But the command regarding animal life had followed the other after a short interval, so that we soon see this developing pari passu with the other groups—­first the lower marine forms and gradually advancing to the Pisces, Amphibia, Reptilia, and then to Aves, as a special division in the second great design group.  Lastly the mammals appear and man.[1] But throughout all, we see the rise, culmination, and decay of many transitory and apparently preparatory groups—­such as, for example, the Labyrinthodons and Urodelas—­preceding the modern types of Amphibia; ancient fish-forms preceding modern ones, and either dying out or leaving but a few and distant representatives; or again, the whole tribes of ancient Saurians, of which something has already been said.  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.

That is the message of Revelation.  It requires no straining of the sacred text:  it takes everything as it stands, and the seemingly lengthy explanation it requires is not to manipulate the text, but to clear away the heap of mistaken conceptions that have gathered round it:—­to establish the idea, that the terms “God said, Let there be,” and so forth, mean Heaven work, in the design and type—­not earth work in its realization and building up.  Establishing this by illustration and argument, nothing more is required in the way of textual exegesis except to argue for the rejection of perverse and unsustainable meanings long given to “days,” to “expanse” or “firmament,” and to “great whales” in the narrative.