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.

It will be admitted readily that if this account of Creation is the true
one, if the meaning assigned to the Genesis narrative is correct, it
affords no hindrance to _any_ conclusions that may progressively be
demanded by the investigation of life-history on earth.

It requires us to believe that the forms which life assumes are not
chance forms, nor the _unpremeditated_ results of environment and
circumstance. But we are not told positively which forms are transitory,
which are final.

It is only a matter of probable opinion, which it is quite open to any
one to dispute, that there is any indication of finality. I should
personally be inclined to think that we have indications that carnivora,
ungulates, and birds are final forms; that no evolution will ever modify
a bird further into anythin