Prof. John M. Taylor: “Man is not merely a mortal but a moral being. If he sinks below this plane of life he misses the path marked out for him by all his past development. In order to progress, the higher vertebrate had to subordinate everything to mental development. In order to become human it had to develop the rational intelligence. In order to become higher man, present man must subordinate everything to moral development. This is the great law of animal and human development clearly revealed in the sequence of physical and psychical functions.” W. E. Gladstone in S. S. Times, April 26, 1890, calls the Mosaic days “chapters in the history of creation.” He objects to calling them epochs or periods, because they are not of equal length, and they sometimes overlap. But he defends the general correspondence of the Mosaic narrative with the latest conclusions of science, and remarks: “Any man whose labor and duty for several scores of years has included as their central point the study of the means of making himself intelligible to the mass of men, is in a far better position to judge what would be the forms and methods of speech proper for the Mosaic writer to adopt, than the most perfect Hebraist as such, or the most consummate votary of physical science as such.”
On the whole subject, see Guyot, Creation; Review of Guyot, in N. Eng., July, 1884:591-594; Tayler Lewis, Six Days of Creation; Thompson, Man in Genesis and in Geology; Agassiz, in Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1874; Dawson, Story of the Earth and Man, 82, and in Expositor, Apl. 1886; LeConte, Science and Religion, 264; Hill, in Bib. Sac., April, 1875; Peirce, Ideality in the Physical Sciences, 38-72; Boardman, The Creative Week; Godet, Bib. Studies of O. T., 65-138; Bell, in Nature, Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 1882; W. E. Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1885:685-707, Jan. 1886:1, 176; reply by Huxley, in Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1885, and Feb. 1886; Schmid, Theories of Darwin; Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 1-35; Cotterill, Does Science Aid Faith in Regard to Creation? Cox, Miracles, 1-39—chapter 1, on the Original Miracle—that of Creation; Zöckler, Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, and Urgeschichte, 1-77; Reusch, Bib. Schöpfungsgeschichte. On difficulties of the nebular hypothesis, see Stallo, Modern Physics, 277-293.