OSES Scientific 
 
 
 
 
 
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 KIPP, P. E. 1847-1900. 
 IS Moses scientific'? 
 
Is Moses Scientific? 
 
 First Chapter of Genesis Tested by Latest Discoveries 
 of Science 
 
 REV. p. E. KIPP XO /p 
 
 "Thy word is true from the beginning "Ps. iig; 160. 
 ''Let all the nations be Rathered together, and let the people 
 be assembled; who among them can declare this, and shew us 
 former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they 
 may be justified; or let them hear, and say — It is truth" Is. 43:9 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 Publishers 0/ Evangelical Literature, 
 
Entered according to Act of Conress, in the year 1893, by 
 Fleming H. Revell Company, in the office of the Librarian of 
 Congress, at Washington. 
 
TO MY FATHER 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The apology tor this book is the crisis of the 
 times. The Old Testament, and especially the 
 Pentateuch, is now receiving the brunt of battle, 
 which thirty or forty years ago was waged against 
 the New Testament. There seems to be such 
 confusion and smoke, that the common people 
 begin to fear there mast be more mistakes in 
 the Bible, than it is to the interest of Christian 
 scholars to let them know. If so much is told 
 out loud, how much more must be concealed? 
 If the books of the Old Testament are unau- 
 thentic and unhistorical, the foundations of their 
 faith seem slipping away, and they are left in 
 bewilderment to know whether anything can be 
 firmly believed. 
 
 The age is passing through a peaceful revolu- 
 tion; old methods of living, traveling, working, 
 thinking, believing are undergoing change. 
 
 If we could read the history of our own times, 
 as it shall be written fifty years hence, we could 
 not believe that we had been on the stage when 
 such great revolutions were in progress. 
 
 In the religious world, as elsewhere, it is a 
 
8 PREFACE 
 
 time of crisis; old faiths need to be restated; 
 old truths need to be set in new relations; old 
 theology needs to be rearranged around new 
 centers. The greatest care should be exercised, 
 lest in proving all things, we should not hold fast 
 that which is good. Re-adjustment does not 
 mean relaxation; restatement does not mean 
 rejection. If on the one hand, we find that 
 our old diamonds need new setting, let us be 
 careful that we shall not have the setting, with- 
 out the diamonds. And if on the other hand, 
 the old tree is sloughing off the effete bark, it is 
 because it is so healthy and vigorous, but let us 
 not clutch after the cast off wood, and despise 
 the new growth. 
 
 The people need to be assured that there is no 
 more danger to the old Book than there is danger 
 to the tree, when Spring splits off the old bark. 
 The old truths are not going to be given up for 
 they are embedded in the life of the world; like 
 the granite rocks, they underlie all our beautiful 
 civilization which grows above them. 
 
 But at just this time, when doubts are raised 
 and controversies fill the air to suffocation, it 
 was thought opportune to look at the bul- 
 warks which have been thought most easily 
 assailed. 
 
PREFACE 9 
 
 The Pentateuch is most violently attacked, 
 but if any part is exposed to the hard facts of 
 rigorous science, it is the first chapter of Genesis. 
 There, if anywhere a deadly battle can be 
 fought; there, if anywhere science is sure of its 
 ground and can make a strong attack. 
 
 Much that is put forth as historical criticism 
 is mere speculation. Much of Vv^hat is hurled 
 against the Pentateuch are missiles that are 
 forged out of fancy and imagination. The mist 
 in which the long distant past is enveloped; the 
 clouds which obscure most of what we call 
 earliest history, have been rolled up into airy 
 cannon-balls and hurled against the beetling 
 rocks of the Bible. 
 
 But in the first chapter of Genesis, this is not 
 so; here positive science comes to the front; 
 here she stands on rock and speaks of what she 
 knows. On somethings in that chapter, science 
 can speak with as much assurance as can revela- 
 tion. If there be a conflict here, it will not be 
 conducted with missiles of mist, but with the cold 
 steel of well tempered facts. So that if anything 
 be the matter with the Bible, here is the place 
 to find out. Science has picks and bars with 
 which she can lay bare the foundations of 
 Scripture to show us upon what it is founded. 
 
10 FREFACt 
 
 The excuse for this book is, therefore, the need 
 of the times. The attempt has been made to bring 
 cut the whole truth of this chapter of Genesis and 
 the whole truth of science upon the same sub- 
 jects, and place thern side by side. If Scripture 
 be true, it must be willing to be tried by the 
 most rigorous tests, wherever such tests can be 
 applied; it must ask for no favor and no screen. 
 Truth should always be willing to stand forth 
 naked and she need not blush. If we ask for one 
 concession for the Bible; if we attempt to cloak 
 its errors; if we apologize for its untruth by the 
 specious plea that the Bible was not given to 
 teach science, we are no friends of Truth. 
 Truth scorns human cloaks; it cannot abide 
 human patronage; it is but fettered when we 
 would throw around it the arms of our protection. 
 If it cannot stand out in the glaring light, it is not 
 Truth, but a half truth, which is the worst 
 counterfeit of all. On most of the subjects of 
 Revelation, Science is not competent to speak, 
 because the facts relate to a realm where she 
 cannot enter; but on this first chapter, she can 
 speak with authority. If we run to hide our 
 Bible from her keenest search; if we piteously 
 beg for quarter, where we fear it is vulnerable, 
 we impeach our own faith. About the contents 
 
PREFACE 11 
 
 of this chapter, Revelation and Science are both 
 positive; if they come into conflict, the battle 
 must be fought out and the sooner we learn the 
 issue, the better for us. 
 
 The writer does not claim to be a scientist. 
 On this side he has taken for his authority such 
 men as Principal Dawson of McGill College 
 Montreal; Prof. Dana of Yale; the late Prof. 
 Winchell of University of Michigan; Prof. War- 
 ring of Poughkeepsie; the late Prof. Guyot of 
 Princeton; Prof. Wright of Oberlin; Prof. Le 
 Conte of the University of California, and others 
 equally eminent who have brought the story of 
 science down to date. 
 
 On the other side the writer has taken the 
 record in the original language and with 
 Hebrew lexicon and concordance has at- 
 tempted to learn what it really does say. 
 He has relied on no tradition nor even trans- 
 lation, but has sought to know what each word 
 means in its derivation, and in the use that is 
 made of it in other passages of Scripture. No 
 reconciliation has been attempted between Rev- 
 elation and Science, for reconciliation implies 
 enmity; what we want is fullest agreement, or 
 nothing. 
 
 Perhaps the confession should be frankly 
 
12 PREF/ICE . 
 
 made that this special study was begun with 
 considerable trepidation, lest wide differences 
 should be met where the two could not be 
 brought into fullest accord. Many men of 
 eminence, who believe in the inspiration of 
 this record, have yet apologized for the un- 
 scientific statements which this chapter was 
 thought to make on minor points. If this be 
 the case, then the record is not scientific, and 
 we had better not advance the claim. But the 
 increasing delight, and astonishment as the 
 points of difference disappeared by a close 
 study of the record, cannot be told. As the 
 angel conducted John through heaven, so 
 Science seems to walk through this garden of 
 Revelation to point out its marvels and sur- 
 prises, and then explain them in a language 
 familiar on earth. 
 
 Condensation has been studied. The age no 
 longer reads voluminous works; it requires of 
 him who would preach or teach, that he shall 
 gather from a wide range, but shall put it within 
 a small compass, for "Art is long and time is 
 fleeting." Technical discussion and terminology 
 have been avoided as far as possible. 
 
 It was for some time a question whether ref- 
 erences to the scientific authorities should not 
 
PREFACE 13 
 
 be constantly made by foot-notes; but it was 
 found that these would be so frequent as to 
 be confusing, for often the same sentences 
 would have a reference to several authors, and 
 it would have necessitated an entire change of 
 style, which is now more of a story from the 
 side of science, illustrating the great truths of 
 the text. 
 
 The question of authorship, has not been en- 
 tered upon. Popular use, and even the authority 
 of Christ, have assigned the name of Moses to 
 this part of Scripture, and no change has been 
 made in this respect. It may be objected that 
 Moses himself, or whoever else was the author, 
 never dreamed of what is supposed to be found 
 in this chapter. It is not meant that this chap- 
 ter is scientific, in the sense of a text book, nor 
 that its terms and classification are those of 
 modern science; but that it contains the germs, 
 which in the future should develope into a tree 
 of knowledge, as the acorns, once scattered 
 over the ground, have developed into the great 
 forest. Moses did not himself realize what 
 his word contained, because they contained 
 expansive ideas, which should mean more to 
 him who knows more about the subjects to which 
 they relate. And this is proof of the inspiration 
 
14 PREFACE 
 
 of this chapter, in that it contains more than 
 any one of that early day could possibly have 
 known, and requires all the science of today to 
 unfold. 
 
 If this be a revelation, it should be expected 
 as a matter of course, that far more was 
 contained than could be comprehended by 
 any man, for the communication was maJe, 
 not to his understanding, but to his faith. 
 If this be God's truth, it should mean more 
 to an advanced age than it could mean to 
 one of less knowledge, just as the heavens, 
 which have always declared the glory of God, 
 must tell more of that glory to the age which 
 has telescopes than to that age which had none. 
 But the depths of this wonderful chapter have 
 not yet been sounded; it will mean far more to 
 the next generation than it can mean to us, if 
 that generation be more enlightened in the wis- 
 dom of God. 
 
 Cleveland, rSpj 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. — Prologue. Conflict between science and revela- 
 tion, here if anywhere; Draper's test; the chapter could have 
 existed in writing before Moses; Guyot's cosmogony; con- 
 tent of tirst verse; data for estimating lapses of time; the 
 four geologic ages: bara — to create, three times used, and just 
 where science requires pp 1 5-38 
 
 Chapter II. — Primitive Condition of Matter. Nebula hy- 
 pothesis; three scientific statements of second verse, earth 
 nebulous, a fluid filled all space, and vibratory motion origi- 
 nally imparted by Spirit of God; clock of universe running 
 down; Encke's comet; twelve scientific principles in first two 
 verses pp. 39-55 
 
 Chapter III. — First Creative Day. The two decalogues; Guy- 
 ot's analysis; creation successive, in obedience to law; com- 
 mand to light correct in itsorder; good light immediately; di- 
 vided from darkness by earth no longer self-luminous; "even- 
 ing was, morning was, day one"; ten more scientific state- 
 ments pp. 56-67 
 
 Chapter IV. — Second Day. "Firmament" a mistranslation; 
 the story told by science; perfect agreement with Moses; 
 water formed after earth ceases to be luminous; no divine 
 commendation: this day the Azoic age; five more scientific 
 statements, yet no conflict with science pp. 70 83 
 
vi T/1BLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter V. — Third Day. Mountains, the wrinkles of cool- 
 ing earth; Will is the only originating force; sea "in one 
 place"; no perspective; no conflict as to first appearance of 
 vegetation; life first appears in era of matter; law applies to 
 life as well as to matter; new power of reproduction; coal 
 measures; highest forms of vegetation pp, 84-115 
 
 Chapter VI. — Fourth Day. Purpose of the luminaries, not 
 their creation given; mere clearing of clouds unworthy of a 
 whole day; six months of darkness unsuitable to growth of 
 highest vegetation, earth's axis must then have received its 
 inclination; negative accuracy in no allusion to week or 
 month: not intended to explain all the purposes of sun and 
 moon; equilibrium of heat and moisture carefully maintained. 
 pp. 116-132 
 
 Chapter VII. — Fifth Day. Earth's crust Nature's herbarium; 
 animate creation the temple of life; Dana's chart; creeping 
 and flying invertebrates, fishes, reptiles, birds; Huxley's chart. 
 PP- 133-155 
 
 Chapter VIII. — Sixth Day. Marine preceed laud animals by 
 a whole creative day; herbivora, reptiles, carnivora; man 
 appears on same day; preparation for him; raised far above 
 other animals by endowment of spiritual nature; divine com- 
 mendation not pronounced upon man; extinction of ferocious 
 
 species; most hopeful of all the statements yet made 
 
 pp. 156 -183 
 
 Chapter IX.— Seventh Day. Human era of geology; no 
 evening mentioned; education by discipline; God's rest not 
 cessation from moral work; a free moral being capable of 
 choice; science too knows something wrong in the world, 
 
 which revelation calls sin; sabbath to be sanctified 
 
 pp. 184-198 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii 
 
 Chapter X. — Method of Creation. Appearances need to be 
 translated; translation by science always received by fright- 
 ened protest; individuals now created by evolution; God's 
 plan always the same; meaning of evolution; Moses does not 
 contradict evolution, but seems to require it.. . .pp. 199-215 
 
 Chapter XI, — Antiquity of Man. Conflict between so-called 
 Bible chronology and geology; gap decreasing from both 
 sides; Scripture genealogies not successive; about ten thous- 
 and years for age of man required by historical argument; 
 same required by geology pp. 216-232 
 
 Chapter XII. — Conclusion. God's Word tested by time, ex- 
 perience, history, science, worthy of fullest confidence 
 
 pp. 233-239 
 
IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 
 
 The first chapter of Genesis is prophecy 
 turned backward. It cannot be history, for it 
 reaches back before man was, before the earth 
 was, yes before time itself began to be. 
 
 On such adventurous flight, imagination 
 would not venture forth alone. The trembling 
 seer must have been encouraged and borne across 
 the measureless distances by other than human 
 power. 
 
 These twinkling points, which he shows us in 
 the depths of the past and which form this galaxy 
 of Genesis, are they real stars, or are they only 
 the after-glow of the distant fires kindled by 
 some sagacious man primeval.-' 
 
 We are children of eternity; we are soon going 
 out into the limitless spaces and we want to 
 
 15 
 
IC IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 know whether we can trust prophecy turned 
 forward. 
 
 And these other hghts twinkhng in the depths 
 of the future and forming the far more brilliant 
 galaxy of the Apocalypse, which closes our 
 Bible, are they too, real stars by which we can 
 guide our course, or are they only the phos- 
 phorescence of human genius? 
 
 We are going out where living man has never 
 been, where earth shall not be, yes where time 
 shall be no more. All that we have to relieve 
 the darkness of the two eternities is this Word. 
 
 Does it tell us true what shall be ? We can 
 better trust it, if it be shown that it told us true 
 of what has been. 
 
 The first chapter of Genesis is necessary to 
 the last chapter of Revelation, How dare we 
 believe in the river of life and the city that hath 
 foundations, if we cannot believe what the Word 
 has told us of the beginning, the light, the air, 
 the earth and its peopling? It is not sufficient 
 that the first chapter of Genesis be fairly true; 
 true in a general way; we require that all its 
 statements shall be wholly accurate. 
 
 Is Moses scientific? does his record square 
 with what science can vouch of the past? So 
 far as science can follow him, we dare not relieve 
 
PROLOGUE \1 
 
 him of the strictest accountability. He has 
 gone out of his way to tell us of things which 
 in no vva}' concern our salvation; things which 
 should not have been told unless absolutely true; 
 but science is true, and therefore he has no right 
 to ask to be screened from the responsibility of 
 scientific accuracy. These facts could not have 
 been known by the writer; they cover ground 
 which human knowledge had not then begun to 
 traverse; if known at all, it must have been by 
 divine inspiration. While the language may be 
 liable to the imperfections of a human vehicle, 
 yet the great facts themselves should not need 
 the slightest apology, for this would not be a 
 question of human, but of divine errancy. 
 
 This cosmogony involves the credibility of the 
 Book which has disclosed to us the way of life, 
 and we insist upon having everything connected 
 with our salvation so sure, that nothing can sug- 
 gest a doubt. It is not sacrilege then that we 
 should ask science to remove the soil so that we 
 may see if the foundations are built upon the 
 bed rock. The places on which rest the two 
 ends of the rainbow will not bear scrutiny, but 
 the viaduct to heaven should not fear to allow 
 science to lay bare the base and examine the pier 
 on which its earth-end is secured. 
 
18 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 This record can claim to be divinely inspired 
 only because Its statements are scientifically 
 true; if they are partly true and partly false it 
 can be nothing more than a shrewd speculation. 
 "It is a flippant remark to make in this con- 
 nection," says Principal Dawson, *'to say that 
 Scripture was not given to teach science." 
 While this is true, it does not apply here; the 
 information here offered is wholly gratuitous; 
 not necessary "to make thee wise unto salva- 
 tion," so that we have a right to expect it shall 
 be accurate information. 
 
 In his "Intellectual Development of Europe," 
 Dr. Draper tells us what a revelation should be 
 able to do. He is speaking of the Koran, and 
 says: "Considering the asserted origin of this 
 book, indirectly from God himself, we might 
 justly expect that it would bear to be tried by 
 any standard that man can apply, and vindicate 
 its truth and excellence in the ordeal of human 
 criticism. As years pass on and human science 
 becomes more exact, more comprehensive, its 
 conclusions must be found in unison therewith. 
 When occasions arise, it should furnish us, at 
 least the forshadowing of the great truths dis- 
 covered by astronomy and geology, not offering 
 for them wild fictions of earlier ages, the inven- 
 tions of the infancy of man." 
 
PROLOGUE 19 
 
 Though intended as a back thrust at the Bible, 
 by setting up a test which he thought could not 
 be fulfilled, we will accept this as a just demand, 
 and we are willing to test the first chapter of 
 Genesis by it, and admit that if it cannot meet 
 it, then this chapter has no right to ask us to 
 believe it is inspired. If this be a part of God's 
 Book, it must be true, and truth asks no favors 
 at our hands; we need not run to hide it from 
 the severest investigation by whomsoever made. 
 If there be a conflict between Revelation and 
 Science, Truth cannot be on both sides; it must 
 be on the one side or the other, 
 
 "And truth the day must win 
 To doubt would be disloyalty; 
 To falter would be sin." 
 
 If Revelation and Science be antagonists, a 
 conflict is inevitable; by all the efforts of the 
 friends of either side such conflict can no more 
 be avoided than it can between light and dark- 
 ness. 
 
 In this chapter Revelation has deliberately 
 come down into the domain of science, and so 
 has made this a legitimate field where they may 
 meet, nay must meet. Here they must fight to 
 the death if they be foes; but if it be found that 
 their supposed differences have been false accu- 
 
20 75 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 sations brought by the indiscreet followers of 
 each against the other, they will come forth from 
 the meeting firmer and faster friends, because 
 of their mistaken enmit}'. 
 
 Even so eminent a scientist as Dr. Draper 
 insists that there is such an enmity, and he has 
 written a "History of the Conflict between Re- 
 ligion and Science." If however we insist upon 
 the definition of terms, we shall see that no 
 such conflict is possible. Religion is the fulfill- 
 ment of our obligation to God and to man, and 
 to this, science can make no opposition. 
 
 No, it is answered; it is not with religion 
 that science has a conflict, but with the Bible. 
 If we again insist upon bringing the charge 
 down from its cloudy vagueness, and ask where 
 that conflict lies, we shall find that it is not with 
 the Bible either, but with the church, or theology, 
 or tradition, or superstition. But the church is 
 not the Bible, for it has often misrepresented 
 the Bible; theology has often made a conflict 
 when none existed; tradition may be wrong. 
 Like Job's three friends, these may have gotten 
 the cause they championed into a false position, 
 and yet the Bible be true, as the heavens have 
 always "declared the glory of God" even though 
 astrology and many theories of the heavens 
 were wrong. 
 
PROLOGUE 21 
 
 "Science interpreted is theology; science pros- 
 ecuted to its conclusions, leads to God." 
 
 The place therefore where the relations be- 
 tween Revelation and Science, will be strained, 
 if anywhere, will be on the field opened by the 
 first chapter of Genesis; we are to enter this 
 field and see if even here they do not dwell in 
 complete accord. 
 
 Whence came this chapter? Higher Critjcism 
 thinks it finds evidence that it was written by a 
 different hand than that which wrote the second 
 chapter. This conclusion may be correct, for it 
 is probable that Moses found this record already 
 to hand, and he had but to incorporate it into 
 the body of his writing. Whether this revelation 
 was made to Moses or Abraham or Noah or even 
 to Adam and handed down by oral tradition, 
 matters not; it has been incorporated into the 
 sacred writings, and Christ has given to it the 
 authority of Moses' name. 
 
 That this document could have been handed 
 down in writing from even a much earlier age, is 
 now quite certain, for writing is known to have 
 been in existence long before the time of Moses. 
 In a recent article Prof. Sayce of Oxford de- 
 scribes what he calls the "romance of archae- 
 ology." Dr. Flinders Petrie has discovered at 
 
]S MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt, tablets which give us 
 a gimpse of the social and political life in Canaan, 
 a century before the Exodus, 
 
 Among these letters written in the cuneiform 
 characters of Babylonia, was one from Zimrida, 
 the governor of Lachish in Palestine, to Pharaoh. 
 Two years ago Dr. Petrie undertook excavations 
 in an artificial mound in southern Palestine, 
 called Tel-el-Hesy, Called away himself, he left 
 the work to be prosecuted by Mr. Bliss, who 
 unearthed at the very close of the work, a small 
 clay tablet also in cuneiform characters similar 
 to those of the letters which had been exhumed 
 down in Egypt, at Tel-el-Amarna. When 
 this tablet was read it was found to contain 
 the name of this governor Zimrida, who had 
 written the letter to the king of Egypt, and it 
 refers to a time a hundred years and more before 
 the Exodus. 
 
 For more than 3,000 years the letter which 
 Zimrida had addressed to Pharaoh, and the let- 
 ter which he had read at home, had been lying 
 beneath the ground, the one on the banks of 
 the Nile, and the other on the desolate site in 
 Southern Palestine, and now they are brought 
 together, and found to be the two halves of 
 this correspondence, a veritable romance of 
 
PROLOGUE 23 
 
 archaeology. In these we have conclusive de- 
 monstration that writing was common several 
 hundred years before the time of Moses, so 
 that this document containing the first chapter 
 of Genesis, could have been handed down in 
 writing, which Moses had but to embody in his 
 own history. 
 
 But we have proof also that writing existed 
 even before the time of Abraham, so that the 
 first chapter may have been written as early 
 as then, and handed down in a more correct 
 form than by oral tradition. 
 
 Tablets giving an account of the Flood from 
 an Assyrian standpoint have been exhumed from 
 the ruins of Nineveh. 
 
 Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, reigned at Nin- 
 eveh about 673 B. C. ; he was the grandson of 
 Sennacherib, and known to the Greeks as Sar- 
 danapalus. Having inherited a royal library of 
 clay tablets, he determined to enrich it; enjoying 
 political repose, like Ptolemy Philadelphus at 
 Alexandria, he sent out scribes to transcribe for 
 him the literature of other peoples. These scribes 
 ransacked the record chambers of the oldest 
 temples in the world. — Babel, Erech, Accad, 
 Ur, and made copies of their tablets. The orig- 
 inals, from which these Nineveh copies were 
 
34 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 made, were very old, claiming to have dated as 
 much as i,6oo years before the time of Assur- 
 banipal. That would show that writing existed 
 two hundred years before the time of Abraham, 
 and how much earlier we cannot as yet know. 
 This Assyrian account of creation, the fall of 
 man and the flood, which have been translated 
 for us, may have been copied from the temple 
 archives of Ur, where Abraham lived, who may 
 have himself read the originals. 
 
 That Abraham was a scholar and an astrono- 
 mer, we know; that he was familiar with writing 
 which had existed in his own city at least for 
 two hundred years, was probable; it is therefore 
 at least possible, and even probable that this 
 first chapter of Genesis was in the form of writ- 
 ing in the time of Abraham. 
 
 But whoever the author, this record takes a 
 bold step; it makes certain statements on scien- 
 tific subjects, commits them to writing, binds 
 them up with a religious ritual of which the 
 people will be very tenacious, and so preserved, 
 it hands them down the centuries, which it 
 challenges later science to disprove. 
 
 "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the 
 Egyptians," and if this chapter be only the spec- 
 ulation of a learned man, it may have its little 
 
PROLOGUE 25 
 
 day, but it will surely be soon shoved aside and 
 thrown into the waste basket of science. 
 
 The theories which have been advanced on the 
 great subjects here propounded, cannot be coun- 
 ted; they have had their day, and soon have 
 given place to others that in turn lived no longer 
 than their predecessors. Prof. Henry Drummond 
 tells us that a text book on science is obsolete 
 in ten years; how then will this record be able 
 to survive centuries and prove the one exception 
 to everything that has ever been written on 
 scientific subjects? 
 
 Here is a whole cosmogony, covering the vast 
 period, during which all the changes on the earth 
 took place, from the "beginning,'*to the comple- 
 tion of creation. It is liable to error on a 
 thousand points. Whoever started this adven- 
 turous bark, sailed on unknown seas; there were 
 a thousand Syllas and a thousand Charybdises 
 on which it must surely be wrecked. If it had 
 been content to make one or two statements, 
 we should not fear so much,'but it has been so 
 indiscreet as to hazard all. 
 
 With all its vast inheritance from the past, 
 science has not yet presumed to speak the 
 last word on these great subjects. How dared 
 any man or any age in the long ago, before 
 
36 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 there was any science; how dared they commit 
 themselves so positively and presume to make 
 a record that will admit of no correction? 
 
 Time is a sieve which ruthlessly separates the 
 wheat from the chaff; the gleanings which have 
 been preserved from the past are very few; 
 ancient books which pretend to give us knowl- 
 edge on scientific subjects, are discarded, every 
 one. But here is a record of scientific facts which 
 is the one single exception; it has not only sur- 
 vived and is still read, but that it is in agree- 
 ment with present knowledge is shown by this 
 incident. 
 
 Prof. Guyot tells us that he was preparing at 
 Neufchatel, a course of lectures on General His- 
 tory, he being then professor of History in the 
 Swiss University, and thought to commence it 
 with an introductory lecture on Cosmogony, or 
 the world before Man, for which astronomy, 
 biology and geology afforded facts. He worked 
 out the order of events without a thought of the 
 first chapter of Genesis. When his cosmogony, 
 thus deduced, was complete, it flashed upon him, 
 he says, that it set forth essentially the same 
 order of events as the cosmogony of the Bible. 
 He then took up Genesis for careful study, and 
 found the two so much alike that the explana- 
 
PROLOGUE 27 
 
 tions of the first chapter which he haspubhshed, 
 is the result. 
 
 Before entering upon its careful investigation, 
 let us be sure that we rid our minds of every- 
 thing which we have learned about it from other 
 sources than the chapter itself. It is not what 
 others have said that Moses said, but we want 
 to ask what the record itself says. We may 
 have been told that Moses says the world was 
 suddenly called into existence; Moses himself 
 does not say so. We may have understood 
 Moses to say that the earth was created a solid 
 globe; he nowhere says so. Tradition may have 
 taught us that creation was finished in six days 
 of twenty-fours each; Moses does not say so. 
 All this is but the reading into the record of the 
 false science of the past ages. . 
 
 The word "day" is used in four different senses 
 in this record, and therefore it would be unfair to 
 pledge it to the one period of twenty four hours 
 only. 
 
 In the first creative day, "God called the light 
 rt'rtr, and the darkness He called night;" that 
 could not have been a solar day, because the 
 sun is not spoken of until the fourth creative 
 day. 
 
 "And God said — let there be lights in the 
 
tS MOSES SCfENTlFIC? 
 
 firmament of the heaven — and let them be for 
 
 signs and for seasons and for c^aj/s and years;" 
 these were days of twenty-four hours each. 
 
 "And God made the two great lights, the 
 greater to rule the day, and the lesser to rule 
 the night;" this day could consist of only twelve 
 hours, or the time when the sun was shining. 
 
 "These are the generations of the heaven and 
 of the earth when they were created, in the day 
 that the Lord God made earth and heaven;" 
 here day covers the whole creative period. Re- 
 membering the length of God's creative day, 
 Moses wrote in the 90th Psalm — "For a thousand 
 years in thy sight are as yesterday when it is past 
 and as a watch in the night." 
 
 Let us be careful to put away all bias or pre- 
 conceived notions, while we come to study 
 this matchless condensation of scientific facts, 
 which forms one of the three great mount- 
 ain peaks of Scripture. As we scan the horizon 
 of Revelation, the three Alpine summits which 
 pierce the sky, are the first chapter of Gen- 
 esis, the ten commandments, and the sermon 
 on the mount. All these are evidently not arti- 
 ficial mounds of human erection, but are the 
 work of divine hands. 
 
 If the apostles of science should attempt to 
 
PROLOGUE 29 
 
 prepare a creed of creation, they could not equal 
 this masterpiece of Moses; this first chapter of 
 Genesis is the "Apostles' Creed" of science. It 
 begins large and in a way worthy of a divine 
 author. "In the beginning, God created the 
 heavens and the earth." 
 
 That first verse, contains five universal terms 
 ■ — God — heaven — earth — creation — beginning, 
 
 "It is the weightiest sentence ever uttered; it 
 covers all past time, all conceivable space, all 
 known things, all power, all intelligence, and the 
 most comprehensive act of that intelligence and 
 power. It tells of the origin of things, names 
 the originator, states the time of the origin, and 
 coordinates all into one great system. This 
 first verse is a statement on nearly all the great 
 problems which now exercise scientists and phil- 
 osophers — God, creation, the whole, eternity, 
 cause, time, space, infinity, force, design, intelli- 
 gence, will, destiny, universality. There is in it 
 the germ of the the whole Bible, as well as the 
 germ of all science and philosophy. Compare 
 this first verse, with the first verse of any history, 
 or biography, or any work of man. These begin 
 with a date, tell the author's ancestors, or some 
 trivial matters. The first verse of Genesis be- 
 gins very differently; if nothing else in the Bible 
 
I 
 
 30 is MOSES SCIENTIFIC^ 
 
 is worthy of God, this first verse is certainly 
 worthy of Him. Had the world met at the 
 Almighty's feet to hear Him speak, it could 
 have heard Him utter no sentence worthier of 
 Him, in tones of thunder from His infinite throne!' 
 Here is the first word of history, for it begins 
 with the beginning. Here is the first word of 
 philosophy, for we cannot go beyond the first 
 cause. Here is the first word of science, for we 
 cannot go beyond the heavens and the earth. 
 This is a sentence of great beginnings — the be- 
 ginning of the world, the beginning of history, 
 the beginning of force, the beginning of revela- 
 tion, the beginning of religion, the beginning of 
 science; the beginning, in short of the whole 
 course of things which has come down to the 
 present. This sentence declares there is a God, 
 and at once settles the greatest question known 
 to man — is there a God? yes there is, and He 
 created all things. At once polytheism is over- 
 turned; all these which pagans worship, the sun, 
 the moon, trees, animals, stones, — these were 
 all created by the one God. It settles the ques- 
 tion of creation; matter was not by spontaneous 
 generation, — not a blind working out of force; 
 there was an Intelligence which made and 
 planned all. A great free will is the first cause. 
 
PROLOGUE 31 
 
 the beginning of the chain of cause and effect; 
 matter is subject to will, to thought; thought is 
 not the effect of natural, molecular action. It 
 settles the unity of God. God made all; He is 
 alone, not one of man}' gods; if everything was 
 made by Elohim, there is no place for any other. 
 It teaches too, that Nature is a unity — it is one 
 great system. Here is the foundation of uni- 
 versal law, the continuity of law, and all those 
 great principles which science is now establishing 
 so firmly. This sentence is a philosophy in itself. 
 From the very dawn, philosophy has been work- 
 ing on this verse, yet in this nineteenth century 
 it has gotten no farther. The scientific world 
 is still engaged on the first verse of Genesis, 
 which has furnished nearly all its current prob- 
 lems that are as fresh to-day, as they were in 
 those days, and that are still pressing for a solu- 
 tion. "When God here spake, He spake prob- 
 lems for all time. For He spake so clearly that 
 all can understand. He spake so grandly that 
 none can fully comprehend." 
 
 "In the beginning," when was that.'' Tradi- 
 tion has said — six thousand years ago, but the 
 Bible does not say so. Some data, from which 
 to estimate what lapses of time have been since 
 *'the beginning," may be found in the "Great 
 
32 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC 
 
 American Desert." For the most vivid descrip- 
 tion of the geology of this forsaken region, we 
 are indebted to Dr. Newberry, the geologist of 
 Ives' Colorado Expedition under the General 
 Government. This region is a vast plateau, 
 stretching for hundreds of miles in either direc- 
 tion. Far in the hazy horizon may be seen the 
 bold wall, which rises to a more elevated table- 
 land, composed of overyling strata. These 
 higher strata were once continuous over the 
 surface of the lower plateau, but have here been 
 worn away by the action of water. Still farther 
 in the horizon, looms up another gigantic terrace, 
 rising to the upper plateau of the desert. The 
 traveler, journeying across this apparently 
 monotonous plain, finds himself suddenly stand- 
 ing on the brink of a precipice. Down, far 
 down into the gloomy chasm at his feet, he en- 
 deavors to cast a look; it is a vertical rent 
 through the strata to the appalling depth of more 
 than a mile. Far down at the bottom, winds 
 the stream which has executed this tremendous 
 piece of engineering, quiet now as a lamb, but 
 in the spring time roaring and destructive as a 
 lion. This is the Colorado river. The great 
 Black Canon of the Colorado, is a gorge with 
 perpendicular walls of rock three hundred miles 
 
PROLOGUE 33 
 
 long, and from three thousand to six thousand 
 feet high. All this vast tunnel has been exca- 
 vated by the slow action of the water; how long 
 must it have taken? What aeons must have 
 rolled by while this unparalleled work was in 
 progress? And yet this work must have been 
 limited to the later ages, since the gorge cuts 
 through cretaceous strata, which were deposited 
 in the last period of Mesozoic time. Man was 
 yet an idea of the Creator in the far distant 
 future, and lazy reptiles held dominion of the 
 fair domain. Vast then as was the work, and 
 vast as must have been its duration, its com- 
 mencement dates back to but the middle of 
 geological time. 
 
