You remember in the history of the plagues in Egypt, that when the wise men
tried to imitate what God was doing in sending His judgments upon the land,
there was a point at which they stopped, and could go no farther, "This is
the finger of God," they said.
What was that point? It was when they tried, by their enchantments, to
produce one of the meanest, as we should say, of _living_ things.
And so it has always been: man, the highest of God's creatures, apart from
all the rest, is still a creature, and he never has been able to usurp the
power which belongs to God alone.
It is true that man can destroy animals, and so hunt them down as to render
them extinct; he can also, as we have seen, by great care and skill and
long patience, produce what are called "varieties" of both plants and
animals, increasing the size of leaves and blossoms twenty, thirty, even a
hundredfold; but though he may talk of the formation of new flowers, with
endless shades of colour, they are not really new, but only varieties of
those already existing. You remember, when we were speaking of the "Green
Earth," we learnt that never, from the beginning of his life on earth, has
man produced a new _kind_, or species, of either plant or animal.
We must never forget this. God, who said to the mighty ocean, "Hitherto
shalt thou come, and no farther: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed"
(Job xxxviii. II), has also set a bound beyond which man, however great his
powers may be, is not permitted to go.
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