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theory of the origin of species by natural selection, like its 
predecessors of transmutation and development, is founded on 
the proposition that, in the furnishing of the earth with its 
organisms, there has been no interposition of a higher power 
in the sense of creation, except, perhaps, in a very remote 
first and undefined step. However philosophers may differ on 
the subject, the believer in the authenticity of the Bible record 
has no difficulty as to the true doctrine of the exercise of 
creative power. He finds it written, and he is bound to believe 
and uphold it, that when the earth was without form and void, 
and darkness on the face of the deep, the Spirit of God brooded 
on the face of the waters — a plain assurance that submarine 
life was first brought into existence by the direct influence of 
God’s Spirit. And, in the work of the fifth day, there is an 
equally plain statement that the moving, or, as more properly 
translated, the creeping creatures from the waters , and winged 
fowl — amphibious reptiles and birds — came into being at the 
bidding of the Almighty. And so, with respect to “ cattle and 
creeping thiugs, and beasts of the earth ” — the mammal races 
— they too came subsequently into existence by the fiat of God. 
And lastly, a man, we are told, was made by the creative 
powers in the image of God , his Creator. Thus we know that 
as regards the first appearance of each of the great leading 
families of the animal world — fishes, reptiles, birds, mammals, 
and man — there was an exercise of the divine will, and a direct 
interposition of a divine power in the sense of creation. All 
the animals that are now on the face of the earth may, or may 
not, have been evolved by natural selection from those first 
created beings, each after its own kind, throughout the geolo- 
gical eras; and to that extent the Darwinian theory may, or 
may not, be well-founded; but no further concession can be 
made by the religionist without surrendering the evidence of 
creation so mysteriously preserved for his use in the first 
chapter of Genesis. How many of each class were created does 
not appear; but sufficient is stated in Scripture to show that 
Darwin’s suggestion, that all vegetables and animals may 
have been derived from, at most, only four or five progenitors, is 
without foundation ; and that there is no ground at all for his 
avowed belief that they have all descended from one proto- 
type, from some one primordial form into which life was 
breathed. So far our old primeval history of the creation has 
decided, for those who believe in its authenticity, an interesting 
and important question, which man’s intellect and research, 
without such aid, are powerless to decide. 
The unity or plurality of the races of manldnd is another of 
those vexed questions, which has undergone considerable dis- 
