195 
Here, then, we have a direct antagonism between the 
sacred narrative and the dictum of modern thought—science 
so-called. The one tells us that man was created ; the other 
asserts that he is simply a development, an improved 
descendant of some particular family of apes. The one declares 
that man was created by God as a distinct race ; the other that 
he was evolved according to natural law, and that he can claim 
no higher origin than any other animal. The one says that 
God made man in His own image ; the other asserts that he 
has a community of origin with the brutes. Which are we 
to accept as the truth? Are we to give up the Old Faith, 
and embrace the New, or keep to the old paths and refuse 
to walk in the new? As for ourselves, we have made up 
our minds that the “ old is the better.” But, for the sake of 
others who may be halting between two thoughts, we propose 
to question the advocates of the new on the nature of the 
proofs that man has descended from the family of the apes. 
_ Here is their answer. 
You ask us, say they, why we assert that man is a direct 
descendant of the anthropoid apes? “ Because in his 
embryonic state he passes through all the intermediate 
stages between the lowest and highest members of the animal 
kingdom, and in his anatomical structure he is closely allied 
to the quadrumana.”’ 
In reply to this, we beg to say that the first reason given is 
not conclusive. It is very probable that many of the supposed 
embryonic resemblances to the lower forms of animals are pre- 
sent more in the imagination of the observers than in fact ; 
and, in the next place, the fact of the similarity of structure in 
man to the apes does not prove the identity of origin. When 
speaking on this subject, the Rev. Alexander Stewart well 
remarks: “ To argue, however, that because there is physical 
similarity there must also be identity of being, is to proceed 
on the basis of a manifest fallacy. We mightas well conclude 
that, because the bodies of two men are the same in kind, 
their moral character must also be identical. Have we not 
what is known in chemistry as isomorphous bodies,—bodies 
which are alike in form and similar in chemical constitution, 
yet different in their properties? ‘The salts formed by these 
substances, with the same acid and similar proportions of the 
water of crystallisation, are identical in their form, and, when 
of the same colour, cannot be distinguished by the eye ; 
magnesia and zinc sulphate may be thus compounded. In 
these isomorphous substances the identity of shape 1s so com- 
plete that they all possess the same crystalline form (octahe- 
Pig 
