HIS A.NTIQUITY AND CHARACTERISTICS. 



19 



depends, is large and fully developed, with the one single and 

 doubtful exception of the Piltdown man. 



And now, having arrived at a summary of what science has 

 to say concerning man's origin, we have to ask if this contradicts 

 Revelation, or does away with the Divine interposition in what 

 we may still be allowed to call the Creation of Man. We do not, 

 like Professor Schaefer, at Dundee, relegate the early chapters 

 of Genesis to their proper place in literature," by which is meant 

 the place of fable or allegory. We admit their historicity. But 

 since Geology and Paleontology have been our instructors, we find 

 the words of that great theologian, the late R. W. Dale, of Bir- 

 mingham, the best interpretation of them : " Here we have the 

 story of the creation of all things presented in a form intelligible 

 to the untaught men of every country and every age, and intended, 

 not to anticipate the results of scientific investigation, but to 

 convey important religious truths. A description, however brief, 

 of the actual processes by which the Divine wisdom and power 

 gradually brought into existence this material universe, with all 

 the living things that have a home in it, would have occupied not a 

 page but many volumes." May we not apply this principle to the 

 story of the Creation of Man ? However repugnant to us may be 

 the doctrine of Evolution, we dare not deny it altogether, for the 

 evidence in its favour accumulates day by day ; and it is far better 

 to face it boldly, and to read into it Divine wisdom and power, 

 to say to science, as Socrates did to those who asked him concerning 

 the disposal of his body, " Do anything you like with my body, 

 BO long as you do not suppose it to be me." 



As we leave the anatomist and the scientist, who cannot tell 

 us anything concerning the soul, the spirit of man, we enter those 

 deep and unsearchable regions where science fails, and bow in 

 faith before the statement that it was the Divine afflatus which 

 made man a living soul. At some stage in the development of 

 that wonderful brain of which we hear so much, there came to it 

 those perceptions and that consciousness which belongs to the 

 realm of religion, and of which the man of science takes no 

 account. 



" A sense of law and duty. 



And a face upturned from the clod. 

 Some call it evolution ; 

 But others call it God.'' 

 Through faith we understand that the worlds were formed 

 by the hand of God, so that things which are seen were not made 



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