 Reflect what this means as to the time since 
 "the beginning." Here is a river which has cut 
 its channel through solid rock to a depth of more 
 than a mile; a thousand feet of that depth was 
 through hardest granite; how long must the in- 
 appreciable action of water have taken to do 
 this vast work? And yet, long, immeasurably 
 long as it must have been, the river began that 
 work not earlier than the last period of Mesozoic 
 time. 
 
 The life of the earth has been divided into four 
 great periods — the Azoic, or lifeless age; the 
 
34 /5 MOSES SCIENTIFIC 
 
 Paleozoic, or oldest age of life; the Mesozoic, or 
 middle age of life; Cainozoic, or recent age of 
 life. And the Colorado began its work, not 
 earlier than the last of the middle period. When 
 then must have been the "beginning?" Geolog- 
 ical periods increase in length as we go back- 
 ward. Dana estimates the ratio for the Paleo- 
 zoic, Mesozoic and Cainozoic periods to be 
 I2;3;i; that is, the Mesozoic is three times as 
 long as the Cainozoic, and the Paleozoic is four 
 times as great as the Mesozoic; how many times 
 greater was the Azoic, we cannot tell. But this 
 river work began in the last of the periods rep- 
 resented by the ratio — 3. 
 
 Let us try to estimate the immensity of time 
 since the "beginning" in another way. There is 
 a crust of stratified rock, twenty-five miles in 
 thickness, resting upon the original foundation 
 which is commonly granite. Now stratified rock 
 is that which has been formed in layers under 
 water. Its materials have been gnawed off from 
 the previous rocks by the action of water, carried 
 off by the violence of the waves, by the action 
 of streams, or held in solution, and have then 
 been deposited in layers, the heaviest at the 
 bottom, the lightest and finest material at the 
 top; then crystallization by heat, or chemical 
 
PROLOGUE 35 
 
 action, or else by pressure has solidified this 
 material into rock. But how was sufficient 
 material secured to form a crust of twenty-five 
 miles in thickness of stratified rocks? The driv- 
 ing storms and the ceaseless erosion by the 
 waves and streams, actually ground up all this 
 vast supply from the old granites which lie at 
 the bottom of this pile. This vast thickness of 
 twenty-five miles, is built up out of the ruins of 
 older formations. The ruthless tooth of time, 
 even as now, silently and slowly gnawed away 
 in this work of disintegration, and then the re- 
 morseful waters sought to atone for the deed by 
 building the ruins up again into stratified rock. 
 Hoary ruins they are! compared with them what 
 are the marbles of Nineveh, or the columns of the 
 Parthenon.'' Many of the palaces of modern 
 Rome are built of the stones of which the old 
 amphitheatre has been robbed by vandal hands. 
 These stratified rocks are the modern structures, 
 built up of the materials which the vandal Time 
 has stolen from Nature's primeval walls. 
 
 But how long must that slow, very slow process 
 been going on.' The first and lowest great sys- 
 tem of strata — the Laurentian — is in Canada 
 thirty and forty thousand feet thick, or nearly five 
 miles. How enormous a bulk of solid rocks was 
 
36 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 ground to powder to furnish materials for these 
 Laurentian strata alone, may be imagined, when 
 we realize that the average elevation of North 
 America is about twelve hundred feet above the 
 level of the sea; and if the entire continent were 
 ground to powder down to the ocean's level, and 
 distributed over an equal area of the ocean's 
 bottom, it would afford a bed of strata not one 
 twentieth the thickness of the Laurentian system 
 alone. But the Laurentian is not one fifth of 
 the thickness of the whole crust of stratified 
 rock. How long must it have taken for the 
 waters to grind up in its voracious maw enough 
 material to build up again so vast a monument 
 to the immensity of Time? "How long, O, 
 Lord; how long?" And yet, and yet even this 
 does not carry us back to the beginning of which 
 Moses speaks. It is the beginning of time itself, 
 the very beginning of matter, out of which future 
 worlds were to be formed. Between "the be- 
 ginning" and the present, there yawns a chasm so 
 great that not mathematics itself can fling even 
 an imaginary arch across it. 
 
 These v^^ords are big with meaning; they try 
 to tell of space, of worlds, of the original con- 
 dition of things —new wine in old bottles. Three 
 times in this chapter occurs the word — dara "to 
 
PROLOGUE 37 
 
 create," and those three times are just where 
 science too comes in and admits there must have 
 been a creation of something out of nothing. "In 
 the beginning" God — bara — called into being 
 what had not existed before. After this absolute 
 creation of original matter, this word does not 
 occur again until the first animal life is called 
 into being; then again God — bara — created the 
 great stretched-out sea monsters; He called into 
 being what had not existed before, viz sentient, 
 volitional life. Once more God — bara — created 
 man in his own image; called into being what 
 had not existed before, viz. spiritual life. Bara 
 is thus reserved for marking the first introduction 
 of each of the three spheres of existence, the 
 world of matter, the world of life and the world 
 of spirit. Wearied with her long efforts to dis- 
 cover whence came matter, what is life, what is 
 spirit ; with spent breath and aching brow, 
 science puts down the problem and confesses 
 that at these three stages there must indeed have 
 been an original creation. At these points she 
 says the best statement that can be made is — 
 bara Elohim — God created. Matter is not eternal ; 
 God created the cosmic dust, that plastic mate- 
 rial out of which our own and other worlds were 
 moulded. 
 
38 Is MOSES SClENTinC? 
 
 This great fact of a beginning science fully 
 sustains. "All portions of science, and especially 
 that beautiful one the Dissipation of Energy, 
 point unanimously to a beginning" (Tait) "All 
 modern science seems to point to the finite dura- 
 tion of our system in its present form"(Newcomb). 
 
 If matter was created, there must have been 
 a First Cause; the original material must have 
 been called into being by some one; Revelation 
 says it was — God. 
 
 Far back in the hazy past, yet not lost in the 
 bosom of eternity; somewhere within the limits 
 of time, that original creation must have taken 
 place; Revelation says it was "in the beginning." 
 This is enough ; this is all we can understand; 
 no need of anything more deffinite, for finite 
 mind can stretch its utmost thought no further. 
 There must have been a First Cause; there 
 must have been an original creation; there must 
 have been a commencement in time. All this 
 is grandly and correctly summed up for us in the 
 first article of the creed of science— "In the be- 
 ginning God created the heavens and the earth." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MATTER. 
 
 ^''Aiid tJic earth was emptiness aud desolate- 
 ness ; and darkness zvas upon the face of the 
 abyss; and the Spirit of God moved upon the 
 face of the fluids 
 
 La Place's nebula hypothesis is now generally 
 accepted by scholars. It is emphatically a 
 speculation and cannot be demonstrated by ob- 
 servation or established by mathematical calcu- 
 lation. Yet it is sustained by all the evidence 
 that is attainable; it satisfies the conditions of 
 our solar system, and is corroborated by the 
 phases through which other systems are now 
 seen to be passing. 
 
 There are very remarkable features in the solar 
 system which point unmistakably to a common 
 origin of all its members. These features are 
 the following, first — the sun rotates on its axis 
 in a certain direction; second, all the major and 
 minor planets numbering more than two hundred, 
 revolve around the sun in the same direction; 
 
 39 
 
40 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 third, the planets also rotate on their axis in 
 that same direction; fourth, the satellites revolve 
 around their planets, also in that same direction, 
 with the exception of the satellites of Uranus; 
 fifth, all these bodies, with one exception, which 
 can otherwise be explained, have their orbits 
 on nearly the same plane, instead of flying about 
 the sun in every possible plane as we might have 
 expected. 
 
 To put it in another way, so that the uni- 
 ty of the system may be the better appreci- 
 ated — two hundred planetary bodies revolve on 
 nearly the same plane; these are all going the 
 same way,— the satellites revolve around their 
 planets in the same direction that the planets 
 revolve around the sun; the planets revolve 
 around the sun in the same direction as they 
 rotate on their own axes; and they rotate on 
 their own axes in the same direction as the sun 
 rotates on his axis. Could all this be by chance? 
 It has been demonstrated that the probability of 
 this happening by chance is as the ratio of one, 
 to a number containing sixty figures. There 
 must therefore be some explanation for this uni- 
 formity. 
 
 La Place supposed that all the material in our 
 planetary system once formed one vast central 
 
PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MATTER 41 
 
 mass, and according to the law of the Dissipa- 
 tion of Energy, that mass must have been at a 
 temperature very much higher than that of the 
 present sun. 
 
 This stupendous nebulous mass had a revolu- 
 tion on its axis. As time passed, this nebula 
 cooled and contracted; but the outer rim, owing 
 to its immense diameter, at least as large as the 
 diameter of the orbit of the outermost planet, 
 — this outer rim was whirling so rapidly that its 
 centrifugal force overcame the contracting 
 force, and a ring of nebulous matter flew off and 
 went on spinning around the sun in the same 
 direction it had been going before. If this ring 
 had cooled and contracted evenly, it would 
 have remained a ring like those still spinning 
 around Saturn, but the outer surface radiated its 
 heat into space, while the inner surface of the 
 ring continued to receive heat from the central 
 sun, so that it cooled unevenly. Contraction was 
 therefore irregular; a strain began to be exert- 
 ed which at last became so great that the 
 ring was broken up and thrown into a revolv- 
 ing spiral, that finally settled down into a globe, 
 which became the outer planet. This planet 
 continued to cool and contract just as the sun 
 had done, until it too, threw off a ring which 
 
12 IS MOSBS SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 settled down into its revolving satellite. Another 
 ring was thrown off from the sun in the same 
 way, which became the next planet, which, also 
 in turn, evolved its satellites. Thus the process 
 went on, until the sun became so far reduced in 
 size that it was able to hurl off no more rings. 
 
 This theory of La Place is also confirmed by 
 the solar spectroscope, which shows that the 
 sun contains in fusion the same elements which 
 are found on our earth, thus indicating a com- 
 mon origin. 
 
 And it is still further confirmed by approach- 
 ing the subject from the opposite direction. It 
 is known that the sun's diameter is shortening 
 at the rate of four miles per century, and yet 
 owing to another law, which need not be dis- 
 cussed here, the sun is not sensibly losing heat. 
 When Columbus discovered America, the sun 
 was twenty miles larger in diameter than now; 
 at the time of Christ, it was eighty miles larger. 
 Carry back this reckoning, say to the time when 
 the Colorado river was beginning to cut its im- 
 mense channel, and the sun's diameter must have 
 been vastly larger than now. Carry it still farther 
 back, and the sun must have been as large as 
 the whole diameter of the orbit of Mercury, and 
 that planet must then have been in the bosom 
 
PRIMITII^E CONDITION OF MATTER 43 
 
 of its parent. Carry it still farther back, and 
 the sun's size equalled the whole orbit of Venus, 
 and that planet was still unborn. So this 
 reasoning will carry us back to the far ago, when 
 the sun must have included the whole space 
 within the orbit of the outermost planet, and all 
 the bodies of our solar system were parts of that 
 central mass, at a vastly higher temperature and 
 in a far more rarified condition. 
 
 This hypothesis of La Place is still further 
 corroborated by actual observation of the 
 heavens. By means of his great telescope, Sir 
 William Herschell has found faint, thin nebulae 
 in the condition, in which the sun is supposed 
 to have once been; he has found other nebulae 
 where there seems to be a faint nucleus, and 
 still others where the nucleus is a brilliant star- 
 like point. Herschell thought he was thus able 
 to view the actual stages through which our sun 
 passed from a mass of glowing vapor, until it 
 had condensed down to a star. The verdict of 
 science is thus expressed by Prof. Newcomb of 
 Washington Observatory — "At the present time 
 we can only say that the nebula hypothesis is 
 indicated by the general tendencies of the laws 
 of nature; that it has not been proved to be 
 inconsistent with any fact; that it is almost a 
 
41 IS MOSRS SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 necessary consequence of the only theory by 
 which we can account for the origin and con- 
 servation of the sun's heat." 
 
 Accepting now the truth of the nebula hypoth- 
 esis, which Prof. Mitchell says "is the boldest 
 thought ever conceived by the human mind," 
 we ask — is there any conflict between it and the 
 record of Moses.-* 
 
 The record now proceeds to make three pro- 
 foundly scientific and far reaching statements; 
 first — that the earth was originally in just that 
 condition contemplated by the nebular hypothe- 
 sis viz. it was — "tohuvabohu — desolateness and 
 emptiness." Second — but to go still farther back, 
 "before the mountains were brought forth or 
 ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the 
 (starry) world" — then, only a fluid filled the 
 abyss of space, and this fluid was quiescent and 
 therefore dark. Third — original motion was im- 
 parted to this universal, etherial fluid by the 
 Spirit of God. These are profoundly scientific 
 utterances, let us see how they are expressed in 
 the record, and how fully they are corroborated. 
 
 There are no words in the abrupt and practi- 
 cal Hebrew that could better describe that 
 nebulous condition of the earth than — "tohu va 
 bohu." In Is 4i;29 "tohu" is translated— 
 
PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MATTER 45 
 
 "confusion;" 4419 — "vanity." In Is 34; 11 
 "tohu va bohu" are translated — "And He shall 
 stretch out upon it the line of confusion and the 
 stone of emptiness.'''' Confusion and emptiness, 
 or emptiness and desolateness was the first con- 
 dition of the earth, says Moses. La Place him- 
 self could not have described that condition more 
 accurately. The earth was then in the bosom 
 of the sun at an exceedingly high temperature, 
 and consequently so attenuated as to be \\ell 
 expressed by "vanity" or "confusion;" so far 
 from its present solid condition, that it could 
 not be better described than by "emptiness" or 
 "desolateness." If the nebular hypothesis satis- 
 fies the conditions of our solar system, much 
 more does it satisfy the conditions expressed in 
 "tohu va bohu." 
 
 The second statement describes a condition of 
 things even still farther back. Says Moses — 
 tohu va bohu was the first condition of the earth, 
 but there was a time long anterior to this when 
 there was no earth, and nothing but a "fluid" 
 filled the abyss. 
 
 The word translated — "waters" is from a root 
 meaning — "to be fluid." Of course the most 
 common form of fluid was water, and so the 
 word ordinarily came to mean — water; but the 
 
46 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 record is going down to the foundations of things, 
 and to get at the meaning we must learn the 
 very roots of the words. It could not have meant 
 "waters" here, for the earth's temperature was 
 such that no water could have formed. "The 
 deep," upon which the darkness rested, could not 
 have meant the ocean, because the ocean was 
 not formed until the second day; nor could it 
 have meant our visible heavens, because all was 
 dark; it was the abyss of space, which as yet 
 contained only fluid matter. Now giving to the 
 words their root meaning, read again the record. 
 "And darkness was upon the face of the abyss; 
 and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of 
 the fluid." The second scientific statement is 
 therefore, that etherial fluid filled all space, and 
 before the Spirit of God gave to it its motion, it 
 was in a quiescent state, and therefore dark. Is 
 this pregnant statement born out by science? 
 Was matter once quiescent, without motion.? 
 According to the law of the Dissipation of 
 Energy, just that condition of matter must have 
 existed; there must have been a time when there 
 was no motion, because energy is being con- 
 stantly dissipated, force is being used up and 
 therefore could not have been eternal. We V 
 know that the clock of the universe is running 
 
PRIMlTiyE CONDITION OF MATTER 47 
 
 down; the heavenly bodies are losing their 
 motion and sometime will have wholly lost it; 
 the rate of the earth's rotation has been much 
 more rapid than now; the friction of the tidal 
 wave will in time stop the diurnal motion of the 
 earth; the sun is slowly losing its heat. How- 
 ever small these retarding forces or however 
 small the loss of heat, yet if they had operated 
 from eternity, the momentum of the earth and 
 the heat of the sun would have been exhausted 
 long ago. 
 
 This retarding influence is seen most conspic- 
 uously in the case of Encke's comet which has 
 fallen behind in its revolution two days and six- 
 teen hours since 1789. This quantity looks 
 small for a whole century, but a small fraction 
 of loss will amount to much, in the course of long 
 ages. In 23,000 years, this comet will have lost 
 half of its velocity. Similar retardation has been 
 fully established in the cases of at least three other 
 comets. The consequences of this admission are 
 stupendous beyond conception ; it records the de- 
 cree of doom upon our solar system. Watson 
 says — "If we grant that the retardation of the 
 comets arises from the existence of an etherial 
 fluid, the total obliteration of the solar system is 
 to be the final result." Helmholtz says: — "A 
 
48 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 time will come when the comet will strike the 
 sun, and a similar end threatens all the planets, 
 although after a time, the length of which baffles 
 our imagination to conceive it." Winchell says 
 — "Not for perpetuity, is written upon every lin- 
 eament of the solar system. We contemplate 
 the matter of the system aggregated into a cold 
 and blackened mass at the center; no more sun, 
 no more planet, no more satellite, no more 
 comet or metonte or zodiacal luminosity, but win- 
 ter, and the silence of death, and the darkness of 
 Nature's midnight, penetrated only by starlight, 
 whose maternal source may have been blotted 
 out — a solitary grave upon a distant plain in the 
 midst of the howling desolation of an arctic 
 winter.'' If mortality is stamped upon every 
 thing; if there must be an end of all, there 
 surely must have been a beginning; there must 
 have been a time when there was no motion, 
 and this first clear intimation of scripture of 
 the primitive condition of matter must have been 
 true. 
 
 At once the laws of physics step in and assure 
 us, if that first statement was true, then the 
 second also was true; if there was no motion, 
 then "darkness was upon the face of the deep," 
 for light is the result of motion. Moses tells us in 
 
PRlMlTiyE CONDITION OF MATTER 49 
 
 the next verse, that after motion had been im- 
 parted to this fluid by the Spirit of God, then Hght 
 began to be, and no physicist could have stated 
 it more scientifically. But as yet he is speaking 
 of an earlier time; then light could not have 
 been, but darkness only, for there was no 
 motion. The qualities of matter had not yet 
 been imparted; there was no chemical action, 
 no attraction, no electricities; all was lifeless 
 and still as the grave, before activity had been 
 given to dead matter, and all was dark. 
 
 But whence came original motion? Ask science 
 and she remains dumb; ask revelation and she 
 promptly answers — "the Spirit of God moved 
 upon the face of the fluid." The Spirit of God 
 is the source of all power, natural and super- 
 natural. When the Spirit of God came upon 
 the waiting disciples, then came upon them — 
 not faith, not joy, but the promise was — "Then 
 shall ye receive power, diiteY that the Holy Ghost 
 is come upon you." And likewise, after that the 
 Holy Spirit had come upon the waiting fluid 
 matter, the same miracle again — and what stu- 
 pendous results! Then universal motion; then 
 atom approached atom and attraction began ; 
 then coalescence of atoms and chemistry began; 
 then attraction and repulsion, and electricity 
 
50 75 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 began; then accelerated motion and heat began ; 
 then persistence and increase of motion, and 
 light began. Then the vast, vast universe, 
 whose wheels had not begun, had its great belt 
 connected with the fly-wheel of original power, 
 and all that universe of God began to be alive, 
 and to hum with busy activity. Here is the 
 origin of power; the source of motion is not 
 within rnatter, for the dead cannot make itself 
 move and live; the Spirit of God, in natural as 
 in supernatural realms, comes upon its subjects, 
 and power is the result. Now notice how care- 
 fully the record is worded. It does not say that 
 the Spirit of God moved in matter, or was im- 
 manent in matter, for that would mean panthe- 
 ism; but the explanation is rigidly accurate. 
 The Spirit of God moves fel penay) "upon the 
 faces of the fluid," for He is outside of and 
 above matter; He moved upon it from without, 
 just as the disciples were to "receive power /;>'^;« 
 on higJi.'^'' 
 
 But we must study these wonderful words 
 more closely still; if there is not verbal in- 
 spiration here, it looks very like it, for the 
 words have been chosen with a scien- 
 tific accuracy which no man, of any period 
 previous to this scientific century, could have 
 
PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF M/ITTER 51 
 
 chosen. What kind of motion did the Spirit of 
 God impart to the original fluid matter? We 
 must look elsewhere to learn what Moses meant. 
 The word "moved," describing this act of the 
 Spirit, in Jer. 2319 is translated— "All my bones 
 shake ; I am like a drunken man and like a man 
 whom wine hath overcome, because of the Lord 
 and because of the words of his holiness." See 
 a drunken man trembling, every nerve quivering 
 with the stimulant of alchohol; it is this quiver- 
 ing motion says Moses which the Spirit of God 
 imparted to the fluid. But better yet, it is used 
 in Deut. 32; 11. "As an eagle stirreth up her 
 nest, fliittcrctli over her young, spreadeth abroad 
 her wings &c." What kind of motion would be 
 imparted to the atmosphere by the fluttering 
 wing of an eagle which hovers over her nest to 
 incite her brood to venture forth and try their 
 own wings? No figure could better suggest 
 vibratory motion than this; the air would vibrate 
 by the impact of her wings, and Moses says it 
 was this quivering, vibrating motion which the 
 Spirit of God imparted to original matter. Now 
 let science open wide her eyes in astonishment 
 and ask, as the Jews asked concerning Christ — 
 "Whence hath this man this wisdom?" What 
 could Moses have known of vibratory motion, 
 
53 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 when this is the great discovery of this age, and 
 wasnot fully accepted until after the middle of this 
 century? 
 
 The diagram will explain the latest known 
 of vibratory motion. All energy is trans- 
 mitted by vibrations. The lower vibrations, 
 those affecting the ear and producing sound, are 
 transmitted through air and other ponderable 
 bodies. For the faster waves of electricity, 
 heat, and light, it is necessary to assume the 
 existence of ether — which may now be consid- 
 ered fairly proved. No sound, that is produced 
 by less than i6 vibrations per second, is audible 
 to the human ear; 4000 vibrations per second 
 constitute the upper limit of music ; 38, 000 vibra- 
 tions bound the upper limit of sound. The form of 
 energy produced by the next higher number of 
 vibrations is electricity, but as Hertz has shown, 
 we have no sense to correspond with this. Prof. 
 De Motte has measured the number of vibrations 
 which produce electricity, and finds them to be 
 ninety-five millions per second. 
 
 The ladder now takes a large step before we 
 reach the next form of energy of which we are 
 cognizant, which is heat. Between the upper 
 limit of sound and electricity there must be 
 many forms of energy, as well as between elec- 
 
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54 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 tricity and heat, but we have not senses enough 
 to correspond with them. Dark heat is formed 
 by one hundred trilHons of vibrations, and is 
 detected by the sense of touch. As the vibra- 
 tions rise in number, hght is produced with which 
 we correspond by the sense of sight. 
 
 So we find that all energy is caused by vibra- 
 tion. That initial vibratory motion which was 
 imparted to original matter, says Moses, was by 
 the Spirit of God. Here again is a philosophy 
 as profound as the universe. Original motion 
 was imparted by the Spirit of God, and it was 
 vibratory. It was stated so quietly and simply, 
 that only this scientific age saw it, just as uni- 
 versal gravitation had been expressed and illus- 
 trated by all that the eye of man could rest 
 upon, but it was not detected nor understood 
 until the progress of the ages had produced a 
 Newton. This surprise of the nineteenth century 
 has been anticipated by Moses for more than 
 3, 500 years; in a few strokes of his inspired pen, 
 he traces a whole galaxy of science and philos- 
 ophy. It is not to be supposed that Moses knew 
 all this, nor ever even knew that vibratory motion 
 existed at all; only the inspiring Spirit could 
 have led him to choose the exact scientific word 
 which would describe the motion which 
 
PRIMlTiyB CONDITION OF MATTER 55 
 
 the spirit of God impressed upon matter. 
 Let us now stop to recapitulate what we 
 have already found and ask whether Moses 
 is so far, rigidly scientific? He tells us 
 that there was a First Cause, His name is 
 Elohim; that matter is not eternal, but had 
 a beginning; that matter is not self originating, 
 God created it; that the true order is "the 
 heavens and the earth," for the earth is not the 
 center of the system as was supposed; that the 
 earth was originally "desolateness and empty- 
 ness," as contemplated by the nebular hypothe- 
 sis; that matter was at first in a fluid form and 
 filled the abyss; that there was no motion, but 
 all was quiescent, as required by the law of the 
 Dissipation of Energy; that therefore "darkness 
 was on the face of the abyss;" that motion did 
 not originate itself; that the Spirit of God is 
 the source of all motion and force; that this force 
 was not immanent in matter, but "moved upon 
 the face of the fiuid" from without; that the 
 motion imparted to matter was vibratory, like 
 that imparted to the air by the fluttering wing 
 of an eagle. Here are twelve profoundly scien- 
 tific utterances in two verses, which are funda- 
 mental to all that is to follow; they are as far- 
 reaching as time, as wide as space, as reliable as 
 
56 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 truth. They are the very core of philosophy; 
 they are the working theories, which science 
 may take and use in endless application. 
 
 We might suppose that one or two of these 
 great principles could have been discovered or 
 guessed by some genius, like those who have 
 shone out through the long dark past, like a star 
 of the first magnitude; but by all the chances 
 of probability, it would have been impossible for 
 any man or any single age, to have discovered a 
 whole constellation of scientific truths like those 
 which form the galaxy of these two verses. 
 Indeed it has taken all the ages since the world 
 began until now, to have wrought out, so as to 
 clearly state, most of these scientific doctrines 
 which are embraced in the opening sentences of 
 the Bible. The world has not until now been 
 able even to read them, though they have been 
 here expressed in words since the record left the 
 pen of the inspired writer. 
 
^ 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE DAY. 
 
 "And God said — let there be light, and there was 
 light. And God saw the light that it was good; and 
 God divided between the light and betweefi the dark- 
 ness. And God called the light — day, and the dark- 
 ness He called — night; and the evening was, and the 
 morning was — day one. 
 
 The first chapter of Genesis contains the 
 material decalogue, as the twentieth chapter of 
 ; Genesis contains the moral decalogue; in the 
 one are the ten commandments for nature, and 
 in the other are the ten commandments for man. 
 Ten times God "spake and it was done, He com- 
 manded and it stood fast;" ten times occurs the 
 phrase — wayomer Elohim — "And God said." 
 The Jews still call this chapter — "The ten words 
 of Jehovah." These two decalogues contain 
 the germs of all natural law and of all moral law. 
 
 Jurists, statesmen, legislators, moralists find 
 
 the seed of all moral and ethical law in that 
 
 grand epitome which begins with the same phrase 
 
 that announced the law to nature — ^^And God 
 
 5? 
 
58 /5 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 Spake all these words, saying I am the Lord thy 
 God; thou shalt have no other gods before 
 me." Likewise philosopher and scientist are 
 finding the seeds of scientific law — in that 
 other grand epitome — "And God said Let there 
 be — and it was so." 
 
 The first chapter of the Bible, and the last 
 chapter of the Bible cast a level beam of light 
 over vast and unnumbered ages, the one over 
 the darkness of the past, the other over the 
 darkness of the future. At one end stands 
 one inspired seer and looks back, far back to 
 the beginning, where time itself shades off and 
 melts into eternity ; at the other end stands 
 the- other mspired seer and looks forward, 
 far forward to the end when "time shall be no 
 more," and again shades off and melts into 
 eternity; and between the beginning of the one 
 and the end of the other, occur all that relates 
 to the history of the world and of man. 
 
 As will be seen by reference to the chart, the 
 first chapter divides itself into two trilogies, the 
 one giving the history of inorganic creation, the 
 other giving the history of organic creation. The 
 respective days in each division correspond to 
 each other in a general way. On the first and 
 iourth days, light appears; the one is univer- 
 
FIFTH CRE/ITiyE DAY 69 
 
60 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 sally diffused, cosmic light, the other is solar 
 light radiated from the luminary; on the second 
 day the expanse of heaven appears, in which the 
 birds of the fifth day are to fly, and the waters 
 form the sea, in which the animals of the fifth day 
 are to live, for these are aquatic. On the third 
 and sixth days, two works are performed, each 
 corresponding to the other, and both days intro- 
 duce life, the one natural, the other spiritual. 
 
 God is here calling into being, by His own 
 free, almighty will, things which before had no 
 existence. Let us not fail to notice how the 
 persons of the Trinity at once appear and per- 
 form their respective works; Elohim expresses 
 the absolute, unconditioned; the creative act is 
 manifested by the Word and executed by the 
 Spirit, as in all the purposes of grace. 
 
 This creation is successive — carried on through 
 the six days; it is progressive, beginning with 
 the lowest element — matter, and continuing by 
 plant and animal hfe, until it terminates in man, 
 made in the divine image. At each successive 
 stage, there is a new divine impulse, but this is 
 exerted each time on materials already existing; 
 the forces of nature already at work, had their 
 part in bringing about the end desired. 
 
 Matter itself is created out of nothing, but 
 
FIRST CREATIVB DAY CI 
 
 beginning with that as a basis, each step is an 
 advance, and the materials already formed, 
 assist in producing the next higher results. The 
 fluid matter existing, the Spirit gives it a new 
 impulse, and vibratory motion is the result; 
 vibratory motion existing, from it the command 
 is, to produce light; the dry land existing, anew 
 impulse is given and plants are produced; 
 waters existing, a new impulse is given and 
 fishes come forth. This is progressive and rigidly 
 scientific; from the lower to the higher, from 
 the simpler to the more complex, this is the 
 order of Moses, and this science has discovered 
 to be the universal law. 
 
 And everywhere government by law, becomes 
 prominent. Every part of creation has its own 
 specific function to fulfill; the light is to divide 
 the day from the night; the expanse is to sep- 
 arate the waters above from the waters below; 
 the luminaries are to be for signs and for seasons, 
 and for days and years; the herbs are to be for 
 food for man and beast. The command assign- 
 ing their functions once given, are never re- 
 peated; their law is permanently fixed, from 
 which nothing can transgress. There is no blind 
 groping after its proper office; everything falls 
 into its place and so continues. This too is 
 
62 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 highly scientific; the prevalence of law through- 
 out every department of nature is the best 
 established of all the large generalizations of 
 science. 
 
 The great principle of subordination of the 
 lower to the higher is also most completely rati- 
 fied by science; each step in creation is upward 
 as well as onward. When the successive stages 
 receive the divine commendation — "and God saw 
 that it was good" — it is not for itself alone that 
 it receives this seal, but especially is it good as 
 a preparation for the next higher step. Light 
 is good, not only in itself but as a preparation 
 for all that is to follow; earth and sea are good 
 as a preparation to their being inhabited. 
 
 The thing first needed is created first, because 
 there is everywhere a principle of dependence of 
 the later and higher, upon the earlier and lower. 
 Animals depend upon the plants for food and 
 not the reverse; plants depend upon the soil; 
 plants and animals alike depend upon the atmos- 
 phere. And last of all, man appears when all 
 necessary preparation has been made for him, 
 for he is the crown of creation, the apex up to 
 ^ which this great pyramid has been shaping. 
 And all things are subordinate to him; they are 
 all placed under his dominion. Nothing can be 
 
FIRST CREATINE DAY 63 
 
 more scientific than this principle of subordina- 
 tion of the lower to the higher, which runs 
 throughout the entire record, for the universe is 
 one organized whole, in which every member 
 depends upon that below, and is a preparation 
 for that above. And even when we reach the 
 apex, we still find that man has not come to 
 rest ; while he is to use all things for his purpose, 
 yet he himself is not to live for a selfish enjoy- 
 ment, but for a use above himself. 
 
 Nature now receives her first commandment 
 — "And God said — Let there be light, and there 
 was light." Let us recall what was said at the 
 close of the preceding chapter. The Spirit of 
 God has just imparted motion to this f^uid mass 
 which fills the abyss of space; we saw that it 
 was vibratory motion which had been given; 
 now ask science what would necessarily follow.? 
 She replies, after motion there would be first 
 heat and then light, according to the great 
 modern discovery of the law of the correlation 
 of Forces: "and it was so." 
 
 We must give the author credit for the mis- 
 takes which he avoids, as well as for the scientific 
 truths he pronounces. How easy it would have 
 been to have slipped in the sentence — "and the 
 Spirit of God moved upon the face of the fluid" 
 
64 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 — AFTER the command to the hght, but if he had 
 done so, he would have been immediately con- 
 victed of error. He places the creation of light 
 after vibratory motion, and what is just as re- 
 markable, three whole days before the account of 
 the sun. How could any one, unacquainted 
 with latest science have known that there could 
 be light without the sun? The first evidence 
 that creation had really begun, was a flash of 
 comical light darting through the black abyss; 
 afterward nebulte would form to condense into 
 revolving suns. 
 
 And now occurs another statement that could 
 not have been known by man until the last half 
 of this century. Not until the spectroscope had 
 been invented could any one have said — "and 
 God saw that it was good." How could light be 
 good and adapted to its purpose, until the sun 
 had appeared.-* This is a statement of pure 
 science, for light is found to be good the moment 
 it appears. The spectroscope shows that light, 
 proceeding from a nebula or cloud of fire mist, 
 has the actinic qualities and properties of solar 
 light. 
 
 And still another scientific accuracy appears 
 where no one but an inspired man or a modern 
 scientist could have made it. Light is called 
 
FIRST CREATIVE DAY 05 
 
 good, before it is said that "God divided the 
 light from the darkness." Ancient philosophy 
 regarded light and darkness as distinct sub- 
 stances, as the Persians regarded good and evil to 
 be two distinct powers, whose demons Ormuzd 
 and Ahriman were ever contending. Any one 
 else would have understood the dividing the light 
 from the darkness, as separating the good from 
 the bad, straining out the darkness from the 
 light, and so leaving it good, and would therefore 
 have reserved the divine commendation until 
 after that dividing process had been completed. 
 But Moses says the light was good, before God 
 h ad divided it from the darkness, and he is 
 scientifically correct. 
 
