All these wonderful under-currents and cross-currents, rises and falls,
appearances and disappearances, nevertheless all work together till the
whole earth is peopled with the forms, designed in the beginning by the
Heavenly Creator.
[Footnote 1: Nor should we be surprised to find (should it be so
discovered) that some animals appeared after man. (_Cf_. "Nineteenth
Century" for Dec. 1885, p. 856.)]
No account of Creation can be other than wonderful and mysterious; nor
can the mystery of the Divine act be explained in language other than
that of analogy.
We can speak without mystery of a human architect conceiving a design in
his mind; and when he utters it, it is by putting the plans and details
upon paper, and handing them over to the builders, who set to work
(under the architect's supervision, and in obedience to all the rules
he has prescribed as to the methods of work and materials to be used).
All this we can transfer by analogy only, to a Divine design. The
design is in the Divine mind, and He utters it in no material plans or
drawings: the forces of nature and the chemical elements, His obedient
builders, have no hands to receive the plans or eyes to scan them; but
we can perceive the analogy directly, and that is all that is necessary
for Faith.
The origin of all we see in the world and in the entire Cosmos is, then,
in God; and as regards the adjustments of our globe and its relations,
and the actual life-forms in plant and animal, they came into existence
pursuant to groups of types or designs, made by the Divine Mind, and
declared by Him from His Throne in heaven, in six several days--periods
of the rotation of our earth.
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