3. Man has been impotent to solve the problem of creation until science has given him the key to it. It has been necessary that astronomy should open the doors of boundless space, and permit him to gaze into its infinite depths; that by the power of calculation he could determine with rigorous precision the movement, position, the volume, the nature, and the role of the celestial bodies; that natural physics should reveal to him the laws of gravitation, of heat, of light, and of electricity; that chemistry should teach of the transformations of metal, and mineralogy of the materials which form the surface of the globe; that geology should teach man to read in terrestrial beds the gradual formation of this same globe; and that botany, zoology, paleontology, anthropology, should come to initiate him into the science of the affiliation and succession of organized beings. By the aid of archeology he has been able to trace the progress of humanity through the ages. All sciences, in a word, complete one another: they carry their indispensable contingent for the knowledge of the history of the world. Without them man would have for his guide only his first hypothesis.
Before man was in possession of these means of investigation, all commentators on Genesis whose reason rebelled at material impossibilities, continued to revolve in the same circle of ideas, with no power to depart from them. Science has come to the rescue by attacking the old edifice of belief, opening a way whereby the whole aspect has changed entirely. Once the conducting thread is found, the difficulties are promptly met. In place of an imaginary Genesis, we have a positive, and in some respect an experimental Genesis. The field of the universe is extended into the infinite. We behold that the Earth and the stars form themselves gradually in obedience to the eternal and immutable law, which testifies far more fully to the grandeur of God than a miraculous creation suddenly originating from nothing by a sudden act of divinity after ages of inaction.
Since it is impossible to comprehend Genesis without the help of science, one can say most truthfully that it is science who has been elected to constitute the true Genesis according to the laws of nature.
