LECTURE IX.

GENESIS OF THE ANIMALS.

"And God said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly the mov、 ing creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good." GENESIS i. 20-25.

I.-Explanation of the Passage.

1.-Animals the Issue of Fifth and Sixth Days.

FIRST of all, let us attend to the Explanation of the Passage.

At the outset, then, observe that I have included in the passage not merely the work of the Fifth Day, but also the first part of the work of the Sixth. My reasons for thus considering them in one lecture is that they naturally form a single and distinct topic, namely, the Creation of Animals; while the second part of the work of the Sixth Day as naturally forms another single

and distinct topic, namely, the Creation of Man. Moreover: remembering that the measures of time in this Creation Archive are not literal days of twenty-four hours each, but eras of indefinite length, it is reasonable to suppose that the Creations on the various days more or less overlap each other, the Creation wrought on any given day being the characteristic work of that day. These explanations, then, justify me in considering in one lecture the work of the Fifth Day and a part of the work of the Sixth-that is to say, the Genesis of Animals.

2.- Panorama of the Emerging Animals.

Remembering, now, that our Chronicler does not profess to be a zoologist, but only an observer and describer of a passing scene, let us again ascend his mount of vision, and survey the unrolling panorama of the Emerging Animals. The Fourth Day, with its flood of solar light, has come. But, though the soil is verdant with glorious vegetation, no beast walks the land, no bird flies the air, no fish swims the sea. And now is heard again the Omnific Word: "Let Animals be!" And, lo, the nautilus spreads his sail, and the caterpillar winds his cocoon, and the spider weaves his web, and the salmon darts through the sea, and the lizard glides among the rocks, and the eagle soars the sky, and the lion roams the jungle, and the monkey chatters among the trees, and all animate Creation waits the advent and lordship of Man, God's Inspiration and therefore God's Image, God's Image and therefore God's Viceroy.

3. The Animal Succession a Prog

For, observe that our passage sets forth the Genesis of the Animals in an ascending order. First, Animals of the water: "God said: 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living beings;' and God created

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the great sea-monsters-literally, long-extended creaturesand every living thing that moveth, with which the waters swarm, after their kind." Secondly, Animals of the air: "God said: "Let birds fly above the earth along the expanse of the heavens;' and God created every winged bird, after its kind." Thirdly, Animals of the land: "God said: 'Let the earth bring forth the living being, after its kind, cattle and reptile and beast of the earth, after its kind' and it was so." Fourthly, Man: "God said: Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness' and God created the man in His own image, in the image of God. created He him; male and female created He them." And with this Mosaic account of the Origin of Life, ascending from plant, by way of animal, to man, the geological records substantially agree: first, plants and fishes of the Palæozoic period; secondly, birds and reptiles of the Mesozoic period; thirdly, mammals and man of the Neozoic period. Remember, now, that our Passage, even as the most skeptical scholars concede, was in existence as a piece of literature at least twenty-five centuries ago. Remember, also, that Geology has not yet celebrated her first Centennial. And now I have a question to ask. How happens it that that far-off, unlored witness of Creation's panorama, writing, as I believe, centuries before the Trojan War began, succeeded in so nearly formulating the teachings of modern Geology? Look at this very curious, most suggestive fact. That ancient Chronicler tells us that God on the Fifth Day created the tanninim; that is to say, longextended creatures. What, now, did he mean by these tanninim, or long-extended creatures? Whales? So To them the

thought the scholars of 250 years ago. whale was the longest creature known. Accordingly, when in 1611, by commission of James I., the learned

Revisers of the "Bishops' Bible" gave to the world the translation known as the "Authorized Version," they rendered the word tannin by the word whale: "God created great whales." But in 1611 Geology, as a definite science, had not been born; she is the blooming daughter of the nineteenth century. But, though her hands are youthful and delicate, she has succeeded in many a place in upheaving earth's rocky crust; and, lo, here and there, in Europe and Australia, in Asia and America, there come to light gigantic fossils of tanninim indeed, vast animal extensions, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty feet long; fossils of colossal creatures which became extinct untold ages before Adam awoke in Eden to kiss his Heaven-given bride. The difference between the modern geologist and the ancient Chronicler is this: the Geologist calls these enormous fossils by names almost as enormous: Dinosaurs, Hydrosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs, Pterodactyls, etc. The hoary Witness of Creation's panorama was not a geologist; he was only an observer, and therefore he called them "long-extended creatures." And so fair Geology, dowered with the glorious heirloom of untold ages, emerges from the rocky sepulchre of an immemorial antiquity, and, ascending the witness-stand of Time, sets aside the mistranslations of the learned and ecclesiastical past, and, kneeling before the hoary transcriber of the primeval Creation Tradition, solemnly swears that he alone speaks the truth. Ay, the very stones of the field are in league with the sons of God. But let me not be diverted from the point in hand. I was speaking of the ascending order of the animal creation. And the ascending order is prophetic as well as historic. The plant suggests the animal; the animal suggests man. For man himself begins as a microscopic, plant-like cell, and, unfold

ing along the scale of the animal creation, culminates in being a temple of God. Alas! many men never outgrow the animal, forever contentedly creeping. Alas, alas! some men never outgrow the plant, forever simply vegetating; and this only as the flowerless cryptogams, the parasitic fungi of society.

4.-" After their Kind."

Not that the ascending order of the animal succession was an "Evolution of Species into Species." In the first place, as was shown in the Lecture on Plants, "Species" is but an abstract term, a mere concept, having no concrete, objective existence in the world of matter: who ever saw a Species ? Again: Evolutionists use their shibboleth-"Evolution". very hazily, confounding it with transmutation, which is an utterly different thing. Evolution-if we use the word intelligently, not playing fast and loose with it-means unrolling. But you cannot unroll what has not been inrolled; you cannot evolve what has not been involved. In other words, the evolution of a concrete, definite, objective organism, say a salmon, a turtle, an eagle, a whale, a gorilla, a man, is—if we use the word intelligently and accurately -an affair of weight: and you cannot evolve a ton out of a kilogramme. Nevertheless, there is an evolution in which I believe; but it is an ideal evolution: that is to say, the evolution along the ideal axis of a plan and purpose: e. g., the unfolding of a leonine ovum into the adult lion is an evolution along the ideal axis of a vertebrate mammal. In this sense, our hoary Chronicler was an evolutionist. Observe the emphatic, solemn frequency with which he uses the profound phrase: "After his kind;" i. e., "After his plan, idea." Seven times is the phrase repeated in our brief passage. Like the previous, solemn iteration of the same phrase in the Story of the Genesis of the Plants, it