But it is around the supposed declarations of Scripture on the subject of creation that the real “conflict” has centred.  Let us look the matter quite fairly in the face.  We accept the conclusion that (let us say) the horse was developed and gradually perfected or advanced to his present form and characteristics, by a number of stages, and that it took a very long time to effect this result.  Now, if there is anywhere a statement in Holy Writ that (a) a horse was per saltum called into existence in a distinctive and complete form, by a special creative fiat, and that (b) this happened not gradually, but in a limited and specified moment of time, then I will at once admit that the record (assuming that its meaning is not to be mistaken) is not provably right, if it is not clearly wrong; and accept the consequences, momentous as they would be.  If, in the same way, the Record asserts that man, or at least man the direct progenitor of the Semitic race,[1] was a distinct and special creation, his bodily frame having some not completely explained developmental connection with the animal creation, but his higher nature being imparted as a special and unique creative endowment out of the line of physical development altogether, then I shall accept the Record, because the proved facts of science have nothing to say against it, whatever Drs. Buchner, Vogt, Haeckel, and others may assert to the contrary.

[Footnote 1:  With whose history, as leading up to the advent of the Saviour in the line of David, the Bible is mainly concerned.]

In the first of my two instances, the popular idea has long been that the sacred record does say something about a direct and separate creative act; and this idea has been the origin and ground of all the supposed conflict between science and “religion.”  As long as this idea continues, it can hardly be said that a book addressed to the clearing up of the subject is unnecessary or to be rejected per se.

As to the method in which this subject will be dealt with, I shall maintain that the Scripture does not say anything about the horse, or the whale, or the ox, or any other animal, being separately or directly created.  And the view thus taken of the Record I have not met with before.  This it is necessary to state, not because the fact would lend any value to the interpretation—­rather the contrary; but because it justifies me in submitting what, if new, may be intrinsically important, to the judgment of the Church; and it also protects me from the offence of plagiarism, however unwitting.  If others have thought out the same rendering of the Genesis history, so much the better for my case; but what is here set down occurred to me quite independently.