action of the sun and the seasons, would be required. No; we must give
up all the older methods which try to ignore the study of the word
"created," or to assume for it a meaning that it is not intended to
bear.

All depends, then, on what is meant by such terms as "created," "let
there be," "let the earth bring forth," &c. Perhaps it has occurred to
but few of my readers seriously to examine into their own mental
conception of an "act of creation." Some will readily answer, "Of course
it means only that at the Divine _fiat_, any given species--say an
elephant--appeared perfect, trunk, tusks, and all the peculiar
development of skull and skeleton, where previously no such creature had
existed." But what possible reason have they for this conclusion? None
whatever. It has simply been carelessly assumed from age to age, because
people at first knew no better; and when they began to know better, they
did not stop to amend their ideas accordingly.

Of course, as Professor Huxley puts it, millions of pious Jews and
Christians[1] supposed _creation_ to mean a "sudden act of the
Deity"--i.e., to mean just what the knowledge of the time enabled them
to imagine. They could do nothing else. The state of knowledge fifty
years ago would not have rendered it possible for an article like
Professor Huxley's (that to which allusion has several times been made)
to have been written at all. What wonder, then, that the multitude did
not understand what _creation_ meant, and that a reasonable
interpretation of the word has only become possible in quite recent
times? Surely all that is the fault of the reader, not of the text. I do
not even care that the writer himself did not fully apprehend the
subject. When a human prophet is entrusted with the divulgation of high
and wonderful things, it is quite possible that he may have been to
greater or less extent in the dark as to all or some of the
communication he was writing.

[Footnote 1: Article quoted, p. 857.]

All that can be reasonably required is that the narrative, as it stands,
shall be consistent with actual truth, and shall at no time come to be
provably at variance with it.

But let us look at the word "creation" more closely. We accept what we
are told, that in the beginning God called into existence force and
matter, the material or "physical basis," and all other necessaries of
life. Suppose, then (even dropping the question of Evolution, in order
to satisfy the "pious m