with error. Hence it may very well happen that where there is
complete harmony between the history and the facts, we may suspect
discord owing to our misunderstanding of the record, or our
misconception of the facts. In order that the harmony may be
recognized in its fulness, there must be a perfect understanding
of the record, and a perfect knowledge of the facts. But from both
of these we are probably at present very far removed.

If a person who was a thorough master of some science undertook to
write a treatise for the purpose of teaching children the
rudiments of that science, we should expect, and the more strongly
if the author were a master of language as well as of science,
that his work should contain indications of a master's hand. We
should expect that while the book conveyed clearly and simply to
the minds of those for whom it was written, the truths which it
was intended to teach, it should also convey to the more educated
reader some intimations of a deeper knowledge on the part of its
author. The choice of a word, the turn of a phrase, the order in
which facts were arranged, the occurrence here and there of a
sentence which an ordinary reader would pass over as unimportant,
would to such a person be indications of trains of thought far
more profound than those which appeared on the surface. And this
recognition would be proportional to two things--the amount of
scientific knowledge possessed by the reader, and his mastery of
the language in which the book was written.

Such, then, are the characteristics which we may expect to find in
the Record of Creation, if it be indeed, as we believe, a
revelation from God, made to men in a very low stage of
intellectual development. In order that we may be able to form a