Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/645

Rh way troubled by the discrepancy before us, if it be a discrepancy, as it is the general structure and effect of the Mosaic statement on which I take my stand.

With regard to reptiles, while I should also hold by my last remark, the case is different. They appear to be mentioned as contemporary with mammals, whereas they are of prior origin. But the relative significance of the several orders evidently affected the method of the Mosaic writer. Agreeably to this idea, insects are not named at all. So reptiles were a family fallen from greatness; instead of stamping on a great period of life its leading character, they merely skulked upon the earth. They are introduced, as will appear better from the LXX than from the A.V. or R.V., as a sort of appendage to mammals. Lying outside both the use and the dominion of man, and far less within his probable notice, they are not wholly omitted like insects, but treated apparently in a loose manner as not one of the main features of the picture which the writer meant to draw. In the Song of the Three Children, where the four principal orders are recited after the series in Genesis, reptiles are dropped altogether, which suggests either that the present text is unsound, or, perhaps more probably, that they were deemed a secondary and insignificant part of it. But, however this case may be regarded, of course I can not draw from it any support to my general contention.

I distinguish, then, in the broadest manner, between Professor Huxley's exposition of certain facts of science, and his treatment of the Book of Genesis. I accept the first, with the reverence due to a great teacher from the meanest of his hearers, as a needed correction to myself, and a valuable instruction for the world. But, subject to that correction, I adhere to my proposition respecting the fourfold succession in the Proem; which further I extend to a fivefold succession respecting life, and to the great stages of the cosmogony to boot. The five origins, or first appearances of plants, fishes, birds, mammals and man, are given to us in Genesis in the order of succession, in which they are also given by the latest geological authorities.

It is, therefore, by attaching to words a sense they were never meant to bear, and by this only, that Mr. Huxley establishes the parallel (so to speak), from which he works his heavy artillery. Land-population is a phrase meant by me to describe the idea of the Mosaic writer, which I conceive to be that of the animals familiarly known to early man. But, by treating this as a scientific phrase, it is made to include extinct reptiles, which I understand Mr. Huxley (P. S. M. p. 45:1) to treat as being land-animals; as, by taking birds of a very high formation, it may be held that mammal forms existed before such birds were produced. These are artificial contradictions, set up by altering in its essence one of the two things which it is sought to compare.

If I am asked whether I contend for the absolute accordance of