104 Science and the Bible. [Jan.
then
speaks contemptuously (p. 107) of nebular condensations, the very
process required to evolve solidity from his nebulosity. He speaks of
the power of cohesion in the nebulous matter as preceding chemical and
other kinds of attraction, not knowing but that the existence of
cohesion involves the existence of the rest.
Professor
Lewis supposes that, on the third day, the world was finished so far as
to have its seas and lands, mountains and valleys, and urges a general
theory of evolutions; yet he thinks that this does not necessarily
imply that, at that time, the central body, to which the earth is a
satellite, was already in its place. The worlds, on such a view, were
not evolved according to the analogy of embryogeny, by eliminating the
systems and then their parts; but first the scattered parts, and then
these, were afterwards put into systems. Science, as well as reason,
most plainly teaches, that if any evolution-theory is to be adopted
(and such our author aims at), the former is the true one.
In
the Mosaic record it is said that, on the third day, dry land appeared;
but nowhere does it announce, like our author, that the land was
diversified with mountains and val-lies: and neither does science.
It
is remarkable, that, in a work on the six days of creation, the
authors system should have led him so far away from the record, as to
place under the fifth day, both his remarks on the creation of
vegetation (the work of the third day), and all he has to say on the
quadrupeds or mammalia (the work of the sixth). The convenience of his
theory of life from the waters and earth, appears to have been,
in part, the occasion of it. But is this reason sufficient, in a work
entitled " The Six Days of Creation, or the Scriptural Cosmology," by
an author who expresses great devotion to the Scriptures ? — a work
exegetical, profound, claiming to sift the Hebrew, and offered as a
contribution to our Biblical literature ? Can we be satisfied that the
word of God has been sufficiently studied and apprehended, when not
even a mention of the creation of quadrupeds is introduced into the
chapter on the sixth day ?
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