tand because some peculiarity of the stone has been forgotten,
or some character of foundation and subsoil has been misunderstood. The
noblest form of turret-ship may prove useless because the strength of
some material will not correspond to the ideal, or some curve of
stability has been miscalculated. Not only this: man may create, as a
sculptor, the ideal form for his to-be statue, or the dramatist his
character; but the perfect realization, either in marble or in an actual
being, may be impossible; the ideal remains "in the air." The ideal,
therefore, is not the major part of "creation" in a human work.

But with the Divine work it is otherwise. The Divine thought in Creation
and its result are separated by no possibility of failure. Given the
matter and the laws of force and of life, directly the Great Designer
has uttered His thought to those that are His builders, they _must_
infallibly and without discord, work through the longest terms, it may
be, of an evolutionary series, till, every transitional condition
passed, the final form emerges perfect.

Our very verbal definition, admitting as it does "derivative" creation,
implies this. We all speak of ourselves as "created." How so? We are not
produced ready made. Nor do we wholly solve the matter by saying that we
are "created" because we are born from parents who (if we go far enough
back) originated in a first production from the hand of Nature. We are
really "created" because the _design_--the _life-form of us_, which
matter and force were to work together to produce--was the direct
product of the Divine Mind.[1]

My question, therefore, of the Genesis interpreters is: Why will you
insist on the text meaning only the second element in Creation--the
production on earth, and not the Design or its issue in heaven?

The former we could find out some day for ourselves; we _have_ found out
some of it (though only some) already; the latter we could never know
unless we were told. Surely it is the "_dignus vindice nodus_" in this
case. To tell us the earth's history within a brief space would be
impossible, and would have been for ages unintelligible if it could have
been told; to tell us of God's creation is possible--for it has been
done; and the record, unless misread, is intelligible for all time.

The narrative, if it is a revelation of Divine Creation in heaven, takes
up ground that none can trespass on. None can say "it is not so," unless
either he will show