the millions of similar bodies which bear witness
to the order which pervades boundless space and has endured
through boundless time, are all working out their predestined
courses of evolution."

The second hypothesis is familiar to us in the sacred records of many
religious and in the Hebrew Scriptures. Most of these have a
fundamental similarity, inasmuch as they offer pictures in which the
mode and order of creation are given in the minutest detail and with
the simplest kind of anthropomorphism; in which the Creator is
represented with familiar human characteristics. But these general
considerations, so obvious now that we have learned to read the Bible
narrative without passion or prejudice, were not plain to the early
opponents of evolution, and it was necessary, step by step, to shew
not only that the narrative in Genesis could not be reconciled with
known facts if it were accepted in its literal meaning, but that the
most strained interpretation of the language failed to bring it into
accordance with scientific truth. Mr. Gladstone was the latest and
most vigorous of those who attempted to reconcile Genesis with modern
knowledge, and in his controversy with Huxley he brought to bear all
the resources of an acute intellect trained by long practice in the
devices of argument and inspired by a lofty if mistaken enthusiasm. In
the course of his argument he wrote:

"But the question is not here of a lofty poem, or a skilfully
constructed narrative; it is whether natural science, in the
patient exercise of its high calling to examine facts, finds that
the works of God cry out against what we have fondly believed to
be His word and tell another tale; or whether, in this nineteenth
century of Christian progress, it substantially echoes back the
majestic sound, which, before it existed as a pursuit, went forth
into all lands.

First, looking largely at the latter portion of the narrative,
which describes the creation of living organisms, and waiving
details, on some of which (as in v. 24) the Septuagint seems to
vary from the Hebrew, there is a grand fourfold division, set
forth in an orderly succession of times as follows: on the fifth
day
1. The water-population.
2. The air-population,
and, on the sixth day,
3. The land-population of animals.
4. The land-population consummated in man.