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.  It is impossible, therefore, that (if we are not misled by appearances) any well-ascertained fact can be contrary to the truth of God as explained by Revelation.  If we are not sure of the facts of nature, we must wait patiently till further knowledge enlightens us, and must not hastily conclude that the Bible is wrong.  The repeated corrections which successive years have compelled us to make in conclusions which were once firmly accepted and proclaimed as “truths of science,” should teach us caution in this respect.