Besides being poetic, the sacred narrative is pre-eminently _symbolical_--must be symbolical, because the Divine reality could never be intuitively known. The facts transcend all the possibilities of human experience. Whatever knowledge the writer had in regard to the creative process must have been obtained in a preternatural way--that is, it must have been revealed by Divine Omniscience. But such a revelation could not have been communicated in mere vocables. Words are themselves but signs--mere arbitrary signs of images and ideas--and can convey no meaning unless the image or the idea be already before the mind. The only natural hypothesis is that the knowledge was conveyed in a symbolic representation--a vision of the past in a succession of scenic representations with accompanying verbal announcements, like the visions of the future in the prophecies of Ezekiel and the apocalypse of John. The original formless nebula--the primeval darkness--the brooding Spirit producing motion--the consequent luminosity--the separation of the aeriform fluid into atmosphere and water--the emergence of the solid land--the shooting forth of grass and plants--the appearance of the heavenly luminaries--the swarming of the waters with living things, and the appearance of birds of wing in the expanse of heaven--the bringing forth of land-animals--and, finally, the creation of man--all pass before his mind in a succession of pictorial representations of the actual progress of creation. "The sights seen, the voices heard, the emotions aroused, are just those adapted to bring out the very words the _seer_ actually uses, and in both cases the very best words that could have been used for such a purpose. The description being given from the barely optical rather than from any reflective scientific stand-point more or less advanced, is on this very account the more vivid as well as the more universal. It is a language read and understood by all." The words of the inspired writer are descriptive of the "vision pictures," and these were symbolic representations of the Divine realities.