marvellous structures, instincts, and powers which
he has bestowed upon the lower races of animals. Witness the answer
of the Almighty to Job, when he spake out of the whirlwind to
vindicate his own plans in creation and providence; and brought before
the patriarch a long train of animals, explaining and dwelling on the
structure and powers of each, in contrast with the puny efforts and
rude artificial contrivances of man. Witness also the preservation, in
the rocks, of the fossil remains of extinct creatures, as if he who
made them was unwilling that the evidence of their existence should
perish, and purposely treasured them through all the revolutions of
the earth, that through them men might magnify his name. The Psalmist
would almost appear to have had all these thoughts before his mind
when he poured out his wonder in the 104th Psalm:

"O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
In wisdom hast thou made them all.
The earth is full of thy riches;
So is this wide and great sea,
Wherein are moving things innumerable,
Creatures both small and great.
There go the ships [or "floating animals"];
There is leviathan, which thou hast formed to sport therein:
That thou givest them they gather.
Thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good;
Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled;
Thou takest away their breath, they return to their dust.
Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created,
And thou renewest the face of the earth."

There are, however, good reasons to believe that, in the plans of
divine wisdom, the long periods in which the earth was occupied by the
inferior races were necessary to its subsequent adaptation to the
residence of man. To these periods our present continents gradually
grew up in all their variety and beauty. The materials of old rocks
were comminuted and mixed to form fertile soils,[96] and stores of
mineral products were accumulated to enable man to earn his
subsistence and the blessings of civilization by the sweat of his
brow. If it pleased the Almighty during these preparatory stages to
replenish the land and sea with living things full of life and beauty
and happiness, who shall venture to criticise his procedure, or to say
to Him, "What doest thou?"

It would be decidedly wrong, in the present state of that which is
popularly called science, to omit to inquire here what relation to the
work of the fifth creative day those theories of development and
evolution whic