 But is the statement that "God divided be- 
 tween the light and between the darkness," 
 correct at the point where it is introduced.'* Let 
 us recall La Place's nebula hypothesis, and see 
 how fully it corroborates this statement. When 
 first thrown off from the sun, the earth was a 
 luminous body itself; it was a burning star, like 
 the sun, but much smaller. Its satellite, the 
 moon received most of its light and heat from 
 the earth, as the earth now does from the sun. 
 Being much smaller, the earth cooled far more 
 rapidly than the sun, so that in course of long 
 
66 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC. 
 
 time, it ceased to be a luminous body; its fires 
 flickered and died out; a solid crust formed over 
 the glowing interior, and the earth became a spent 
 star, no longer visible by its own light. 
 
 Right there, when the earth had lost its lumin- 
 osity and began to be a dark opaque body, the 
 Creator actually did divide between the light 
 and the darkness; day and night did then begin. 
 Of course the earth had always rotated on its 
 axis since it had come forth in the sun's birth 
 pangs, but as the side of the earth opposite from 
 the sun, still shone with its own luminosity, 
 there could be no night. But as soon as the 
 crust had formed and the earth was no longer 
 giving out light from its own fires, then there 
 was night on the side that was turned away from 
 the sun, as now, and day and night did begin. 
 "And God called the light — Day, and the dark- 
 ness He called — Night;" Moses is correct in 
 assigning the beginning of day and night to that 
 first creative day, that is, to the time when the 
 earth had so far cooled as to lose its own lumin- 
 osity. The next creative act, the clearing away 
 of the expanse so as to form the open starry 
 heaven, could not have occurred until this cooling 
 had taken place as we shall see in the next 
 chapter. 
 
FIRST CREATINE DAY 67 
 
 What was meant by the expression — "and the 
 evening was and morning was — day one"? This 
 could not mean a natural day, for that would 
 have been expressed by night and day, instead 
 of evening and morning. It could not refer to 
 the result of the earth's diurnal rotation, for that 
 had already been stated and correctly named. 
 Evening is the natural close of a day's work; 
 morning is the opening of another day's work. 
 The evening and the morning therefore, were 
 simply the marking off of God's creative periods; 
 this was the announcement of periodic cessation 
 from labor between each of the creative days, as 
 a whole day of rest from creative work followed 
 the six days. Man should need not only a whole 
 day in seven for rest from labor, but a period of 
 rest between each one of those six days, and here 
 God sets the example to him who was to be 
 created in the divine image. 
 
 Whether geology will ever be able to identify 
 these periodic rests from labor, or not, cannot be 
 foretold, but it is not necessary that it should, 
 any more than it is necessary that geology shall 
 tell us how long God's creative days were. 
 
 The first product of the creative work is light. 
 Let the Spirit of God come in contact with 
 matter, and light is the result, good light. The 
 
08 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 same great marvel and miracle takes place in 
 the moral world when the Spirit of God comes 
 in special contact with our race. Said the angel 
 to Mary — "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee 
 and the pov/er of the Highest shall overshadow 
 thee, therefore also that holy thing which shall 
 be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God." 
 The result of the Spirit's special contact with 
 our race, was the great moral light, "The Light 
 of the World." In both instances the quickening 
 influence of the Spirit of God produces the same 
 result. 
 
 Once more let us sum up the facts so far 
 enumerated. In this chapter we have found — 
 that creation is successive, not instantaneous; 
 that it is progressive, from lower to higher; that 
 government by law is universal; that there is 
 subordination of the lower to the uses of the 
 higher, because each advancing step is an upward 
 step; that light results from vibratory motion; 
 that it is good light, even though nebulous; that 
 light long precedes the appearance of the lumi- 
 naries, the sun and moon; that it is good, even 
 before light is separated from the darkness, be- 
 cause the earth ceases to be luminous; that 
 daily rest was inaugurated from the beginning, 
 as well as a weekly rest of a whole day. Here 
 
FIRST CREATURE DAY 69 
 
 we have ten more great statements to add 
 to the previous twelve, in all of which we have 
 not met one challenge from science, but on 
 the contrary the most hearty and astonished 
 agreement. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SECOND CREATIVE DAY. 
 
 "And God said — Let there be an expanse between 
 the waters, and let it separate the waters from the 
 tvaters. And God made the expanse, and separated 
 the waters which are under the expanse from the 
 waters which are over the expanse; and it was so. 
 And God called the expanse Heaven. And the eve- 
 ning was, morning was, day two. " 
 
 In the second creative day we find ourselves 
 almost on historic ground, compared with the 
 ageless depths from which we have just emerged. 
 Matter, having received motion, swirled into one 
 immense nebula; this broke up into countless 
 suns, all still revolving, according to Maedler, 
 around one common center, situated in the region 
 of the Pleiades. Our own sun has thrown off its 
 rings, which have settled down into as many 
 planets, with satellites which they in turn threw 
 off, revolving around them. At last our earth has 
 became a settled planet and has thrown off its 
 ring, which has cooled down into the now dead 
 cold moon. The crust has formed on the cool- 
 
 7l> 
 
SECOND CREATIVE DAY 1\ 
 
 ing earth and the successive steps of preparation 
 for the abode of man, have begun. 
 
 The time that has elapsed from the first form- 
 ation of its crust until now, computing by the 
 rapidity of the radiation of its heat, has been 
 estimated by Sir W. Thompson as from one to 
 two hundred millions of years. Prof. Guthrie 
 Tait, on the other hand, argues that from ten to 
 fifteen millions of years would be sufficient, 
 while Lockyer suggests a longer time even than 
 that of Thompson. 
 
 The gasses that filled the atmosphere, have 
 sufficiently cooled to form chemical combina- 
 tions; two atoms of Hydrogen unite with one 
 of Oxygen, and vapors of water begin to appear, 
 for all the water which now fills sea and river, 
 then existed in the form of hot gasses, which 
 were prevented from uniting to become com- 
 pounds, by the excessive heat. 
 
 The translation — "firmament" is most unfort- 
 unate, and is another instance where the trans- 
 lator read into the record the science of his age. 
 The translators of our authorized version, were 
 misled by — firmamentum — by which the Vulgate 
 translated the Greek — stereoma — of the Sep- 
 tuagint. Stereoma and firmamentum, both 
 mean something solid or fi.rm, by which the 
 
n Is MOSES SCIENTIFICP 
 
 heavenly bodies were thought to be upborn. 
 
 It would be most unfair to convict Moses of 
 a mistake, because of a mistransalation in our 
 version; yet Prof. Huxley accused Moses of 
 being unscientific because he uses the word — 
 firmament, when Moses does no such thing. 
 The Hebrew word used is — rakiach, and means 
 something expanded or beaten out; it radically 
 refers to the work of a metal worker when he 
 has beaten his metal out into thin leaves. The 
 idea is correctly expressed in Is. 42; 5 — "thus 
 saith the Lord, He that created the heavens and 
 stretched them out; He that spread forth the 
 earth;" referring to an extent of landscape. Ex. 
 39;3 "And they did beat the gold into thin 
 plates" — simple extension. Job. 37; 18 "Hast 
 thou with Him spread out the sky etc.".-' 
 
 The idea therefore which is expressed, was sim- 
 ply that of extension, without reference to solidi- 
 ty. A more correct translation of the word is "ex- 
 panse," instead of firmament. That it could not 
 have meant anything solid is perfectly clear 
 from the record itself, which says a few verses 
 below, that the birds are to "fly in the open 
 firmament of heaven." 
 
 Before following Moses any farther, we shall 
 turn to science, and ask her to tell us the story. 
 
SECOND CREATll^E DAY IZ 
 
 We have accepted the nebula hypothesis. 
 According to this, the earth was once a self 
 luminous body as fiercely hot as the sun itself. 
 All that is now solid must then have been in a 
 liquid form, and the more volatile substances 
 were gaseous. All the carbon in the world was 
 then carbonic acid gas, all the sulphur was sul- 
 phuric acid, all the water was then invisible 
 steam. All that we now behold must have been 
 represented by a glowing liquid nucleus, en- 
 veloped in a dense atmosphere of burning acrid 
 vapors. The sun was then shining as now, only 
 larger, and possibly earth has thrown off its ring 
 to roll up into a globe of fire, but being so small, 
 soon cooled down into our dead moon. The 
 fiery glance of the sun was met by a fiercely 
 burning glance from the earth, where reigned 
 chaos terrific. Here was death and confusion, 
 upon which the uncreated alone looked down 
 and saw order and life and beauty germinating in 
 the heart of universal discord. Radiation of 
 heat went on through the slow ages, also con- 
 traction. The least fusible elements began first 
 to crystallize; when the temperature had suffi- 
 ciently lowered, a solid film formed over the 
 surface of water. 
 
 The earth was then rotating as now; sun and 
 
/S MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 moon, then as now, reached forth their attract- 
 ing influences to solicit the tides of the fiery sea. 
 But the film was quickly broken up by the tidal 
 waves, just as now the ocean's tides break up 
 the ice which may have formed. In time how- 
 ever, the crowding, jostling fragments began to 
 congeal permanently, as the broken ice of the 
 Arctic seas, after being worried by winds and 
 currents, seizes an interval of calm to consolo- 
 date into a vast rugged floe. The rock floe of 
 this fiery ocean, formed at length a rough and 
 jagged crust; the granites were then laid as the 
 foundation, on which long afterward, the water- 
 formed rocks were to be deposited. These 
 jammed and rugged scoriae of crystalline rocks 
 were to be ground up through the succeeding 
 milleniums; the granite grist was again deposited 
 as stratified rocks beneath the water; these were 
 again to be reground.and the mass worked over 
 and over, as a woman works her dough, to form 
 the soil, on which the long distant future should 
 see life blossoming with verdure and beauty. 
 
 Of course no water could then have fallen on 
 the parched and blackened earth, for all was too 
 hot; all the present waters of ocean, lakes and 
 rivers was then an invisible gas. At length the 
 time arrived when the remoter regions of the 
 
SECOND CREATiyE DAY 
 
 atmosphere had been so far reduced in temper- 
 ature, as to cause condensation to begin; vapor 
 began to appear on the far off edges. Clouds 
 formed and grew and thickened and darkened, 
 till a pall of impending gloom enwrapped the 
 earth, and the light of sun and moon and stars 
 were shut off for another geological age. Parti- 
 cle drew particle to itself, and rain drops began 
 to precipitate themselves through the lower 
 strata of the fervid atmosphere. In their descent 
 they were scorched to evaporation again; the 
 vapors hurrying back to the bosom of the cloud, 
 were again sent forth, to be again consumed. 
 At length rain-drops reached the fervid crust, 
 only to be exploded into vapor and driven back 
 to the overburdened cloud, which had an ocean 
 to transfer to the earth. The clouds poured the 
 ocean continually forth, and the seething crust 
 continually rejected the offering. The field be- 
 tween the cloud and earth was one stupendous 
 scene of ebullition; ten thousand Niagaras 
 poured into as many Etnas. 
 
 The descent of the rains and the ascent of the 
 vapors disturbed the electricities of the elements; 
 in the midst of this contest between fire and 
 water, the voices of heaven's artillery were 
 heard; lightening darted vivid through the 
 
76 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 Cimmerian gloom, and world convulsing thunders 
 echoed through thickest darkness. It was a battle 
 of the elements.* 
 
 Let us realize that three fourths of the earth's 
 surface is covered with water, which is sufficient 
 to cover the whole globe to the depth of 12,000 
 feet. At that time all the water was in the 
 atmosphere, so that the pressure on the hot 
 surface must have been enormous, no less than 
 6,000 pounds to the square inch, from that 
 cause alone Now we know from the laws of 
 chemistry that great pressure will force vapor into 
 a liquid, long before the steam has lowered to 
 the point of liquefaction. There must have 
 been therefore a sea of immensely hot water,long 
 before the temperature had been sufficiently 
 lowered for steam to condense into water, of its 
 own accord; a boiling sea below, was prevented 
 from escaping back into steam by the enormous 
 pressure, and a sea above held in the form of 
 vapor all the rest of the present waters. 
 
 Consider what vast amount of water can now 
 be held suspended in the atmosphere! In 
 many storms the fall of rain will exceed two 
 inches, but the amount of water on an acre to 
 the depth of one inch will weigh 100 tons. The 
 
 * Figuier and Winchell. 
 
SECOND CRE^TiyE D^Y 77 
 
 city of Cleveland covers an area of about eight 
 miles by four, or thirty-two square miles. If 
 rain should fall upon this area to the depth of 
 two inches it would mean that four million tons 
 of water had been held in suspension over this 
 city during a single rain storm. All the rivers 
 are simply the overflow of the vast reservoir of 
 our atmosphere; the Amazon, the Mississippi, 
 the Niagara and all the rivers of the world are 
 carrying away the excess of water which the 
 atmosphere once held, but can hold no longer. 
 But at the time under review, the atmosphere 
 was intensely hot, and therefore capable of hold- 
 ing vastly more than now; there was truly an 
 ocean above, and an ocean below. 
 
 Now let us turn to Moses to see whether he 
 has given a correct account from his side. "And 
 God said — Let there be an expanse in the midst 
 of the waters, and let it divide the waters from 
 the waters." At this point there was water 
 only both above and below, for the hot vapors 
 rested directly on the hot sea. Radiation goes 
 on slowly, and the vaporous atmosphere requires 
 a long time to cool sufficiently to make a clear- 
 ing. Finally the clouds become thinner at the 
 surface of the earth ; the dense fogs begin to lift 
 and something like a clear atmosphere opens out 
 
78 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 into a growing expanse, which does Hterally 
 divide between the waters which were above and 
 the waters which were below. Still the clearing 
 went on; the clouds float higher and grow 
 thinner, until a faint ray struggles through the 
 gloom. At last the whole expanse is cleared, 
 and God called it — Heaven. The account of 
 Moses agrees exactly with that of science, and 
 still we find no hint of the dreaded conflict. 
 
 But to get at all its meaning, we must care- 
 fully study the words of this record. Recall 
 therefore that the Hebrew word translated — 
 firmament, is rakiach. Lexicographers tell us 
 that it is an onomatopoetic word, that is, one 
 whose sound represents its meaning, as buzz of 
 bees, crackle of burning thorns. Some maintain 
 that all words had their origen in this way. 
 Rak^h is such a word, and refers to the din 
 and terrible racket of a gold- beater's or metal- 
 workers' shop, and could almost be translated — 
 racket; if one goes into a boiler shop where the 
 sheets of iron are being hammered, he will un- 
 derstand the meaning of this word. 
 
 Now see how accurate is this description of 
 what took place as the clearing was forming. The 
 electricities were disturbed, as described a few 
 pages before; the fearful lightenings shot out 
 
SECOND CREATIVE DAY 79 
 
 their angry flames, terrific thunders almost 
 sounded the crack of doom. It was a racket 
 indeed; an expanse seemed to be beaten out 
 by some titanic hammers, whose claps shook the 
 earth. In one word, Moses has told us a fact 
 and its method of formation, which science can 
 tell us only in many pages. 
 
 Still more; there was onl}' water below the 
 expanse, according to Moses; in the succeeding 
 day when the dry land emerges, the positive state- 
 ment is made that there was then a universal 
 sea, that covered the whole earth. No state- 
 ment is more abundantly corroborated than this. 
 What mean the strata of rocks which every- 
 where overlay the earth, in some places twenty- 
 five miles in thickness, but that water had once 
 covered the whole surface of the earth, for strati- 
 fied rocks can be formed only beneath water. 
 
 Winchel says — "A thousand years of storm 
 and lightning have passed, and the primeval 
 tempest is drawing to a close. The waters are 
 now permitted to rest on the surface. By de- 
 grees the clouds are exhausted, and sunlight filters 
 through the thinned envelope. As the morning 
 of another geological epoch dawns, it reveals the 
 change of scene; the surface which in the pre- 
 ceding age was scorched and arid, is now a uni- 
 versal sea of tepid waters." 
 
IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC.^ 
 
 The action of water was essential for the great 
 work of preparation and purification, before the 
 earth should be fit to receive life. The hard 
 and bare rocks must be ground up and worked 
 over and over; the high temperature enabled the 
 water to dissolve many substances which are not 
 soluable in cold water, and which are needed for 
 the future soil. No living man had seen a uni- 
 versal sea, and so improbable a fact could not 
 have been guessed until the leaves of rock on 
 which the fact had also been written, was opened 
 by the geologist, but both Genesis and Geology 
 agree in their testimony that the surface' of the 
 earth was covered with water. 
 
 Notice also how scientific is the order of these 
 events. The clearing of the atmosphere comes 
 a/Ur God had divided between the light and the 
 darkness, that is, after the time when the earth 
 had so far cooled as to be no longer luminous 
 with its own heat. If this clearing of the atmos- 
 phere had been placed before the division into 
 day and night, there would have been a great 
 scientific blunder detected at once, for Moses 
 would have asserted that water existed ata time 
 when the earth was still so intensely hot as to 
 be self-luminous, which would have been absurd. 
 The components of water are known to be in 
 
SECOND CRE/iTlVE DAY 81 
 
 the sun, for the spectroscope shows that hydro- 
 gen and oxygen are there, but the heat will not 
 permit these atoms to unite to form water. So 
 while the necessary ingredients were present 
 upon the burning earth, there could be no water 
 formed until the crust had so far cooled as to be 
 dark, when night would occur on that part which 
 was turned away from the sun. So it is after 
 that time that Moses correctly puts the formation 
 of water. 
 
 Another position, eminently scientific, Moses 
 unhesitatingly assumes, in the fact that he here 
 witholds the divine commendation. In the first 
 day, he told us that the nebulous light was 
 "good," and the spectroscope fully sustains that 
 statement; but on the second day, he does not 
 add the word of commendation; the atmosphere 
 is not said to be "good." 
 
 This seems like a great oversight, and there- 
 fore the translators of the Septuagint undertook to 
 correct this mistake of Moses, by adding — "and 
 God saw that it was good." But science comes 
 in to sustain Moses, and declares most positively 
 that the atmosphere was not good at that early 
 time. The oxygen had been burned out and the 
 atmosphere was full of carbonic acid gas which 
 was mimical to life; even plants could not live 
 
82 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 in an atmosphere so overcharged with carbonic 
 acid, and it would not be fit for respiration for 
 many a century. Not until the carboniferous 
 period, when plants flourished most luxuriantly, 
 absorbing the carbonic acid and replacing it 
 with oxygen, — not until then could animal life 
 exist, nor would the atmosphere be good. The 
 appearance or absence of this certificate of the 
 Creator, testifying that the work was or was not 
 adapted to the function it was intended to ful- 
 fill, is highly scientific, as we shall have reason 
 to notice as we proceed. 
 
 This second creative day corresponds to the 
 Azoic period of geology. The crystalline rocks 
 have been formed, the waters have begun their 
 long and slow work of disintegration to produce 
 new rocks, but no life has as yet appeared. 
 This was a period of preparation; to none but 
 to the eye of the Infinite Himself, could any 
 prospect of what should be, have appeared then, 
 even in dimmest suggestion. The work to be 
 done was great, and the time needed would be 
 long; but no; this is incorrect to say, for great 
 and long are only relative terms, to be used by 
 finite creatures, but not by the Infinite. 
 
 Again we have found five m.ore, wide reaching 
 statements, all of which are fully borne out by 
 
SECOND CREATIVE DAY 83 
 
 modern science. First — there was a sea below, 
 owing to the enormous pressure at the surface 
 of the earth; second — the expanse, or clearing 
 away of the vapors, was literally "in the midst 
 of the waters; third — there was at first a univer- 
 sal ocean; fourth — the dry land did not appear 
 until another geological era had passed; fifth — 
 the atmosphere was so full of carbonic acid gas, 
 that it was not fit for breathing either by plant 
 or animal; it was not "good." In the twenty- 
 seven steps so far taken by the Mosaic record, it 
 is accompanied by science, which walks by its 
 side in perfect agreement, without one word ot 
 discord. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THIRD CREATIVE DAY. 
 
 ^'A?id God said — Let the ivaters under the heavefis 
 be gathered into one place, and let dry land appear ; 
 and it was so. And God called the dry land earth, 
 and the gathering of waters called He seas; and God 
 saw that it was good. And God said — Let the earth 
 bring forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit trees 
 yielding frtdt after its kind, wherein is the seed 
 thereof, upon the earth; and it was so. And the earth 
 brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its ki?id, 
 and trees bearing f-uit, wherein is the seed thereof 
 after its kind; and God saw that it was good. And 
 evening was, and tnorning zvas — day three. ' ' 
 
 The thought must not escape our minds, that 
 Moses is giving in one chapter, what would have 
 required vast libraries, filled with countless 
 volumes to have fully described. He has given 
 a sketch in largest outline, only one rapid sweep 
 of the inspired pen across the geologic ages. 
 We may not therefore ask — has he told us what 
 we think should have been told, but only — is he 
 correct in what he has said? And if his pen was 
 
 84 
 
THIRD CREATINE DAY 85 
 
 inspired, let us expect that much will be found 
 which does not appear on the surface. 
 
 He has brought us down to the time where 
 the water that had been held in the atmosphere 
 in the form of vapor, has been precipitated upon 
 the cooled crust and has formed a universal sea. 
 Contrary to what he could himself see, contrary 
 to all human experience, he yet persists in telling 
 us that water covered the whole suface of the 
 earth, and that the land afterward emerged from 
 beneath the waters. 
 
 We turn again to science to ask if that was so.-* 
 she answers promptly — "it was so." Radiation 
 of heat had been going on for untold ages; as 
 the earth cooled, it contracted and finally the 
 crust became hard and firm. On this crystalline 
 crust the waters were deposited until they 
 covered the whole earth, and in them the vast 
 piles of stratified rocks were formed. But still 
 the radiation of heat went on, but more slowly 
 as the crust thickened; and still the earth con- 
 tracted. At first the crust rested on the surface 
 of the molten interior, as ice rests on the surface 
 of the water. As the contraction still continued, 
 the interior withdrew its support, as the water 
 leaves the ice suspended when it has sunk away 
 into the ground. For a time the crust could 
 
86 /5 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 support itself notwithstanding that it did not 
 rest solid at every point, but finally it was com- 
 pelled to crumple up and adjust itself to the 
 smaller interior. This it could do only by fold- 
 ing itself into wrinkles, as a garment will wrinkle 
 if too large for tne person. These wrinkles of the 
 earth's crust are the mountains, which appeared 
 above the water at the divine command. 
 
 Very large wrinkles, we may think, but the 
 fact is, they are very small compared to the size 
 of the earth on whose surface they have formed. 
 The diameter of the earth is nearly eight thou- 
 sand miles; a wrinkle ten thousand feet high 
 would be like a paint blister raised one tenth of 
 an inch on a house thirty-five feet high. But 
 the mountain ranges hardly average three 
 thousand feet in height, which compared to the 
 size of the earth, would be like a wrinkle on an 
 apple, so small that it could not be seen without 
 a magnifying glass. So the dry land obeyed the 
 creative command, in the way and at the time 
 indicated in the record. 
 
 "But a new agency soon began to work, an 
 agency of terrific power; volcanic outbursts of 
 fearful extent took place. As the wrinkles 
 would crack in some places and form great rents 
 in the crust of the earth, the cooled surface 
 
THIRD CREy4TIFE DAY 87 
 
 water would pour through the openings, and 
 coming in contact with the internal molten fire, 
 would cause explosion after explosion, upheaval 
 after upheaval; vast stretches of earth's surface, 
 hundreds of miles in extent, would be pushed 
 up above the ocean, amidst the most terrific 
 thunderings and awful crashes. We all know 
 how disastrous to a red-hot boiler is the sudden 
 inlet of water turning to steam; it exerts a force 
 that bursts the strongest bands of iron. Imagine 
 vast masses, millions of tons of water, suddenly 
 precipitated through the gaping earth upon the 
 molten rocks and liquid fires beneath. It is 
 impossible for us to conceive the awfulness of 
 the scene, but monuments of that age of thunder 
 exist, which speak to us of its terrific forces. 
 The Andes, the Himalayas, the Alps, and other 
 vast mountain ranges, are the upheavals of this 
 period of the world's history, and standing mon- 
 uments of the day when the Lord said — Let the 
 dry land appear." 
 
 The objection will doubtless be raised, that it 
 was not by divine command that these results 
 were brought about, for science teaches that 
 they were accomplished by the laws of nature. 
 That phrase — "laws of nature," is misleading; it 
 is often used as though law contained a power 
 
IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 in itself to effect results. Law is only the 
 metJiod of action, in which works a force outside 
 of itself; the laws of nature are only grooves, 
 through which some mighty force moves. 
 What is the force? Not nature, for nature is a 
 result, not a cause. It is not inherent in matter, 
 for science has proved that there is no self- 
 originating nor self-perpetuating force in matter, 
 because matter always tends to come to rest, 
 unless it is moved upon from without. The only 
 originating force of which we are cognizant, is 
 will; this alone can originate force and direct it 
 to an intelligent end. Therefore back of the 
 laws according to which nature is compelled to 
 move; back of nature itself, which cannot orig- 
 inate action or motion, but can only carry out 
 that which has been impressed upon it; back of 
 all, there must be a mighty Will, if we may be 
 permitted to reason from the seen to the unseen. 
 Moses says it was Will that caused all these 
 effects, and its name is God; "and God said — 
 let there be, and it was so;" and science offers 
 no objection. 
 
 These original wrinkles formed the outlines of 
 the future continents; again and again the crust 
 had to double up and compress itself together 
 to conform to the shrinking interior, and so the 
 continents gradually grew. 
 
HIRD CREATURE DAY 80 
 
 Prof. Guyot has shown in a beautiful and con- 
 vincing way, a unity of design in all the great 
 mountain systems, which form the skeletons on 
 which the respective continents are built. The 
 systems all run from north-west to south east, 
 or from north- east to south-west, and the contour 
 of the continents is formed by these boundary 
 masses, as will be readily seen by the study, of a 
 map of the world. The same system also runs 
 through the oceans, for the islands of the sea 
 are only the tops of such mountain ranges, and 
 their general direction is the same. These lines 
 of crumpling are all arranged in great circles of 
 the earth, tangent to the polar circle. There is 
 therefore a uniformity in the arrangement of the 
 whole mountain system of the earth. 
 
 Thus science shows that not only were the 
 creative commands carried out in exactly the 
 way described, but that one great system is ap- 
 parent in all the ranges which marked out the 
 boundaries of the future continents, showing that 
 it was one directing Will that was obeyed. 
 
 "And these wrinklings of the earth's crust are 
 still proceeding at the present, though not as 
 formerly, because the crust is becoming thicker 
 as the cooling still goes on. Some countries are 
 gradually rising above the ocean, while others 
 
90 /5 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 are being depressed. Norway and Sweden, for 
 instance seem to be situated upon the convex 
 side of one of these wrinkles; marine beaches 
 are found hundreds of feet above the present 
 sea level; and by careful observation it has been 
 found that a gradual upheaval of perhaps four 
 feet a century, is still taking place. In almost 
 every country, marine shells are found on the 
 top of the highest mountains. Each upheaval 
 necessitates a corresponding depression; thus 
 along the east coast of England, there is a de- 
 pression of the land, and the ocean is slowly 
 encroaching. Once England was so high that 
 there was no English Channel, but it was joined 
 to the continent, and no channel existed between 
 it and Ireland," These changes are not percep- 
 tible to us, because our lives are so short, but 
 for many centuries they have been proceeding. 
 Areas have been raised above the sea, and then 
 depressed as some other elevation took place 
 elsewhere; they were again raised and again de- 
 pressed, for whole continents thus oscillate. 
 South America has along its western coast, 
 what are called parallel roads, which are nothing 
 but sea beaches, that have been raised one after 
 another, and the eastern coast has been corre- 
 spondingly depressed. But these changes do not 
 
Third creative day 91 
 
 always go on so quietly, even now. Occasionally 
 we read of fearful earthquakes which entirely 
 alter the configuration of the whole country. 
 Land is forced up where no land had existed, 
 and the waters of the ocean are hurled in a 
 mighty wave against the opposite coast line, 
 overwhelming cities and villages. But how must 
 it have been in the earlier ages of the world's 
 history, when all these forces waged a thousand 
 fold power? Geologists are agreed that the 
 Devonian era was one of fearful volcanic dis- 
 turbance. How marvellously the Psalmist 
 describes the wonders of this age of thunder in 
 the 104th Psalm — "The waters stood above the 
 mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the 
 voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They 
 go up by the mountains, they go down by the 
 vallies, unto the place which Thou hast founded 
 for them." 
 
 The next statement is also thoroughly accurate, 
 but wholly impossible for any uninspired man to 
 make — "Let the waters be gathered together 
 into one place." In his Manual of Geology, Dana 
 expresses this fact in almost the same words, 
 though without any reference to Genesis; "while 
 the continents are separate areas, the oceans 
 occupy one continuous hasiny Exactly; but 
 
92 rS MOSES SCIENTIFIC^ 
 
 how could the author of this order have known 
 that the waters on the earth was one vast body, 
 while the continents were isolated islands? 
 
 Think of the situation; had the writer looked 
 upon the Mediterranean sea to the westward, 
 and the Red sea or perhaps the Arabian Gulf on 
 the south? Had he doubled the Cape of Good 
 Hope to find that both were one and the same 
 bodies of water? But even then, he would have 
 known nothing of the Atlantic stretching west 
 from the Pillars of Hercules, and still west until 
 it joined its waters with those of the Pacific, 
 which in turn would carry on the connection 
 until it had traversed the round earth and had 
 joined again the waters of the Red Sea. No 
 one could have known that, until after Columbus 
 had made his great discovery three thousand 
 years after the time of Moses. Until the world 
 had been circumnavigated by Magellan, not a 
 scientist living on the earth could have made that 
 statement which is advanced so boldly, that "the 
 waters under the heaveii were gathered together 
 into one place." One might have said — the 
 waters under the southern heaven is one body; 
 or perhaps the waters under the western heavens; 
 but for three thousand years after this statement 
 had been made, science could but place herself 
 
THIRD CREATIVE DAY 03 
 
 squarely against Revelation, and insist that here 
 is a geographical mistake. How did this old 
 record get a three thousand year start of science? 
 
 The divine approval is again given to the work 
 that has so far proceeded on the third day; "the 
 earth and seas are pronounced good." Does 
 geology bear out this statement? Certainly not, 
 if it is meant that the dry land was good, as soon 
 as it had emerged from the water. At first it 
 was only black lava, and this would require 
 many ages before it had been ground up and 
 worked over to produce soil; this material 
 needed to be enriched by lime taken from the 
 sea, beneath which geology finds the land has 
 been submerged again and again; it needed to 
 be enriched by carbonaceous matter from the de- 
 composition of plants and animals, before it was 
 capable of sustaining vegetation, and could be 
 called "good." At first, the sea also was unfit 
 for life; vast qantities of lime, silica and other 
 impurities held in solution, had to be removed by 
 marine vegetation, which took up the excess of 
 mineral mater and carbonic acid, before the sea 
 could be called "good." 
 
 Is there then a conflict here? Not unless we 
 believe the arrangement in verses was inspired. 
 The clause expressing the divine approval is 
 
Oi is MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 placed in the tenth verse, and so makes it appear 
 that it was given immediately after the dry land 
 and seas had been separated. This was another 
 reading of the science of the day into the record, 
 and so making it false. But place this clause at 
 the beginning of the eleventh verse, instead of 
 at the end of the tenth and all is correct. "And 
 God saw that it was good; and. God said — let 
 the earth bring forth grass, etc." When was 
 the approval given.-* Moses does not tell us 
 when; but geology says long, very long after the 
 emergence of the dry land, did it become "good." 
 All that Moses says on the subject is, that the 
 commendation was given before the next step 
 was taken; it was "good," before the earth was 
 commanded to bring forth vegetation, and this 
 is perfectly correct. 
 
 We must not read these statements, which 
 describe the events of, no one knows how many, 
 ages, as though they immediately followed each 
 other. The few facts here given are like the 
 tops of mountain peaks, along whose range we 
 are looking; all these peaks seem to lie close 
 together, owing to the lack of perspective, but 
 when we come close to them we find that they 
 are separated by wide intervening vallies. 
 
 These facts may seem to lie close together, 
 
THIRD CREATINE DAY 95 
 
 because the narrative gives no intervening spaces 
 between them ; imperfect science used to read 
 them as though they followed each other imme- 
 diately. But now that science is able to walk 
 over the same ground, it finds that while the 
 great facts are true, yet there are immense gaps 
 between them in regard to time. There is an 
 immense gap between the emergence of the dry 
 land, and its being good, though from our view 
 point we can not see it. 
 
 We now approach a difficulty which has made 
 Revelation seem to be in hopeless conflict with 
 science. "And God said — let the earth bring 
 forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit tree 
 bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed 
 thereof, upon the earth; and it was so." But 
 geology says that this was not the first vegeta- 
 tion, for marine vegetation had existed long be- 
 fore land vegetation appeared; indeed marine 
 vegetation helped to prepare the soil on which 
 land vegetation could live. Likewise on the fifth 
 day the record tells us — "And God said, let the 
 waters bring forth abundantly the moving 
 creature that hath life, etc. ," while geology again 
 insists, that living creatures had existed in the 
 sea, long ages before the time of the fifth creative 
 day. How shall we reconcile these two author- 
 ities on these points.-* 
 
96 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 There needs to be no reconciliation. The 
 difficulties arise because we have not expected 
 this record to be scientific, and therefore we 
 have not read it with that care with which we 
 would read a book of science. Every statement 
 of science we expect will be both inclusive and 
 exclusive. For instance, if a scientist speaks of 
 vertebrates, we understand him to carefully t'n- 
 cliide all the animals which have a spinal column, 
 but also exclude just as rigidly all which do not 
 have a spine. If now we would read this record 
 in this way, we should be relieved at once of 
 many supposed difficulties. 
 
