446 CHRISTIANITY MOST LIKELY TO BE ASSAILED 



And further, it is worthy the consideration of all 

 the friends of the Christian faith that in our time it 

 appears likely that Christianity is to be most seriously 

 assailed on the fields of zoology, comparative anatomy, 

 geology, and generally of the sciences of observation. 

 Those whose duty and profession it is to defend and 

 uphold the truths of Christianity, ought therefore to be 

 somewhat familiar with these fields of knowledge to 

 know so much, at least, as to enable them, when need 

 arises, to travel over and explore them without the help 



diate connection with the creation of man, and its peculiar delights 

 were found only within its own enclosures. A wide difference, there 

 fore, between the general condition of the earth and the felicities of 

 paradise is altogether conformable to the Scriptural narrative. 



&quot; Not a few, however, are particulai ly shocked to think that fossil 

 remains should indicate the ravages of death among the brute creation, 

 at periods anterior to the fall of man. They have been accustomed to 

 regard death as in all cases the effect of sin, and they are confounded 

 to hear of creatures having died in the earth before it was tainted or 

 blighted by transgression. But let the following considerations be duly 

 weighed : 1. If birds and beasts and creeping things had not died, 

 they must have been immortal ; and w r e at once perceive that there is 

 an unsuitableness in the nature and extent of their powers to the inhe 

 ritance of immortality. 2. The supposition of irresponsible and sinless 

 creatures dying in consequence of the sin of man is a mysterious expla 

 nation of the facts ; and instead of removing the difficulty, only 

 replaces it by another. 3. The circumstance of man alone having been 

 created immortal, is not at all more wonderful or unlikely, than that 

 man alone should have been created rational. There is in truth a 

 natural fitness that these wonders should go together Eeason and 

 Immortality. As eternal life appears inappropriate to an insect, so, on 

 the other hand, a dm-ation equally brief with that of the brutes appears 

 inappropriate to the faculties and affections, the retrospects andj antici 

 pations, of the soul of man. The immortality of the human body, and 

 the happy immortality of the human spirit, were, however, made con 

 ditional on obedience. The apostasy of our race brought sad derange 

 ment over this seemly order ; but surely the consequences have not 

 been more disastrous than might have been anticipated from the 

 acknowledged entrance of moral evil. 4. The Scriptures advance 

 nothing at variance with these statements. They tell us of no tree of 

 life, of which the lower animals might eat and live for ever ; nor do 

 they give us the slightest hint that such creatures expire, because our 



