that the words will not bear the meaning, or that
the context and other Scripture contradict it.

[Footnote 1: "_In Thy book_ were all my members written, while _as yet
there were none_ of them" (Psa. cxxxix. 16).

"How did this all first come to be you?
_God thought about me_
and I grew."--_Macdonald_.]

So soon as the matter of earth and heaven (and all that is implied
therewith) originated "in the beginning," the narrative introduces to
our reverent contemplation the solemn conclave in heaven, when, in a
serial order and on separate days, God declared, for the guidance of the
ever potentially active forces, and for materials ever (as we know)
seeking combination and resolution,[1] the _form_ which the earth
surface is (it may be ever so gradually) to take and the _life-forms_
which are to be evolved.

That this creative work was piecemeal, and on separate days, we know
from the narrative. _Why_ it was so arranged we do not know. Vast as was
the work to be done, almost infinite as was the complexity of the laws
required to be formulated, it _could_ have all been done at once, in a
moment of time; for time does not exist to the Divine Mind. But seeing
that the work was to be on earth, and for the benefit of creatures to
whom the divisions of time were all-important, we can dimly, at least,
discern a certain fitness and appropriateness in the gradual and divided
work.

[Footnote 1: The reader will recognize that there is not the least
exaggeration in this. It is plain matter of fact, as I have endeavoured
to show in the earlier chapters of this book. Everywhere we see _force_
ready to be evoked by the proper method. Everywhere we see _molecular_
motion, and a perpetual combination and resolution of elements and
compounds, whether chemical or mechanical.]

CHAPTER XIV.

_THE INTERPRETATION SUPPORTED BY OTHER SCRIPTURES._

In interpreting the narrative before us, we have an important aid which
has hardly received the attention it deserves. I allude to the other
passages of Scripture which were written by men undoubtedly familiar
with the Book of Genesis.

Now, in more than one of them, I find the idea that the Creation spoken
of is the _Divine work in heaven_, and not the subsequent and long
process of its realization on the surface of our globe, fully confirmed.

In the beautiful thirty-eighth chapter of the very ancient Book of Job,
we find a distinct allusion to a time when God "laid the found