"Fundamentals," a strict scientific method
may destroy the theory of Successive Ages, and it may show that there
has been a great world catastrophe. But here the work of strict
inductive science ends. It cannot show just how or when life or the
various kinds of life did originate, it can only show _how it did not_.
It destroys forever the fantastic scheme of a definite and precise order
in which the various types of life occurred on the globe, and thus it
_leaves the way open_ to say that life must have originated by just such
a literal Creation as is recorded in the first chapters of the Bible.
But this is as far as it can be expected to go. It is strong evidence in
favor of a direct and literal Creation; but it furnishes this evidence
by indirection, that is, by demolishing the only alternative or rival of
Creation that can command a moment's attention from a rational mind.

_But if life is not now being created from the not-living, if new kinds
of life are not now appearing by natural process, if above all we cannot
prove in any way worthy of being called scientific that certain types of
life lived before others, if in fine man himself is found fossil and no
one fossil can be proved older than another or than that of man himself,
why is not a literal Creation demonstrated as a scientific certainty for
every mind capable of appreciating the force of logical reasoning?_

VIII

CREATION AND THE CREATOR

I

We need not here attempt to discuss the existence or even the nature of
God. The Infinite One in all His attributes is above and beyond
discussion. But there are some things that we can very profitably gather
together as the net results of modern scientific investigation regarding
the origin of things; and to this task we must now address ourselves in
a very brief way.

We shall not attempt to deal with the astronomical aspects of the
question, or the origin of our world as a planet or the origin of the
solar system. This would lead us too far afield. We shall make more
progress in dealing with the questions nearest at hand, namely, the
origin of the present order of things on our globe.

First we must summarize the facts as we now know them in the five
departments of knowledge with which we have had to deal.

1. Both matter and energy seem now to be at a standstill, so far as
creation is concerned; no means being known to science whereby the fixed
quantity of both with which we have to deal in this wor