"SPECIAL CREATION 145 



created just as they were, and that they had never 

 been anything else. So did Philip Gosse some 

 two and a half centuries later. 



There is nothing more sure than that the world 

 was not created j ust as it is. Reason and Scripture 

 both teach us that, and geology makes it quite 

 clear that the appearance of living things upon the 

 earth has been successive ; that groups of living 

 things, like the giant saurians, which were once 

 the dominant zoological objects, had their day 

 and have gone, as we may suppose, for ever. A 

 few very lowly forms, like the lamp-shells, have 

 persisted almost throughout the history of life 

 on the earth, but on the whole the picture which 

 we see is one of appearances, culminations, and 

 disappearances of successive races of living things. 

 There was a time when Trilobites, crustaceans 

 whose nearest living representatives are the King- 

 Crabs, first became features of the fauna of the 

 earth. Then they increased to such an extent 

 as to become the most prominent feature. Then 

 they declined in importance, disappeared, and for 

 uncounted ages have existed only as fossils. Thus 

 we conclude that the creation of species was a 

 progressive affair, just as the creation of individuals 

 is a successive affair, for every living thing, coming 

 as it does into existence by the power of the Creator, 

 is His creation and in a very real sense a special 

 creation. Now we know very well how living 

 things come into existence to-day ; can we form 

 any idea as to how they originated in the be- 

 ginning ? Milton, in his crude description in 

 Paradise Lost, pictured living things as gradually 



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