It is admitted that the position is not confirmed by geological evidence, inasmuch as the many inter mediate links which must necessarily have existed be tween the various species, are not found in the geolo gical formations. There is no such finely graduated organic chain revealed by geology ; for the groups of animals, as they existed, are as distinct and well defined in those ancient records as they are at the present day. To meet this admitted difficulty Dr. Darwin is driven to allege the extreme imperfec tion of the geological record,' arising, as he states, from an extremely incomplete examination of existing strata, and the small proportion which those existing strata bear to those others which have been deposited, and removed or swept away by denudation.' These are mere gratuitous as sumptions, put forth without foundation, to prop up a failing theory. No well-informed geologist will be found to admit that imperfections could exist in the geological record to an extent sufficient to ac count for the absence of so many forms of life, as must, if Dr. Darwin's theory be true, have been in existence at some period of the world's history. Moreover, his suggestion that every past and present organism has descended from three or four original forms, requires us to suppose that life must have existed in the planet long before the deposi tion of the Cambrian and Silurian rocks, in which the first groups of life appear, and that the rocks in which these remains were deposited have been either removed or transformed. This hypothesis not only receives no countenance from the records of geology, but is contradicted by all the evidence which they supply. So many startling concessions required to uphold this theory of the production of species by natural selection, without the direct in tervention of the creative power of the Almighty, are sufficient to justify its rejection, even if the more direct arguments to which we have referred were wanting.
To those who have dwelt on the problem of the origin of life, it must be manifest that the probabili ties are, that the subject lies beyond the confines of the regions of the knowledge that is attainable by human experience, and the exercise of man's reason ing faculties, and that it falls within the province of that class of intelligence which can only be communi cated through the medium of a divine revelation. To those who thus regard the matter, the Mosaic record of the creation, authenticated as it has been by the facts of science, will be found to repay the obligation, by teaching the man of science that God did not leave His handiwork to be developed by the unassisted operation of pre-ordained laws ; but at every stage of the production of animal and vege table life He commanded and they were created,' each of them 'after hi.r own kind,' and God saw each, and every thing that He had made, and behold, it was very good.' The mind that submits to receive divine instruc tion from the only source from which it can be derived, will here find a solution of the difficulties which have embarrassed philosophers in their pursuit of the mysteries of the origin of life ; for here is a divine revelation that each species of the animal and vegetable worlds was made after its own kind, by the direct interposition of the omnipotent Creator— that each was the result of a creative fiat, and was then sealed with the divine approval. And while, on the one hand, the man of science will discover nothing in the teachings of revelation that militates against the facts which he has collected without the aid of revelation, so, on the other hand, the religion ist will find nothing in the well-established facts of science to cast a doubt on the well-understood reve lations of Scripture. The harmony thus found to exist between the records of science and the records of the Bible, separated as they have been by cen turies of darkness from each other, is highly instruc tive, and can only be accounted for by referring both to the same omniscient and omnipotent author—the one and only source of everlasting truth. Both tell
us of works designed and executed by a combination of wisdom, power, and goodness ; and while the Bible informs us that the Deity was and is present, as an efficient operating principle, at every stage of his work, the records of philosophy can supply no fact or argument that is inconsistent with the revela tion. We are bound, therefore, to receive it as a truth within the province of the things that are re vealed. Both tell us of a progress in creation from the lower to the higher orders of animal life ; and while analogy, reasoning from the unvarying onward and upward march of mundane vitalities in the past ages of our planet's existence, assures the natural philosopher that at some epoch in the ages to come beings of a higher order than those of A dam's race will become inhabitants of our earth, the sacred records have added the intelligence that the first Adam is of the earth, earthy, the second Adam is the Lord from Heaven ;' and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.' When the mind contemplates the various scenes of which our planet has been the theatre, each in advance of the preceding, it is impossible to limit its glorious hereafter to any condition that can be realized by the imagination. At one time it was girded with a shoreless sea, and for ages its only in habitants were lowly submarine invertebrates, of which the highest in rank was a Crustacean. At a subsequent period, its uncultivated land, its oceans and its air, were tenanted through an equally long space of time by nothing that was higher in the scale of animal life than Saurian reptiles, and at a later period by a higher order of quadruped mam mals. And lastly, it became the abode of intelli gent man, who, unlike all that had preceded him, can, from the platform of the present, review the past, and contemplate the future ; and who has, in ad dition to the beauties of nature that have increased around him, encircled himself with the fair fabrics of art, and the conveniences and luxuries of civilized life. Compare this present scene with any of those that preceded it on the earth's surface,—let the mind realize the difference, and then ask of nature's progressive law,,the exponent of God's will, what the future has in store for our planet ? Should its next state be as high in comparison with the pre sent as the present is high when compared with any of the pre-existing earthly scenes—should the next receptacle of the breath of life be as much above man in the scale of being as man is above the creatures which have tenanted the earth before him, how glorious will be the `new earth '—how exalted the beings who will be its inhabitants ! Mere philosophy, without the aid of revelation, may conduct the human intellect thus far in its reasonings and conclusions ; but it requires the divine communications to the holy men of old to complete the picture, and assure the man who will receive it, that though worms destroy his body, yet in his flesh shall he see his God, and with his eyes behold the glories of the world to come.
Thus, the book of nature and the book of inspir ation, when combined, embrace the whole history of organic and inorganic matter, which has ex panded through that portion of eternal duration which lies between the beginning of our planet and the end of the Sabbath of creation—the seventh day, or period of the Mosaic narrative. The history of the past is authenticated by the dis coveries of the present ; and the inspired record of the future is—if we may so speak—rendered more sure by the analogy of the past. God has, in His goodness, provided for all the means of acquiring this important knowledge. It is for man to accept and use the gracious gift in its integrity, and apply every part of it to guide him into the paths of true wisdom—that wisdom which leads mankind to recognize the Creator in the several items of his creation, and to ascribe their being, not to nature, or to nature's laws—but to nature's God, and Him alone.—D. M`C.