A cursory reading of the narrative will convince any one that its purpose is not to enlarge men's views of nature, but to teach them something concerning nature's God. It says nothing about the forces of nature, the laws of nature, the classifications of natural history, or the size, positions, distances, and motions of the heavenly bodies. From first to last, every phenomenon and every law is linked immediately to some act or some command of God. It is God who creates, God who commands, God who names, God who approves, and God who blesses. Strike out the allusions to God, and the narrative is meaningless. Clearly it was never intended to teach science. It has obviously one purpose, to reveal and keep before the minds of men the grand truth _that Jehovah is the sole Creator and Lord of the heavens and the earth_; and it leaves the scientific comprehension of nature to the natural powers with which God has endowed man for that end.
But the author believes that the Mosaic account is practically correct, or perhaps we should say harmonious with the truth. It may be truthful without being all the truth, or truthful and still be very defective. He considers that when scientific knowledge is complete, the Scripture, rightly interpreted, will be found in harmony with its final conclusions. How Moses was made acquainted with the events of creation is a matter upon which it is impossible to be positive. The author sees no objection to the suggestion that he may have witnessed a series of pictures or visions, the result of which upon his mind is given in the hymn of creation. This explanation of the Biblical narrative forms but a small part of the work, which is chiefly given to a discussion of the views and positive discoveries of scientific men which relate to the production of the world. It is a remarkable tribute to the overmastering power of positive knowledge. Science and theology are mingled in an extraordinary way, but a way that is now necessary, for there is not one province of human thought that has not been compelled to acknowledge the great possibilities of inductive reasoning. Dr. Cocker labors to establish the old faith on the new ground. He is a man of great reading and has a strong belief in the religion to which he has given his heart. Every question is approached in the firm faith that when rightly interpreted it will be found to sustain the Christian religion. This is the fundamental fault of the work. It is a plea for a cause that does not need it, for a cause that is quite as apt to lose as to gain by the defence. The difficulty with this method of meeting the hypothesis of science is that the scientific views are themselves in a state of unstable equilibrium. They may topple at any moment, and then the correspondence that eager devotees have found between them and the Bible is a slur that falls altogether on the religion and not on the science. This is a great error, and those who are drawn into it belittle the cause that is dear to them. While our author is catholic in his reading, he does not seem to assign to all writers in his field their just value. His quotations, the fresh, the obsolete, the trustworthy, and the doubtful, are mingled in a confusion that only the experienced can penetrate. His book is creditable to his unshaken faith, and it presents the religious aspect of modern knowledge in a thorough manner.