tion alone, it becomes ns to be very careful how we make that 
Kevelation say what, perhaps, it did not say. This is a difficulty 
with which the Biblical student will often have to deal, and 
1 j e } s J us ^ will give to the natural philosopher all the 
advantage to which he is entitled, when we oblige him to 
receive authority so high, and so unique, injured and misin- 
terpreted as it is, or at any rate not rendered clear, and 
without doubt, m many passages that are now even obscure 
m the present day. A great responsibility rests on those 
that have made the word of God say what it does not say. 
.for instance, it is all-important, if we want to conduct this 
argument with due justice to both sides, that we decide, more 
correctly than has hitherto been done, what was really com- 
prehended in the six days of the living creation mentioned in 
brenesis ; and that obliges us to say, that neither the original 
Hebrew m Genesis, nor natural philosophy compels us to 
understand that every creature we now find on the earth had 
its exact counterpart in that six days' creation. 
But I have made an assertion which I can hardly expect 
those who have not been able yet to believe it, will receive 
without some further proof. Indeed there would be no 
necessity that I should occupy your time in this place and 
upon this occasion, if my arguments were exclusively to be 
drawn from the proofs of the supernatural source from which 
Kevelation derives her authority. It would be unreasonable 
?, ® , S ' cllai % alone, which makes allowance for 
all those who differ from ourselves, obliges me to give a 
reason for what I state, in language which is nearer to the 
arguments taken up by those who differ from myself. It is 
only fair, therefore, that I draw my argument from geological 
sources. Thus, geologists are very confident in their asser- 
tion that more than one independent creation has passed out 
of the hands of the Creator. They are persuaded that they 
see marks m the fossils that have been entombed in the earth 
distinct enough m their character to justify them in drawing 
the inference that they were separate and independent acts of 
creation-separate as regards time and general external appear- 
anc f ^ ^ noticed that it is not a consequence 
that, because great stress is thrown upon the expression “ very 
good, as applied by God himself to that creation in Genesis 
mentioned in the six days, therefore all the animals that we 
see now alive necessarily constituted part of that creation. 
I he term “ very good" cannot be a term taken in the 
abstract, but must necessarily form a proper relation to the 
time and circumstances of that creation to which it applied. 
In this sense, that creation which was so described by its 
