Page:Genesis I-II- (IA genesisiii00grot).pdf/18

8 the fatal error of believing that our knowledge in these branches does not contradict Genesis or that a reconciliation is possible. But with Biology the struggle is now on, and before people will generally admit, that here too development reigns, that there is not necessarily anything more miraculous in the first appearance of life on this globe than in the appearance of a rock-formation, there will be much disputing, in which the Church and the social state must both suffer. And here too it is possible that the same mistake may arise, and the words of Genesis are taken to be elastic to fit all discoveries, and that Bible science, in matters of natural history at least, is at the bottom true and inspired, only we did not understand it. Many like contradictions have already offered themselves in human experience. It is imagined that the six days mean really periods, although from the context the meaning is shown to clearly agree with he word, since the morning and evening are given to limit the term and decide the intention. It cannot, indeed, be too often remembered, that people did not write in early times what they did not mean. The reverse is found to be the rule and, where a different intention is contended for, the burden of proof lies upon the champions of the figurative and poetical sense of the tradition. When a statement becomes an allegory it is already ceasing to be believed as fact.

It will be then for us to place the account of Genesis where it belongs. As contradicting the process of gradual development it is well if we can view it in its real light and remove it, so far as it is an obstruction, from the path of knowledge. So long as it is taught in a bald unæsthetic way in the Sunday school catechisms, it is productive of great injury to the growing generation. To read it in the Churches as a grand poetic account of the origin of things may still be countenanced. But there is a great difference between teaching a thing as literally true and reading it for religious edification. In one sense the world, and all that therein is, is a great miracle, but as to how it was brought about, the real working of the great Force which moves all things, of