 The charge is that geology says that a marine 
 vegetation came into existence first, while Moses 
 speaks first of land vegetation. Now the truth 
 is, that Moses has not chosen to speak of marine 
 vegetation at all; it may have existed for ages 
 before the dry land brought forth grass, but 
 Moses is confining himself exclusively to land 
 vegetation. He tells us plainly that it was to 
 the EARTH to which God spake to bring forth 
 grass, and of course it brought forth what it was 
 commanded to do. There is no conflict what- 
 ever here; geology says marine vegetation came 
 first into existence. Very well; it may have 
 been so, for all that Moses says to the contrary; 
 
THIRD CREATIVE DAY 
 
 he has simply said nothing about marine vege- 
 tation, but warned us that it was of land vege- 
 tation of which he was speaking, and in this he 
 was perfectly correct. 
 
 Likewise the difficulty of the fifth day will 
 also disappear, if we read the statement with 
 rigid attention. Geology tells us that animal 
 life existed long ages before the time of which 
 Moses speaks. Protozoans had already swarmed 
 in the sea for many centuries. Chalk is now 
 found to be the remains of the shells of minute 
 sea animals, which absorbed the lime from the 
 water and converted it into chalk and limestone 
 formations. The chalk deposits are so vast that 
 along the English Channel they tower up in 
 cliffs one thousand feet and dazzle the eye with 
 their brilliant whiteness, giving to England the 
 name of Albion. This chalk formation extends 
 across the continent of Europe for more than 
 eleven hundred miles in length, and eight hun- 
 dred miles m breadth. But these animals that 
 inhabited the chalk shells, lived long before the 
 fifth creative day. 
 
 But now read the record with that care which 
 would be exercised in reading a scientific state- 
 ment, and the apparent conflict disappears. 
 "And God said — let the waters brine forth 
 
98 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC/ 
 
 abundantly the moving creature that hath life 
 etc." What kind of creature is Moses speaking 
 of which appeared on the fifth day? It is the 
 '"''tnoving creature^ But these earlier protozoans, 
 of which geology tells us, were not "moving 
 creatures;" many were what may be called 
 agglutinative creatures; animals which builded 
 themselves fast to each other, as the corals now 
 do; they could not "move," but were stationary, 
 and so it was not of them at all that Moses was 
 speaking. These were rigidly excluded by the 
 careful terms he used — "moving creatures." The 
 Spirit did not propose to tell us about protozoans, 
 and other inferior animals which could be seen 
 only with a microscope; what He gave Moses to 
 say, was that the class of creatures carefully 
 described as "moving creatures," appeared on the 
 fifth creative day. Likewise of the introduction 
 of marine vegetation, the record does not speak; 
 this is one of those unseen vallies which inter- 
 vene between the mountains, whose peaks have 
 alone been brought into sight by the light of 
 inspiration, which has illumined them. Again 
 there is no conflict between Revelation and 
 Science, for they are speaking of different kinds 
 of life, and both are true. 
 
 It is on the third day that vegetation is 
 
THIRD CREATIVE DAY 99 
 
 created, but not until the tifth day that animal 
 life appears, and here again is enunciated a great 
 scientific truth which is abundantly corroborated, 
 viz, that plant life precedes animal life. Carbonic 
 acid gas, with which the atmosphere was laden, 
 was propitious to the growth of plants, but 
 inimical to the existence of animals. The vege- 
 table and animal kingdoms are complementary 
 to each other; the plant absorbs carbonic acid 
 and exhales oxygen, while the animal reverses 
 this process and absorbs oxygen but exhales car- 
 bonic acid. In this way the atmosphere is pre- 
 served pure, and fit for both plants and animals, 
 for what is used by the one is produced by the 
 other. At first however, the plant alone could 
 exist, which must prepare the atmosphere and 
 the soil for the introduction of animal life, and 
 the order of their introduction given by the 
 record is correct. Geology has found fossils of 
 plants and animals in the same rocks as though 
 their introduction was contemporaneous, and it 
 had to depend upon its own reasoning to prove 
 that the plant must have preceded the animal. In 
 late years, however, graphite, from which lead 
 pencils are made, and which is found in igneous 
 rocks, has been proved to be of vegetable origin, 
 and so the rocks too, add their testimony to the 
 
100 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 reasoning of the geologist, and confirm the order 
 given by Moses, in which the plant has the pre- 
 cedence of the animal. 
 
 This order is rigidly scientific also for another 
 reason. The plant lives upon inorganicinatter, 
 but the animal lives only upon organic matter. 
 The function of the plant is to take the inor- 
 ganic and convert it into organic, and so furnish 
 food for the grade of life next above itself; the 
 plant stands as the connecting link between dead 
 matter and the living animal. 
 
 It is one of the miracles of nature, com- 
 mon, yet none the less a miracle, that the par- 
 ticle of rock that has been broken off from 
 the mountain by the hammer of frost and 
 washed down to the valley by the freshet, 
 can be seized upon by the rootlets of the 
 plant, and elements extracted which are or- 
 ganized into living material. This material is 
 handed on by the plant to the ox which feeds in 
 the meadow; the ox lays down its life for the 
 life of man and passes on these elements until 
 they are incorporated into a human body; per- 
 haps they go to nourish the brain, by which 
 thought is evolved, which flies out to grapple 
 with the secrets of the stars. Here is a miracle 
 indeed! the rock of the mountain has some con- 
 
THIRD CREATURE DAY 101 
 
 nection with the thought that calculates the 
 orbits of the stars, Soniehow, the rock becomes 
 a wing, by means of which thought flies to the 
 Pleiades. The plant takes dead matter and 
 organizes it into living material, upon which alone 
 animal life can subsist. Therefore the plant 
 must have preceded the animal in the order of 
 its introduction upon the earth, just as the Bible 
 record gives it. 
 
 But the time of this introduction is also to be 
 noted from another point of view. We saw in 
 chapter III, that the six creative days divide 
 themselves into two great classes; the first three 
 constitute the era of matter, the last three con- 
 stitute the era of life. But let us notice carefully 
 that life is introduced not in the era of life, but 
 in the era of matter; this forms the second act 
 of the third day, instead of being performed, 
 as we might have expected, on the fifth day. 
 Is not this an inconsistency.-* Has not Moses 
 made a mistake in introducing life before its 
 time.' Guyot says "this is profoundly philo- 
 sophical," but its philosophical aspect will be 
 reserved to be discussed when we study its 
 counterpart on the sixth day, for there too, a 
 second act takes place; it is the introduction 
 there too of life, but this time a spiritual, as 
 
102 /5 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 that introduced on the third day is natural. 
 And the spiritual life seems again to have been 
 introduced before its time, viz, in the era of 
 natural life; whereas we should again have ex- 
 pected that spiritual life would not have been 
 introduced until the era of the spiritual had 
 arrived, viz, in the seventh period. But this 
 will be considered more fully later. 
 
 Let us ask science whether it is proper thus 
 to introduce a new creation by sending forward 
 a forerunner to announce its coming. We have 
 seen a John Baptist run before the chariot of his 
 King to announce his appearance; we have seen 
 angels herald the birth of the Savior, but this is 
 in another realm altogether, and we thought 
 sending scouts in advance was a peculiarity of the 
 spiritual kingdom only. 
 
 Winchell tells us — "Nature has always issued 
 her bulletins. It is a most interesting fact in 
 the history of the animal creation that Nature 
 advertised her plans in the very earliest creative 
 acts. Nature had her plans, and these were 
 mature in the very beginning. All possible con- 
 tingencies being foreseen, no amendments or 
 modifications have been necessitated by the 
 growth of successive populations and the march 
 of human improvement. The outlines of 
 
THIRD CRE/tTIt^E DAY 103 
 
 Nature's grand methods were announced in her 
 initial creative efforts. It was thus in the plan 
 of continental development ; it was thus in the 
 plan of the animal creation. It is only in the 
 infinite flexibility of her plans, and in the inex- 
 haustible richness of the filling up, that Nature 
 transcends all the possibilities of human expec- 
 tation." 
 
 Here is one of those bulletins announcing 
 what was to come on the fifth and sixth creative 
 days, by making the introduction of the lowest 
 form of life the second act of the third day. 
 Moses plants the tree of life on the third day, so 
 that it may strike its roots deep down in the in- 
 organic period, while it is to develope and pro- 
 duce its fruit all through the next period, the 
 era of life. Guyot says: "The striking fact 
 that Moses, though fully recognizing the great 
 difference between the two works of the third 
 day, and importance of the vegetable kingdom, 
 did not assign to it a special day but left it in the 
 age of matter, is full of meaning. The plant is 
 not yet life, but the bridge between matter and 
 life, the link between the two ages. Placed 
 within the material age of creation, it is the 
 harbinger and promise of a more noble and 
 better time to come. It is the root of the living 
 
104 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 tree, planted in the organic globe and destined 
 to flourish in the age of life." 
 
 But we are asking, "Is Moses scientific?" Is 
 it scientific thus to introduce life, not in its own, 
 but in a previous age? Dana says, "The be- 
 ginning of an age will be in the midst of a pre- 
 ceding age. We naturally look for precursors 
 of every age. There were Mammals before the 
 age of Mammals, Reptiles before the age of Rep- 
 tile, Acrogensand Gymnosperms before the age 
 of coal-plant." And likewise Moses says there 
 was life before the age of life. Moses and Dana 
 agree. 
 
 If the reaoer will turn forward to the chart on 
 page 1 39 this thought will be made clearer, and 
 he will see again how scientifically correct Moses 
 is in thus introducing life, in a way which at first 
 sight seems to us inconsistent. It will there be 
 seen, according to Dana, that the various classes 
 of life follow each other through the geologic 
 ages and reach their culmination, in a period 
 which is named for the species which then 
 flourishes. The first age is that of invertebrates ; 
 next above is the age of fishes, the age of reptiles, 
 of mammals and of man. Now notice that these 
 various orders of life, began, not in their own 
 age, but each began in the age preceding. 
 
THIRD CREATINE DAY 105 
 
 Fishes flourished in the age named for them, 
 but began in the previous age. Reptiles began 
 not in their own, but in the previous age of 
 fishes. Mammals began not in their own, but 
 in the previous age of reptiles. But this rule 
 does not hold in the case of man, The mean- 
 ing of all this is, that each order of natural life 
 began in the age preceding to that in which 
 it flourished. 
 
 And this agrees exactly with Moses. Dana 
 tells us that each of the subdivisions of natural 
 life flourished in one age, but had its origin in 
 the preceding; Moses tells us that the same 
 law is true of life in general; that it too flour- 
 ished in one age, but had its origin in the age 
 preceding. If Moses had told us that life began 
 in the fifth day, where we would have expected 
 it to begin, he would have placed himself in 
 positive conflict with science. If he had re- 
 corded — "And God said — let the earth bring 
 forth grass, herb yielding seed etc," and entered 
 it on the fourth or fifth day, somewhere within 
 the era of life, he would have shown that he was 
 neither inspired nor scientific. But the chart 
 of Moses precisely agrees with the chart of Dana. 
 
 Still another great scientific principle appears. 
 Life is a new thing in the earth; hitherto all 
 
1C6 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 had been lifeless; the inorganic alone had ex- 
 isted, and had at once been placed under the 
 dominion of law. How will it be when life 
 appears? Moses tells us, each form of this new 
 principle is at once placed under the dominion 
 of law also. That is — it is God working still, as 
 much in preserving these species of life as in 
 creating them, but He works according to an 
 unchangable method from the beginning. Hence- 
 forth there is to be no more special creation, but 
 the plants are endowed with the power of per- 
 petuating themselves. The herbs bear seeds, 
 the trees yield fruit which enclose their seed, and 
 each species henceforth is to go on reproducing 
 — "after his kind." Life enjoys a new property 
 unknown before — -that of reproduction; con- 
 formity to type was impressed upon life from the 
 first says Moses. No law is more abundantly 
 confirmed than this; different species reproduce 
 themselves continually — "after his kind." There 
 is capacity of unlimited improvement of kind; 
 the wild rose of the wayside little looks like the 
 progenitor of the American Beauty or Jacque- 
 minot. The great luscious clusters bursting 
 with purple blood, are a vast improvement of the 
 wild grape of the forest. Improvement always 
 — "after his kind," as Moses declares. Artificial 
 
THIRD CREyiTIVE DAY 107 
 
 generation can force different species to unite 
 and produce hybrids, but if left to themselves 
 they will invariably return again to their original 
 stock according to the law of conformity to 
 type. "After his kind," is one of the command- 
 ments written on nature's decalogue recorded in 
 this first chapter of Genesis, and nature obeys 
 her ten commandments better than does man. 
 
 The divine commendation is again received ; 
 "and God saw that it was good." Not only was 
 vegetation good in itself, but especially as it was 
 fitted to the purpose for which it was then intro- 
 duced. It was "good," in that it immediately set 
 about removing the excess of carbonic acid from 
 the atmosphere and so prepare for higher forms 
 of life, for which the earth was not yet fitted. 
 
 It would be interesting to follow geology as it 
 traces the forms of vegetable life, especially as 
 it describes for us the carboniferous period, when 
 vegetation was most luxuriant, and the carbon 
 was taken from the atmosphere and stored away 
 in the coal measures, which like the first promise 
 in the garden was a most suggestive prophecy 
 and promise of great blessings as yet in the far 
 future. If there is anything that can prove a 
 divine plan and providence, it is the existence of 
 coal. Certain conditions had to be fulfilled 
 
108 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 which could occur once and never again. Not 
 only was excessive carbonic acid gas necessary, 
 as food lor vegetation, but also the heat and 
 moisture which existed only in the earlier ages. 
 It was also necessary that there should be rapid 
 changes in the earth's surface; when great 
 forests had grown up rapidly under these favor- 
 able conditions, it was necessary that the surface 
 of the land should be depressed beneath the 
 water before wood had decayed, because the 
 wood can be converted into coal only by a slow 
 oxydation under water, or under some covering 
 sufficient to protect it from the action of atmos- 
 pheric air. Then the land must rise again to 
 receive new forest growths, and again be de- 
 pressed to lay down a new coal seam, so that 
 sufficient quantities should be stored in any one 
 place. The amount of vegetable matter in a 
 single coal-seam six inches thick, is greater than 
 the most luxuriant vegetation of the present day 
 would furnish in twelve hundred years, as seventy- 
 five per cent of the weight of the wood is lost by 
 its transformation into coal. Boussingault cal- 
 culates that luxuriant vegetation at the present 
 takes from the atmosphere about half a ton of 
 carbon per acre annually, or fifty tons per acre 
 in a century. But fifty tons of coal spread evenly 
 
THIRD CRE/ITiyE Dy4Y 109 
 
 over an acre of surface, would make a layer of 
 less than one third of an inch. But suppose it 
 to be half an inch, then the time required for the 
 accumulation of a seam of coal three feet thick — 
 the thinnest which can be worked with advantage 
 — would be seven thousand two hundred years. 
 If the aggregate thickness of all the seams of 
 coal in any basin amount to sixty feet, the time 
 required for its accumulation would be one hun- 
 dred and forty-four thousand years. In the 
 coal measures of Nova Scotia are seventy-six 
 seams of coal, one of which is twenty-two feet 
 thick, and another thirty-seven. The "Mammoth 
 Vein" at Wilkesbarre, Penn,, is twenty-nine feet 
 thick. 
 
 Thus the Infinite not only removed the car- 
 bonic acid from the atmosphere and so prepared 
 for the coming of man, but He prepared in a still 
 more remarkable way, by storing up for his future 
 use that which should be the very cause and 
 means of his christian civilization. It will be 
 seen on the slightest reflection that this marvel- 
 ous century could not have become what it is, 
 without the use of coal. That wonderful genie, 
 more wonderful and powerful than any of myth 
 or story, which is evoked from the impassive 
 water, would not have come forth in such 
 
no IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 strength and continuance to turn all the wheels 
 of industry, and push our steamers, and print our 
 books, unless nature had filled her cellars with 
 the black food on which steam can feed. But 
 who told nature that such a being, who could use 
 coal, was to be born in the far-off centuries? 
 And who told nature, that thousands of years 
 after man had appeared, necessity should arise 
 for this carbon which, was worse than useless in 
 the then atmosphere ? Nature is never provident, 
 she is wastful; nature is never thoughtful, but 
 pursues her wonted way unconcerned of what 
 may be thousands of years hence. In the pro- 
 vision of coal there is as certain proof of kindly 
 care, as there is in the dinner which the hungry 
 child finds has been made ready for it when it 
 returns from school. The coal was as much 
 planned and provided for the nineteenth century, 
 as the timbers which are cut and sawed in the 
 far-away forest, were planned for the ship that is 
 building down on the sea-board. And we who 
 can look back upon all the work which was then 
 transpiring, and who know what vegetation was 
 then preparing for us, can join heartily in the 
 divine commendation and say — "it was good." 
 
 But now candor compels us to acknowledge a 
 difficulty, which has not as yet been satisfacforily 
 
THIRD CREATINE DAY 111 
 
 removed. Moses says that the highest forms of 
 vegetable life appeared on the third day, while 
 geology says that there are no fossils of these 
 highest forms such as the fruit tree and other 
 exogens, until long after the time indicated in the 
 record. The question at issue is — did fruit trees, 
 and trees whose seed is enclosed within covering, 
 appear at so early a date? Moses says yes, 
 geology says no. 
 
 Different suggestions have been made to 
 reconcile the two. Guyot suggests that Moses 
 means to describe vegetation as a whole, 
 and not the particular forms which appeared at 
 different times; he describes the system of plants 
 in full outline, as it has been developed from the 
 lowest to the most perfect in the succession of 
 ages, for he will not speak of the subject again 
 in the remainder of the narrative. What Moses 
 has to say about plants he will say then, but he 
 does not mean that all, of which he speaks, 
 appeared at that particular period. Dawson on 
 the contrary, says that higher forms of life than 
 we think, may have flourished in the earlier ages ; 
 the progress of improvement has not been con- 
 tinuous and uninterrupted; the fact that a cer- 
 tain order of plants or animals lived in one age, 
 is no proof that a better state of things may not 
 
112 JS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 have existed in a previous age. The conditions 
 for plant hfe were certainly much more favora- 
 ble then than now, and therefore, even higher 
 forms of plant life than any that we are familiar 
 with may then have existed. The fact that 
 they do not exist now signifies nothing, for we 
 know that whole races of animals have been 
 swept out of existence, leaving no successors. 
 Furthermore, we know that each form of life 
 reached its highest development in the period 
 when it was dominant. For instance, when fishes 
 reigned supreme, they reached greater propor- 
 tions than at any subsequent period. Reptiles 
 were the monarchs in the period named for them, 
 and were then much larger and more ferocious 
 than at any time since; so of land animals. Now 
 if that be true of animal life, why may it not be 
 true of vegetable life, that not only did the 
 highest known varieties of plant life exist in the 
 period mentioned by Moses — fruit trees and all 
 trees whose seed is enclosed within its fruit, but 
 even higher forms than any that have survived, 
 because then was the period of special plant 
 development.? 
 
 And yet, it must be said on the contrary, 
 that the rocks show no such fossils, as they 
 ought to do if these had existed. There cer- 
 
THIRD CRE/ITiyE DAY 111] 
 
 tainly is a difference between the testimony 
 of Revelation and Science on this point, and it 
 is only right that we frankly acknowledge it, and 
 then wait until more light upon the reading of 
 the Book or of the rocks, shall bring them into 
 perfect agreement. We want no plausible recon- 
 ciliation, this suggests that the two have been en- 
 emies; we shall be satisfied with nothing less than 
 the perfect agreement and concord of life-long 
 friends. All that the Book contains has not yet 
 been learned, and surely all that God has writ-^ 
 ten upon the rocks has not been deciphered. 
 More and more as the two have been studied in 
 the past, have they been found to be in perfect 
 accord; if one more point remains on which they 
 have not yet been read alike, we have the right 
 to expect from all the history of the past, that 
 this point also will melt away, if we patiently 
 wait for more light. Some day science will flash 
 such light upon this passage as will make it 
 stand out bright and luminous; somewhere in 
 the archives of nature, is hidden the illustration 
 which will fully explain this, as yet, dark pas- 
 sage. All of us remember when geology was 
 supposed to contradict Genesis at almost every 
 point. One by one, these points of disagree- 
 ment have disappeared by the labors of sincere 
 
114 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC/ 
 
 and reverent scholarship; more and more the 
 wonders of this chapter are coming out to aston- 
 ish the world; depth beyond depths is found in 
 this record, as one age continues after another to 
 explore its contents. And this proves it to be 
 the work of God. The telescope, the micro- 
 scope, the scalpel, the retort find inexhaustible 
 depths of meaning where previous ages saw 
 nothing; if this first chapter of Genesis be the 
 work of God, we should expect the same of it. 
 And we do find it so. This age has found far 
 more in it than has any previous age; the next 
 age, if it be studious and reverent, shall yet dis- 
 cover more than have we. We have not yet 
 read all. And if there be still an apparent dis- 
 agreement between the Bible and our Science, 
 let us acknowledge that the error must be, where 
 we have found the errors of previous ages were, 
 not in the Book but in our reading of it, or in 
 our interpretation of nature. On this point 
 therefore, viz, the early introduction of the highest 
 forms of plant life, we will frankly admit that 
 more needs to be known, before we can read the 
 two testimonies alike. But let it be remembered, 
 that in the great scientific principles which have 
 so far been discovered in the record, there has 
 been found to be perfect agreement in all, until 
 
THIRD CREATINE DAY 115 
 
 we come to this. Perfect agreement on all the 
 other points, most plausible reconciliation on 
 this; but as reconciliation is not agreement, we 
 prefer to let the divergence stand unreconciled, 
 until the dawn of perfect accord shall shine upon 
 it to melt away the mist. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FOURTH CREATIVE DAY. 
 
 And God said — /ei luminaries be in the expanse of 
 the heaven to divide between the day and between the 
 night, and let them be for signs and seasons and 
 for days and years; and let them be for light in the 
 expanse of the heaven, to give light upon the 
 earth: and it was so. And God made tivo great 
 lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser 
 to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God 
 set them in the expanse of the heaven to give light 
 upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the 
 night, and to divide the light from the darkness ; and 
 God saw that it was good. " 
 
 Here too, as everywhere in this chapter, we 
 must read carefully what Moses has written. 
 As translated in the Authorized Version, it 
 might seem that the command was that' the 
 luminaries should now appear for the first time; 
 but the Hebrew gives no such meaning. Liter- 
 ally it reads— "And God said — let luminaries be 
 in the expanse of the heavens, for the separating 
 between the day and between the night;" that 
 
 116 
 
FOURTH CREATiyE DAY 117 
 
 is, it is not the fact of their creation or of their 
 appearance which is stated; but simply the pur- 
 pose, which those luminaries are to fulfill. In- 
 deed the creation of the sun and the moon, as 
 of marine vegetation and of protozoan life— all 
 this is not touched upon at all. Moses, like the 
 United States survey corps, has simply indicated 
 a few salient points, from which to trian°juLite 
 and give the general bearings, but has left the 
 intermediate spaces to be surveyed by those who 
 shall follow after to fill out the details of his 
 great map. It is with the earth wholly and the 
 things that are upon it, with which the record 
 has to do after the prologue; it is not giving any 
 astronomy of the heavens, nor of any biology of 
 by-gone orders of life. 
 
 Far back in his narrative, Moses told us that 
 motion was imparted to the etherial fluid, which 
 filled all space, by the Spirit of God, and accord 
 ing to the laws then imposed, the nebula hy- 
 pothesis explains how the luminous matter con- 
 centrated into constellations and suns and plan- 
 ets and satellites. That Moses could not have 
 meant to refer to the creation of the sun and 
 moon, might have been seen at once, if students 
 had regarded him as scientific; this would have 
 been out of line with the rest of his record, for he 
 
118 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 is confining himself wholly to the earth. What 
 took place on the fourth creative day, could 
 therefore not have been something up in the 
 heavens at all, but something upon the earth. 
 What was this change.^ 
 
 It has been thought by many, that up to this 
 time the earth had been enswathed in dense 
 clouds since the hot steam had begun to con- 
 dense into vapor, which entirely cut off the light 
 of the sun and moon and stars; gradually those 
 clouds thinned out, until at the time of the crea- 
 tion of the plants on the third day, there was 
 enough light that could struggle through, to 
 minister to the necessities of plant life, as on a 
 cloudy day at present. But now, on the fourth 
 day, the clouds at last broke away and the sun 
 and moon and stars appeared in the sky. But 
 would so small a matter as the breaking up of 
 the clouds, be worthy of a whole creative day? 
 Besides, the highest forms of plant life, such as 
 the fruit trees, could not have thriven without the 
 direct rays of sunlight. And further, simply the 
 clearing away of the clouds and bringing in of 
 the light of the sun and moon, could not possibly 
 be the cause of the seasons, of days, or years. 
 Up to this time, the record seems to imply there 
 had been no seasons, and whatever the change 
 
FOURTH CREATiyE DAY 119 
 
 which now took place, it was tor the purpose of 
 creating seasons. Neither could the mere 
 absence of clouds, create any signs by which the 
 years could be marked off. So small a cause as 
 the cleanng off of the clouds, is not adequate to 
 such great effects as were to be produced on the 
 fourth day. 
 
 Just here Prof. Warring argues elaborately, 
 and to the mind of the writer, most convincingly, 
 that a great change took place in the earth itself. 
 Remember what was to be accomplished — to 
 divide between the day and between the night, 
 and to arrange for seasons, and create signs 
 whereby the seasons and days and years should 
 be known. All this could be produced, says 
 Warring, only by the inclination of the earth's 
 axis. Let us here recall what we learned at 
 school. The days, we know, are caused by the 
 rotation of the earth on its axis, so that for half 
 of the time one hemisphere is brought into the 
 light of the sun, while the other is turned away 
 and is therefore in darkness. The years are 
 caused by the revolution of the earth in its orbit 
 around the sun; it takes 36^34^ days for the 
 earth to make this circuit and return again to 
 the same spot in the heavens. But neither the 
 earth's rotation nor revolution can cause the 
 
120 IS MOSFS SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 seasons. If only these two motions affected 
 the earth, there would be no change in the 
 climate throughout the whole year, and there 
 would be no difference in the length of the days 
 and nights. In our latitude, it would be per- 
 petual Spring, and the days would all be of the 
 same length, as also the nights. There would 
 be no signs, by which we could know when one 
 year closed and another began, if there were 
 no seasons, and we should have to depend upon 
 astronomers to tell us when to measure off an- 
 other year; we shoultf soon lose account of 
 dates, and chronology would be impossible. But 
 what causes all this beneficent change, without 
 which life would stagnate.'' It is the inclination 
 of the earth's axis, because instead of being per- 
 pendicular to the plane of its orbit, it is inclined 
 at an angle of 23^^ degrees. Because of this 
 inclination, our northern pole is for a part of the 
 year turned toward the sun, so that the sun's 
 rays fall upon the northern hemisphere more 
 directly, the days are longer, and we receive 
 more heat; it is then summer with us, while it 
 is winter in the southern hemisphere. Six 
 months from that time, the north pole is turned 
 away from the sun, the rays fall upon us more 
 obliquely, the days are shorter, we receive less 
 
FOURTH CREATINE DAY 121 
 
 heat, and it is winter with us, but summer at the 
 antipodes. Half way between these two points 
 is Fall on the one side and Spring on the other. 
 Thus we have the changes which make our 
 seasons ; make the difference in the length of days 
 and nights, and we have the signs by which every 
 one knows when the new year begins, and ac- 
 curate chronology is possible to all. 
 
 Now recall once more, that we have accepted 
 LaPlace's nebular h\pothesis, as do scholars gen- 
 erally. The earth was thrown off from the sun 
 in the form of a ring which broke up into a 
 spiral, that finally settled down into a great 
 globe, revolving upon an axis of its own. But 
 this axis must at first have been parallel to the 
 axis of the sun, and if so it must have been per- 
 pendicular to the plane of its orbit. Mathe- 
 matical demonstration proves that the earth 
 must have started off on a perpendicular axis, 
 that is, one exactly parallel to that of the sun; 
 it could not have been otherwise. The motion 
 which the earth received from the sun, must have 
 been in exactly the same direction which the sun 
 itself had, because the sun could impart no 
 other, and the earth could not of itself change 
 it; the earth had to continue as it began, until 
 some great cause should come in to produce a 
 
123 is MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 change. But that motion must have been a 
 revolution on an axis perpendicular with the 
 plane of the orbit around the sun. 
 
 We find however, that the earth is not now 
 revolving upon a perpendicular axis, but upon an 
 inclined axis. A great change has taken place 
 sometime between the beginning of its separate 
 existence and now, for it is now inclined at an 
 angle of 23^^ degrees; when did that change take 
 place? On the fourth creative day, says War- 
 ring, for then Moses declares took place those ef- 
 fects which this inclination alone can produce; it 
 is this inclination which causes the seasons, which 
 makes the difference in the length of the days 
 and nights, and which gives us the signs, by which 
 all can know when the old year ends and the new 
 begins. But if the nebula hypothesis be true, 
 it is mathematically impossible that this incli- 
 nation could have existed at the beginning of the 
 earth's existence. 
 
 This view is corroborated by geology. Geol- 
 ogy finds that up to a certain period in the 
 earth's history, "there were no zones of climate;" 
 the fauna and flora were not confined to certain 
 belts, as now, but the same plants thrived at 
 Spitzbergen, which is almost the northernmost 
 land discovered, and which is now covered with 
 
FOURTH CREATIVE DAY 123 
 
 immense glaciers, and where a few diminutive 
 plants spring up and mature in a month or six 
 weeks of the summer, whose mean temperature 
 of its three summer months, is only two degrees 
 above the freezing point; — the same plants 
 once thrived in Spitzbergen as did in Florida. 
 Dana says "The coal beds of the Arctic, are 
 evidence of a profuse growth of vegetation; 
 through the whole hemisphere, and we may 
 say world, there was one uniform type of veg- 
 etation, and there were genial waters." The 
 conditions of life in latitude 70^ to 80^ were 
 the same as those in latitude 30^ and 40^; that 
 is, the climate of the mast northern boundaries 
 of Greenland, was like that of the United 
 States between Illinois and Texas. 
 
 Now consider what all this means! It means 
 that a great change has occurred between that 
 time and now, a change in the cause of climate. 
 What is the cause of climate.^ The ice and 
 snow of upper Greenland do not produce the 
 cold, but are produced by it. What makes this 
 extreme cold? It is the long night of four 
 months of darkness with two more months of 
 twilight, during which there is no heat received 
 from the sun And what makes that long night 
 of nearly six months? Of course it is the inch- 
 
124 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 nation of the earth's axis, which causes the 
 north pole to be turned away from the sun, so 
 as to receive none of its direct rays during half 
 of the year. But there was a time when it was 
 not so, for the plants and animals which can 
 live only in warm climates, then lived far up to 
 the north. At that time there could have been 
 no long cold night of six months, as now, be- 
 cause these tropical plants and animals could 
 not have lived under such conditions. But if 
 it be said, that it was the earth's own internal 
 heat which raised the temperature sufficiently 
 high, yet the long nights of six months would 
 still make it impossible for these flora and fauna 
 to survive. If the axis had then been inclined 
 as now, there could not have been the luxuriant 
 growth of forests to produce the excellent coal 
 which is found at Spitsbergen, for such forests 
 could not have grown where six months of the 
 year are night, and where for two more months 
 the sun is but a small distance above the hori- 
 zon. So that by the demonstration of science 
 as well as from mathematical deductions 
 from the nebula hypothesis, there must have 
 been a time when the earth did rotate on per- 
 pendicular axis; but it is not so rotating now; 
 a great change must have taken place. When? 
 On the fourth creative day. 
 
FOURTH CRE/tTIVE DAY 125 
 
 Then God spake, and some causes for tipping 
 the earth must have conspired either rapidly, 
 or, as we usually find, slowly through the long 
 centuries. When the axis had been so inclined, 
 then the sun and moon would do as commanded 
 to do in the fourth day; then they would be for 
 signs and for seasons, and for days and years. 
 Then for the first time, the seasons would regu- 
 larly follow each other; then they would divide 
 the time between the days and between the 
 nights, giving the most now to the day, and 
 now to the night; then they would give the 
 signs which were necessary, so that we might 
 mark off the years, which otherwise would 
 glide away as unseen and unknown as the pre- 
 cession of the equinoxes. Then too, the plants 
 and animals, which could have existed in the 
 upper latitudes while the earth was revolving 
 on perpendicular axis, must have perished, as we 
 now find them to have done, and all would be 
 cold and still, covered only by immense 
 glaciers. 
 
 "And it was so." Our observation con- 
 firms the record, and we find it is so. Now life 
 ceases to be one continuous and monotonous 
 existence, as it would have been if the axis of 
 the earth had not been inclined. The 2ist of 
 
126 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 March would have stretched on monotonously 
 until it met the 21st of September; all would 
 have been unvarying Springtime with us, with- 
 out summer or winter; the days would have 
 been exactly equal, and so would have been the 
 nights; no long days of summer in which to 
 watch the gorgeous sunsets and enjoy its pleas- 
 ures; no long evenings of winter, with their 
 blazing fires and the happy fireside; no vigor- 
 ous growth and rich fruitage of summer, and no 
 tonic and recuperation from the winters cold. 
 But now the inclination of earth's axis has taken 
 place, and our life is varied and full of change, 
 and consequently vigorous and active. 
 
