(6) AND GOD SAID—­
    (i.) Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind ...
           the beast of the earth after its kind (Carnivora), cattle
        after its kind (Ungulata), and everything that creepeth on
           the ground after its kind.[1]

And also—­

(ii.) Let us make man....  So God created man in His
own image—­in the image of God created He him; male
and female created He them.

(7) Then followed the day of rest.

[Footnote 1:  See page 178.] [Transcriber’s Note:  Chapter XIV.]

Sec. 2. The Order of Events considered.

It was convenient first to bring these later Creative Acts together before beginning any remarks about any one of them.

It will now be desirable to notice what occurred, because here the question of order is concerned.  I could not avoid a partial statement on this subject at an earlier page, nor would it be quite sufficient simply to refer the reader back to those pages.  At the risk of some repetition, I will therefore consider the subject here.  It will be observed that on the older interpretation, which passed over the special act of God in designing and publishing the design, and descended at once to the earth to the process of producing the designed forms, this order was matter of great importance.

Granting the supporters of this view that the six days are unequal periods often of vast duration, with or without important subdivisions, they are bound to make out that each creation began, and was at any rate well advanced, before the next began.  We ought, in fact, to see a period more or less prolonged when the whole of what is indicated in the plant verse was well advanced, before any marine or fresh-water life appeared at all.[1]

[Footnote 1:  There was “evening and morning” of the third day, i.e., beginning and completion, and also the whole interval of the fourth day, before the command of the fifth.]

All attempts to make out that this was so, have proved failures.  It is assumed, for instance (and justly so), that life on the globe began with low vegetable forms; these represented the “grass” of the text, and it is suggested that the “fruit tree” is represented by the Devonian and Carboniferous conifers.  This in itself is a very strained view.  It is recollected that the terms used are not scientific, but for the world at large; but without confining “fruit tree” to mean only trees having edible fruit, still the appearance of a few first species of conifers in the Devonian, can hardly be called an adequate fulfilment of the requirements of the passage.  But even so, myriads of fish and other animals existed before the Devonian and Carboniferous plant age.

The animal forms that so existed, have therefore to be ignored, or are assumed to have been created without special notice:  and it is said that the Mosaic period of “moving creatures of the deep,” fishes and monsters, only began when the rocks begin to show great abundance of shells, of fish, and subsequently of huge reptilians which prepared the way for birds—­which gradually make their appearance towards the Trias.