[Footnote 1:  Article quoted, p. 857.]

All that can be reasonably required is that the narrative, as it stands, shall be consistent with actual truth, and shall at no time come to be provably at variance with it.

But let us look at the word “creation” more closely.  We accept what we are told, that in the beginning God called into existence force and matter, the material or “physical basis,” and all other necessaries of life.  Suppose, then (even dropping the question of Evolution, in order to satisfy the “pious millions"), that this “matter” was all ready (if I may so speak) to spring into organized form and being to take shape on earth—­what shape should it take?  Why (e.g.) an elephant?  Why not any other animal, or a nondescript—­a form which no zoologist could place, recognize, or classify?  The form, the ideal structure, the formula, of the genus elephant must somehow have come into existence before the obedient materials and the suitable forces of nature could work themselves together to the desired end.

Mr. Mivart has defined “creation” at page 290 of his “Genesis of Species.”  There is original creation, derivative or secondary creation (where the present form has descended from an ancestor that was originally “directly” created), and conventional creation (as when a man “creates a fortune,” meaning that he produces a complex state or arrangement out of simpler materials).  That is perfectly true, so far; but it is only a verbal definition, and still does not go inside, into the idea involved.  We must go farther.

In every act of creation, two requisites can clearly be distinguished:  (1) the matter of life, and the forces, affinities, and local surroundings necessary; and (2) the type, plan, ideal, or formula, to realize or produce which, the forces and the matter are to act and react.  This second is all-essential; without it the first would only produce a limbo of

“Unaccomplisht works of Nature’s hand,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixt.[1]”

[Footnote 1:  “Paradise Lost,” iii. 455.]

No creation in any sense whatever could come out of it.

In the same way, when we speak of the Divine Artificer “creating,” or saying “Let there be,” there are two things implied:  (i) the Divine plan or type-form, and its utterance or delivery (so to speak) to the builder-forces and materials; (2) the result or the translation into tangible existence of the Divine plan.

In every passage speaking of creation it possible that both processes may be implied; it may be clear from the text (as in Genesis i. 1) that this is so.  But it is equally possible that the first point only, which in some aspects is really the essential matter, is alone spoken of.