 A negative accuracy occurs right here which 
 must not be overlooked. This record has com 3 
 down to us through the hands of Jews, for whom 
 it was first prepared. But with the Jews, the 
 most important measures of time were the week 
 and the month. Every week brought them back 
 their holy Sabbath day of rest, when all work 
 was prohibited. The month brought them their 
 festivals and feasts, which were faithfully ob- 
 served. But strange to say, as the ancient Jew 
 must have reasoned, there is no mention of their 
 most important time measures. Days, years and 
 seasons are mentioned; why did not Moses em- 
 
FOURTH CREATINE DAY 137 
 
 phasize the most important periods of all — the 
 week and the month? Because, he wou|d then 
 have been most unscientific. The seasons, and 
 days, and years are measured off by the earth 
 itself, but not the weeks and months. If he 
 had yielded to his Jewish prejudices, he would 
 have committed the first scientific blunder in the 
 record, and so have brought it into discredit; 
 but here the same accuracy is found in what is 
 omitted, as in what is given. 
 
 But Moses goes still farther. He has just 
 said what the luminaries were for, but the ques- 
 tion will surely arise — who made them? Were 
 the sun and moon self-originating, if so they 
 are worthy objects of worship. Fire-worship- 
 ers and pantheists will surely make them the 
 objects of divine homage. No, says Moses, they 
 are not self originative ; they are not gods; the 
 one God made them, Elohim is his name; wor- 
 ship Him. "He made the stars also;" do not 
 cast the horoscope; do not consult the stars as 
 to your future, for they cannot foretell events. 
 "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth 
 the sea and all that in than is." 
 
 Great perplexities have arisen from adding to 
 what the record gives, which has then made it 
 seem full of errors; but the fault is then, not 
 
128 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 of the record, but of the additions which have 
 been gratuitously made. It has been supposed, 
 for instance, that Moses intended to say that 
 the sun and moon were created on the fourth 
 day, when the fact is that he has said nothing 
 whatever about their creation. Sometimes the 
 translators have made these additions which 
 have lead the English readers astray. In the 
 14th verse, the translators have added the word 
 — "there" — which is not in the original at all; 
 "and God said — let t/iere be lights in the firma- 
 ment of the heaven," and this has led to much 
 confusion. If we will read the account as given, 
 no difficulty will be met. Moses simply intends 
 to assign the purpose, which these luminaries are 
 to fulfill, viz. to divide between the day and be- 
 tween the night, etc., and so the record reads, 
 if we will adhere closely to what has been writ- 
 ten. "And God said — let luminaries be in the 
 expanse of the heaven for the dividing, between 
 the day and the dividing between the night, 
 etc. ;" not their creation, but their object and 
 purpose are here given. And likewise in the 
 i6th verse, another gratuitous difficulty has 
 been made, as though it was stated absolutely, 
 that "God (then) made two great lights," whereas 
 the purpose only is given, viz, to rule the day 
 
FOURTH CRE/lTlyE DAY 129 
 
 and the night, and this is clear, if read connect- 
 edly — "and God made two great lights, the 
 greater to rule the day, the lesser to rule the 
 night." But what about the stars? "He made 
 the stars also." Most of the difficulties with 
 the chapter, have risen from reading into it 
 what is not there, or from failing to note care- 
 fully what is said, and so the words have been 
 robbed of their precise meaning. 
 
 But is the purpose which the sun and moon 
 were to fulfill, worthy of so great a creation? 
 "And God set them in the expanse of the heaven 
 to give h'ght upon the earth, and to rule over 
 the day and over the night, and to divide the 
 light from the darkness." Can it be possible 
 that all that the sun and the moon were created 
 for, was to serve this little earth of ours,when ours 
 is not by any means the most important planet 
 in the system? Our planet receives only one two 
 millionth of the sun's rays of light and heat, and 
 so far as we are concerned, all the rest are lost. 
 It seems therefore that a scientific mistake has 
 here been made, for it cannot be conceived 
 that God would create the sun for a purpose 
 which causes the loss of nearly all its benefit. 
 But this objection again reads into the record 
 what is not there. It assumes that Moses is in- 
 
130 is MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 tending to tell us all that the sun and moon 
 were created for, when the truth is that he has 
 carefully explained all along, that he is describ- 
 ing only what concerns the earth. The author 
 has not undertaken to tell us about the heaven, 
 except as this concerns the earth ; he has told 
 us nothing concerning the sun, neither the 
 manner of its creation, nor the time, only as it 
 relates to that which is being fitted to become 
 the abode of man. So far as Moses has said to 
 the contrary, the sun may have a thousand other 
 purposes to fulfill toward the other planets, and 
 the starry heavens. All that is here given, is 
 what the sun does for the earth, and that is to 
 give light and therefore heat; to divide between 
 the day and between the night ; to be for signs 
 and for seasons, and for days and years, and to 
 rule over the day. What other purpose does 
 the sun accomplish in relation to the earth.'' If 
 Moses was giving us a treatise upon astronomy, 
 we might easily convict him of error; but when 
 he is confining himself strictly to what relates 
 to the earth, what mistake has he made either 
 in assertion or in omission? 
 
 "And God saw that it was good." How good 
 this arrangement is, may be somewhat realized 
 upjn a little reflection. Whatever was caused 
 
FOURTH CREATiyE DAY 131 
 
 to begin on this fourth day, whether the change 
 in the earth's axis or something else, this cer- 
 tainly did begin according to Moses, viz, the 
 seasons. But the seasons include not only the 
 variety of conditions, so that life shall be more 
 agreeable, but also the change in temperature 
 and moisture. To sustain life on the earth, it 
 is necessary that there shall be relatively the 
 same amount of heat every year to produce and 
 ripen our harvests, and the same amount of 
 rainfall, which in this section o^f the country is 
 about 40 inches annually. It could be easily 
 imagined how greatly this equilibrium could be 
 disturbed; indeed it is one of the proofs of the 
 direct, preserving care of God, that the amount 
 of our annual heat and rain are so even and 
 regular. The heat at the sun, mounts up to a 
 hundred thousand degrees; the space between 
 the sun and the earth, has a temperature hun- 
 dreds of degrees below zero. But the tempera- 
 ture on our earth must be confined within the 
 very narrow limit of a hundred degrees. To 
 maintain life herq, the temperature must not 
 generally range above 135, nor below 35. A 
 few degrees more or less of heat, or a few inches 
 more or less of rainfall, would seriously interfere 
 with our harvests, and completely demoralize 
 
132 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 all our operations. That we may live at all, and 
 especially live happily, it is necessary that the 
 nice balance of heat and moisture shall be care- 
 full}' preserved. And this is done by the seasons. 
 The thermometers and measures are carefully 
 and constantly consulted by nature, and the 
 general average maintained. If we stop to con- 
 sider that our present environment must be 
 strictly and invariably preserved, that our lives 
 may pass smoothly and peacefully, we can but 
 reaffirm the divine commendation and say — it is 
 good. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FIFTH CREATIVE DAY. 
 
 "And God said — 'let the waters swarm with 
 living creatures that creep, and let fliers fly above 
 the earth, on the face of the expanse of heaven; 
 a?id God created great sea monsters, and every living 
 creature that crawls, with which the waters swarm, 
 after their kind, and every winged flier after its kind; 
 and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them 
 saying be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in 
 the seas; and let the fliers multiply in the earth. " 
 
 The earth's crust is a bound volume, having 
 as many leaves as there are strata. This volume 
 is nature's great herbarium, in which she has 
 preserved either the fossils themselves, or their 
 imprint upon its pages. The leaf or grass fell 
 in the soft mud; the fish, animal or bird laid 
 down its body, which the waters reverently buried, 
 and then the coffin was turned into rock and 
 became the sarcophagus, where these remains 
 have been safely buried and preserved, until the 
 geologist opens that sarcophagus with his ex- 
 ploring hammer, or the quarryman irreverently 
 
 133 
 
]34 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 blows up this sealed tomb with his dynamite, 
 and there are the skeletons, or their imprint to 
 show us what kinds of life prevailed on the 
 earth at the time when these several strata 
 were deposited. It only remams now to deter- 
 mine the relative time, when those strata were 
 laid down, and we can easily read backward 
 this accurate and illustrated history of the earth's 
 past. Often, instead of the skeleton itself will 
 be found the footprint of the animal which had 
 stepped on the yielding soil to seek its prey or 
 indulge in its clumsy gambols, or where the bird 
 had walked on the muddy beach, whither it had 
 come to drink or bathe. Like the clay tablets 
 found in the ruins of Nineveh, on whose soft 
 surface the strange hieroglyphics had been im- 
 pressed, which were then baked so that these 
 records still read to us the events of the long 
 past, so these tablets of nature also preserve for 
 us the hieroglyphics, by which we can read the 
 history of the life which then prevailed, and be- 
 fore they passed away, left their biographies for 
 us in the rocks. 
 
 Dana says, geology applies only to the last of 
 the third creative day, to the fifth, and to the 
 sixth. Guyot says — "The fifth and sixth days 
 offer no difficulties, for they unfold the succes- 
 
FIFTH CREATIVE DAY 135 
 
 sive creation of various tribes and animals which 
 people the water, the air and the land, in the 
 precise order indicated by geology." We should 
 have expected just what Guyot tells us, for we 
 have seen that the record, thus far has given us 
 the events in the precise order indicated by 
 science in general. 
 
 We are now approaching the great temple in 
 which Life is to be enshrined — the temple for 
 which the earth has been preparing through all 
 the previous ages. The beautiful portico we 
 entered on the third creative day; now we are 
 to cross the threshold and stand in the presence 
 of that wonderful, mysterious thing we call 
 sentient, volitional Life. At first, it will be in 
 the outer temple into which the fifth day will 
 introduce us, where the Levites of the lower 
 orders stand, and minister, and furnish forth the 
 table with the bread, and fill the lamps with oil. 
 On the sixth day, we shall enter in still farther, 
 where the higher orders of priests serve, and 
 finally we shall enter the holiest of all, where 
 the High Priest of nature — Man — passes behind 
 the veil, to worship and commune with his God, 
 but yet not without blood, "the blood of a 
 Lamb, without blemish and without spot." 
 
 This great creation of sentient, volitional life, 
 
136 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 is also described with the word — bara. Three 
 times we meet this suggestive word, in this 
 chapter, first when original matter was called 
 into existence out of nothing; second, when 
 animal life which is the first and lowest form of 
 real life, is put forth on the earth; third when 
 man is made in the image of God, and is en- 
 dowed with a spiritual nature, the breath of the 
 divine Spirit. Far back in the record, when 
 motion was to be imparted to matter, the Spirit 
 of God — "moved upon the face of the fluid;" 
 but when man is to be endowed with something, 
 which mere matter cannot have, with something 
 more than motion, even a moral nature, then it 
 was by the breath of God. 
 
 Plant life is only half life; it has the power of 
 organization, as distinguished from the power of 
 crystallization, but it has no motion, no volition, 
 no brain; the plant is therefore only the perys- 
 tyle to this temple, and the word "bara," is not 
 applied to it. "Bara" indicates original creation, 
 something called into being which had not ex- 
 isted before. Matter is not eternal, but is called 
 into existence by the command of God; therefore 
 "bara" is used. There is no such thing as sponta- 
 neous generation; life cannot be evolved out of 
 non-living; God created it, and again — "bara." 
 
FIFTH CREATINE DAY 13? 
 
 Man cannot be evolved out of the lower creation; 
 the human spirit is not a development of the 
 animal soul; the endowment of a nature in the 
 image of God, is not reached from below, but 
 is a new creation of God, and is again expressed 
 by — "bara." It is remarkable that these three 
 instances in which this special word is used, are 
 exactly the points where science acknowledges 
 that it knows nothing to the contrary, and can 
 know nothing Science assumes a basis of a 
 creation; it must have a starting point, and 
 after that, it can proceed step by step; but of 
 that starting point it can assert nothing. That 
 starting point is described by this mysterious 
 word — "bara." Again science finds a gulf which 
 it cannot pass, at the point where "bara" is again 
 used, viz, at the introduction of life. Many and 
 repeated attempts have been made to obtain a 
 spontaneous generation, where even the slightest 
 and lowest form of life shall come forth directly 
 from non-living matter, Some physicists have 
 at times thought they had been able to accom- 
 plish it, but Mr, Huxley acknowledges that where 
 the water has been carefully boiled so as to 
 destroy all possible germs of life, and where the 
 experiment has been hermetically sealed, sothat 
 the atmosphere could communicate no living 
 
IS MOSES scientific:' 
 
 germs, every such attempt has proved most con- 
 clusively that spontaneous generation is impos- 
 sible. At this stage, Moses brings in the direct 
 creation from non-existence by "bara," And 
 at that still more mysterious point, where animal 
 life joins on to divine life; where a moral nature 
 is discovered, where a conscience feels the sense 
 of — "ought," where right can be distinguished 
 from wrong, where the happy possessor of this 
 nature can pray, can hold intercourse with the 
 invisible world, — at that point again, science 
 steps back and bows in the presence of this mys- 
 tery, but can explain nothing; and this also is 
 described by "bara." The origin of matter, the 
 origin of volitional life, and the origin of a 
 moral nature, are all a direct and new creation 
 of God; and this Moses indicates by his triple 
 use of — "bara." 
 
 The record now tells us not only of the intro- 
 duction of animated life into the world, but of 
 the order of its introduction. Here will be the 
 crucial test; can Moses successfully meet it.? 
 On the question of the order of the mtroduction 
 of life, geology can speak with positiveness; it 
 knows precisely what species came first and 
 what last. On the next page is a chart giv- 
 ing the known order, which was prepared 
 
t'lFTH CREATIVE DAY 
 
 139 
 
 with no thought of this first chapter of Genesis; 
 if Moses does not agree with Dana, then so 
 much the worse for Moses, because Dana is 
 correct. According to geology, the first order 
 of life that was introduced was the general class 
 of invertebrates, which includes the three sub- 
 orders of mollusks, radiates and articulates. The 
 
 CHART 
 THE INTRODUCTION OF LIFE. 
 
 MOLLUSKS 
 
 From Dana's Manual of Geology. 
 
 next class was that of fishes, then of reptiles, 
 mammals, and lastly man. Birds, which are not 
 given on the chart, were introduced between the 
 age of reptiles and that of mammals, but birds 
 and insects did not reach their culmination until 
 the age of man. The horizontal bands on the 
 chart represent the ages m succession; the ver- 
 tical, which are black, correspond to different 
 
140 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 groups of animals, and give the relative time of 
 their introduction, as also the periods of their 
 culmination. 
 
 Does the chart of Moses agree with this? It 
 will now be necessary that we learn exactly what 
 Moses means in his classification, and we must 
 read him with the same rigorous precision as 
 we do a geologist. It will be necessary there- 
 fore, that we examine his terms very closely and 
 get at their root meaning, as well as the meaning 
 which they have elsewhere. Literally the 20th 
 verse reads — "And God said — let the waters 
 creep with creeping things of life, and let winged 
 creatures upon the earth, wing upon the surface 
 of the expanse of the heavens." By the first 
 is of course understood that the waters shall be 
 full of these creeping creatures, or swarm with 
 them, but the root idea is that they creep. In 
 Lev. II: 20-30 various kmds of these are given, 
 but it must be noticed that they all creep, and 
 are those which are exceedingly prolific, as for 
 instance — grasshoppers, locusts, lizzards and 
 snails. Now Moses says that it is the waters 
 which bring forth these creatures in such swarms 
 and not the land or the air. The class, which he 
 says first came forth, had three charactersitics 
 — they were water animals; they swarmed in 
 
FIFTH CREATIVE DAY 141 
 
 such swarms as to make the water fairly "creep" 
 with them; and they creep or crawl. Science 
 has a more specific name for the animals that 
 first appeared, and calls them — invertebrates. 
 But these also were water animals; they were 
 exceedingly prolific, but the first invertebrates 
 did not creep. 
 
 As will be remembered from what was said in 
 Chapter V. the first creatures that appeared were 
 the protozoans — first livers, — but these did not 
 creep, they were what might be called aggluti- 
 native, for like the corals, they glued their shells 
 fast to the shells of others, and so built up the 
 chalk formations for instance, and many lime- 
 stone formations. However after the protozoan, 
 says science came the other invertebrates, which 
 do creep, and have power of motion, and these 
 ha-ve all the characteristics of the animal, which 
 Moses so carefully describes; they were water 
 animals, they were swarmers, and they creep. 
 Here then is perfect agreement between Genesis 
 and science as to the class of invertebrates which 
 appeared in due time. Both say that the first 
 class was the invertebrate; but science says 
 those which appeared the very first, did not 
 creep. Very well, says Moses, I am speaking 
 of invertebrates too, but I am not speaking of 
 
142 is MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 the first class that ever appeared; I liavc not 
 descended to these particulars, for lain not fix- 
 ing a text book on zoology, but am giving a rapid 
 sketch of the history of the earth. The order 
 of the introduction of life was first invertebrates, 
 but the subdivision to which 1 refer, was not 
 those minute animals which have no power of 
 motion; the first subdivision of invertebrates 
 with which I begin, is that immense class which 
 do have the power of motion, the creeping 
 creatures. We can see at once why Moses in- 
 serts that discriminating word — "creeping," for 
 if he had not done so, he would not have been 
 scientific. The protozoans had long preceded 
 even the rise of the dry land above the ocean; 
 they are supposed to have begun in the later 
 part of what is called the Azoic age, that is the 
 age which was lifeless except for these minute 
 animals. It is of the fifth day animals of which 
 Moses is speaking, and if he had not inserted 
 that qualifying word, but had said that animal 
 life in general began at this period, he would 
 have been found to have been in error by later 
 science. The animals which began life on this 
 fifth creative day were invertebrates, but they 
 were distinguished from those minute forms 
 which preceded them by having true power of 
 
FIFTH CREATIVE DAY 143 
 
 locomotion. Put in the word which Moses in- 
 serts, and he is exactly in agreement with 
 science; but overlook the scientific value of — 
 "creeping," and you bring Moses into conflict 
 with science. 
 
 The invertebrates, thus introduce the great 
 order of general animal life on the earth. But 
 there is a general class of life, also animal, which 
 is not strictly on the earth, but above it. Moses 
 says the command was to the winged, as well as 
 to the creeping creatures, to come forth; and it 
 was so. This 20th verse therefore is a general 
 introduction of creeping life, and of winged life, 
 both appearing on the same day, but the creep- 
 ing before the winged, which is perfectly correct. 
 What these winged creatures were, the record 
 does not tell us, but biology says they were not 
 birds, for these appeared later. Moses is labor- 
 ing at a greater disadvantage than modern 
 scientists; he has no strict and scientific nomen- 
 clature at his command. The word he used, is 
 simply one that expressed something that flies, 
 whether a vertebrated bird, or insect or even a 
 flying reptile. Next after the water swarmers, 
 which science specifies as invertebrates, are fly- 
 ing things, and this is perfectly correct as seen by 
 the table of Mr. Huxley on page 147. 
 
144 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC/ 
 
 After the invertebrates, says science, came 
 fishes and reptiles; and Moses says the same — 
 "and God created great sea-monsters and every 
 creature that crawls, with which the waters 
 swarm." Still the creatures are water animals, 
 but of a higher order. This class has been sub- 
 divided, for convenience into the two orders of 
 fishes and reptiles, but so closely are they as- 
 similated, especially back in the beginning of 
 animated life on the earth, that it is often diffi- 
 cult to tell which is strictly a fish and which a 
 reptile. Dana says — "These early fishes have 
 strong reptilian characteristics, and they were 
 thus comprehensive types, foreshadowing the 
 class of reptiles afterwards created." 
 
 Confirming what Moses said, that the fishes 
 were — "great sea-monsters." Dana, speaking of 
 the fishes of the Devonian age, says — "The earli- 
 est species, therefore, instead of being the lowest 
 of fishes, belong to the highest of the three great 
 divisions; moreover, instead of being small, some 
 of them were twenty or thirty feet long; one class 
 — the Selachians, is the highest among fishes, 
 even in modern seas." So that the record is correct 
 in the order of the introduction of these species of 
 life, and it is also in describing them as — "great 
 sea-monsters." The Icthyosaurs, for instance, 
 
FIFTH CRFATIl^E DAY 145 
 
 "were gigantic animals ten to forty teet long, 
 having paddles somewhat like the whale, long 
 head and jaws, numerous (m some species 200) 
 stout teeth, and an eye of enormous dimensions; 
 more than thirty species are known to have ex- 
 isted in the Reptilian age." The Plesiosaur had 
 a long snake-like neck, a small head, short body, 
 very like that of a swan, and from twenty -five to 
 thirty feet long. In the great central sea which 
 then covered the plains of Kansas, swam a 
 species of great sea-monsters which attained a 
 length of eighty feet and more. Dinosaurs 
 sometimes reached a length of fifty to sixty feet. 
 The Iguanodon was an herbivorous Dinosaur, 
 and had the habits of a Hippopotamus; it was 
 thirty feet long and of great bulk. In this age, 
 the reptile approached the bird form, as the 
 Pterodactyls, were immense bat-like creatures, 
 measuring as much as twenty-five feet from tip 
 to tip of wing. Could Moses have been more 
 correct in his description, than by saying — "and 
 God created great sea-mosters and every living 
 creature that crawls," for what distinguishes a 
 reptile from a fish, is that the former crawls 
 while the other can only swim. And Moses says 
 that those which crawl came after the great sea- 
 monsters. And further, all these are as yet 
 
146 JS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 marine animals, or as the record puts it — "with 
 which the waters swarm." "Up to the time of 
 the carboniferous formations, nearly all life was 
 marine, or if not entirely so, required the ocean 
 or some inland sea for its development and ex- 
 istence. But toward the time when the Permian 
 strata were being deposited, a marvelous change 
 took place; the earth and rivers and seas 
 swarmed with reptiles, and the air was darkened 
 by huge flying monsters, half reptile, half bird. 
 It was as if the sea had poured out upon the 
 shores its store of life. So prolific was this 
 period with saurians, lizards and reptiles, as 
 evidenced by the fossil remains, that geologists 
 have called it "the great Reptilian era." 
 
 After this comes again, according to the 
 record, the "winged flier." The nomenclature is 
 not scientific, nor does Moses enter into the de- 
 tails, or give subdivisions; he is only tracing 
 general outlines and leaves it to science to fill 
 them out in the future ages. Science is a true 
 interpreter, and so she explains that, while the 
 expression — "the flier that flies" in the former 
 verse, meant insects, it now means birds and 
 pterodactyls. 
 
 A most remarkable confirmation of the scien- 
 tific accuracy of Moses is given by so competent 
 
148 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIO' 
 
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FIFTH CREATINE Dy4Y 14!) 
 
 an authority as Prof, Huxley, which is all the 
 stronger because it is undesigned. 
 
 Mr. Huxley is conducting a controversy with 
 Mr. Gladstone in a series of articles in the "Nine- 
 teenth Century," in which his purpose is to show 
 that the first chapter of Genesis is in conflict 
 with science. Instead, however of asking what 
 Moses really did say, he accepts the inaccurate 
 translation, and the false conclusions which 
 unscientific centuries have read into the record, 
 and for these he holds Moses responsible; then 
 easily showing that these are untrue, he claims 
 that Genesis is untrue. Afterward he proceeds to 
 show what is the correct order of life, as learned 
 from the earth's strata, and puts it in the form 
 of a table as given on opposite page. 
 
 Mr. Huxley explains — "The series of the 
 fossiliferous deposits, which contain the re- 
 mains of the animals which have lived on 
 the earth in past ages of its history, and 
 which can alone afford the evidence, required 
 by natural science, of the order of appearance 
 of their different species, may be grouped in the 
 manner shown in the left-hand column of the ac- 
 companying table, the oldest being at the bottom. 
 In the right-hand column, I have noted the 
 group of strata, in which, according to our 
 
150 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 present information, the land, air and water 
 populations appear for the first time." 
 
 Now if we take this table, whose design is inim- 
 ical, and compare it carefully with what Moses 
 did really say, as shown in the third column, 
 we shall see, that so far from being in conflict, 
 Huxley and Moses are in complete concord. So far 
 from accomplishing what was intended, the table 
 most wonderfully confirms Genesis, and as this 
 is the testimony of an unwilling and even hostile 
 witness, its weight is all the greater. It will be 
 seen however that Mr. Huxley does not give a 
 complete table of animal life, but only as far as 
 the purpose of his argument requires; all the 
 herbivora and carnivora, as well as man, are not 
 included. 
 
 "These empires, named for the species that 
 were then monarchs, rose upon the earth and 
 crumbled in succession to decay, a thousand 
 ages before the foot of man had yet pressed the 
 soil of the garden of Eden. A series of dynasties 
 flitted like shadows over the face of our planet, 
 and disappeared beneath the dim horizon of the 
 past, while the empire of man, was yet but an 
 idea in the mind of the Creator. Here were 
 morning and evening, invigorating sunlight, 
 cooling dew, softly wooing breeze and fierce- 
 
FIFTH CREATIVE D/tY 151 
 
 ly maddened tempest, springtime and au- 
 tumn, weeping clouds and placid evening sky, 
 ocean sui^ges waging everlasting battle with 
 the rocky shore — and God alone the spec- 
 tator of the progress of the mighty work 
 which was then being accomplished. How the 
 imagination halts and faints and falters in the 
 effort to traverse those dim and distant ages! 
 The ignoble mollusk held dominion in the sea, 
 through all the morning twilight of animated ex- 
 istence; the mute fish reared his empire on the 
 ruins of that of the mollusk, in turn the dynasty 
 of the fishes was superseded by that of the 
 reptiles." But all these changes went on in 
 exactly the order portrayed by Moses; the chart 
 of science has followed precisely the chart of 
 revelation, for the record on the rocks must agree 
 in all things with the record made in the Book, 
 for both are true. 
 
 Again is added the expression of the divine 
 approval — "and God saw that it was good." 
 This does not mean that these grades were the 
 highest and best, or were to remain, for at the 
 close of the Carboniferous age, there was a 
 complete extermination of all the then living 
 species, which made way for higher forms. The 
 divine commendation signifies that the new work 
 
152 /5 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 which had just been completed, was good in 
 view of the function it had to perform. As crea- 
 tion proceeded, everything looked forward to- 
 ward a great end; all these forms of life, pointed 
 as with index finger — saying something better is 
 to come, something better is yet to come; we 
 are but the advance guard in ascending grades, 
 to announce the coming of our king. Not only 
 in the preparation of his kingdom, but in bony 
 structure and in advancing grade of life, each 
 one rising higher than the last, there was an 
 anticipation of man. As all the converging lines 
 of a rising pyramid plainly prophesy of the time 
 when the top-stone shall be reached, so all the 
 stages of creation clearly prophesied of the time 
 when the top-stone of this pyramid too should 
 be brought forth, amid the acclaim of the morn- 
 ing stars and the congratulatory song of all the 
 sons of God. 
 
 For the first time God blesses this new 
 work of his hand, because only life that has 
 sensation can appreciate a blessing. The 
 blessing contained not only the power of fruit- 
 fulness and multiplication, but there was in it 
 the capacity and the permission of enjoyment. 
 The Creator, did not intend that life should 
 mean simple existence, but He endowed anima- 
 
h^lFTH CREATt^E DAY 153 
 
 ted life with sensation, and this was to be 
 gratified. That his blessing has been fulfilled is 
 clearly seen, not only in the fact that the sea 
 has been filled with life, and the air with flying 
 things, but also in the very manifest enjoyment 
 which all these creatures seem to have in life. 
 The fish are as sportive as the lambs; the in- 
 sects respond to the enticing warmth and sun- 
 shine and give themselves up to delightful grat- 
 ification and enjoyment. 
 
 All through the record, there have been 
 glimpses of something which seems to be strug- 
 gling to come to the surface, or perhaps we 
 should rather say — we have almost caught sight 
 of a something, which the inadequacy of our light 
 or imperfection of our vision has prevented us 
 from clearly distinguishing. From the very 
 first, the record has said what it had to say, but 
 men could not understand it until astronomy, 
 and especially the telescope and spectroscope, 
 until geology and biology gave us the eyes to 
 see, and the ears to hear what had been there all 
 along. This principle, which now almost sug- 
 gests itself plainly, and now eludes us, is the 
 method of creation; was it all by direct and 
 special act of God, or was it by evolution? At 
 each step in the record is the suggestive state- 
 
154 IS MOSES scientific:' 
 
 ment — "and God said let there be, and it was 
 so," Does this mean, not what it appears to 
 say, not that God used co-operating causes; but 
 when God said — "let there be light;" "let the 
 earth bring forth;" "let the waters bring forth 
 abundantly," does it mean that God did it Him- 
 self directly; that God created vegetation Him- 
 self, without the earth as a co-operating cause; 
 that God created the animal Himself, without 
 the co-operating cause of the waters? Does it 
 mean that the command was really, not to the 
 earth to bring forth the first plants, not to the 
 waters to bring forth the first animals, but the 
 command was only to Himself? Reproduction 
 was to be "after his kind;" but when the addi- 
 tional blessing is added to "multiply and fill" 
 does this mean multiplication only in numbers, 
 but not in species? Does this mean nothing 
 more than reproduction "after his kind", over 
 again? The method of creation — just how God 
 did it, seems to be struggling to reveal itself; 
 have we as yet reached the point where we can 
 read clearly and understand its meaning? This 
 suggestion is more clearly made in the fifth 
 creative day than elsewhere, and especially in 
 the different expression used with regard to man 
 in the sixth day, so that it can no longer be 
 
FIFTH CREATIVE DAY 155 
 
 avoided, but its fuller discussion will be reserved 
 for a special chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SIXTH CREATIVE DAY. 
 
 And God said lei tJie eartJi bring forth animals 
 after their kind, the herbivora, the reptiles, the car- 
 nivora after their kind; and it was so. And God 
 made the carnivora after their kind, and the her- 
 bivora after their kind, and every land-reptile after 
 its kind; and God saw that it ivas good. And God 
 said let us make man in our image, after our likeness, 
 and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, 
 and over the birds of the air, and over the herbivora, 
 and over all the land, and over every land-reptile. So 
 God created man in his own image, in the image of 
 God created He him, male and female created 
 He them. And God blessed them, and God said — be 
 fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and 
 subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea 
 and over the birds of the air, and over every animal 
 that creepeth tipon the earth. And God said behold 
 J have given you every herb bearing seed which is 
 upon the face of the earth, aud every tree in which is 
 the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be food. 
 And to every animal of the earth, and to every bird 
 of the air, and to every living thing that creep- 
 eth upon the earth, I have given every green herb for 
 156 
 
SIXTH CREATINE DAY 157 
 
 food: and it was so. And God saw everything that 
 He had made: and behold it was very good; and 
 evening ivas, morning was sixth day. 
 
 The fifth creative day describes to us the 
 creation of marine animals, in exactly the order 
 which Mr. Huxley says science knows to be 
 correct; the sixth day gives the description and 
 order of land-animals and man, and here too the 
 record is in perfect agreement with science. 
 But the marine animals preceded land animals 
 by a whole creative day, says Moses; is that 
 correct? It is correct, says geology, for the 
 lower animals appeared in the Secondary period, 
 but the mammals did not appear until the Ter- 
 tiary. Speaking of this sixth day, Dawson says 
 — "It is almost unnecessary to say that this 
 period corresponds with the Tertiary or Caino- 
 zoic era of geologists. The coincidences are 
 very marked and striking, for though in the 
 Secondary period of geology, when these lower 
 orders prevailed, there were great facilities in the 
 strata then forming, for the preservation of 
 mammals, yet only a few small species of the 
 humblest orders have been found. But at the 
 very beginning of the Tertiary period, all this 
 was changed; most of the gigantic reptiles had 
 disappeared and land mammals of large size and 
 
158 75 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 high organization had taken their place. Per- 
 haps no geological change is more striking or 
 more remarkable, than the sudden disappearance 
 of numerous species of large mammals, and this, 
 not in one region only but over both continents." 
 We set out with the determination to study, 
 not traditions, nor even translations, but the 
 record in its own original language, so it will be 
 seen that the rendering of what took place during 
 the sixth day, at the head of this chapter, differs 
 somewhat from the authorized translation. Moses 
 says there were two kinds of land animals which 
 now appeared, and the distinction between them 
 must be learned from their use elsewhere. 
 Bhema, translated — cattle, in our English ver- 
 sion, is used in a few instances as a general 
 term for animals, but in distinction from chaytho- 
 eretz, as here, it means domestic animals as dis- 
 tinguished from the wild beasts. In Lev. 1:2, 
 Bhema refers only to the herds and flocks — 
 "Ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even 
 of the herd and of the flock." In Lev. 11:22-27, 
 the bhema are mentioned which could and could 
 not be used for food, and these are strictly her- 
 bivora, while the carnivora which were also un- 
 clean, are described by chaytho-eretz, and this 
 distinction is observed wherever these two words 
 
SIXTH CREATINE DAY 159 
 
 occur together. Principal Dawson also translates 
 the two words as above — viz, herbivora and 
 carnivora. 
 
 Now if we will turn back to page 139 and look 
 once more to Dana's chart, we shall find that 
 the order of life as given by Moses is precisely 
 that given by Dana, for herbivora and carnivora 
 are both mammals. Dana speaks of the two in 
 the general class of mammals, while Moses gives 
 the two separately, and says that the herbivora 
 precede the carnivora; is this correct.-' Dana 
 says — "The quadrupeds did not all come forth 
 together. Large and powerful herbivorous 
 species ^rj-/ take possession of the earth, with 
 only a few small carnivora. These pass away, 
 and other herbivora with a larger proportion of 
 carnivora next appear; these also are extermi- 
 nated and so with others. Then the carnivora 
 appear in vast numbers and power, and the her- 
 bivora also abound. Moreover these races attain 
 a magnitude and number far surpassing all that 
 now exist, as much so indeed on all the conti- 
 nents, as the old Mastodon twenty feet long and 
 nine feet high, exceeds the modern buffalo." 
 Here is no reconciliation, but perfect agreement. 
 Moses wrote his order of mamalian life centuries 
 a;5o, while Dana wrote his from the stand-point 
 
160 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 of pure science, with no reference to Genesis. 
 
