HOW LIFE APPEARED ON EARTH 133 



sarily to be given in strong, bold lines, and in a 

 language intelligible to all his hearers through the 

 course of ages. Such was God's plan. Yet the 

 broad succession of life-forms in the Scripture ac- 

 count is accurately the same as that which science 

 teaches us it must have been : first vegetative or- 

 ganisms ; then the primitive sea-worms, fishes and 

 saurians; next the birds, and finally the fully de- 

 veloped forms of the land animals preparatory to 

 the coming of man : 



And God said: Let the earth bring forth the 

 living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping 

 things f and beasts of the earth, according to theil 

 kinds. 



It should again be understood, on the chrono- 

 logical hypothesis, which, as we have seen, is but 

 one method of interpreting the narrative of the 

 Creation, that as Genesis is not intended for a 

 detailed scientific account, so science in its turn 

 has only the most fragmentary records to offer. 

 Thus it is stated that the fossils of reptiles are 

 found before those of birds; it does not follow 

 that reptiles actually preceded the birds in the 

 order of direct creation or of evolution. The 

 earliest birds, more delicate in structure, might 

 more readily have been destroyed so that fossil 

 traces could not be found of them. Here our 

 knowledge is so utterly inadequate. Hence there 

 could be no question, on such a supposition, of 

 affirming any contradiction. We have but begun 



