CREATION OF ANIMALS. 39 



dred feet long and ten feet high ! would have 

 puzzled the crocodiles and alligators and other 

 carnivorous ones to overpower and dispatch them. 



But, in fact, the question is concerning those 

 that were alive upon this globe at the time when 

 the great convulsion took place that buried them. 

 The skeletons of all that were placed under 

 similar circumstances would be found in a 

 similar state of preservation ; their flesh would 

 be decomposed but not their skeleton ; the 

 deluge would also interrupt all attacks of one 

 animal upon another, every individual would be 

 seeking to secure its own escape. But, setting 

 aside these arguments upon the uncertain facts 

 on which this hypothesis is built, if we turn our 

 attention to the reason of the thing, who can 

 think that a Being of unbounded power, wisdom, 

 and goodness should create a world merely for 

 the habitation of a race of monsters, without a 

 single rational being in it to glorify and serve 

 him. The supposition that these animals were 

 a separate creation, independent of man, and oc- 

 cupying his eminent station and throne upon our 

 globe long before he was brought into existence, 

 interrupts the harmony between the different 

 members of the animal kingdom, and dislocates 

 the beautiful and entire system, recorded with so 

 much sublimity and majestic brevity in the first 

 chapter of Genesis. 



How grand and at the same time how simple 