 Between the herbivora and carnivora Moses 
 speaks once more of creeping things as he had 
 done on the fifth day, and again he is correct, 
 for a new species of reptiles now appear. Dana 
 tells us — "the first snakes have been found in 
 the Eocene; a species twenty feet long was 
 discovered in the Brackelsham beds; half a 
 dozen species, related to the common black 
 snake occur in the Miocene." The Eocene — 
 literally, "the dawn of the new" is the first, and 
 the Miocene is the middle division of the Tertiary 
 period, which corresponds to the sixth day of 
 Genesis. The order is again perfectly scientific 
 herbivora, reptiles, carnivora. 
 
 A difficulty however occurs here which must 
 be honestly acknowledged, for views which de- 
 pend upon ignoring uncomfortable facts can- 
 not be reliable. In the 24th verse the order is that 
 of science — herbivora, reptiles, carnivora, but in 
 the next verse, this order is changed to carnivora, 
 herbivora, reptiles. An explanation may be that 
 the first gives the true order of creation, while the 
 second gives the order of rank, the carnivora 
 being larger and stronger than the herbivora, 
 while the herbivora rank above the reptiles. 
 But if this be not the explanation, we may be 
 
SIXTH CRE^TI^E D/IY \(\\ 
 
 sure that some one will come along to give us 
 tlie explanation, and we shall tind, as usual 
 that the record is right. 
 
 And now the top-stone of the pyramid is 
 "brought forth with cryings — grace, grace unto 
 it." Man appears next, on the same day with 
 the higher orders, but raised far above them by 
 the endowment of a moral nature. These three 
 facts are very suggestive, and the first two are 
 fully corroborated by geology, \'\z, that man 
 appeared last, and on the same day with the 
 higher animals, but on the third point — that he 
 has the endowment of a- new nature, geology is 
 not competent to speak. Says Dana — "As the 
 mammalian age draws to a close, the herbivora 
 and carnivora of that age all pass away, except- 
 ing, it is believed, a few that are useful to 
 man. New creations of smaller size peopled the 
 groves; the vegetation received accessions to its 
 foliage, fruits trees and flowers, and the seas 
 brighter forms of life. This we know from com- 
 parisons with the fossils of the preceding mam- 
 malian age. There was at that time no chaotic 
 UPTURNING, but only the opening out of creation 
 to its fullest extent; and so in Genesis, ;/<? new 
 da_y IS begun, it is still the sixth day." Exactly 
 so; animals of the higher order and man come 
 
162 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 forth on the same day, so says geology and so 
 says the Bible, but how could the writer of this 
 record have trodden amid the elaborate difficul- 
 ties of that distant past, and not have made a 
 misstep, when only the most diligent study of 
 the rocks in this late year of Grace, has been 
 able to clear away those difficulties, so as to 
 read aright that testimony of the rocks? 
 
 As we look back from man's place, upon the 
 past long history, wc can see now how all was 
 in preparation for his coming. The waters 
 ground up the rocks to make for him a soil; 
 vegetation removed the poison from the atmos- 
 phere and stored it away as fuel for his future 
 use. Even geological upheavals, the rising and 
 submergence of continents; vast wrinkles thrown 
 up to form mountains which were burst through 
 with irrepressible volcanic force; the crust 
 twisted, broken, thrown into great confusion — 
 all this can now be clearly seen to have been for 
 the benefit of man, and a preparation for his 
 coming. Had it not been for these upheavals, 
 the coal would have been buried under ten 
 thousand feet of level strata, so far away from 
 man's sight that he would never have found it, 
 nor dreamed that this great provision was wait- 
 ing his search beneath his feet. But tlie coal 
 
SIXTH CREATURE DAY 1G3 
 
 was tilted up on end; again and again it crops 
 out upon the surface, as much as to say — see 
 here, search not in vain; dig and be warm; use 
 freely the fuel which your beneficent Creator 
 stored away for you thousands of ages ago, and 
 let the wheels of your industry revolve, let your 
 literature be printed, and let it be disseminated 
 on the wings of the wind. The metals too were 
 buried beneath a vast amount of sediments, but 
 by the rupture of the earth's crust, they have 
 been thrown up to the surface and a clew is given, 
 which man can follow to discover the vast treas- 
 ures which would not otherwise have been found. 
 On the north shore of Lake Superior are the 
 famous picture rocks, strange formations cut 
 out in all manner of fanciful forms. A mile be- 
 neath these rocks, lie the rich copper ores. A 
 fiery outburst threw this valuable metal to the 
 surface; it did more, it reduced those refractory 
 ores for the service of man. It did still more, it 
 bent the flinty rocks into the form of an im- 
 mense trough, heaven poured out its waters to 
 fill it, and to-day. Lake Superior, connected with 
 the other great lakes, floats an immense tonnage 
 to bring us the valuable ores of upper Michigan. 
 This same preparation is noticeable in the case 
 of gold, iron and all the other valuable metals. 
 
164 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 But what is more remarkable still, note the 
 time when this upheaval took place; mark 
 it well and then "be still and know that 
 He is God." Had all this valuable store of 
 gold, iron, copper, coal been thrown up to the 
 surface in the Mesozoic period, all would have 
 been deeply buried again, or have been washed 
 over all the breadth of the land. Instead of 
 that, God saw to it that this breaking of the 
 earth's strata, and turning of them up on end 
 should take place after all the Tertiary beds had 
 been laid and man is just about to appear. And 
 not only so, but nature, contained a prophecy 
 that man should be an intelligent, reasoning, 
 worshiping creature, for recall how few of 
 nature's resources have been discovered without 
 study and effort. When the Creator adopted an 
 intelligent method and a beautiful symmetry of 
 plan, it was a sure hint that He meant to intro- 
 duce an intelligent being, who should be able to 
 respond and follow Him. And now, at last he 
 appears; the king has come, and dominion is 
 formally turned over to him. 
 
 By referring once more to the chart of the in- 
 troduction of life, on page 1 39, it will be seen that 
 all previous species had been introduced gradu- 
 ally, beginning in the age, previous to that to 
 
SIXTH CREATIVE DAY 165 
 
 which it gave its name; the fishes reigned in one 
 age, but began in the previous age, so did the 
 reptiles, and mammals, but not man; the age of 
 man began abruptly, for he is an exception. 
 Winchell says — "The moment that the last rev- 
 olutionary visitation had come to an end, while 
 yet the lands had become scarcely stable in their 
 places, man seems to have suddenly made his 
 appearance among the beasts of the earth, and 
 to have moved among them with a conscious 
 and uncontested superiority." That is the testi- 
 mony of the rocks, but it simply corroborates 
 what Moses said long ago. Man does step out 
 at once, and takes dominion over the fish of the 
 sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living 
 thing that creepeth on the earth. By his intelli- 
 gence, he is master over those which have much 
 greater strength and speed and even cunning. 
 
 Creation has reached its finality in man; his 
 very physical structure indicates that man is at 
 the top. He is a vertebrate, the highest order 
 of mammals. The lowest of this class carry the 
 brain on a horizontal spine; as they ascend in 
 grade the brain is held higher and the spine 
 more elevated ; the class next below man carries 
 its brain now on erect spine and now prone, but 
 man alone stands erect, with the brain on the 
 
IGG IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 top, and physical structure can rise no higher 
 than this. 
 
 "But beyond this, in Man the forehmbs 
 are not organs of locomotion, as they are in 
 all other mammals; they have passed from 
 the locomotive to the cephalic series, that is, 
 have been made to subserve the purposes of the 
 head. This transfer is in accordance with a 
 grand law in nature, which is at the basis of 
 grade and development. The intellectual char- 
 acter of man, is thus expressed in his material 
 structure. Man is therefore not one of the 
 Primates alongside of the Monkeys; he stands 
 alone — the Archon of Mammals." (Dana.) 
 
 But now man takes a sudden leap above all 
 the other animals, so that an impassable gulf 
 becomes fixed between him and them, in the 
 endowment of a moral nature. He has an intel- 
 ligence, whose capacity for development knows 
 no limits. The animal has instincts, which can 
 be educated to a certain extent, but never to 
 the point where these instincts become human 
 reason. A dog can be trained, so can a horse; 
 but no amount of training would make the dog 
 or horse capable of learning mathematics or 
 comprehending philosophy, while there is not a 
 child of the lowest savage, which cannot be in- 
 
SIXTH CREATIVE D/IY 107 
 
 structed so as to comprehend the highest 
 learning. The human reason, on the contrary 
 is unHmited; man can go on developing forever 
 and never reach the line beyond which it is im- 
 possible to go. 
 
 Man is a moral creature; he knows right 
 from wrong, and can feel the weight of 
 that word — ought. This moral sense is in- 
 tuitive, while a lower animal recognizes a right 
 or wrong because he has been rewarded for 
 doing right and punished for doing wrong. Mati, 
 like his Creator, can enjoy right for right's sake; 
 can enter into the sweet bliss which wells up 
 within him from the fountains of an innate sense 
 of right, without any external rewards. Man 
 can worship and love his Creator; he can com- 
 mune with Him, not only by the aid of articulate 
 language, but by the unspoken language of the 
 heart. He can receive the inspiration and gift 
 of the divine Spirit; he possesses the highest 
 and heavenliest prerogative, a capacity for God; 
 can receive the germ of God-life, just as the 
 tree can receive a graft of a new species and in- 
 corporate it into itself. 
 
 This spiritual life is altogether different from 
 the human, as natural life is altogether different 
 from crystalization, the quality possessed by the 
 
IGS IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC!' 
 
 inorganic. As chemical atoms can be so organ- 
 ized as to receive life, so that a material body 
 can somehow contain a human soul, exactly so 
 the human soul has been so organized as to have 
 the capacity of receiving and containing a life as 
 much above itself, as human life is above the 
 chemical constituents which hold it. This is the 
 new birth. Then the soul itself receives another 
 something, we call divine life, just as the body 
 by birth receives a something which we call 
 hsman life. Christ said, unless a soul did thus 
 exercise its highest faculty and receive this new 
 and divine life, it would be utterly impossible for 
 it to enter that new and divine kingdom. Nico- 
 demus marveled at this, but as a master of Israel 
 he should not have marveled at this capacity 
 of the human soul, for he should have known 
 that nothing can enter a higher kingdom unless 
 it first be endowed with the life of that kingdom; 
 nothing can enter the plant kingdom unless it 
 has the plant life; nothing can enter the animal 
 kingdom unless it have the animal life, and like- 
 wise, no one can enter the kingdom of God, 
 except it have the life of God. This is a simple, 
 rational necessity, which Nicodemus should have 
 recognized. And this capacity of the new birth, 
 this ability to receive and incorporate the divine 
 
SIXTH CREATURE DAY ]l)9 
 
 germ, this is the highest faculty of man, and 
 Hfts him infinitely above the animal. 
 
 Now it may seem a strange omission, but 
 upon man the divine commendation is not pro- 
 nounced, as it was upon the animal. After his 
 appearance, it is not said — "and God saw that it 
 was good." Is not this a reflection upon him? 
 does not the record make a discrimination in 
 favor of the animal? On the contrary, this 
 omission is the highest compliment to man; it 
 is a tribute to his greatness. Animals were 
 created at their best; all that they could ever 
 do, they could do at the beginning. The ant is 
 not any wiser than it was in the time of Solomon ; 
 the dog was just as sagacious at the beginning 
 as now, the fox as cunning. There has been 
 no improvement among the animals, but there 
 has been vast improvement among men, even 
 in their fallen estate. With man there is end- 
 less power of improvement, unlimited progress; 
 ever and forever he shall become better and still 
 better able to serve the ends, his Creator had in 
 view when He created man. Man was not 
 "good," when he was created, in the sense in 
 which this term is used in this first chapter of 
 Genesis; he is not now, and perhaps he never 
 shall be. That commendation expressed the 
 
170 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC^ 
 
 final height of attainment. Its omission was not 
 a suggestion of imperfection, but of incomplete- 
 ness; it was a suggestion that man was to "work 
 out his own salvation with fear and trembling, 
 for it was God that worketh in him both to will 
 and to do of His good pleasure." Some one has 
 said — "man is an animal with tools;" those tools 
 are the divine endowments, and no matter how 
 well he has used them, there is always a possi- 
 bility of using them better; however great may 
 have been his accomplishment with them, there 
 is always a still higher power of accomplishment. 
 Man was not created at his best even though 
 pure and holy; he was not placed at his final 
 state, and indeed such is his capacity, he shall 
 never reach his final state, beyond which he 
 cannot attain to something better. All this is 
 impossible to the animal, and therefore at the 
 first, God could say of it "and God saw that it 
 was good," but this could not be said of man, 
 because he is ever capable of something better. 
 Dana thus admirably sums up the attributes of 
 man — "Man was the first being that was not 
 finished on reaching adult growth, but was pro- 
 vided with powers for indefinite expansion, a will 
 for a life work, and boundless aspirations to lead 
 to endless improvement. He was the first being 
 
SIXTH CREATURE DAY 171 
 
 capable of an intelligent survey of nature and 
 comprehension of her laws; the first capable of 
 augmenting his strength by bending nature to 
 his service, rendering thereby a weak body 
 stronger than all possible animal force; the 
 first capable of deriving happiness from truth 
 and goodness; of apprehending eternal right; 
 of reaching towards a knowledge of self and of 
 God; the first therefore capable of conscious 
 obedience or disobedience of any moral law, 
 and the first subject to debasement through his 
 appetites and a moral nature. There is in man 
 a spiritual element in which the brutes have no 
 share. His power of indefinite progress, his 
 thoughts and desires that look onward even be- 
 yond time, his recognition of spiritual existence 
 and of a Divinity above, all evince a nature that 
 partakes of the infinite and divine. Man is linked 
 to the past through the system of life, of which 
 he is the last, the completing creation. But, 
 unlike other species of that closing system of the 
 past, he, through his spiritual nature, is far 
 more intimately connected with the opening 
 future.'' 
 
 While man was created pure and holy, he was 
 probably as undeveloped as a child. We must 
 not think of him however as an uncivilized 
 
172 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC P 
 
 creature gathering acorns. Though he had none 
 of the arts and sciences of our civiHzation, he 
 was very far from being a savage. He had fresh 
 and uncorrupted powers, which as in the case 
 of a child, must have been capable of prodigious 
 growth; he had nature, the great original of 
 which all art is but the copy; he had God for 
 his teacher, with whom he communed without 
 restraint, and the effect of such a stimulus and 
 inspiration must have been immense. We can 
 no more judge of his progress and rapid develop- 
 ment from our own experience under circum- 
 stances so different, than we could judge of the 
 growth of a tropical tree, from its stunted size in 
 the cold climate to which it has been trans- 
 planted. 
 
 The dominion which was given at once 
 into his hands, was over the fish of the sea, 
 and over the birds of the air, and over the 
 bhema or herbivora, and over all the land, and 
 over every reptile that crawls upon the earth. 
 It is noticeable that the carnivora are not in- 
 cluded, and when the description of the garden 
 of Eden is given in the second chapter, the carni- 
 vora again are not mentioned. We shall never 
 appreciate the wonders of Scripture unless we pay 
 strictest aUention to what it does not say, as well 
 
SIXTH CREATINE DAY 173 
 
 as to what it does say. Its omissions are as sugges- 
 tive as its positive statements. If the carnivora 
 had been included among the animals over which 
 man should have dominion, again the accuracy 
 of Moses would be questioned. 
 
 The question cannot but be asked — how could 
 man be safe and happy, when carnivorous and 
 predacious creatures were created in great 
 abundance on the same day with himself, accord- 
 ing to both geology and Scripture? This question 
 can be easily solved when brought into the light 
 of modern knowledge of nature. Every large 
 region of the earth differs from all other such 
 regions, in the groups of animals which inhabit 
 it; there is also sufficient reason to believe that 
 all animals and plants have spread from certain 
 local centers of creation. Scripture and ethnology 
 agree, in assigning the origin of the human race 
 to the vicinity of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, 
 and to this same center, we can also with the 
 greatest probability, trace several species of the 
 animals and plants that are most useful to man. 
 At the time of man's appearance, this locality 
 may have been peopled by just such animals as 
 we know to have come from thence, such as 
 were specially suited to association with himself. 
 The passage in the second chapter, which de- 
 
174 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 scribes the formation of herbivora and birds out 
 of the ground, and which were then brought to 
 Adam to see what he would name them, would 
 be superfluous, unless the additional facts were 
 intended, that these creatures thus associated 
 with him, were only those which would con- 
 tribute to his happiness and had no tendency to 
 injure or annoy. Indeed the class which we call 
 the domestic animals, seem to have an innate 
 fitness for domestication, and a fondness for 
 man's company, while other animals cannot be 
 domesticated even after long contact. But the 
 difficulty arising out of the fact that ferocious 
 and carnivorous animals existed at the same 
 time that man was in Eden, is at once obviated 
 by the geological doctrine of the extinction of 
 species. In past geologic ages, large and im- 
 portant groups of species have become extinct, 
 and have been replaced by new groups; this 
 process has removed many creatures which would 
 have been highly injurious to the welfare of 
 man. We know that many injurious animals 
 have been replaced by others that were helpful ; 
 why cannot we suppose that this process would 
 have continued until all the injurious animals 
 had been so replaced, if man had not sinned.? 
 The curse would thus consist in the permission 
 
SIXTH CREATINE DAY 175 
 
 to the predacious animals and to the thorns and 
 briars of other regions, to invade Eden, or in 
 man's own expulsion from the favored spot, to 
 contend with the animals and plants which were 
 intended to have given way and become extinct 
 before him? Thus while the other regions were 
 as before the appearance of man, the center 
 whence the human race sprang, was also the 
 center of only helpful animals and plants, which 
 would have spread with him until the whole 
 earth had been subdued, as we have found to be 
 the case with many other species of fauna and 
 flora, 
 
 A conflict has been supposed to exist between 
 St. Paul and geology, in that it is said the former 
 declares that there was no death in the world 
 until Adam sinned, while geology finds the rocks 
 filled with the skeletons of animals which per- 
 ished, ages before man appeared at all. But 
 this inference, like all others which would involve 
 Scripture into a conflict with Science, arises from 
 careless reading. Paul does not say that death 
 passed upon all the world because of man's sin, 
 but upon his OA'n descendents; "wherefore as 
 by one man, sin entered into the world and death 
 by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for 
 that all have sinned." Death that was penal. 
 
176 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 extends only as far as the sin, which was the 
 cause; the animals are not capable of sin be- 
 cause they have no moral nature. This high 
 prerogative of a moral nature is capable of being 
 positively pure and holy, but it is also capable 
 of sinning, and must then incur the consequence 
 of sin — death. 
 
 And now is presented, v;hat to the^ writer, 
 seems the richest, the most blessed, and most 
 hopeful of all the suggestions this wonderful 
 chapter has yet made. Man appears on the 
 same creative day on which the animals were 
 created, so says the Bible, and so says Geology. 
 Any uninspired writer of the time of Moses or 
 before, would certainly have claimed a special 
 day for man; he would have put the creation of 
 the higher animals back on the fifth day, with 
 the other animals, and have reserved the sixth 
 exclusively for one who deserved a whole day to 
 himself. But then he would not have been true 
 to science, for while man is raised far above the 
 plane of the animals by the endowment of a 
 moral nature, which allies him to God, yet he is 
 created at the same time with the other mam- 
 mals, with which, in his bodily nature, he is also 
 allied. 
 
 This makes the introduction of spiritual life, 
 
SIXTH CRE^Til^E DAY J 77 
 
 exactly parallel to the introduction of natural 
 life. It will be remembered, that creation of 
 natural life was the second act of the third day, 
 so likewise the creation of spiritual life, is the 
 second act of the sixth day. To the ordinary 
 intelligence, this would seem to be a mistake; 
 life of both kinds should not have been intro- 
 duced until its own period; natural life should 
 have been created in the era of life, and spiritual 
 life in the era of divine life. But no, each is 
 brought forth in one age, and intended to meet 
 the fullest development in the succeeding age; 
 each is made to strike its roots down in the one, 
 and flourish in the next. Natural life is planted 
 in the era of matter, but brings forth its results 
 in the era of life; so spiritual life is planted in 
 the era of the animal, but shall attain its true 
 development, in the next, in the era of the 
 spiritual. 
 
 And here let us reflect how rich, how full of 
 blessed suggestion this fact is. Natural life be- 
 comes thus the type, or perhaps we should say. 
 the parallel of spiritual life. Could we have 
 taken our place back in the third creative day, 
 and have seen life as it then was, we would have 
 been just as little able to imagine what the im- 
 mense and beautiful development of it would be 
 
178 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 in the sixth and seventh, as now standing at the 
 very threshold of the spiritual life, we are little 
 able to imagine what its glorious and endless de- 
 velopment shall be, when the new week shall 
 have begun under "the new heavens and in the 
 new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 
 Then the world was lifeless and bare; not a 
 blade of grass to deck the tomb of the dead 
 earth, not a leaf nor flower; not a bird nor 
 animal to waken echoes of life from the hollow 
 caverns where the cruel waters of the sea alone 
 were devouring the rocks in their ceaseless, ever- 
 lasting grind. In what form, life first appeared, 
 neither Revelation nor Evolution have told us; 
 perhaps a thin sparse growth, like moss or fungus, 
 began to cover the bare rocks. Had we been 
 there, we should have stooped down to pluck 
 the strange thing, and then we should have 
 tossed it contemptuously into the sea. Is this 
 all.^ Is this insignificant, worthless thing that 
 which you call life ? Do you expect that from this, 
 will develope an ever increasing series of new 
 forms, that will cover the dead earth with verdure 
 and beauty, that shall fill the air with winged 
 things of gorgeous hues and delightful melody, 
 that shall stock the world with moving, sentient 
 creatures, ranging all tiie way from the burrowing 
 
SIXTH CREATiyE DAY 179 
 
 mole to the mighty mastodon, from the shmy 
 invertebrate, to a man made in the image and 
 likeness of God? 
 
 Compare that first germ of natural life 
 with what has come forth from it — an earth, 
 that were fit for the sons of God, were it not 
 for sin. The mountains are decked with flow- 
 ers, the vallies are yellow with harvests, the 
 air is full of song, every inch of earth's surface is 
 busy with multitudinous life; fish and insect and 
 animal and bird and man are full of activity and 
 gladness. And when we rise to contemplate 
 what man has been able to achieve — cities burst 
 forth into the blossoms of civilization, chasms are 
 bridged, mountains tunneled, sea turned into a 
 highway, continents webed with railroads and 
 threaded with electric wires, distance annihilated 
 and time itself outrun; when we see all this, and 
 remember the first beginnings of life back in 
 the third day. we are lost in wonder and awe. 
 
 But this is only the type of another, a higher 
 life, which was not communicated to matter, 
 but was breathed into man, and which was in- 
 troduced as the second act on the sixth creative 
 day. As we stand here, and look at this small 
 beginning of divine life, again we are tempted to 
 despise it, and ask — is this all.'' Is this moral 
 
180 IS MOSES SCIFNTIFIC 
 
 nature, which some men can hardly distinguish 
 from the cultivated instincts of the animal; is 
 this little germ all, upon which you say the great 
 and immortal system of redeemed souls is built? 
 We answer, look back to its counterpart, that 
 was brought forth on the third day, and then 
 behold into what infinite results it has developed ; 
 if from natural life, with such small beginning, 
 all this can come forth, then we ask you to con- 
 sider what can come forth from this germ of a 
 divine life? As yet we see this divine life only 
 in its first stage; as yet it has only begun to 
 strike root into the natural, as the natural struck 
 its root into the material. We are not yet in 
 the era of the spiritual, when this germ of the 
 divine can flourish; we are only in the era of the 
 natural. As well ask to see the results of natural 
 life, while the life was as yet only rooting itself 
 in the inorganic period, as to ask for the glorious 
 results of the spiritual life, while it is yet only 
 rooting itself in the material period. "It doth 
 not yet appear what we shall be," any more 
 than it could appear what fullness of natural life 
 should be, w_hile only ferns and club mosses 
 were struggling for a foothold on the earth. 
 
 This is the era of the natural, and we cannot 
 even guess what the era of the supernatural 
 
SIXTH CREATiyE DAY 181 
 
 shall be. True to the old principle implanted 
 in nature from the beginning, this highest form 
 of life begins too, not in its own, but in the 
 period next below; but it can flourish, only 
 when that glad and propitious era shall be 
 ushered in, which is correctly termed the era of 
 the spiritual. If natural life flourished so luxur- 
 iantly, and blossomed so generously, and bore its 
 fruit so abundantly in its own period, why shall 
 we not expect that the spiritual life shall do the 
 same, when its own period shall have arrived? 
 We need only carry out the sweep of the arc, 
 which we have seen this principle to make here 
 in this visible world, to estimate what its direc- 
 tion will be there in the invisible world. A 
 mathematician need to know only three points 
 on a circle, to be able to tell where that circle 
 shall strike at any other part. We have seen the 
 curvature of this principle of life down here in 
 this world; is any one so unscientific as to say 
 that the circle stops, v/hen it passes out of his 
 sight.'' Is any one so little acquainted with 
 natural laws as not to know what to expect from 
 their action anywhere in the future, however 
 remote? Life begins in one age but it flourishes 
 in the next age. We have seen this to be true 
 of natural life in general, and also to be true of 
 
1S2 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 all the subdivisions of animal life as Dana's 
 chart so clearly shows. But now, by our own 
 experience, as well as from Revelation, we know 
 that another and higher life has begun in man. 
 Are we not compelled to acknowledge from the 
 sweep of this law, first, that there will be another 
 age succeeding this, and second, that this life 
 shall flourish then, as it cannot now under these 
 unpropitious conditions? From a scientific 
 standpoint alone, we ought to know that if we 
 have received this gift of a divine life, which 
 comes by what is called the new birth, then 
 there is a better period ahead, in which we shall 
 know the blessed, and wonderful, and inexpressi- 
 ble results of this divine life, in that new, the 
 divine era. 
 
 And now upon the creation as a whole, the 
 divine commendation is pronounced — "and God 
 saw everything that He had made, and behold it 
 was very good." The great work of preparation 
 had been completed, and the wonderful system 
 of life had been begun, and all was very good. 
 Part fitted to part; v/heel cogged into wheel; 
 the great fly wheel of universal motion, con- 
 tinuously impelled by the Spirit of God, was 
 connected by invisible belts to all parts of 
 creation; all forms cf life were acting out their 
 
SIXTH GREAT lyE DAY 183 
 
 function, and man himself had been created in 
 the divine image and preparing to fill a divme 
 part. It was complete, it was all well. Crea- 
 tive work was done; now another and higher 
 work was to be entered upon; but this prepa- 
 ration for that higher work, received the divine 
 approval — "it was very good." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SEVENTH CREATIVE DAY. 
 
 "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and 
 all the host of them, and on the seventh day God 
 ended his tvork which He had made; and he rested on 
 the seventh day from all his icork which he had made. 
 And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, be- 
 cause that in it He had rested from all his work 
 which God created and made. " 
 
 The great work is finished, so far as the earth 
 is concerned, for it is only of the earth and what 
 has relation to the earth, that the record speaks. 
 Again there would be a conflict, if we read the 
 announcement absolutely, that all the host of 
 heaven is finished, for Sir John Herschell, saw 
 through his great telescope, what he thought was 
 other systems, still going through the changes 
 from nebula to settled planetary system, as ours 
 had done. It is more than probable that crea- 
 tive work is still proceeding in other parts of 
 the universe, but of this Moses is not speaking; 
 his words refer entirely to what concerns our 
 
 earth. 
 
 184 
 
SEVENTH CREATIVE DAY 185 
 
 Three statements are made concerning the 
 seventh day — on it God ended his creative 
 work, on it He rested, and He sanctified it. 
 That seventh day, is the present in which we are 
 Hving; it is the modern or human era of geology; 
 it was to be the period in which man is to re- 
 plenish and subdue the earth, and with him, all 
 the creatures that were serviceable to him, to 
 the displacement and extinction of the ferocious 
 and destructive animals, as so many species have 
 been displaced and extinguished before. This 
 fact, of cessation of all creative work, is fully 
 corroborated by geology, for no new species have 
 been known to have appeared since the creation 
 of man; man is the last term in the ascending 
 series of creations, according to science. No 
 great geological changes have taken place during 
 this period, for nature has entered upon her 
 seventh day. There is no record of an evening 
 and a morning, as in all the previous days, be- 
 cause the end of this day is not yet; when it 
 shall end, "knoweth no man, no not the angels 
 in heaven." 
 
 The stage is now completed, and all the 
 scaffolding is taken down; the arena is now 
 ready, in which man is to work out his eternal 
 destiny, because for this, it was all along pre- 
 
186 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 paring, and man enters at once into the posses- 
 sion of his dominion. All the powers of the 
 world are to serve his use, all its animals are to 
 help him build up the vast system, which might 
 be called, not a christian but a heavenly civil- 
 ization, which should be in itself and in its up- 
 building, the great means of discipline to fit him 
 for higher service, so that graduating from office 
 in this dominion, he might be prepared for the 
 thrones which await him in the higher kingdom, 
 where he should be associated with the very Son 
 of God, in His larger, divine dominion. For 
 even Eden was not all; Eden was not the king- 
 dom, but only the school to fit him for it. 
 
 Man is a free, moral being, who must make 
 him self perfect, for even God cannot make him 
 so; education can come only from discipline and 
 even suffering, for not the power of the Almighty 
 Himself can confer an education to such a being. 
 Safeguards must be built for his character, but 
 he must build them from within, as a mollusk 
 builds his own shell about it. He must learn 
 to exercise power, so that by and by, he shall be 
 competent to rule angels, but he must learn this 
 by exercising control first over self, then over 
 animals, and then over the whole world. And 
 all the means of preparation for this high destiny 
 
SEVENTH CREATINE DAY 1S7 
 
 were there in Eden; even the forbidden tree 
 was not wanting, for by this he could learn that 
 quality, most essential to a perfect moral agent, 
 viz, obedience to the right. Perfection of moral 
 character is not only to control, but also to be 
 controled by the Right, the True, the Good. 
 These are the gems of his crown, without which 
 he cannot be king; but a king in the moral 
 kingdom must make his own crown, as the lily 
 crowns itself, from the qualities which are pro- 
 duced from its own bosom. That is the charac- 
 teristic of a moral being, that he too becomes a 
 creator; he creates his own robe of state — his 
 beautiful character; makes his own sceptre of 
 power — his knowledge; produces his own be- 
 jeweled crown — the divine qualities which blos- 
 som out of his godly heart. This dominion was 
 given man, that he might have a sphere in 
 which to practise as king, before he should be 
 summoned to assume part ' in the mightier, 
 more glorious kingdom of which Jesus is King, 
 "for though He were a Son, yet learned He obe- 
 dience, by the things which He suffered." This 
 moral gymnasium, in which man was to practise 
 royal and divine qualities, and so prepare to 
 "go up higher," is all finished, and God rested 
 from all his work, which he created and made. 
 
183 is MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 We must not however conceive the childish 
 thought that now God lay back exhausted with 
 his week's work, and sleeps or rests as too many 
 men rest on their Sabbath day. Creative work 
 on earth is done, but now God's moral work 
 begins. Said Jesus — "My Father worketh 
 hitherto and I work," and this is no contradic- 
 tion of Genesis. Rest, in the highest sense 
 does not mean cessation from work, but change ; 
 a child really works harder in his play than he 
 had worked at his study, but yet it is rest. 
 This high work, on which the Creator now enters 
 in the earth, is that which is so thoroughly con- 
 genial to his nature, that it is rest; engagement 
 upon material things is ivork, upon moral things 
 is rest, and into this condition Grace is to bring 
 its subjects too. If man had remained as he 
 was created, this seventh day to him also would 
 have been a day of rest, "for he that is entered 
 into his rest, he al§o hath ceased from his own 
 works, as God did from his." There would have 
 been no curse to him, no thorns and briars, no 
 sweat of the brow, no hard struggle for daily 
 bread, no bodily infirmity to make labor an ex- 
 hausting weariness, no enmity between Satan 
 and the seed of the woman, but the work would 
 have been a delight and therefore a rest. Work 
 
SEVENTH CREATIVE DAY 189 
 
 there would have been, for capacity for endless 
 progress means necessity for endless work; 
 glorious opportunity means earnest effort, nec- 
 essarily. 
 
 What might have been! Had man exercised 
 his divine quality of freedom under the divine 
 law of obedience to Right^what might have 
 been? But being a free moral being, he had the 
 power of choice; he could obey Right or could 
 disobey; he could not be deprived of the power 
 of disobedience, and yet remain a free agent. 
 Being in the image and likeness of God, he 
 reached forth to claim what belongs only to God. 
 "Ye shall be as gods," that was the temptation; 
 he reached too far, lost his balance, and fell. 
 And so God's great work was marred, and all his 
 plans seemed to be foiled when they had just 
 reached completion. 
 
