262 
Among the benefits which science has rendered there have 
been none greater than the light it has thrown upon some 
parts of the sacred record which are found to anticipate (when 
rightly questioned) on this point the discoveries of science. 
That the fossils which seem to testify of ages long past, and 
of progressive development, should have had such features of 
antiquity stamped upon them by the God of truth, though by 
Him created in a literal day, is a theory which, constructed as 
it may have been by some timid believer, is utterly abhorrent, 
as I venture to think, to a right dividing of the word of truth. 
Happily, there is one aspect of the modeim introduction of 
man upon the earth in which well-nigh all will be agreed. If 
we lay aside that chronology which is measured by years, and 
consult that which consists of the sequence of events, we 
shall find that the fundamental truth of man’s origin, as 
recorded in Genesis, viz., that he is the climax, the consum- 
mation and crown of God's creation, is the testimony which 
geology has always given. Of all the creatures that have 
been formed to live, it testifies that man is the latest form. 
“ Ho geological fact," says Professor Dawson, “ can now be 
more firmly established than the ascending progression of 
animal life, whereby from the early invertebrates of the Eozoic 
and Primordial series we pass upward through the dynasties 
of fishes, and reptiles, and brute mammals, to the reign of 
man. In this great series man is obviously the last term. 
And when we inquire at what point he was introduced the 
answer must be, in the latter part of the Kainozoic or Tertiary 
period, which is the latest of the whole. Hot only have we 
the negative fact of the absence of his remains from all the 
earlier Tertiary formations, but the positive fact that all 
the mammalia of these earlier ages are now extinct, and that 
man could not have survived the changes of condition which 
destroyed them and introduced the species now our con- 
temporaries." In this confirmation from science of the exact 
position of man in the order of God's creation, as recorded 
by Genesis, we may well rejoice. When, however, we turn 
to that chronology which is measured by years, if God's Word 
on this point be the W ord of Truth, we cannot but recognise 
that much erroneous teaching prevails. 
To the question, When did man appear on the earth ? the 
Word of Truth gives no exact date; for I need not remind 
my brethren that the marginal 4,004 is of no binding authority, 
and is but the result of one among the 180 systems of chrono- 
logy which have been broached as to the period which elapsed 
between Adam and the birth of Christ. Of all these systems, 
the lowest numbers about 3,600 years, the highest about 
