s established the fact
recorded in Scripture, that in bringing the world into its present form
there were several distinct and successive interpositions of
supernatural power, in the distinct and successive creations of
different species of vegetable and animal life. In former periods, they
tell us, the earth was so warm that the present races of men and animals
could not have lived on it, and the plants and animals of that age could
not live now. These very men are profuse in proving that the earth
existed for ages before _man_ made his appearance upon it. This being
the case, we are compelled to acknowledge the creating power of God
above the laws of nature, for there is no law of nature which can either
create a new species of plants or animals, nor yet change one kind into
another, make an oak into a larch, or an ox into a sheep, or a goose
into a turkey, or a megatherium into an elephant, much less into a man.
Some men have dreamed of such changes as these, but no instance of such
a change has ever been alleged in proof of the notion. The most
distinguished anatomists and geologists are fully agreed that no such
change of one animal into another ever took place; much less that any
animal ever was changed into a man. Cuvier, from his comprehensive
survey of the fossils of former periods, establishes the fact, "that the
species now living are not mere varieties of the species which are
lost." And Agassiz says, "I have the conviction that species have been
created successively, at distinct intervals."[40] Revelations of God's
special interpositions in the affairs of this world are thus written by
his own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlasting
granite of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptiles
start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated
supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made.
Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct
supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of
man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the
chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very
foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena
produced immediately by God himself--the phenomena of the creation of
life--have occurred repeatedly in the history of our globe. Revelation
is not impossible because supernatural. The world is just as full of