 Here too, science corroborates revelation. It 
 knows well that something is wrong in the world, 
 but what it is, science cannot tell. There is a 
 disease at the heart of things, but science is 
 confined to the extremities of nature; it sees 
 the irregular pulse-beats, sees the fever flush the 
 brow of nature, sees the extremities wither and 
 die, but science knows nothing of nature's heart- 
 disease. There is not a naturalist, however 
 
190 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 skeptical he may be about revelation, but knows 
 that man is out of harmony with nature, and 
 most of all is out of harmony with himself. A 
 great break has occurred somewhere; the wheels 
 of the world go with a jar, as though a cog had 
 been broken. There is a natural gravity toward 
 wrong; something makes it easy to sin, but hard 
 to do right; there is some force pulling down- 
 ward as the moon pulls the tides. What is this 
 disturbing cause.-* 
 
 From the perturbations of the planet Ura- 
 nus, which could not be accounted for by 
 any known cause, Leverrier was convinced 
 that there must be another unknown planet out- 
 side the orbit of Uranus, to cause this disturb- 
 ance. He made his calculations and wrote to 
 his friend Dr. Galle in Berlin, to direct his large 
 refracting telescope on a certain night at a spot 
 in the heavens indicated, where he would proba- 
 bly find the undiscovered planet. Dr. Galle did 
 as directed, and found it within one degree of the 
 spot described. This discovery of Neptune from 
 theoretical calculation, which required another 
 planet, to account for the disturbing influence 
 on Uranus, ranks among the most brilliant of 
 the scientific feats of the present century. Like- 
 wise, there are great perturbations in the moral 
 
SEyHNTH CKEATiyE DAY 191 
 
 realm; science realizes the fact, but she cannot 
 point her telescope, so as to discover the dis- 
 turbing influence. 
 
 And right there Revelation comes in to tell us 
 the cause and its cure. Science fully corrobo- 
 rates Revelation in announcing the effect, but 
 she stands reverently at the door with unshod 
 feet, while Revelation enters into the sick 
 chamber to remove the cause. If the watch is 
 broken, only the watch-maker can repair it. If 
 the main-spring of humanity is broken, no one 
 but the Creator can make it good. Just here is 
 disclosed the wonders of Redemption, which is 
 a new moral Creation. It discloses the power 
 which originally made, as once more, but now 
 in Grace, willing to restore. Revelation comes 
 to deal with a free moral being, and tells him 
 how he may come to the great Maker, and have 
 the injury repaired. But in this there must be 
 a co-operation on the part of the man; he must 
 be willing to come to the Creator, who has come 
 down into flesh, in order to become accessible 
 to men, so that man may be fully restored. But 
 men must act upon their own freedom: this 
 prerogative will never be invaded. Revelation 
 can but invite, but it will not compel, for then 
 man's moral quality, would be gone. It tells 
 
192 76 MOSES SClENTItlC 
 
 them that it were vain for the broken being to 
 attempt to repair itself; let him but come to 
 the Creator and Repairer of humanity, and, all 
 shall be made right. All this is beyond science; 
 she can but give her assent to the facts, but can 
 say nothing about the repairs, for the material 
 creation alone is the domain of science, but this 
 is a moral creation. 
 
 But all this was not so at the first; the seventh 
 day was meant, not for repair, but for growth in 
 the image of God, for moral development and 
 spiritual culture. That purpose was frustrated 
 by the entrance of sin, and by that entrance, 
 the race has been set back a whole geological 
 period. The millenium will be again, what 
 Eden was when man lost it, but the whole time 
 between Eden and the personal return of our 
 Lord to finish his new creation, has been lost 
 time, for it is all required to bring the race back 
 again to the moral plane where God made it to 
 begin. 
 
 "And God blessed the seventh day and sanc- 
 tified it, because that in it He had rested from 
 all his work which God created and made." Now 
 that we cannot enter with the Creator into the 
 enjoyment of his Sabbath rest, but must struggle 
 with the weeds and groan under the curse, God 
 
SEVENTH CREATV/E DAY 193 
 
 has given us a little Sabbath, commemorative of 
 his own, and anticipative of the "rest which 
 remaineth for the people of God." Six days of 
 work, occupied creative week, and a seventh for 
 rest; six days for the material, and one for the 
 spiritual. The evening and the morning which 
 intervened between the creative days, were the 
 periods of rest, and then the whole seventh day 
 was also a day of rest; so the time between 
 evening and morning is to be a period of daily 
 rest for man, but he also needs a whole day in 
 seven, in which he shall rest from all his work. 
 But this seventh day, unlike the daily rests, 
 is to be sanctified, that is — set apart to a holy 
 purpose. Therefore comes the command, "Re- 
 member the seventh day to keep it/zt?//. " Some 
 think that this is only a Jewish regulation, from 
 which we are free; but it will be seen that its 
 basis is creation; "for in six days the Lord made 
 heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them 
 is, and rested the seventh day wherefore the 
 Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." 
 If this be only a Jewish regulation, in which we 
 have no part, then the heaven, the earth, the 
 sea and all that in them is, must also belong to 
 the Jews in which we have also no part, for the 
 observance of the Sabbath is founded upon the 
 
194 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 creation; then let us turn over to the Jews, what 
 we have taken from them, for to them belongs 
 creation, if to them alone belongs the Sabbath. 
 
 A Sabbath rest is founded upon human nature, 
 as well as upon creation, and the necessity of 
 its observance is as wide as creation and the 
 human race. Man's physical being requires 
 this seventh day rest; less will not satisfy the 
 body, more will not furnish him daily bread. 
 During the French Revolution of 1779, when 
 lawlessness ran riot, divine as well as human 
 government was to be overthrown; it was 
 enacted that the Sabbath should be abolished, 
 but that a tenth day should be observed for rest. 
 For three years they attempted to observe this 
 statute, but, atheistic as the Government was, 
 it was compelled to exscind it from the statute 
 book and re-establish the seventh day rest once 
 more, because the necessities of man and beast 
 required it. 
 
 Six days man shall use, as God did, in work 
 upon material things carrying the world up to a 
 higher plane of progress, but the seventh must be 
 employed for the nobler purpose of the soul. 
 And let the same principle pervade man's days 
 of work as pervaded God's. From the time 
 when cosmical matter lay dark and quiescent, 
 
SEVENTH CREATURE DAY 195 
 
 waiting to be quickened by the Spirit of God, 
 up to the time when creation was crowned by a 
 creature made in the likeness of God, there was 
 orderly advancement and progress. So in all 
 man's days of work, let there be advancement 
 toward a better civilization, let there be a more 
 complete subjugation of all nature's powers, and 
 a more complete use of them toward reaching 
 that high ideal of the condition of the race which 
 is known as millenium; let there be progress in 
 man's own condition, physically, socially, in- 
 tellectually; let the fields yield better harvests, 
 the garden more beautiful Howers, the city be 
 more wholesome and healthy, and teem with all 
 the conveniences; let the home be enriched with 
 all that can sweeten and refine with means of 
 happiness. Six days of every week are to be 
 devoted to improvement in everything, as were 
 the six creative days; they are to be given to 
 "replenish and subdue the earth." 
 
 Replenish the earth with everything that will 
 make it brighter and better; fill it with all that 
 will tend to make it a happy home for the sons of 
 God. Subdue it until its wild and untamed powers, 
 like so many untrained colts, shall all become 
 docile and serviceable to man. The lightning 
 frolics in the air, seize it and subdue it; steam 
 
lOG IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 and explosives rupture the earth with volcanic 
 destruction; seize them boldly and subdue them, 
 they will make mighty agencies for good; light 
 colors the rainbow and glorifies the cloud, how 
 it would glorify man's own life! subdue it to 
 human purposes; the winds rave wildly over the 
 seas, the tides waste their immense energy, sub- 
 due them and turn them into practical use. Give 
 six days to these useful purposes to replenish 
 the earth and fill it again with beauty and ver- 
 dure, to bring all the wasted powers of nature 
 into complete subjection for the benefit of man. 
 This is a noble use in which to spend six days 
 of every week; "but the seventh da)' is the 
 Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt 
 not do any work." The use to be made of the 
 Sabbath day, is as necessary to the welfare of 
 man as that of the six days. The individual or 
 the nation which disobeys this command of God 
 is simply bent upon its own ruin. Says di- 
 vine Wisdom — "he that sinneth against Me, 
 wrongeth his own soul." 
 
 But how is the Sabbath to be sanctified ? 
 Just as God sanctified it, by resting from all his 
 secular work and entering upon a higher work, 
 the spiritual and moral. This seventh, is God's 
 day of redemption. Whatever will subserve 
 
SIXTH CREATINE DAY 197 
 
 one's own or other's redemption, sanctifies the 
 Sabbath. It is to be given exclusively to the 
 spiritual welfare, and rigorously protected from 
 all secular encroachments. The immortal part 
 of man must not be robbed by the material and 
 perishable part. He who uses the six days of 
 the week wholly in the interests of the body, 
 and then uses the seventh simply for the resting 
 of the body, so that it can give itself again ex- 
 clusively and more vigorously to the acquisition 
 of material things, robs the prince to pay the 
 slave; he subordinates the immortal to the 
 temporal, he beggars eternity for the enrichment 
 of time. 
 
 At the end of his creative work "God saw 
 everything that He had made, and behold it was 
 very good," The contemplation of his finished 
 work, was the joy of his Sabbath rest. Let 
 man so spend his six days, that the review of 
 them will give satisfaction on the seventh. The 
 use of the seventh day, which God commanded, 
 will fit men for that eternal Sabbath of rest 
 which will open the new week of heaven, that 
 will never end. No evening or morning closes 
 up the seventh day of creation; there will be no 
 close to the eternal Sabbath, when "the new 
 heavens and the new earth wherein dwellelh 
 
J!)S IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 righteousness" shall have opened the blessed era 
 for man; and for this, all the previous days are 
 to be a preparation, as all God's six days were 
 a preparation to the seventh. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 METHOD OF CREATION. 
 
 Revelation, whether in the Bible or in Nature, 
 is written, not in the language of science but in 
 the language of appearances, for in no other way 
 could it be understood in any age by the mass 
 of men. All men can see that "the heavens de- 
 clare the glory of God and the firmament showeth 
 his handiwork," but that glory is disclosed in the 
 language of appearances. The earth appears 
 to be the center of the universe and the heavenly 
 bodies to revolve around it; the sun appears to 
 rise and set; the moon appears to be larger 
 than any of the fixed stars; the planets appear 
 to be only stars like all the rest of the heavenly 
 bodies. And so in Revelation, creation appears 
 to have been accomplished in six natural days; 
 it appears to have been done by God's simple 
 word of power; the sun and moon appear to 
 come into existence on the fourth day. But 
 all appearances need to be translated. To the 
 
 child, looking down the railroad track, the rails 
 
 199 
 
200 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 appear to approach each other, the farther they 
 recede; the window pane, through which the 
 house on the opposite side of the street can be 
 seen, appears to be larger than the house, for 
 how else could the one be seen through the 
 other? Does then Revelation, does Nature, 
 does Observation teach us falsely? No, they do 
 not teach us falsely; their language of appear- 
 ances must be interpreted for us by correct 
 science. Now the only teacher to explain to 
 us what Revelation says about nature, is science; 
 for God never does for us what we can do for 
 ourselves. We have accepted the explanation of 
 the first chapter of Genesis as given by science, 
 and the record then becomes luminous; science 
 has established the inspiration of that chapter 
 as it has never before been established. But now 
 one more interpretation remains to be given, 
 viz, the method of creation; if we are to know 
 how God did it, science alone can explain. 
 
 We have seen that in the case of original 
 matter, of the introduction of life, and of the 
 endowment of man with a moral nature, a special 
 word is used — "bara;" but all the other acts de- 
 scribed by a peculiar and invariable phrase — 
 "and God said, let there be." To matter, to 
 which vibratory motion had been imparted by 
 
METHOD OF CREATION 201 
 
 the Spirit, God said— let there be hght; to the 
 clouds which held vast seas in their bosoms, God 
 said — let there be a firmament; to the waters 
 God said — let the waters bring forth abundantly ; 
 to the earth, God said — let the earth bring forth 
 cattle. In each instance, God spake to what 
 had been already created, and commanded it to 
 CO operate with Him, to bring forth something 
 else; God did not create alone, nor did nature 
 bring forth alone, but the record declares that 
 in each case both were co-operating causes. The 
 different things and species of life, were not 
 created off-hand by an immediate act of God; 
 of course He could have done so, but He did 
 not choose to create in that way; His method 
 was regular, orderly and always by means of 
 natural causes ;^He gave nature a new power, 
 and in each case this became a secondary cause. 
 God speaks, not to Himself, but to that second- 
 ary cause, and by means of this, each separate 
 act of creation is produced; in the case of man, 
 however. He speaks to Himself — "let us make 
 man in our image after our likeness" for here 
 the creation is immediate, and without any 
 secondary cause. 
 
 These are the data which the record gives us 
 as to the method of creation; now for the in- 
 
202 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 terpretatiori, we must come to science, for it is 
 not the object of scripture to reveal what we may 
 ourselves discover, and it would have perma- 
 nently enfeebled the mind of the race, if the 
 stimulus of research had been rendered unnec- 
 essary. This is the last office we shall ask 
 science to render in the interpretation of the 
 first chapter of Genesis. Astronomy, geology, 
 biology have explained the rest of it. Once 
 more we will ask science to explain and tell us 
 the method of creation. 
 
 But from our knowledge of the history of the 
 past, we shall expect that this last interpreta- 
 tion will also be met by violent opposition and 
 frightened protest. When science explained 
 the record by transferring the center of the 
 planetary system from the earth to the sun, its 
 words were scouted and its advocates were perse- 
 cuted; does not the Bible say that the sun rises 
 and sets? does it not say that God laid the foun- 
 dations of the earth > Galileo is an atheist, if he 
 assert the contrary. When science explained that 
 the world was sustained, not directly by the finger 
 of God, but by the power of gravitation, again 
 the opposition was great, for it seemed that then 
 God would be removed from the course of nature. 
 When science explained that the antiquity of 
 
METHOD OF CREATION 203 
 
 the earth exceeded 6,000 years, again it was 
 violsntly assailed, because it contradicted the 
 Bible. And when science established the fact 
 that man has lived upon the earth, much longer 
 than was supposed by deducing a chronology 
 from the Bible, again the opposition was up in 
 arms. But truth must prevail; and afterward it 
 was found that the authority and credibility of 
 the Bible were in no wise impeached, but were 
 rendered more secure than ever. 
 
 This opposition to whoever or whatever ap- 
 proaches our citadel of Truth, is proper and 
 natural. No one must come within our defense 
 except he can give the password and comes as a 
 friend; we s'nall firmly hold to the old, until the 
 new has proven itself better. Our education, 
 traditions, and beliefs held from childhood, are 
 very dear and will not easily be given up. So 
 that when science once more comes to perform 
 the part of interpreter and tell us how God cre- 
 ated, it will be hard for us to give up our heredi- 
 tary beliefs, and science will again be resisted. 
 But if this last interpretation be thoroughly es- 
 tablished in truth, we shall find that our dear old 
 Book will not suffer here, any more than it did 
 in the other instances when science took from 
 men their false views, and gave them true ones. 
 
204 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 It is not the Book which needs to be corrected, 
 but our interpretation of it. 
 
 What is God's method of action now? Science 
 finds that God does not now accomplish results 
 directly, but always by the use of means; there 
 is always a natural cause to produce a ceitain 
 effect, as well as a divine cause. We do not 
 now see species created, but we see that indi- 
 viduals are always produced by evolution from 
 previous material. The seed, by means of the 
 powers with which God has endowed it, devel- 
 opes into the root, the stalk, the leaf, and finally 
 the fruit. From the egg is evolved the embryo, 
 the chick, and then the air-breathing fowl. A 
 man becomes what he is by a slow process of 
 evolution from a microscopic spherule of proto- 
 plasm, and yet this does not in the least interfere 
 with our belief that God made him. Individuals, 
 everywhere and always have been created by 
 evolution; as at the first, so still, God speaks 
 to co-operating natural causes and says — let 
 there be, and there is; it is God working, but 
 never alone; He contributes the power, but that 
 other cause uses it. 
 
 This is God's method of working in all those 
 instances where we can follow Him, and the 
 question is, did He use a different method in 
 
METHOD OF CREATION 205 
 
 those instances where we cannot follow Hinri? 
 This is His way of producing individuals, did 
 He have a different way of producing species? 
 His method has always been from the lower to 
 the higher; from the simple to the more com- 
 plex; to previous material He imparted a new 
 power, and this material thus endowed, then 
 became the cause to produce the next higher, 
 as explained in the record. When life came 
 forth, God gave to each form the power of repro- 
 duction — "after his kind;" but does that mean, 
 that kind shall be no better than before? If the 
 parent is coarse, does reproduction "after his 
 kind," mean that the offspring shall be equally 
 as coarse? if rude and ugly, the offspring shall 
 be the same? If this were the law of reproduc- 
 tion, there could be no improvement. Under 
 better conditions improvement is possible, and 
 still reproduction is "after his kind." If under 
 this law there is a possibility for improvement 
 for present individuals, why could there not 
 have been such possibility of improvement for 
 individuals of long ago, yes as far back as you 
 wish to carry thought? If that were so, it would 
 be hard to find first individuals, for the creation 
 of life would be, as the record tells us, was the 
 creation in the first three days. We could not 
 
206 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 tell when light began to be, for it was slowly 
 evolved from vibrating matter, we could not 
 tell when the firmament began to be, for the ex- 
 panse was slowly evolved from the cloud ; we 
 could not tell when dry land began to be, be- 
 cause the top of earth's wrinkles would appear 
 above the water and the next moment be over- 
 flowed again; now it would be above the tide, 
 and now be beneath the tide. Now if this same 
 method of evolution which prevailed on the first 
 three creative days, prevailed also during the last 
 three days, then all individuals which are now 
 conveniently classed together to form species 
 began alike, viz, by a slow process of evolution. 
 In the first three days of creation, the phrase — 
 "and God said — let there be," science has ex- 
 plained, mean that God made nature a co-operat- 
 ing cause, and these two causes, the super- 
 natural and the natural, produced all the results. 
 In the last three days, where the record tells of 
 life, we find the same phrase, but does it mean 
 there the reverse of what it meant before? 
 There it meant that God produced light, firma- 
 ment, dry land by means of a co-operating cause ; 
 here can the same phrase mean that God pro- 
 duced vegetation and animals, through all the 
 ascending grades, without a cooperating cause ? 
 
METHOD OF CREATION 207 
 
 In the first half of creation God adopted one 
 method, but in the second half did He adopt 
 another, when both methods are described by 
 the same phrase? This would make Him the 
 God of confusion, a changeable God. 
 
 But it is time to ask — what is evolution? This 
 is a word of such bad associations, that it still 
 is dreaded, as a child dreads a chamber which 
 she has been told was haunted, even after she 
 knows there are no ghosts. "Evolution is the 
 divine method of creation, as gravitation is the 
 divine method of sustentation." God supports 
 worlds in space, not by holding them on his 
 fingers, but by tying them to each other by the 
 cables of gravity; so God creates worlds, not by 
 moulding with his own fingers, but by working 
 through natural causes. This is theistic evolution, 
 which differs from materialistic evolution, as 
 theistic philosophy differs from materialistic 
 philosophy. It will not do to deny theistic 
 evolution, any more than it will do to deny 
 theistic science. Of course there are atheistic 
 scientists, agnostic scientists and deistic scien- 
 tists; but we must not therefore conclude that 
 science cannot be theistic. There are too many 
 Christian men, who believe in a personal God, 
 a divine revelation, the divinity of Jesus Christ, 
 
208 tS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 the personality of the Holy Spirit, the efficacy of 
 prayer, but who yet believe in the creation of 
 the world after the manner of evolution; there 
 are too many of these sincere, and evangelical 
 believers, for any one to brand evolution with 
 the mark of Cain, and turn it out of the house- 
 hold of faith. 
 
 Three views of the creation of man have been 
 held; the first is that of the pious child who 
 believes that God made it of dust, just as itself 
 makes a man out of snow. The second is that 
 of Topsey,who ^says — "I wasn't made, specs I 
 growed;" this is the view of the materialist, who 
 believes that God had no hand in the making 
 of us. The third is the view of- the christian 
 evolutionist, who says — God made me, and I 
 growed too; God and nature co-operated in my 
 creation. All christians believe that the latter 
 is true of known individuals, and theistic evolu- 
 tionists believe it was also true of all individuals 
 first, last or middle. That there was a first man 
 and woman, all christians believe, for it was a 
 single man into whose nostrils God breathed 
 the breath of life, so that man became a living 
 soul; but that the body of that first man was 
 immediately formed out of the dust of the ground, 
 as the child makes its snow man, the evolution- 
 
METHOD OF CRE/ITlOh] 200 
 
 ist does not believe, "And the Lord God formed 
 man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into 
 his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a 
 living soul." But when did God form man of 
 the dust of the ground? Was it the very 
 moment before He breathed into him the breath 
 of life? Did He form man immediately of dust, 
 when all else He formed mediately? Was it 
 necessarily unorganized dust which He then took 
 up and shaped into a human form? God formed 
 my body of the dust of the ground too, but He 
 did not form it in that way; it was by a long 
 process and that not directly, but through other 
 co-operating causes. Why should it be thought 
 strange that He formed the first body into which 
 He then breathed the breath of divine life, just 
 as He has continued to form all other bodies of 
 the dust of the ground. The record does not 
 tell us of the method, but has left it to science 
 to come and interpret the ways of God in crea- 
 tion, by the study of the ways of God in preser- 
 vation, which is but another name of continued 
 creation. 
 
 The difference in the belief of an evolutionist 
 and a direct creationist, is not whether it was 
 God who created or not, but simply as to the 
 method of his creation. The latter believes that 
 
210 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC}' 
 
 God alone created each species directly, and 
 without any intermediate causes, while the 
 former believes that God proceeds in all his work 
 according to the same universal method; as He 
 creates individuals now, so He created the whole 
 race, by means of lower and co-operating causes. 
 Theistic evolution is as christian and scriptural 
 in its views, as is direct-creation; one interprets 
 God as adopting the same method in all his 
 works, the other interprets Him as adopting 
 two methods, one for the first pair of individuals, 
 and the other method for all other individuals. 
 Geology finds that whole species have been ex- 
 terminated and new ones have taken their place; 
 species have changed many times in the course 
 of geological ages, but how did they change? 
 Evolutionists say — they were transmuted; direct 
 creationists say — they were replaced. The one 
 class say — as conditions of life change, the 
 species change too, so as to correspond with the 
 new environment; those which did not change 
 had to die, but those which changed to meet the 
 new conditions lived, and so what we call new 
 species came into being. But the other class 
 of interpreters say — as one species died out,others 
 were created at once and off-hand to take their 
 place. The one say, God and Nature constantly 
 
METHOD OF CREATION 211 
 
 and consistently co-operate together to create, as 
 well as to sustain; the other say — life is contin- 
 ued on earth by the alternation of supernatural 
 and natural processes, now by the direct and 
 now by the indirect action of God; in the in- 
 troduction of the first pairs, God acted directly, 
 but in the introduction of all subsequent pairs, 
 God acted indirectly. The one say— God has 
 but one method of operation in creating new 
 species as in perpetuating them, and in replacing 
 old ones with new; the other say — God has two 
 methods of operation, and reports now to one 
 method and now to the other method, and again 
 to the first, and then again to the second. The 
 difference therefore is only as to method, not as 
 to fact. 
 
 The agency of God in evolution may be illus- 
 trated by the use of the word — manufacture. 
 Etymologically, the word means, hand-made, 
 and originally it was applicable. The f^ax was 
 sowed by hand, was reaped, hatcheled, spun, 
 and woven by hand, and the product was liter- 
 ally a manufacture. But now this product is 
 made altogether by machinery; the seed is sown 
 by machinery, reaped, cleaned, spun, and woven 
 by machinery entirely, and still we call it a man- 
 ufacture. But is the. agency of man eliminated 
 
312 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 by machinery, because linen is not now literally 
 a manufacture? Man stands now one remove 
 back from the result, but is the result any the 
 less his? Does not the machinery, by which 
 such results are secured, prove the agency of 
 man all the more, even though the result is not 
 now first-hand? Says Le Conte — "Evolution 
 not only, is not identical with materialism, but 
 to deep thinkers it has not added a feather's 
 weight to the probability or reasonableness of 
 materialism. Evolution is one thing, material- 
 ism is quite another thing; now and always, there 
 has been the alternative — theism or materialism, 
 God operating nature, or nature operating itself." 
 Says Dr. McCosh, e.x-President of Princeton 
 College — "There is, or was a widespread idea 
 that the doctrine of development is adverse to 
 religion; this has risen mainly from the circum- 
 stance that it seems to remove God altogether, 
 or at least to a greater distance from his works, 
 and this has been increased by the circumstance 
 that the theory has been turned to atheistic 
 purposes. But it must be emphatically declared 
 that we are to look on evolution, simply as the 
 method by which God works. It is forgotten 
 that when Newton proclaimed the law of gravi- 
 tation, it was urged that he thereby took from 
 
METHOD OF CREATION 213 
 
 God an important part of his works, to hand it 
 over to material mechanism. The time has now 
 come when people must judge of a supposed 
 scientific theory, not from the faith or unbelief 
 of the discoverer, but from the evidence in its 
 behalf. They will find that whatever is true is 
 also good, and will in the end be favorable to 
 religion. Because God executes his purposes 
 by agents, which it should be observed, He has 
 himself appointed, we are not therefore to argue 
 that He does not continue to act, that He does 
 not now act. God acts in his works now, quite 
 as much as He did in their original creation. The 
 effects follow, the product is evolved, because 
 He wills it, just as plants generate only when 
 there is light shining on them. I am not pre- 
 pared to prove that evolution is the best way in 
 which God could have proceeded, or that there 
 are no other ways equally good in which He acts 
 in other worlds. All that I profess to do, is to 
 show that the method is not unworthy of God; 
 that it is suited to man's nature; that it accom- 
 plishes some good end. It is to this extent 
 that I would justify the way of God to man." 
 
 But suppose now that evolution shall become 
 as thoroughly established as is gravitation, what 
 will become of the record of Moses? This 
 
214 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 chapter is not written to argue the cause of 
 evolution, but to state in the most incomplete 
 way, some of the grounds on which this view is 
 based, and to show that still there will be no 
 conflict between Revelation and Science, for the 
 record in first chapter of Genesis can easily bear 
 the interpretation which evolution would put 
 upon it. Indeed the frequent expression "and 
 God said — let be" seems to require evolution, 
 for it implies that God did not create immedi- 
 ately, but through co-operating causes; that at 
 the beginning as now, many influences conspired 
 to produce the results. There is the evolution 
 of Lamarck which is materialistic; that of Dar- 
 win which is agnostic, and that of McCosh, Le 
 Conte, Wright and many other christian thinkers, 
 which is theistic. If evolution is true, it must 
 prevail, but still our old Book cannot suffer; it 
 will but shine out with new and better meaning, 
 and its divine inspiration will be more firmly 
 established than before. Evolution itself has 
 not yet been completely evolved; the final word 
 has not been said in its defense, indeed hardly 
 more than its first word. Until it has been 
 completely wrought out, or completely over- 
 thrown, believers in the Bible can wait with 
 perfect calmness, indifferent which side shall 
 
METHOD OF CREATION 215 
 
 be victorious, for only the true can survive, 
 and the true is in perfect agreement with Reve- 
 lation. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 How long has the human race existed on the 
 earth? Upon this answer, too, there has been 
 supposed to be an irreconcilable conflict between 
 Revelation and Science. Man has lived 5509 
 years before Christ according to the Byzantine 
 era; 5 199 years according to Eusebius and Bede; 
 4004 years according to Archbishop Ussher; 3984 
 according to Kepler. On the contrary, the 
 uniformitarian school of geologists, under the 
 lead of Sir Charles Lyell, dated the origin of 
 life upon the globe back to a period of hve 
 hundred million of years, though the last, or 
 human period, would of course be far less. In 
 his first edition of the "Origin of species, "Darwin 
 estimates the time for certain erosions to have 
 taken place as jo6,662,400 years, and this he 
 regards as "a mere trifle" which can be allowed 
 for establishing his theory of the origin of species 
 through natural selection. How much of these 
 vast periods would be assigned to the human 
 
 216 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN 217 
 
 period, we do not know, but very much more 
 than that assigned by those who deduce their 
 estimates from Scripture. In his "Antiquity 
 of Man," Lyell estimates the human period at no 
 less than 224,000 years, and adds "the advent 
 of man in Europe would be sufficiently remote 
 to cause the historical period to appear quite 
 insignificant in duration, when compared to the 
 antiquity of the human race." So that there 
 would certainly be a wide difference between 
 the estimates of Biblical and scientific chronol- 
 ogists, and here we should have an irreconcilable 
 conflict if both parties read their texts correctly. 
 But again, as alvva3S, such a conflict is caused 
 by misreading the Bible on the one side, and 
 Geology on the other. Astronomy has now 
 taken up the question, and shown the estimates 
 of the earlier geologists to be greatly in error, 
 for Sir. Wm. Thompson, and Prof. Tait of Eng- 
 land, and Prof Newcombe of Washington Naval 
 Observatory, have demonstrated that the radia- 
 tion of heat from the sun is diminishing at such 
 a rate, that ten or twelve millions of years ago, 
 it must have been so hot upon the earth's sur- 
 face as to vaporize all the water, and thus render 
 the beginning of geological life impossible until 
 a much later period. Mr. Wallace, estimating 
 
IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 the time required for the deposition of the strati- 
 fied rocks, that are open to inspection on the 
 surface of the globe, finds that twenty-eight 
 million years are all the time required for the 
 formation of the whole geological strata, and of 
 course the beginning of life, must have been far 
 within that period. Mr. Prestwich and others, 
 bring all the phenomena of the Glacial period 
 within the limits of thirty or forty thousand 
 years, but the human era did not begin until 
 near the close of the Ice Age. These general 
 conclusions of later science, have thus very much 
 restricted the extravagant claims of those who 
 based their estimates on the insufficient data of 
 earlier geology. In this way, science is herself 
 lessening the gap which was supposed at first to 
 exist between its conclusions, and those based 
 on the records of Genesis. 
 
 On the other hand, a deeper study of scripture 
 has shown, that the choronology which was based 
 upon the supposition, that the genealogies of the 
 fifth and eleventh chapters of Genesis were suc- 
 cessive, is built upon sand. The problem seemed 
 very simple; here are two tables of genealogy, 
 one extending from Adam to Noah, the other 
 from Shem. the son of Noah, down to Abraham. 
 They each contain ten generations, in which, is 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN 219 
 
 given in the case of each individual the age when 
 his son was born, and how long he lived after- 
 ward. Now all that needs to be done seems to 
 be, to add these amounts together, and we shall 
 have a scripture chronology, from Adam to Abra- 
 ham, at which period authentic history dawns, 
 when' we can arrive at chronology from other 
 sources. These results would be perfectly satis- 
 factory, if we were sure that the Bible intended 
 to teach the science of chronology, while we 
 agreed at the outset that its purpose was not to 
 teach science at all. 
 
 In an elaborate article in Bibliotheca Sacra for 
 April 1890, Prof. Green of Princeton Theologial 
 Seminary says — "There is an element of uncer- 
 tainty in a computation of time which rests upon 
 genealogies, as the sacred chronology so large- 
 ly does. Who is to certify to us, that the 
 ante-diluvian and ante-Abrahamic genealogies 
 have not been condensed in the same man- 
 ner as have the post-Abrahamic? Our cur- 
 rent chronology is based upon the prima facie 
 impression of these genealogies. But if the 
 recently discovered indications of the antiquity 
 of man shall, when carefully inspected and thor- 
 oughly weighed, demonstrate all that any have 
 imagined they might demonstrate, what then.? 
 
220 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 They will simply show that the popular chronol- 
 ogy is based upon a wrong interpretation, and 
 that a select and partial register of ante-Abra- 
 hamic names, has been mistaken for a complete 
 one." Prof. Green then shows that these 
 chapters of Genesis were not intended to be 
 used, and cannot be used for the construction 
 of a chronology. Bible genealogies are fre- 
 quently abreviated by the omission of unim- 
 portant names; abridgement is the rule and not 
 the exception. The intention seems to be, not 
 so much to give a complete register, but rather 
 the line of descent, by mentioning a few princi- 
 pal names, as in Matt. i;i the whole genealogy 
 of Christ is summed up in two steps, "the gen- 
 eration of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the 
 son of Abraham." But Christ was not the im- 
 mediate son of David, nor was David the imme- 
 diate son of Abraham. From verse 2 follows a 
 more lengthy line of descent from Abraham 
 down, in which we know that several names 
 have also been omitted; they seem to have 
 served as way- marks to indicate the road of de- 
 scent, and not all the steps in it. 
 
