The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-08-17
UPHOLDS BIBLE CREATION STORY
Presbyterian In Dr. LOrimer's Pulpit Says
II Is Tenable scientifically.

The Rev. DR.. George Hanson of London,
a Presbyterian clergyman who has been
filing the pulpit OF the Madison Avenue
Baptist Church for several Sundays preached
Yesterday morning on THE First Chapter
of Genesis" There was large congre-
CATION present TO watch the minister pick
his way among the pitfalls in this cele-
brated field OF controversy
DR.. Hanson first said that the upholders
of science and of the Bible had committed
blunders about equally. He continued;
First of all, notice not only what the first
chapter of Genesis contains. but what il
omis Remember that II was written thou
sands of years ago, in the infancy of the world:
ages before there was anything known OF
them Don't you think that if it. were "A
merely human composition it would be dis
figured by cruditirs which ,wonld at once
argue an absolutely earthly character? Plato,
the greatest thinker Of antiquity, stated
that the earth was endowed with intelligence.
Now. suppose that the first chapter of Genesis
World 1" Would have sRrek"d with laughter
at the expense of the Bible Suppose that
Moses had taught anything like the Hndoo
theory of the universe declaring that the
earth was a fat expanse OF three great stories
upheld upon the backs Of elephants, and so on.
what a target for ridicule the Bible would be.
And | ask How did Moses escape the mac
curacies that have marked every other at-
tempt to set forth the story of the origin of
things?
There are several specific points of agree
ment between Genesis and science. Verse
two of the first chapter teaches that the world
was ut first entirely under water. Dry land
does not appear until the third day. Now
science affirms that the strata of which the
earth is composed were once under water
Genesis speaks of the existence of light in
dependently of the sun--a very important
point Light is created upon the first day,
the sun not until the fourth. Some people
used TO make very merry over this mistake
of Moses" Ingersoll gloated over il. But
il Ia a commonplace of science now that light
did and does exist quite Independently Of the
sun. and that the sun IL simply n ight-hOldcr.
Genesis speaks OF vegetation before there
was a sun. moon and stars That, too. used
to be- a subject of ridicule, but science tells
us that the electric light alone Possesses the
growth of trees and plants. Genesis speaks
of the priority of marine and amphibious
animals to land animals, and this IL precisely
the claim that science makes.
There is, OF course, vast gulf between
matter and nothing, and Moses expressed
that thought by the word create" The moral
faculties could not have been developed
from a lower animal form. and an explanation
is only to be found in the great unseen world
of spirit. Genesis teaches the unity Of man
that all are of one blood. 1t is not so long
10 now. Language even is being traced back
to single stalk.
The preacher concluded that the story OF
Genesis is tenable from a strictly scientific
point of view, and that these facts, and
others, proved that the writer had been
guided by the divine hand