It may be said that it seems inconsistent with the dignity of man’s nature as described in the Bible to believe that his formation was effected by any process of evolution, still more by any such process of evolution as would represent him to have been an animal before he became a man.

But, in the first place, it is to be observed that Science does not yet assert, and there is no reason to believe that it ever will assert, that man became a fully developed animal, with the brute instincts and inclinations, appetites and passions, fully formed, an animal such as we see other animals now, before he passed on into a man such as man is now.  His body may have been developed according to the theory of Evolution, yet along a parallel but independent line of its own; but at any rate it branched off from other animals at a very early point in the descent of animal life.  And, further, as Science cannot yet assert that life was not introduced into the world when made habitable by a direct creative act, so too Science cannot yet assert, and it is tolerably certain will never assert, that the higher and added life, the spiritual faculty, which is man’s characteristic prerogative, was not given to man by a direct creative act as soon as the body which was to be the seat and the instrument of that spiritual faculty had been sufficiently developed to receive it.  That the body should have been first prepared, and that when it was prepared the soul should either have been then given, or then first made to live in the image of God,—­this is a supposition which is inconsistent neither with what the Bible tells nor with what Science has up to this time proved.

And to this must be added that it is out of place for us to define what is consistent or inconsistent with the dignity of man in the process or method by which he was created to be what he is.  His dignity consists in his possession of the spiritual faculty, and not in the method by which he became possessed of it.  We cannot tell, we never can tell, and the Bible never professes to tell, what powers or gifts are wrapped up in matter itself, or in that living matter of which we are made.  How absolutely nothing we know of the mode by which any single soul is created!  The germ which is to become a man can be traced by the physiologist through all the changes that it has to undergo before it comes to life.  Is the future soul wrapped up in it from the first, and dormant till the hour of awakening comes? or is it given at some moment in the development?  We see in the infant how its powers expand, and we know that the spiritual faculty, the very essence of its being, has a development like the other faculties.  It has in it the gift of speech, and yet it cannot speak.  Judgment, and taste, and power of thought; self-sacrifice and unswerving truth; science and art, and spiritual understanding, all may be there in abundant measure and yet may show no sign.  All this we know; and because it is common and well known we see nothing inconsistent with the dignity of our nature in this concealment of all that dignity, helpless and powerless, within the form of an infant in arms.  With this before us it is impossible to say that anything which Science has yet proved, or ever has any chance of proving, is inconsistent with the place given to man in Creation by the teaching of the Bible.