day and night had been generated on the first 
day ; for this is just such a contradiction as a fabricator would have 
avoided.”— Professor Ciiali.tr, F.R.S. 
