Christianity need fear nothing from the advance of science; on the contrary it will always derive fresh confirmation from every accession of philosophic truth, and acquire greater splendour and illustration from every ray of light which can thus be shed upon it. Each seeming attack may overthrow some fallacy, either of philosophy or biblical interpretation, but the simple truth as it is in Jesus is bettered by the riddance, and stands out only the more majestically by the change.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE RETROSPECTIVE APOCALYPSE OF MOSES.

WHEN geology was first becoming a science, men were startled at its revelations, and many thought that Scripture had at length been proved untrue. The Mosaic account of creation seemed not only to be superseded, but actually to have met a complete contradiction in its most important assertion, viz., the time occupied in the creation of the universe. If there be one feature more than another which distinguishes the Bible testimony regarding it, it is this, that in six days God created the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh; and it is upon this point also that geology gives its most emphatic and most characteristic testimony, affirming that the creation of the world occupied a length of time so great, that it must be measured not by days, but (if it can be measured at all) by thousands of years.

So complete and so decided seemed the contradiction, that many religious men at once abandoned all hope of reconciliation, and choosing their side, did not hesitate to affirm that geology was a fallacy, and its inductions false. They cut the gordian knot, because they despaired of ever solving it. This class of theologians was never very large, and at the present day is very nearly extinct. Christian philosophers at once perceived, that such a defence was nothing more than an unconditional surrender of the

Divine authority of Scripture, and various explanations were offered to account for the apparent contradiction.

The first and most successful was the interpretation given to the word "day" in the Mosaic narrative, which was held to mean, not a period of twenty-four hours, but a period of indefinite extent, stretching, it may be, to a thousand years; and then it was supposed that all the incidents of the Mosaic narrative would be found to harmonise with the discoveries of geology. And, indeed, at first it did appear as if such would have been the case, and that the time would come when we should be able to mark off in our geologic maps the various formations of the different days. More accurate investigation, however, proved this theory to be false; and although there was a wonderful coincidence in the general features of the organic progression in the order of creation, in the Mosaic and the geologic cosmogony, still it was found that they did not altogether coincide. The periods of creation, as marked in the geologic history, were not so much contributions to a progressive system of zoology, as renewed and enlarged creations of all kinds, consequent on the destruction or exhaustion of those which preceded them. For example, instead of finding that at one period there were plants but no fishes, and then plants and fishes but no quadrupeds, we find that each successive era has its own plants, its own fishes, and latterly its own quadrupeds; and although, no doubt, we do find that there is some degree of increase in the development of organic life in the different eras, very much like what is represented in Genesis, still the mere substitution of an indefinite period of time for a day of twenty-four hours will not transform the Mosaic narrative into an accurate representation of the creation of all things.

Another and more cautious theory has been adopted by another class of philosophical interpreters, who concede to the geologist all that he does or may yet demand in regard to the creation or creations of the world before Adam; but fixing on the present conditions of the earth, as the creation of which Moses wrote, they assert that all that is written in Genesis is literally true, and that the six successive days of creation found the earth in a state of ruin consequent on some great natural catastrophe, which not only extinguished all vegetable and animal life of previous creations, but so affected the very ocean and atmosphere as to produce a watery chaos, such as would be described by these words, "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

Until we have found the true key to the Mosaic account of creation, this probably is a most convenient answer with which to silence the infidel who would insist on an immediate solution, which certainly we are not bound to give him; at the same time, it is not very satisfactory to the Bible student; for, apart from other difficulties, it has this objection, that the Mosaic narrative ceases to be an account of creation as we understand it. It describes the origin, not of the earth, far less the heavens, but merely of its present tenantry. To secure a literal interpretation in one particular, it is not satisfactory to sacrifice not only the literal in every other, but even the grand and primary meaning of the entire text; for if those passages of Scripture, in which the words six days occur in connexion with creation, do not assert the creation of the whole universe, then is Scripture silent on the subject, and, what is more, language is incapable of asserting that God is its Creator.

The fundamental error appears to lie in expecting a scientific, or even a historic explanation of cosmogony in

an inspired revelation. They who require or expect in Genesis a treatise on geology will be equally disappointed with those who expect a book of history in the Revelation of St John. Scripture avoids giving any assistance either in art or science; and we have already shewn that this constitutes one of those grand distinctive features which give evidence of the divinity of its origin. Infidels acknowledge that its ethical system is so perfect that it was obviously written by men far in advance of their age; but if so, why did these men rise so far above their contemporaries, and yet make no other discoveries of a more scientific kind? How did their eagle-glance penetrate so far into futurity, and descry with so accurate an appreciation facts and principles in moral and intellectual philosophy, which thousands of years afterwards were still undiscovered and unknown to the philosophers of Greece and Rome, and only in the present day are beginning to be recognised as something responsive to the very nature of our constitution both in aptitude and power? How is it that such giant minds should fail to discover a single truth in science, or aid the toils of their brother man by one useful invention? To the Christian the answer is easy. Scripture is addressed to men of all ages, and was not intended to supersede philosophical inquiry. If it did make revelations in physical science, where would they begin, and where would they end? A volume as large as the Bible would not have brought the Israelites abreast of the present generation, and after it had done so, of what further use would it have been to us? It was necessary therefore to speak the language of current knowledge only; and it was not expedient that Moses should make a contribution to geology, any more than he should to astronomy or chemistry. It did indeed become necessary