96 Science and the Bible. [Jan.
On
these several points, Prof. Lewis says (p. 136): " Science is dumb,
and revelation says nothing;" and again as to the establishment of the
relation of the earth and the sun at that time, he remarks with equal
confidence (p. 144) : " science cannot say anything for or against such
a view;" and again: " how can science say whether there was then any
revolution of the earth upon its axis or not," and so on to a depth the
reader can explore on page 145. Science seems to haunt the author like
a horrible ghost, and his cudgel is always up. After all this and much
more, he adds as follows, in which the remarks on vegetation are
noteworthy :
"
We may conclude that at this fourth period, partly contemporary with
vegetation, and before the earliest dawn of animal life, the sun
assumed towards our earth the state and form of a luminous body, and
the adjustment of the shorter periodic seasons commenced .... All that
we can say is, that at this period the solar system was lit up, the
phosphorescent light which the earth may have possessed went out as the
planet became more dense, the veil was taken from the central luminary,
in order that now there might be not only light and warmth, which
existed before, but such regulated diversities of them as would be required for the later vegetation as well as for the animal and human life " (pp. 147, 148).
Between the chapters on the fourth and fifth days, a discussion comes in again on the word day, and on time, and the uses of the sun, which it is unnecessary here to consider.
The fifth day
is now taken up, when the author speaks of the creation of vegetation,
and animals generally, exclusive of man. The expressions, " Let the
waters bring forth," " Let the earth bring forth," are explained thus:
"
In its general effect, [the general effect of the account by Moses,]
and still more, in the conceptions which lie at the roots of its most
important terms, it forces upon the mind the idea of a nature in the earth actino-through
a real dynamical process of its own, and in periods, which, whether
longer or shorter, contain within themselves all the changes and
successive stages which we find it impossible to dissociate from the
thought of birth and growth. And this, too, of the animal as well as of
the vegetable world " (pp. 211, 212).
Preparatory to this conclusion he had said (p. 200): " holding Nature thus to be, in some sense, a self-subsisting, self-
