I make no apology for repeating this so often, because it is really
amazing to see the way in which "anti-theological" writers attack what
_they suppose_ to be the interpretation of the narrative, or what some
one else supposes to be such, and seem to be satisfied that in so doing
they have demolished the credibility of the narrative itself.
If you choose to assume that Creation as spoken of by the sacred writer
means some particular thing, or even if the mass of uneducated or
unreflecting people assume it and you follow them, I grant at once that
the narrative can be readily made out to be wrong.
Permit me, then, to repeat once more, that the narrative is in human
language, and uses the human terms "created," "made," and "formed," and
that these terms _do_ (as a matter of fact which there is no gainsaying)
bear a meaning which is not invariable. Hence, without any glossing or
"torturing" of the narrative, we are under the plain obligation to seek
to assign to these terms a true meaning _with all the light that modern
knowledge_ can afford.
Now (having already considered the school of interpretation which
declines to attend to the exact terms) we can confine our attention to
two classes of interpreters. One explains the term "days" to mean long
periods of time; the other accepts the word in its ordinary and most
natural sense, and endeavours to eliminate the long course of
developmental work made known to us by palaeontological science, and
supposes all that to have been passed over in silence; and argues that a
final preparation for the advent of the man Adam was made in a special
work of six days.
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