THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



find their succession, yet we may expect to close the 

 gaps in the later periods. But geologists still ask, 

 whence came the recent placental mammals, and their 

 answer is: "Their origin is one of the great outstand- 

 ing problems in palaeontology.""^ As for man, we 

 have found the roof of a skull, two molar teeth, and 

 an abnormal femur in the Pliocene deposits and from 

 them there has been constructed a man-like skeleton. 

 In the next period, or Pleistocene, man is found well 

 scattered over the earth and well advanced in civili- 

 zation, using fire and implements of stone and wood. 

 Here, again, a dominant form arises suddenly and 

 without close ancestry, as monkeys and men are now 

 supposed to be collateral branches from an earlier 

 mammalian type. 



The more one studies palaeontology, the more cer- 

 tain one becomes that evolution is based on faith 

 alone ; exactly the same sort of faith which it is neces- 

 sary to have when one encounters the great mysteries 

 of religion. The changes that are noted as time pro- 

 gresses show no orderly and no consecutive evolu- 

 tionary chain and, above all, they give us no clue 

 whatever as to the cause of variations. Evolutionists 

 would have us believe that they have photographed 

 the succession of fauna and flora, and have arranged 

 them on a vast moving picture film. Its slow unroll- 

 ing takes millions of years. A few pictures, mostly 

 vague, defaced and tattered, occasionally attract our 

 attention. Between these memorials of the past are 



23 op. cit., vol. Ill, p. 222. 



C 1603 



