he other,
from the receptivity of their mind for the mind of God and the last
purposes of his actions--we also have explained that record of creation
from two factors: on the one hand, from the view and the knowledge of its
time, and on the other from the receptivity of its author for a pure and
living idea of God and of the religious relations of human life. And we
shall also have to do likewise when interpreting it. For the interpretation
of the forward-looking prophecy, we have behind us the experience of
thousands of years, from which the following principles, of treatment and
interpretation have resulted. As long as such a prophetic word is not yet
fulfilled, so long, indeed, its meaning is and remains the object of
Christian faith and Christian hope; but it is difficult and almost
impossible to distinguish in it, what is lasting substance, and what is
transient form. Perhaps many a thing is looked upon as substance, which in
the fulfilment appears to be only an image and form; and perhaps many a
thing as form, which in the fulfilment shows itself as a more concrete
reality than we had supposed. {307} And it would even be psychologically a
violent assumption, if we should presuppose in the mind of the prophet a
still greater knowledge of the future course of things, than that which he
expresses; or if we should separate him in his worldly knowledge, and even
in the form of his prophetic utterances, from the views and limits of his
time. But by far the most fruitless effort of all would be to construct
beforehand out of his words the particulars of the historical course of the
future. Attempts of this kind have been defeated whenever they have been
made. But if the fulfilment of such a prophetic word has once taken place,
it is a joy and a strengthening of faith to all following generations, and
even after the final fulfilment of all prophecy, it will still be a joy to
the children of God in their perfection, to compare prophecy and fulfilment
and to allow the prophecy to be illumined by the light of fulfilment, the
fulfilment by that of prophecy.

All this finds its full application to the Biblical narrative of creation.
That which in the forward-looking prophecy is the historical fulfilment, is
in the backward-looking the scientific investigation. So long as the latter
was not directed at all to the prehistoric history of the earth, it was an
audacious undertaking to separate in the Biblical six days' work substance