65 
Then come the fishes and amphibious creatures of the 
waters, including fowl that fly in the air as well as live on sea 
and land. Is not this in strictly scientific order ? If Moses 
did not mean to teach us science, it is surely marvellous that 
he taught us such perfect knowledge of nature without mean- 
ing it ! If unconsciously he taught that which has never been 
excelled by the best minds on earth, it would be miraculous 
indeed. Then come before us the “ great whales ” of our 
common version, but really the gigantic originals of that vast 
variety of large creatures which still inhabit the earth, though 
now reduced to narrower dimensions. In these we are 
presented with neither the “few forms ” of Darwin, nor 
with the multitudinous creations of Agassiz ; yet with that 
very golden mean in which the truth is so often found. 
I confess that I feel the very gravest doubt as to whether 
the fundamental elements of all popular natural science are 
not merely the unconsciously retailed ideas of the Bible. I 
am not able to find evidence of a “ beginning ” in geology. 
The “ nebular hypothesis,” as it is called, is absurdity itself 
when tried by actual facts. The igneous condition of the 
interior of our globe, and its cooling down to its present 
state, is utterly inconsistent with the strongest geological 
evidence.* It does seem as if our great scientific men were 
deluding themselves with the idea that they have found in 
the records of the rocks that which they would never have 
dreamed but for their Bibles. These Bibles have taught them 
all the true doctrine of creation they yet know ! 
See how this is confirmed when we come to the creation of 
man. Here is a breathing into one form, not of “ several 
powers,” but of a special life. This is in perfect accordance 
with all that true science teaches, though not the result of 
unaided human inquiry such as claims the monopoly of being 
that science. In the lowest specimen of human kind there is a 
life, or movement, of spirit that is specific in the highest sense 
of the term — a movement which rises to the Creator Himself, 
and marks Him out as the object of either love or fear — a 
movement which has nothing analogous to it in all the rest of 
creation. Surely the teaching of such a truth in the creation 
of man is teaching the very loftiest and most trustworthy of 
all science. Compare it with the Pangenesis of Darwin, and 
* “ The doctrine, therefore, of the pristine fluidity of the interior of the 
earth, and the gradual solidification of its crust consequent on the loss of 
internal heat by radiation into space, is one of many scientific hypotheses 
which has been adhered to after the props by which it was at first sup- 
ported have given way one after the other .” — Principles of Sir Charles 
Lyell , p. 211, edition 1868. 
VOL. IV. 
F 
