I am aware that Professor Huxley's recent articles may at first sight seem to go against this; but that is not so on any grounds of actual fact, but of a particular interpretation—which I submit is wholly unwarranted.
For instance, it is insisted that the "sea-monsters" of the second group included sirenia and cetacea (dugongs, manatees, and whales, dolphins, &c.), which are mammals. In that case a portion of the command would not have been obeyed—a number of the designed forms would have been kept in abeyance—for a long time. And the same is still more true if bats—a highly placed group of mammals—were included in "winged fowl."
But both these interpretations are distinctly arbitrary, incapable of holding good, and also entirely ignore the conditions of a Revelation.
The narrative is not discussed or defended as an ordinary secular narrative, which is true according to the writer's uninspired intention or the state of his personal knowledge. It is defended as a Revelation. The distinction is as obvious as it is important, directly a moment's consideration is accorded.
If we assume, for a moment, that God did (on any theory whatever of Inspiration) instruct, direct, or enable the writer in making the record, then it is obvious that the writer either put down what he saw in a vision, or what was in some other manner borne on his mind. In any case, he could have had no critical knowledge, and no historical knowledge as an eye-witness, of the actual facts; and he may very well therefore have used language the full meaning of which he did not apprehend.[[94]] What alone is essential is, that the narrative as it stands, on an ordinary critical, linguistic, and grammatical interpretation, should not contain anything which is untrue. Suppose, for example, the word "tannînîm" to be incapable of bearing any other meaning linguistically than "cetacean," then the narrative might be objected to; but if it will bear a meaning which is consistent with fact, then it is no matter that the writer at the time had an erroneous, or (what is more likely) no defined, idea in his own mind of the meaning. And so with "winged fowl"—the objection fails entirely, unless it can be shown, not only that the writer might have thought "bats" to be included, but that linguistically the word cannot have any other meaning than one which would include bats.[[95]]
We have every right, then, to say that the "tannînîm" of the text may be taken to refer to that great and remarkable age of Saurians which is not only of very great importance in itself, but becomes doubly so when we see its connection backward with the fishes, and forward through the Pterodactyles to Odontoformae (Apatornis and Icthyornis) and modern winged birds (Hesperonis for the Penguins); and through the Dinosaurs[[96]] with the Saurornithes, with the Dinornis and the struthious birds; and through the Theriodonts with the mammalian carnivora.
In that case the sequence of the two groups, plants and aquatic animal-forms, is explained. They come almost together—plants being probably actually the first, and mollusca, fishes, and saurians.
There is, further, no real dispute that the Saurians led up to the Aves, and that the third group (of mammals) follows all the members of the second group. The earliest known mammal (microlestes) is an isolated forerunner of not very certain location, the real bulk of the mammalian orders beginning in the Eocene. Seeing, too, how very closely one Creative command is recorded to have followed on the other, it is not in any way against the narrative that some land forms of crustaceans and insects (and possibly others) began to appear at an early stage, when the vegetable and water-animal forms had only progressed as far as the Silurian and Devonian ages. Nor should we wonder if mammalian forms had occurred earlier. I mention this because of the evident gap in the geologic record between the Cretaceous and the Eocene, and because in the article of December, 1885 (and elsewhere), Professor Huxley has used language which suggests that mammals may have existed of which the rocks give no sign. E.g. (p. 855): "The organization of the bat, bird, or pterodactyle, presupposes that of a terrestrial quadruped ... and is intelligible only as an extreme modification of the organization of a terrestrial mammal or reptile." The italics are of course mine. And again (p. 855), "I am not aware that any competent judge would hesitate to admit that the organization of these animals (whales, dugongs, &c.) shows the most obvious signs of their descent from terrestrial quadrupeds."
I do not quote these words of so great a master as presuming to question them (even if, as a scientific verdict, I had any motive for so doing), but merely to point out as a matter of plain and fair reasoning, that if a Divine Creator had designed certain forms to be gradually attained by the processes of Evolution, it would not be necessary that any actually realized form or tangible creature should have existed as ancestors. Logically, the necessity is either that certain animals should have actually existed whose descendants gradually lost or gained certain features and functions till the forms we are speaking of resulted, or that certain patterns or designs should have been created according to which development proceeded by regular laws till the forms in question resulted.
A few words as to the terms used in describing the contents of each group, may be added. It is obvious that the terms are intended to be exhaustive of certain main groups which are described sufficiently, without being cast in a form which would have been incompatible with the use (at the time) of a human agent as the medium of the recorded Revelation.