After the creation of light (first
day), and the ideal adjustment of the distribution of land and water
(second day), He (_a_) "_created_," on the third day, plants, from the
lowest cryptogam upwards; then (_b_) paused for a day (the fourth) in
the direct work of creating life-forms, to adjust certain matters
regarding times and seasons, and regulation of climate, which doubtless
would not be essential during the early stages of life evolution, but
would become so directly a certain point was reached; then (_c_) resumed
the direct creating work (fifth day), with fishes, great reptiles,[1]
and birds (grouped purposely so, as we shall see); and, lastly (_d_),
before the Day of Rest, created the group of mammals (_carnivora_ and
_herbivora_), the "creeping things" of the earth, and man (also grouped
together).
[Footnote 1: This term may be here accepted for the moment--not to
interrupt the argument. It will be more fully dealt with in a subsequent
chapter.]
But some one will ask, You then accept the earlier theory, that the
whole life-series that is now revealed to us by the rocks, from the
Laurentian to the Recent, is excluded from the narrative; and that some
special acts of creation, regarding only modern and surviving
life-forms, were made immediately before man appeared? By no-means; for
such a theory is not only in itself improbable, but is contrary to all
the evidence we possess of life-history on the earth, and is so hopeless
that it is really not worth serious examination and refutation.
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