especially when it is so needful and important. Men of
science, by teaching positive and indisputable truths, are gradually
but surely revolutionising the world of thought, and dethroning the
priesthoods of mystery and superstition. Yet their influence on the
masses is indirect, and they do not often trouble themselves to show the
contradiction between their discoveries and what is preached from the
pulpit. Perhaps they are right. But it is also right that others should
appeal to the people in the name not only of science, but also of
scholarship and common sense, and show them the incredible absurdity of
much that the clergy are handsomely paid to preach as the veritable and
infallible Word of God.

The Creation Story, with which the Book of Genesis opens, is incoherent,
discrepant, and intrinsically absurd, as we shall attempt to show. It is
also discordant with the plainest truths of Science. Let us examine it,
after casting aside all prejudice and predilection.

If the universe, including this earth and its principal inhabitant, man,
was created in six days, it follows that less than six thousand years
ago chaos reigned throughout nature. This, however, is clearly untrue.
Our earth has revolved round its central sun for numberless millions of
years. Geology proves also that million years have elapsed since
organic existence first appeared on the earth's surface, and this world
became the theatre of life and death. Darwin speaks of the known history
of the world as "of a length quite incomprehensible by us," yet even
that he affirms "will hereafter be recognised as a mere fragment of
time" com-pared with the vast periods which Biology will demand. The
instructed members of the Church have long recognised these-statements
as substantially true, and they have tried to reconcile them with
Scripture by assuming that the word which in the History of Creation is
rendered _day_ really means a _period_, that is an elastic space of time
which may be expanded or contracted to suit all requirements. But there
are two fatal objections to this assumption. In the first place, the
same word is rendered _day_ in the fourth commandment, and if it
means period in Genesis it means period in Exodus. In that case we are
commanded to work six periods and rest on the seventh, and each period
must cover a geological epoch. How pleasant for those who happen to be
born in the seventh period, how unpleasant for those born in one of the
six!