"
But there is a great difference between what we may thus glean from the
study of the earth, and what is revealed to us by the clear teaching of the
Word of God, as He tells us what He did in His wonderful work of Creation,
and how He "saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good."
When God speaks, all is clear and simple and true; and is to be understood
by believing His word: when we come to the thoughts of men about what
happened in the far past, especially when they try to settle not only the
_when_ but the _how_ of His mighty working, much is dark uncertainty.
Should we then _not_ study the letters of the Stone Book? I did not say so;
"God has made everything beautiful in its time," and His handiwork in the
past as well as the present is indeed worthy of our attention. But in
reading books about geology, more perhaps than in any other study, you need
to ask God to teach you to hold fast by His Word.
Then, if you read that many geologists now believe that there has been no
special creation of fish or bird or beast of the earth, but that "all the
many forms of plant and animal life have been unfolded out of a few simple
forms, just as the stem, the leaf, and the flower are evolved out of a
simple seed"--you will say at once, "That cannot be; for God has plainly
told us of both plants and animals that they were made each 'after its
kind,' and therefore there can never have been such a thing as a fish
developing into a bird, or a bird into a lizard: nor, so far as I have
seen, is any such creature to be found in a fossil state.
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