enlightened eye, when a stupendous scheme is developed, gradually
and imperceptibly, but without pause or hesitation through a long
succession of ages; when a multitude of seemingly discordant
elements are at last brought together in a perfect work; when a
power, unseen and unnoticed, slowly but surely overrules the
working of ten thousand apparently independent agents, through a
thousand generations, and moulds their separate works into one
harmonious whole. Such a manifestation of power as this was beyond
the grasp of the untrained mind; but to such intellects there was
something irresistibly fascinating in the idea of a world rising
into perfect existence in a moment, of innumerable hosts of living
creatures called into being at a word. Such was the meaning of the
account of creation which naturally suggested itself to the
untrained mind, and there was nothing in science in those early
days to throw any doubt upon it, and so this belief was
unhesitatingly and almost universally adopted. Here and there,
indeed, some man of deeper thought than his brethren, such as St.
Augustine [Footnote: See St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad Literam,"
Liber Imperfectus, and Libri Duodecim, and also "Confessionum"
Liber xiii.], suspected that there might be more in that seemingly
simple record than was generally acknowledged; but such men had no
means of verifying their conjectures, and their number was very
small. For three thousand years the old view was practically
unquestioned, it received the tacit sanction of the Church, it
gradually became identified in the minds of all with the record
itself, and was as much an article of faith as the very Creed.

This was the state of things, when at last science awoke from its
long slumber, and began for the first time to employ its energies
in the right direction. Very soon discoveries were made which