of explanation,
certainly _creation_ (i.e., terms implying it) did require very great
care in interpreting, and very great consideration as to what they
really meant But however that may be, we have here a passage which
_must_ have an explanation; and which must have an explanation that
depends on the state of knowledge.

The utility of Revelation is not negatived by this necessary result of
the employment of human language in describing the facts. It was _not_
necessary before, that all should be understood; it may be now
increasingly necessary in the purposes of God that it should be. At any
rate the fact is so, that in former days people did not possess the data
for knowing fully what creation meant, and certainly they do now possess
it to a very much greater extent at least. Always men could learn from
the narrative what it always was important for them to learn, namely,
God's Sovereignty and Authorship. It is in this way that the value of
the _general_ teaching of the narrative comes out, and not by trying to
allow a mixture of truth and falsehood in Revelation. All is and always
was true; but _all_ the truth was not equally extractable at all times.

Again: the dignity of the old written Revelation is not compromised
because God has virtually given a further revelation in His works,
i.e., by enabling man to know more about the rock-strata and the
succession of life on the earth. That is what it really comes to. It
should never be forgotten that the book of Nature _is_ a revelation.

The _works_ of God, if interpreted truly, are evidence of the same
nature as the _word_ of God if interpreted truly. God has created man
and his reason. It is impossible to suppose that it can be unrighteous
reasoning in God's sight, to derive from the facts of nature any
legitimate conclusion to which those facts point. It is childish to
believe that God created ready-made--if I may so speak--rocks with
fossils in them, marks of rain-drops showing which way the wind blew at
the time, foot-prints of birds, animals with remains of the prey they
had been feeding on, in their stomachs, and so forth. It is perfectly
reasonable and right to conclude certainly, that those creatures were
once living beings; that the surface of the earth was once a soft
sediment which received the impression of the rain-drops as they fell;
and that stratified rocks were deposited out of lakes and seas, as we
see alluvial strata deposited at the present day.