The Mosaic Record tells us nothing about the method by which G.o.d created the different varieties of plants and animals. All that we read there is just as applicable to a process of evolution, as to any other method which we may be able to imagine. But it is remarkable that what Moses does say is just what is required to make Mr. Darwin"s theory possible. So far then as the lower orders of creation are concerned, the hypothesis of development, modified by the admission of uniform superintendence and occasional special interferences on the part of the Creator, may be accepted as being the most satisfactory explanation that can be given, in the present state of physiological science, of the Scriptural Narrative.
But we have yet to consider this hypothesis as applied to man in Mr. Darwin"s latest work. We naturally recoil from the thought that we have sprung from some lower race of animals--that we are only the descendants of some race of anthropoid apes. So long as it is a.s.serted that we are no more than this, we may well be reluctant to admit the suggestion. But if it be admitted that to a physical nature formed like the bodies of the lower animals, a special spiritual gift may have been superadded, the difficulty vanishes. All Mr. Darwin"s arguments with reference to physical resemblances may then be admitted, and we may allow that he has given a probable explanation of the method by which "the Lord G.o.d formed the Adam, dust from the ground" while we maintain that the intellectual and moral faculties of man are derived from a source which lies beyond the investigations of science.
The conclusions to be drawn from this investigation may be briefly summed up as follows:--
1. There is every reason to conclude that the process of Creation was carried on, in great part, under the operation of the system of natural laws which we still see acting in the world around us: such laws being so far as we are concerned only an expression of an observed uniformity in the action of that Being by whom the Universe was created and is upheld.
2. That inasmuch as the development of a new state of things differs from the maintenance of a condition already existing, the working of these laws was necessarily from time to time supplemented by special interferences of the Creator, but that such interferences formed parts of the original design, and are not indications of anything in the shape of change or failure.
3. That many of the events recorded in the Mosaic Record are of the nature of such special interferences, while others point to remarkable developments of particular forms of organic life.
4. That these interferences thus recorded occur at the exact points at which natural laws, so far as science has yet been able to ascertain them, are inadequate to produce the phenomena which then took place, and that the developments are proved by geology to have taken place at the points indicated.
5. That the six days into which the work is divided by Moses do correspond to the probable order of development--that in three of them, the third, fifth, and sixth, this correspondence is marked by facts ascertained by Geology--that the fourth, in which no terrestrial phenomenon is recorded, corresponds to a very long period in the Geological record in which no indications of any new development are found--while the first and second indicate a state of things which the nebular hypothesis renders highly probable, but of which no positive information is within the reach of science.
Admitting then that there is something in the way in which the days are spoken of which we are at present unable to understand, we may yet confidently a.s.sert that such a record could not have been the product of man"s thought at the period at which it was written. It is utterly impossible that it should have been the result of a series of fortunate conjectures without any foundation to rest upon, and scientific foundation there was none, for there is every reason to believe that the sciences which might perchance now supply some foundation are entirely the growth of the last three centuries. There is then only one conclusion that we can draw, that it is a revelation from the Creator Himself, and that if there is anything in it which seems inexplicable or erroneous, that appearance arises from our own ignorance of facts, and not from any error on the part of the Author.