200 
ON THE CREATION AND 
to the test of close investigation. Error alone needs artificial 
support; but truth, like a Cornish wrestler, requires only a ring 
and fair play. 
It is probable that many of you may not agree in the con¬ 
clusions which I have come to,—that each kind of animal had a 
determinate spot, which was its original abode., and from that 
region it afterwards issued, according to the perfection of its 
locomotive faculties, and spread through distant regions. Yet 
thus far you must agree with me,—that the creation and dis¬ 
tribution of animals in the first place, their destruction and the 
preservation of the few survivors in the second place, were the 
immediate acts of the Divinity, and that the same power that 
caused their destruction could certainly create them again. 
In considering this question, we must never lose sight of Him, 
according to whose will, and by whose almighty power, they 
were first brought into being—who has changed, from time to 
time, after lengthened periods, the races which exist, allowing 
the natural extinction of some, and supplying by a new creation 
others more fitted to occupy the place previously abandoned. 
This is beautifully exemplified, as I have shewn in my lecture, 
in our native country, formerly the abode of elephants, hyanas, 
and other wild animals. 
I have shewn, too, that each additional step in the grouping 
together of the facts of geology confirms the view that the 
changes of our planet, since it has been the abode of man, is 
but as a page in the massive volumes of its history, every leaf 
of which, written in the same character, conveys to the de¬ 
cipherer the idea of a succession of the same causes, acting 
with varying intensity through unequal but enormous periods ; 
each period apparently distinguished by the coming in or going 
out of new subsidiary laws ; yet all submitted to some still higher 
condition, which has stamped the mark of unity on the series, 
and points to the conclusion, that the minutest changes, as 
well as those transitions apparently the most abrupt, have been 
throughout all time, the necessary, the inevitable consequences 
of some more comprehensive law, impressed on matter at the 
dawn of its existence. 
Some of the present company may be inclined to doubt the 
truth of the facts presented to us by geology, because they differ 
from the history of the creation as delivered by Moses, that the 
earth was first created about 6000 years ago. But a different 
interpretation has been lately put upon that passage of the Sacred 
Writings ; and according to the highest authorities of the pre¬ 
sent time, it was not the intention of the writer of the book of 
Genesis to assign the date to the creation of our globe, but only 
