80 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



of the third day must have had its place before the Paleozoic period of geology ; 

 also that "no plants of the older and middle geological periods now exist. " ' 'We 

 may therefore rest assured," says he, " that the vegetable species, and probably 

 also many of the generic and family forms of the vegetation of the third day, 

 have long since perished, and been replaced by others suited to the changed condi- 

 tion of the earth." But, if each plant propagated its own species only, as he as- 

 serts, it is difficult to account for the introduction of the widely differing species 

 which appeared later than the Paleozoic period, and replaced the "created" 

 forms. As they could not, in his view, be developed from the first forms, there 

 must have been creations of plants after the third day, of which we have no rec 

 ord in the Bible ; for he allows us to conceive of no conservative way in which 

 the old could have been replaced. And the difficulty is increased when we un- 

 derstand that the plaudit " good," pronounced upon the work of each day, .indi- 

 cates that the work was already complete. The Doctor explains his position in. 

 these words : " The introduction of new species of animals and plants has been 

 a continuous process, not necessarily in the sense of derivation of one species 

 from another, but in the higher sense of the continued operation of the cause or 

 causes which introduced life at first. This, I take to be the true theological or 

 scriptural as well as scientific idea of what we ordinarily and somewhat loosely 

 term creation." He further remarks: "The formulae in Genesis, 'Let the 

 land produce and let the waters produce,' imply some sort of mediate creation 

 through the agency of the land and the waters, but of what sort, we have no 

 means of knowing. They include, however, the idea of the origin of the lower 

 and humbler forms of life from material pre-existing in inorganic nature." This, 

 is essentially the position of Dr. Cocker, as already shown. One more quota- 

 tion from Dr. Dawson, will suffice : " The term 'evolution' need not in itself 

 be a bugbear on theological grounds. The Bible writers would, I presume, have- 

 no objection to it if understood to mean the development of the plans of the 

 Creator in n-ature." 



Prof. Dana, another acknowledged and honored light on the theistic side of 

 this controversy, asserts that a conclusion most likely to be sustained by further 

 research is this: "The evolution of the system of life went forward through the 

 derivation of species from species, according to natural methods not yet clearly 

 understood, and with few occasions for supernatural intervention," 



I have said this much on the mooted subject of the origin of living forms inj 

 nature, iii the first place, because a thorough study of either Genesis or geology 

 requires it, and, secondly, with a desire to show that in reality theistic students of 

 nature hold views essentially the same as their materialistic co-laborers, so far as 

 the facts in nature are concerned. The only real difference is in the interpretation 

 of these facts. But here the gulf which separates them is as deep and yawning as. 

 that between the monkey and man. The one claim that all the processes of na-.' 

 ture are due to ioxcfa within physical nature herself; and these, so far as their study 

 of nature is concerned, ignore the agency of God in it. To this extent they are 

 Godless, but it does not follow that, outside of their study of nature, they may 