 In I Chron. 26; 24 we read, in a list of ap- 
 pointments made by King David, that "Shebuel, 
 the son of Ghershom, the son of Moses was ruler 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAhl 221 
 
 of the treasures;" here the genealogy of five 
 hundred years is reduced to two names. The 
 genealogy of Ezra is given in the book which 
 bears his name; but in another passage, in 
 which the same line of descent is given, it has 
 been abridged by the omission of six consecutive 
 names. In Ezra 8; 1,2 we read — "These are 
 now the chief of their fathers, and this is the 
 genealogy of them that went up with me from 
 Babylon in the reign of Artaxerxes the king. 
 Of the sons of Phineas-Gershom ; of the sons 
 of Ithamar-Daniel; of the sons of David-Hut- 
 tush." If no abridgement of the genealogy be 
 allowed, we should have a great-grand son, and 
 a grand son of Aaron, and a son of David coming 
 up with Ezra from Babylon, an event which 
 took place at least nine hundred years after the 
 birth of the first two, and five hundred years 
 after the last mentioned. The line of descent 
 of Gershom, Daniel and Hattush could only 
 have been intended, and not their complete 
 genealogy. Many other instances might be given 
 to show that there is great abridgement in the 
 genealogical lists, by the omission of unim- 
 portant names, because space would not permit 
 of a full register, which was kept in another 
 place. The idea of the Hebrew word, translated 
 
IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 — son, would be better expressed to us by being 
 translated — descendant, as in Matt. i;i "Jesus 
 Christ, the descendant of David, the descendant 
 of Abraham," 
 
 But to make the period of time from the crea- 
 tion of man to the birth of Christ, just 4004 
 years, it is necessary to suppose that Gen. 5 and 
 1 1 contain full registers of all the generations 
 that intervened. In each case there are only 
 ten names given, and that fact alone would lead 
 us to suspect that the author did not mean to 
 give a full register, for it is quite improbable that 
 there were exactly the same number of genera- 
 tions between the creation and the Flood, as were 
 between the Flood and Abraham. It is much 
 more likely that the author selected ten names 
 of representative men, simply to indicate the line 
 from Adam to Noah, and from Shem to Abra- 
 ham. The analogy of Scripture is against the 
 assumption that here a complete register is 
 given; the series seems to afford us a conspectus 
 of individual lives. They exhibit, in these 
 selected examples, the term of human life in 
 those two periods — what it was before the 
 Flood, and how it narrowed down after. But 
 to do this, a continuous genealogy was not nec- 
 essary, but only a number of specimens, the 
 
yiNTIQUlTY OF MAN 223 
 
 same in both periods, with the appropriate num- 
 bers attached. But to base a chronology upon 
 these specimen Hsts of ten each, and learn there- 
 from how long Adam lived before the Flood, 
 and how long Abraham lived after, would use 
 the record in a way that it was not intended to 
 be used, and would certainly bring us in error. 
 And then, if we insist that this chronology is 
 based upon Scripture, so that the Bible becomes 
 responsible for it, we bring on another conflict, 
 when it is proved from scientific data, that man 
 did live longer than 4004 years before Christ. 
 Dr. Green concludes "that the Scriptures furnish 
 no data for a chronological computation prior to 
 the life of Abraham, and the Mosaic records do 
 not fix, and were not intended to fix the precise 
 date either of the Flood or of the creation of 
 the world." 
 
 So that from the Scripture side, we also 
 approach the position of science, and lessen 
 the gap v/hich seemed at first to be fixed 
 between the two. So far as the Bible is con- 
 cerned, it neither contradicts nor affirms any 
 reasonable age of man upon the earth. 
 
 Historical evidence requires a longer period 
 for man, than that usually assigned in the gen- 
 erally accepted chronology. The Egyptologists 
 
224 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 Mariette and Brugsch find high civilization on 
 the banks of the Nile seven thousand years ago; 
 they would make the civilization of Assyria on 
 the Euphrates as old. Considering the length 
 of time for the languages of these and other 
 peoples then living, to have differentiated so 
 much as to make them totally distinct tongues, 
 though derived from the same stock, a conser- 
 vative estimate would require perhaps three 
 thousand years more, if we believe in the unity 
 of the race. 
 
 We find language is still changing, so that 
 the Romanse languages of Southern Europe, 
 Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, though derived 
 from the same stock, are wholly different 
 now. It requires a certain time for language 
 to change so completely as to drift entirely 
 away from another, which has come from the 
 same source. Here are the Assyrian and Egyp- 
 tian tongues, so completely changed from each 
 other seven thousand years ago, yet both came 
 from the original stock; a large allowance must 
 therefore be allowed for this change to have 
 taken place. Ten thousand years for the age of 
 man on the earth would not be too great to 
 satisfy historical demands. 
 
 But we have more exact time measures of the 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN 225 
 
 age of man on earth in geology. The earliest 
 evidence of man is found at the close of the 
 Glacial Period, in the Post Tertiary. It was 
 not very long ago, as geology counts time, that 
 a large portion of North America and of Europe 
 were covered by an ice sheet, like that which 
 still covers the interior of Greenland. As Robin- 
 son Crusoe, knew by the footprints, that there 
 was another human being beside himself on the 
 sand, so geologists can follow the course of the 
 glaciers, by the abundant prints which they have 
 left in the moraines of debris, in the isolated 
 boulders that have been carried by the ice far 
 from the place where such rocks alone appear on 
 the surface, in grooves ploughed by the moving 
 ice, and the parallel scratches which the advanc- 
 ing mass has written on the stones. From these 
 and other evidences of glacial work, we know 
 that four million square miles in this country, 
 and two millions in Europe have been covered 
 by an ice sheet at least a mile in thickness. 
 
 The southern boundary of the glaciated area 
 ran across our continent from the eastern end of 
 Long Island, through New jersey a little north 
 of Trenton, thence north westerly to a point 
 near Buffalo, thence south west through the 
 Ohio valley to Cincinnati, throwing a great 
 
226 75 MOSES SCIENTIFIC 
 
 tongue down the Mississippi far into Louisiana, 
 and from Cairo north westerly through middle 
 Dakota and Montana, and thence to the Pacific 
 coast. 
 
 Vast quantities of water poured forth from 
 this melting ice, and as the mass began to re- 
 treat under the influence of a rising temperature, 
 the water often dug out new channels, when the 
 old river beds had been filled in ; or finding itself 
 dammed up, it made new lakes, and pouring 
 forth in great freshets, it carried vast amounts 
 of sand and gravel which it deposited in embank- 
 ments or spread over new areas. 
 
 The first evidence of the existence of man on 
 the earth is in connection with the retreat of this 
 ice sheet; human remains and stone implements 
 are first found buried beneath these glacial de- 
 posits of earth and gravel. The first discovery 
 of human relics clearly connected with glacial 
 desposits in America and of the same age with 
 them, was not until 1875; up to that time the 
 age of man could be connected with the Glacial 
 Period, only by the discovered fossils of animals 
 which were known to be contemporaneous with 
 him. So that the very earliest time when we 
 can know positively that man existed, was not 
 earlier than the close of the Ice-age. If now, 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN 227 
 
 we can determine when these glacial deposits 
 were made, we shall have some definite data 
 by which to estimate the length of the human 
 period. 
 
 We have such self-registering chronometers in 
 some of the rivers which are known to have 
 begun since the ice disappeared. It will be 
 noted that the water-falls of this continent are 
 north of the southern boundary of the Ice sheet, 
 and the reason is very plain ; those rivers which 
 were pre-glacial have had time sufficient to wear 
 away their channels down to the level, and any 
 falls which might formerly have existed, have 
 long since been eroded, while post-glacial 
 streams have not yet had the time to finish their 
 work. Many of the lakes, which dot the glaci- 
 ated area, are also due to the fact that their 
 outlets have not had time enough to lower their 
 beds, sufficiently to drain off the water. Lake 
 Erie is one of those post glacial lakes, formed 
 by the damming up of the river which formerly 
 ran through a channel at its bottom, and which 
 found its outlet through the lower part of the 
 valley of Grand River in Canada, and entered 
 Lake Ontario at its western extremity. Lake 
 Michigan in pre-glacial times had its outlet to the 
 south and emptied into the Mississippi. 
 
228 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 The old outlet of Erie river becoming closed 
 by the debris deposited by the ice sheet on its 
 recession, the water found itself dammed up, 
 and rose to form the present Lake Erie, which 
 then had to find a new outlet that finally be- 
 came the Niagara river, which is wholly a post- 
 glacial stream. All who have visited Niagara, 
 will remember that the water, after leaping over 
 the falls, rushes through a deep gorge, that has 
 been cut through solid rock, until it reaches 
 Lewiston, about eight miles below. This rock 
 gorge of the Niagara, therefore is an accurate 
 chronometer by which to measure the time that 
 has elapsed since the retreat of the ice, because 
 it has been entirely cut by the action of the 
 water, since that time. All that is necessary, 
 is to ascertain the rate of recession of the falls, 
 the distance from Lewiston to its present posi- 
 tion, and divide the latter by the former, when 
 the quotient will give us the length of time that 
 this post-glacial stream has continued to flow. 
 We find that the falls are slowly wearing back- 
 ward, and when Sir Charles Lyell visited Niagara 
 with State Geologist Hall in 1841, they estimated 
 that the rate of recession could not be greater 
 than one foot a year, which would make the time 
 required about thirty-five thousand years. Yet 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN 229 
 
 Lyell thought this rate of recession was probably 
 three times too large, so that he favored extending 
 the time to one hundred thousand years. Before 
 this, the eminent French geologist Desor, had 
 estimated that the recession could not have been 
 more than a foot a century, which would throw 
 the beginning of the gorge back more than three 
 million years. But these were only guesses of 
 eminent men, that were not based on well ascer- 
 tained facts. Soon after. Prof. Hall had a trig- 
 onometrical survey made of the falls; since then, 
 three other surveys have been made, from which 
 it is found that the rate of recession has been 
 about two and a half feet per year for the last 
 forty-five years. But in the central parts of the 
 curve, where the water is deepest, the Horseshoe 
 Fall has retreated at the rate of more than 
 twenty feet per year, during the last eleven 
 years. If now, we suppose that the falls have 
 been worn backward at a uniform rate since the 
 Niagara river first began to flow, the whole 
 period cannot be more than seven thousand 
 years. But there are evidences to show that 
 the waters of Lake Erie did not immediately 
 begin their work of cutting a channel through 
 the Niagara, so that a longer period must be 
 allowed since the foot of the ice sheet melted 
 
330 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 away from that region. Prof. Wright estimates 
 that three thousand years more, will fully cover 
 all the conditions, so that the close of the glacial 
 period cannot be more distant than about ten 
 thousand years. 
 
 A second noteworthy glacial chronometer is 
 found in the gorge of the Mississippi River, ex- 
 tending from the Falls of St. Anthony, at Min- 
 neapolis, to its jimction with the pre-glacial 
 trough of the old Mississippi, at Fort Snelling, 
 a distance of about seven miles. The known 
 rate of recession of the falls, would give the total 
 length of time required for the formation of the 
 gorge, of a little less than eight thousand years, 
 or about the same as that required for the for- 
 mation of the Niagara gorge. The same impres- 
 sion of recent age is made by examination of the 
 outlets of almost any of the lakes which stud 
 the glaciated area; the time during which this 
 process of lowering the outlets has been going 
 on, cannot have been many thousand years. 
 The same impression is also made by the study 
 of the vallies that have been dug out by post- 
 glacial streams. The streams constantly carry 
 away the earth from their banks and bottoms 
 and tend to enlarge their troughs. If we meas- 
 ure the cubical contents of these eroded troughs, 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN 231 
 
 and divide the amount by the average amount 
 of transported sediment which they carry every 
 year to the sea, we shall have again nearly the 
 same results obtained from the study of the 
 recession of post-glacial water-falls. Calcula- 
 tions based upon the amount of sediment de- 
 posited since the retreat of the ice-sheet point to 
 a like moderate conclusion. 
 
 From these and similar investigations, 
 that have been carried on since geology has 
 been able to ascertain rigid facts, upon 
 which to base its estimates, science has very 
 m ich modified its conclusions, which in for- 
 mer years it had so hastily made, especially 
 under the lead of men, who would very much 
 like to bring the Bible into discredit. For 
 while, we have found that estimates of time 
 based upon genealogical lists, which it is clearly 
 seen could not have been meant to be complete, 
 must be incorrect, yet the study of the Bible 
 certainly gives the impression that the human 
 period upon the earth has not been long. While 
 the extension of the time to ten or even twelve 
 thousand years, if science should require so 
 much, would spoil the fancies of many theorists, 
 who like to build airy castles out of the Bible, 
 yet such an amount of time would not at all 
 
232 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 conflict with anything that the Bible itself has 
 to say, for the reason that it says simply nothing 
 at all. The ten selected names of men who 
 lived before the Flood, which seem to have been 
 given to show the length of human life then, 
 and the ten selected from those who lived after, 
 in whose time human life had greatly narrowed 
 — these would not prohibit our supposing ten 
 times ten generations in both periods, if it were 
 necessary, so that there certainly cannot be 
 made a conflict between Revelation and Science 
 on the length of the human period, because 
 Revelation declines to say anything, but leaves 
 this to her sister and interpreter to determine, 
 while she herself hastens to speak of more im- 
 portant things of which science can tell us 
 nothing. 
 
 Again the two have approached each other. 
 The wide chasm which seemed to yavv'n between 
 them has entirely disappeared, because scientists 
 now acknowledge that they mis-read nature in 
 making the human period too great; and Bible 
 students acknowledge that they mis-read the 
 inspired record when they made the human 
 period too small. If we assign from seven to 
 ten thousand years to the human period both 
 revelation and science will not withhold their 
 consent. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 "The word of the Lord is tried," says the 
 Psalmist; through the centuries it has been 
 tested, so that it comes into our hands with an 
 authentication which it did not bring to the gen- 
 erations before us. There are four great and 
 rigorous tests to which it has been subjected, 
 out of which it has come with a vast increase of 
 authority. The first test which the Bible has 
 successfully passed is — time. Nothing but truth 
 lasts; everything materiable is perishable. "The 
 everlasting mountains" is only a figure of speech, 
 for geology shows that the mountains change 
 and pass away. But of all things, the most 
 perishable are the creation of men; literature is 
 ephemeral and lasts but for a day. Of the three 
 millions of volumes in the library of Paris, only 
 a few thousand are what may be said to be alive, 
 while the vast numbers are buried in the dust 
 of oblivion, and are mouldy with neglect. But 
 
 contrary to the universal law, time has but 
 
 233 
 
231 /5 MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 polished the Bible as the ceaseless waves polish 
 the pebbles, and it is to-day brighter and more 
 resplendent than it has been in all the thirty- 
 five centuries of its existence. It has never been 
 so universally studied, never so widely circulated, 
 and never so generally accepted as now. Time 
 has tested it and proved it true. 
 
 The second great test by which the Bible has 
 been tried is — experience. "Are these things 
 so?" men ask. The answer is — "Come and see." 
 "O, taste and see; "Handle me and see!" Like 
 a ready reference volume of medical practice for 
 home use, the Bible makes certain prescriptions 
 for the ills of human life, the correctness of which 
 can be proved only by experience. It promises 
 relief from the sense of guilt and deliverance 
 from the power of sin; it offers perfect peace and 
 fullness of joy; it professes to have a secret by 
 which life can be lived under unfavorable condi- 
 tions, and yet can be serene and happy ; it claims 
 to be able to tell us how perfect mastery may 
 be obtained over self, victory over temptation, 
 and power over the world; it furnishes an equip- 
 ment for service, so that one who tried it, ex- 
 claimed— "I can do all things through Christ 
 which strengtheneth me;" it professes to open 
 a means of communication between God and 
 
CONCLUSION 235 
 
 man by prayer, so that our requests may be 
 known unto Him, and direct answers shall come 
 to us; it tells of divine help for human infirmi- 
 ties by an indwelling Spirit, so that a new life 
 shall result, and divine fruits shall be produced; 
 it promises that all things shall be so directed 
 that individual sanctification shall follow, and 
 men shall be more and more delivered from the 
 evil, and made meet for the inheritance of the 
 saints in light. It promises much more than 
 this, but all of these are practical and can be 
 experienced in this life ; these are as much within 
 the range of experiment as anything material 
 and visible. Multitudes of men have accepted 
 the Bible's challenge to "taste and see;" they 
 have complied with the necessary conditions, 
 and their universal testimony is that in all these 
 respects, it is true. 
 
 But just here, men who are not themselves 
 willing to comply with the prescribed conditions, 
 yet complain that the testimony of christians is 
 not trustworthy, because that testimony does not 
 agree with their own experience: they have not 
 themselves found it so. But just as well might 
 laymen refuse the testimony of a chemical expert, 
 who declares that water is composed of two parts 
 of hydrogen and one part of oxygen. Ah, but 
 
236 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC? 
 
 argues the objector, hydrogen and oxygen are 
 gases, whereas water is not a gas but a fluid; 
 your testimony contradicts my experience. The 
 answer is — your experience has not been under 
 proper conditions. 
 
 On all other points which are to be established 
 by testimony, we rely most upon the testimony 
 of experts. If the subject be the effect of 
 medicine, we ask for the testimony oti medical 
 experts; if it be electrical, we require the testi- 
 mony of electrical experts. Why then should 
 we not most rely upon the testimony of spiritual 
 experts, where the subject is a spiritual one.^ 
 These matters of which the Bible mostly speaks 
 are spiritual; if we seek for proof of its trust- 
 worthiness, we should ask, not of those who have 
 had no experience in the matter, but of those 
 whose experience has been so large that they 
 may be called spiritual experts. There are 
 thousands of these now in the world; millions 
 have already passed away, who have put the 
 Bible to a practical test on these spiritual things, 
 and they unanimously testify that it is true. 
 
 The third test is history. Here too the Bible 
 is more and more vindicated; as ancient history, 
 archaeology, ethnology, the study of comparative 
 languages, lay their results before us, we find 
 
CONCLUSION 237 
 
 this record more abundantly confirmed. Many 
 a statement of the Bible has been rejected as 
 untrue by historical students in the past, and 
 has been adduced as proof of its error, but it 
 has now been completely confirmed, as ancient 
 monuments have been exhumed, rolls and tablets 
 have been deciphered, historic places have been 
 unearthed, and mummies have come forth from 
 their long forgotten tombs with scrolls in their 
 withered hands. Numerous and wonderful 
 instances could be cited, if this were the proper 
 place. The vigorous test to which history has 
 subjected the Book, has only the more clearly 
 disclosed its truthfulness. 
 
 And the fourth test is that produced by 
 modern science. This is a search light which 
 could be thrown upon the "word of the Lord" 
 only in these last days. Geology is a compara- 
 tively new science; biology is still in its infancy; 
 ethnology, archaeology, cosmogony, comparative 
 languages and religions are all of the last few 
 decades. But as this electric light is turned on 
 the diirk places of the Bible, these do not prove 
 to be caverns whence superstition drew myth 
 and fable, but they are found to be deep mines, 
 where are found rare and beautiful jewels. And 
 as the sun rises higher in our intellectual 
 
238 IS MOSES SCIENTIFIC.^ 
 
 heavens, the fog banks are rolled back, and what 
 seemed frowning and hostile battlements, where 
 revelation was entrenched on the one side and 
 science on the other, are now seen to be parts 
 of the same great mountain mass of truth, 
 touched and gilded by the light of heaven. The 
 mercy of the Bible and the truth of science 
 have met together; they have looked each other 
 in the face and found that they were daughters 
 of the same great Father; the righteousness 
 brought in the hand of the Bible, and the peace 
 brought in the hand of science, have kissed each 
 other. 
 
 No longer with the jealousy and petulance of 
 ignorance, keeping each her own book to herself. 
 Revelation and Science now, like two loving and 
 beautiful sisters, sit down together, and study 
 their books together, and ask each other's aid. 
 Revelation turns over the leaves of the Bible 
 and asks Science to help interpret its teachings 
 to men; and Science turns over the rocky leaves 
 of Nature, and when she has deciphered the 
 hieroglyphics which the divine finger has written 
 upon them, she is surprised and rejoices, when 
 revelation shows that they are but pictured illus- 
 trations of the same truths contained in the 
 written word. 
 
CONCLUSION 239 
 
 By time, by experience, by history, by science, 
 the Word of the Lord has been tried, and the 
 results have been for its confirmation. But the 
 work is not yet all done. There remain more 
 difficulties to be explained, more seeming con- 
 flicts to be harmonized. If we shall not see it 
 all accomplished in our day, we will not with- 
 hold our faith. So much has been done already, 
 that we cannot but expect that the good w^ork 
 will go on; more light will break forth from the 
 written word, and more light will break forth 
 from the material word of God. But all light, 
 from whatever source is one. The results thus 
 far are all in the same direction, and we cannot 
 but believe that they will continue in that same 
 direction for all future time. "Lord, I believe, 
 help Thou mine unbelief." Upon the truth of 
 the written word of the Lord, we are willing to 
 build our hope for eternity, and we "know that 
 we shall not be ashamed," 
 
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 thrills with the life which the Master Himself has imparted to it. It will be a 
 v/elcome addition to Missionary literature. 
 
 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS. By Rev, Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. 
 Cloth, $1.25 ; paper, 35c. 
 
 " We do not hesitate to say that this book is the most purposeful, earnest and 
 intelligent review of the mission work and field which has ever been given to the 
 Church." — Christian Statesman. 
 
 MEDICAL MISSIONS. Their Place and Power. By John Lowe, 
 F. R. C. S. E., Secretary of the Edinburgh Medical Mission Society. 
 12mo., 308 pages, cloth, |1.50. 
 
 "This book contains an exhaustive account of the benefits that may, and in 
 point of fact do, accrue from tlie use of the medical art as a Christian agency. Mr. 
 Lowe is eminently qualified to instruct us in this matter, having himself been so 
 long engaged in the same field." — Prom Introduction by Sir William, Muir. 
 
 ONCE HINDU : NOW CHRISTIAN. The early life of Baba 
 Padmanji. Translated from the Marathi. Edited by J. Murray Mit- 
 chell, M. A,, LLD. 12mo., 155 pages, with appendix. Cloth, 75c. 
 
 " A more instructive or more interesting narrative of a human soul, once held 
 firmly in the grip of oriental superstition, idolatry and caste, gradually emerging 
 into the light, liberty and peace of a regenerate child of God, does not often come 
 to hand." — Missionary Herald. 
 
 AN INTENSE LIFE. By George F. Herrick. A sketch of the life 
 and work of Rev. Andrew T Prattt, M.D., Missionary of the A. B. 
 C. F. M., iu Turkey, 1832-1372. 16mo., cloth, 50c 
 
 NEW YORK. : : Flctiiing H._ReDell Company : : cHiCAGo. 
 
Important Missionary Publications 
 
 {Continued.') 
 
 EVERY-DAY LIFE IN SOUTH INDIA, or, the Story of Coopoo- 
 swamev. An Autobiography. With fine engravii^gs bv E. Whym- 
 per. 12mo., cloth, $100. 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF INDIA. Written for children by one of 
 
 their friends. Illustrations and map. Small 4to , cloth, |1,25. 
 
 "These are gooil books for tlie Sunday-.Scliool Library, and will help young 
 people in missionary societies who desire to have an intelligrept idea of the people 
 in India whom they are sending their money and their missionaries to converi." — 
 Missionary Herald. 
 
 HINDUISM, PAST AND PRESENT. With an account of recent 
 Hindu reformers, and a brief comparison between Hinduism and 
 Christianity. By J. Murray Mitchell, M.A., LLiD. 12mo., cloth, 
 $1.60. 
 
 " A praiseworthy attempt to present a popular view of a vast and important 
 ubject. " — Saturday Review. 
 
 GOSPEL ETHNOLOGY. With illustrations. By S. R. Paterson, 
 F. G. S. 12mo, cloth., $1.00. 
 
 " The first attempt to treat this subject from a thorough-gfiing scientific stand- 
 point. A very powerful argument for the truth of Christianity. ''—English Church- 
 man. 
 
 " A book to refer to for information not easily to be o')tained otherwise. — 
 Church Missionary InleUigencer. 
 
 NATIVE LIFE IN SOUTH INDIA. Being sketches of the social 
 
 and religious characteristics of the Hindus. By the Kcv. Henry 
 
 Rice. With many illustrations from native sketches. 12mo., cloth 
 
 boards, $1.00. 
 
 "Those who have heard >Ir. Rice's missionary addressed Will be prepared to 
 
 hear that this is afascinating: book." — Life and Work. 
 
 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS IN CHINA. Gleaninjr? ^som the writ- 
 ings and speaches of many workeis. By Arnold Foster, B.A., 
 London Missionary, Hankow. With map of China. 12iuo., cloth, 
 $1.00. 
 
 AMONG THE MONGOLS. By Rev. James Gilroour, M.A., London 
 Mission, Peking. Numerous engravings liom photographs and 
 native sketches. 12mo., gilt edges, cloth, $1.00. 
 'The newness and value of the book consists solely in Vs Defof ouality, that 
 
 when you have read it you know, and will never forget, all Mr. CiiJiucir kiiowa 
 
 and tells of how Mongols live." — Spectator. 
 
 EVERY-DAY LIFE IN CHINA, or, Scenes .alon? River iwd Road 
 in the Celestial Empire. By Edwin J. Dukes. Illustratioue from 
 the author's sketches. 12mo., with embellished cover, $2.00. 
 That China is a mysterious problem to all who interest themselves in its -^faira 
 is the only e.tcuse for offering another liook on the .'^uhjcct. 
 
 NEW YORK. ;; Fleming H. Reucll Company ;: cHici.«Q. 
 
Popular Missionary Biographies. 
 
 i2mo, i6o pages. Fully illustrated; cloth extra, 75 cents each 
 
 S.ev. C. H. Spurgeon, 
 
 jrrites : 
 
 " Crowded with facts 
 that both interest and in- 
 spire, we can conceive of 
 no better plan to spread 
 the Missionary spirit than 
 the multiplying of such 
 biographies; and we 
 would specially commend 
 this series to those who 
 have the management of 
 libraries and selection of 
 prizes in our Sunday 
 Schools." 
 
 From The Missionary 
 H eta Id ; 
 
 "\Ve commended this 
 series in our last issue, 
 and a further examina- 
 tion leads us to renew our 
 commendation, and to 
 urge the placing of this 
 series of missionary books 
 in ail our Sabbath-school 
 libraries. 
 
 These books are hand- 
 somely printed and bound 
 and are beautifully illus- 
 trated, and we are confi- 
 dent that they will prove 
 attractive to all young 
 people." 
 
 SAMUEL CROWTHER, the Slave Boy v/ho became Bishop of 
 
 the Niger. By Jesse Page, author of " Bishop Patterson." 
 THOMAS J. COMBER, Missionary Pioneer to the Congo. By 
 
 Rev. J. B. Myers, Association Secretary Baptist Missionary Society. 
 BISHOP PATTESON, the Martyr of Melanesia. By Jesse Page. 
 GRIFFITH JOHN, Founder of the Hankow Mission, CentraX 
 
 China. By Wm. Robson, of the London Missionary Society. 
 ROBERT MORRISON, the Pioneer of Chinese Missions. By 
 
 Wm. J, TowNSEND, Sec, Methodist New Connexion Missionary Soc'y. 
 
 ROBERT MOFFAT, the Missionary Hero of Kuruman. By David 
 J. Dkane, author of " Martin Luther, the Reformer," etc. 
 
 WILLIAM CAREY, the Shoemaker who became a Missionary. 
 
 By Rev. J. B. Myers, Association Secretary Baptist Missionary Society. 
 JAMES CHALMERS, Missionary and Explorer of Rarotonga 
 
 and New Guinea. By Wm. Robson, of the London Missionary Soc'y. 
 MISSIONARY LADIES IN FOREIGN LANDS. By Mrs. E. R. 
 
 Pilman, author of " Heroines of the Mission Fields," etc. 
 JAMES CALVERT; or. From Dark to Dawn in Fiji. 
 JOHN WILLIAMS, the Martyr of Erromanga. By Rev. James 
 
 J. Ellis. 
 
 UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. 
 
 JOHN BRIGHT, the Man of the People. By JesSe Page, author of 
 
 " Bishop Patteson," " Samuel Crowther," etc. 
 HENRY M, STANLEY, the African Explorer. By Arthur Monte- 
 
 FiORE, F.R.G.S. Brought down to 1889. 
 DAVID LIVINGSTON, his Labors and his Legacy. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 148-1^0 Madison Street. 
 
 . Flemiiig H. MbII Co. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 112 Fifth Ave., near i6'.h. 
 
M»ni /•r a Hat 0/ contents of entire a«ri«t. 
 
 A L,IBRARY or CRITICAL^ I^BARNING. 
 
 \jry^k^9yi9 j<^yR£7^3 
 
 'KlStKl HEStlf fUESElrt mi* 'BEEHIlPlifStHM hftCNl.'i'BtSljPliESf M PR[S[l(l' 
 DAY DM 'day JJAY BA.y:i DAY^I DAY ; DAY i DAY l DAY 
 
 liVOL- VOLfOL VOL lol- |oL JVOL mW^V bl I 
 
 '^ i f'li lui I'lvfv'ivi-piilviu :ix IX'^I 
 
 LIUING PAPERS 
 
 ON PRESENT DAY THEMES. 
 
 A SCRIES OFTEN VOLUMES COVERING A WIDE RANGE OF SUBJECTS C^ 
 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE, DOCTRINE AND MORALS. 
 
 We wish to place this set of hooks in the library of every thoughtfvl 
 minister. 
 
 The set cannot but be desired as soon as their worth is known 
 
 The subjects treated are the leading topics of the day, and the writers 
 are acknowledged authorities on the particular themes discussed. 
 
 Note the remarkable list of names included atnong the contributors. 
 
 Pbinoipal Caiens, 
 Rev. C. a. Row. 
 W. G. Blaokie, D.D. 
 
 LL.D., 
 Pekbendaey Row, M.A., 
 Rkt. Noah Poeteb, D.D., 
 Canon Rawlinson, 
 H. R. Pattison, F.G.S., 
 Db. Fbiedeich Pfaff. 
 Deam of Cantebbuey, 
 Henet Wage, D.D., 
 Ret. W. F. Wilkinson, M.A.. 
 James Leqge, LL.D., 
 Ret. W. G. Elmslie, M.A., 
 Dean of Chestee, 
 J. MuBEAY Mitchell, LL.D.. 
 F. Godet, D.D., 
 Ettstaoe p. Condeb, M.A., D.D., 
 
 Ret. James Iveeaoh, M.A., 
 
 A. H. 8AYCE, M.A., 
 
 Rev. J. Radfoed Thomson, M.A., 
 
 Rev. William Aethuu, 
 
 Sib W. Mttib, 
 
 Rev. a. B. Beuce, D.D., 
 
 ALEXANDEii Maoalisteb, M.A., M.D.. 
 
 Rev. G. F. Macleab J).D.. 
 
 Rev. J. Stoughton, D.D., 
 
 Rev. R. MoCheyne Edgae, M.A.. 
 
 Rev. John C.^iens, D.D., 
 
 Sib J. WiLLi.\M Dawson, F.R.S., 
 
 Rev. W. 8. Lewis, M.A.. 
 
 Rev. John Kelly, 
 
 Rev. M. Kaufmann, M.A., 
 
 '^ "ON GlBDLBSTONE, 
 
 X*.. i others. 
 
 Can you in any other shape add to your library so much valuable 
 material with so small an expenditure? 
 
 These have until lately been sold at $1.25 per vol., $12.50 per set. 
 The price has now been reduced to $10.00 per set, and we make the 
 following 
 
 Special Offer, viz. : We will send this remarkable set of books to 
 any minister for the special net price of $7.50 Per Sct. 
 
 CHICAGO : 
 
 148-150 Madison Street. 
 
 Flemii]g H. I^eVell Co. . 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 II Fifth Ave., near 16th. 
 
Popular Helps for Pulpit and Platform. 
 
 SpurgeOn's Sermon Notes. Vol. l, Genesis to Proverbs. $1.00. Vol. 2, 
 JEcelesiastes to Malachi, $1.00. Vol. 3, Matthew to Acts, $1.00, 
 Vol. 4, Romans to Revelations, $1.00. 
 
 "It is a rare treat to g-et into the study and as it were, behind the scenes with a 
 great man like Charles Spurgeon. In these analyses, thorough and elaborate as they 
 are, one discovers the method of the Tabernacle preacher. Each of the sermon 
 outlines have an accompaniment of apt illustrations arid side-lights."— 5/a«c/ar</. 
 
 "Every paragraph opens a mine of riches." — Interior. 
 
 EIGHTH EDITION. 
 
 The Prayermee-ting and its Improvement. By Rev. L. O. Thompson." 
 
 12 mo; cloth, $1.25. 
 
 "Most heartily do we wish this work a wide circulation, both among pastors and 
 people, and we hope it mav do much towards the lifting of the prayer-meeting into 
 that higher place which xt ought to hold among the grand instrumentalities in the 
 kingdom of the Master." — Congre.gationalist. 
 
 "Mr. Thompson says some capital things in a telling manner, and, as his pages 
 are full of fire and gunpowder, v/e hope certain old, worn-out things among us will be 
 exploded, and good things set on fire. This is so good a book that we wish we could 
 afford to g'ive a copy of it to every young minister." — C. H, Spurgeon. 
 
 Books of Illustration, Anecdote, Etc., for Teachers and Preachers. 
 
 Seed Corn for the Sower. Compiled by Rev. C. Perrin, Ph. D. 12 
 
 mo; cloth, ^1.50. 
 
 No public speaker need be reminded of the effective power of an apt illustration or 
 the difficulty of obtaining such as are fresh and to the point. "Seed Corn" consists of 
 the material from a working pastor's note book, gathered during a ministry of over a 
 quarter of a century. 
 
 "To teachers and all engaged in Bible instruction, it will prove a volume of great 
 help and usefulness and furnish ready to their hand many a nail with which to fasten in 
 a sure place the truths they may desire to drive home." — Christian at Work. 
 
 Feathers for Arrows. By Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. 12 mo; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 A choicer collection of illustrations we do not know. Mr. Spurgeon has few 
 equals in the choice and use of effective illustration matter. 
 
 SpurgeOn's Gems. Being a collection of extracts, pointed, brilliant and 
 effective, from the works; of Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. 12 mo; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 Gleanings Among the Sheaves. By Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. 16 mo, 
 cloth, 60 cents. 
 Full ripe ears are these if they are but "gleanings." 
 
 Scripture Itself the Illustrator. By Rev. G. S. Bowes. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 Information and Illustration for Sermons and Addresses. By Rev. 
 
 G. S. Bowes. Cloth, $1,25, 
 
 Two well known and most helpful books of illustration. 
 
 NEW YORK. Fleming H. Revell Company, cmcAGa 
 
^>^: 
 
 
 
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