in detail, but are opposed to
the central idea on which it appears to be based.
There must be some position from which the reconcilers of science and
Genesis will not retreat, some central idea the maintenance of which is
vital and its refutation fatal. Even if they now allow that the words "the
evening and the morning" have not the least reference to a natural day,
but mean a period of any number of millions of years that may be
necessary; even if they are driven to admit that the word "creation,"
which so many millions of pious Jews and Christians have held, and
still hold, to mean a sudden act of the Deity, signifies a process of
gradual evolution of one species from another, extending through
immeasurable time; even if they are willing to grant that the asserted
coincidence of the order of Nature with the "fourfold order" ascribed to
Genesis is an obvious error instead of an established truth; they are
surely prepared to make a last stand upon the conception which
underlies the whole, and which constitutes the essence of Mr.
Gladstone's "fourfold division, set forth in an orderly succession of
times." It is, that the animal species which compose the
water-population, the air- population, and the land-population
respectively, originated during three distinct and successive periods of
time, and only during those periods of time.
This statement appears to me to be the interpretation of Genesis which
Mr. Gladstone supports, reduced to its simplest expression. "Period of
time" is substituted for "day"; "originated" is substituted for "created";
and "any order required" for that adopted by Mr. Gladstone. It is
necessary to make this proviso, for if "day" may mean a few million
years, and "creation" may mean evolution, then it is obvious that the
order (1) water-population, (2) air-population, (3) land- population,
may also mean (1) water-population, (2) land- population, (3)
air-population; and it would be unkind to bind down the reconcilers to
this detail when one has parted with so many others to oblige them.
But even this sublimated essence of the pentateuchal doctrine (if it be
such) remains as discordant with natural science as ever.
It is not true that the species composing any one of the three
populations originated during any one of three successive periods of
time, and not at any other of these.
Undoubtedly, it is in the highest degree probable that animal life
appeared first under aquatic conditions; that terrestrial forms appeared
later, and flying animals only after land animals; but it is, at the same
time, testified by all the evidence we possess, that the great majority, if
not the whole, of the primordial species of each division have long
since died out and have been replaced by a vast succession of new
forms. Hundreds of thousands of animal species, as distinct as those
which now compose our water, land, and air-populations, have come
into existence and died out again, throughout the aeons of geological
time which separate us from the lower Palaeozoic epoch, when, as I
have pointed out, our present evidence of the existence of such distinct
populations commences. If the species of animals have all been
separately created, then it follows that hundreds of thousands of acts of
creative energy have occurred, at intervals, throughout the whole time
recorded by the fossiliferous rocks; and, during the greater part of that
time, the "creation" of the members of the water, land, and
air-populations must have gone on contemporaneously.
If we represent the water, land, and air-populations by a, b, and
c respectively, and take vertical succession on the page to
indicate order in time, then the following schemes will roughly shadow
forth the contrast I have been endeavouring to explain:
Genesis (as interpreted by Nature (as interpreted by Mr. Gladstone).
natural science). b b b c1 a3 b2 c c c c a2 b1 a a a b a1 b a a a
So far as I can see, there is only one resource left for those modern
representatives of Sisyphus, the reconcilers of Genesis with science;
and it has the advantage of being founded on a perfectly legitimate
appeal to our ignorance. It has been seen that, on any interpretation of
the terms water-population and land-population, it must be admitted
that invertebrate representatives of these populations existed during the
lower Palaeozoic epoch. No evolutionist can hesitate to admit that other
land animals (and possibly vertebrates among them) may have existed
during that time, of the history of which we know so little; and, further,
that scorpions are animals of such high organisation that it is highly
probable their existence indicates that of a long antecedent
land-population of a similar character.
Then, since the land-population is said not to have been created until
the sixth day, it necessarily follows
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