IV GENESIS VERSUS NATURE 149 



If, stepping beyond that which may be learned 

 from the facts of the successive appearance of the 

 forms of animal life upon the surface of the globe, 

 in so far as they are yet made known to us by 

 natural science, we apply our reasoning faculties 

 to the task of finding out what those observed 

 facts mean, the present conclusions of the inter- 

 preters of nature appear to be no less directly in 

 conflict with those of the latest interpreter of 

 Genesis. 



Mr. Gladstone appears to admit that there is 

 some truth in the doctrine of evolution, and 

 indeed places it under very high patronage. 



I contend that evolution in its highest form has not been a 

 thing heretofore unknown to history, to philosophy, or to theo- 

 logy. I contend that it was before the mind of Saint Paul 

 when he taught that in the fulness of time God sent forth 

 His Son, and of Eusebius when he wrote the "Preparation for 

 the Gospel," and of Augustine when he composed the " City of 

 God "(p. 706). 



twelve months ago in Silurian rocks, and which is, at present, the 

 sole evidence of insects older than the Devonian epoch, came 

 from strata of Middle Silurian age, and is therefore older than 

 the scorpions which, within the last two years, have been found 

 in Upper Silurian strata in Sweden, Britain, and the United 

 States. But no one who comprehends the nature of the evidence 

 afforded by fossil remains would venture to say that the non- 

 discovery of scorpions in the Middle Silurian strata, up to this 

 time, affords any more ground for supposing that they did not 

 exist, than the non-discovery of flying insects in the Upper 

 Silurian strata, up to this time, throws any doubt on the cer- 

 tainty that they existed, which is derived from the occurrence 

 of the wing in the Middle Silurian. In fact, I have stretched a 

 point in admitting that these fossils afford a colourable pretext 

 for the assumption that the land and air-population were of 

 contemporaneous origin. 



