SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Undrr this heading we notice gush Dooks of the week aa hare not been- reeervett for review in other forms.] The First Things. By the Rev. John Buchan. (Blackwood and Sons. 5s.)—Mr. Buchan takes the conservative standpoint in the great controversy of Religion v. Science. Ho would not be willing, we suppose, to regard Genesis as only a "Psalm of Crea- tion," though he concedes that there are difficulties in reconciling its statements with the discoveries of geology. When, too, he says of the stars that "the Biblical account is not a scientifio description of their places in the universe, but only their relation to humankind," he is saying much the same thing. As to the Biblical account of Eden, he would accept the Scripture narrative, which "testifies to a time when the moral taint did not exist in man. But is it possible to reconcile such a conception with what the geologists tell us about palaeolithic man struggling against the great mammals and lizards? Mr. Buchan's book is thoughtful and candid; but we feel that many of his positions are very insecure.—Another work, the author of which takes much the same point of view, is The Conflict of Truth, by F. Ilugh Capron (Hodder and Stoughton, 10s. 0d.) Mr. Capron certainly scores a point against Professor Huxley in the matter of the words " waste " and "without form" (the "without form and void" of
Genesis i.) In 1886 Professor Huxley wrote: "Science knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless." But in 1869 he had, in a highly favourable appreciation of Kant's theory of the universe, written: "Kant pictures to himself the universe as
once an infinite expansion of formless matter and depicts the great world maelstrom gradually reclaiming more and more of the molecular waste." Of his constructive argument we cannot speak very highly. In dealing with the "six days" of Genesis he says: "The attitude of the Deity in relation to the first and third days is represented to have been confined to saying alone : in the history of each of these two days He is not stated to have done anything." But is this so ? In the record it is stated: "God
said, Let there be Light, and there was Light And God divided the Light from the Darkness." Surely the word " divided " means doing something. Nor can it be allowed that what may be called the "active part" of the first day really belongs to the fourth. All this seems to us a not quite fair method of dealing with the language of Scripture. Mr. Capron has found out that what "Biblical scholars and critics have alike unanimously assumed" to be the meaning of the words is not the right meaning. Is it likely ? Then there seems to be a confusion in our author's mind as to the word "law." A statute ordaining universal military service is a law. The instinct of all creatures to defend themselves is a law. But "law" does not mean the same thing in both. In which sense does Mr. Capron use the word? The fact is that it is not safe to go beyond the state- ment that the cosmogony of Genesis is the most dignified in the world, and is a grand assertion of a First Cause. Of the "antiquity of man" Mr. Capron holds that the spiritual existence of the human race began with the Creation as recorded in Genesis, while mechanical and rational man was in being in long prior periods. We might put it in this way, that man was in process of develop- ment throughout long ages, and that when he reached a certain point God made Himself known to him, and that Genesis describes the beginning of the relation. Mr. Capron has certainly written a book of ability and worth reading. But we cannot acquit him of some of the faults that are commonly found in apologists.
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