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the extinct animals toward our own time.” That systems 
should be built up in contradiction to the Word of Truth on 
evidence such as this warrants the application of Archbishop 
Whately's stern rebuke in a similar case : — “ A theory sup- 
ported altogether by groundless conjectures and inconclusive 
reasonings, this procedure may be put forward as science, but 
it is a science which is neither Aristotelian nor Baconian, for 
it consists in simply begging the question.” Shall we not 
protest when, upon such evidence as this, we find our popular 
manuals, our newspaper writers, our encyclopaedia compilers, 
flooding the minds of the young and of the uninstructed with 
the assumption of conclusions on man's high antiquity which 
are absolutely unproven ? 
Assuredly, when we seek to divide the Word of Truth 
aright, we may confidently proclaim the Bible teaching of 
man's modern origin, since science itself assures us, by the 
mouth of Cuvier, that man's traditions and historical con- 
sciousness in no nation go further back than two or three 
thousand years before Christ, and since geologists of the first 
rank declare that “ the annals of Genesis afford time for all the 
geological and palaeontological sequence so far as the flint- tool 
makers are concerned.” 
III. The Divine Origin of Man . — I hasten, in the third and 
last place, to contrast some prevalent errors in reference to 
the cause of man’s origin with the statements of the Word of 
Truth. In Scripture it is clearly asserted, not only that God 
made man, but that it is by Him our souls are maintained in 
life. The passages will at once occur to all our minds. St. Paul's 
words to the Corinthians, “ A man indeed ought not to cover his 
head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God ” ; “ The 
first Adam was made a living soul ” ; or in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, where the Apostle adduces words spoken originally of 
the first Adam, “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; 
thou crownest him with glory and honour, and didst set him over 
the works of thy hands.” Two things seem explicitly laid down 
in these passages — first, that man's body did not grow and was 
not progressively developed, but was formed from the dust by 
the immediate operation of God ; and, secondly, that that life 
which constituted him a man, a living creature bearing the 
image of God, was breathed into him by God. When we turn, 
however, to some popular teachers of the present day, we are 
met with theories to account for man's origin which may 
be resolved into two great classes, those of spontaneous gene- 
ration and those of development. 
The doctrine of spontaneous generation is a revival of 
the speculations of Greek and Roman philosophers, and 
