462 Science and the Bible. [July,
may " blunder," and " work out an idea badly,"1 though, " in general, she is to be regarded as honest." The author also observes :
"
This constant tendency of nature, general or partial, to degenerate
from the primal force (or, in other words, when thus left to itself, to
manifest its necessary finiteness), this, taken in connection with
God's from time to time renewing it, and even supernaturally raising it
to a higher law than before, may be regarded as constituting those
periods of torpor and revi-viscence which are so appropriately styled evenings and mornings." — World-Problem, p. 343.
And
thus he explains the successive days of Genesis, and the accordance of
creation with the " cyclical law, which is the law of all natures." 2 The idea is presented as follows in the " Six Days of Creation :"
"
Not merely is each period considered in its comparative imperfection an
evening to the more perfect that follows; but there is, in a still more
marked sense, in each period, considered in itself, an evening
and a morning— a time of growth and a time of decline, a time of
energy and a time of torpor, when nature requires a higher power to
wake her from her commencing slumbers." — Six Days, p. 242.
We
should add, in justice to the author, that he expresses a willingness
to give up his views, if they can be shown to be incorrect. To secure
this end is, and has been, an object with us in our communications.
The views of Plato, as given in the myth in his Politicus, and cited in the " Six Days" as "germane to the argument" on nature,3 are briefly as follows : " The leading idea is the one on which we [the "Six Days"] have dwelt, the cyclical alternation of the natural and supernatural." The myth says : " At one time, it [the world] is guided by a divine cause, during which period it
receives again the acquired power of life, and an immortality not
innate but imparted by the Demiurgus ; and then again, that it goes by
itself, being left to itself so long, that even many ten thou-
i World-Problem, p. 202. 2 Six Days of Creation, p. 239.
3 Ibid. pp. 243-245.
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