He had first (v. 7) "formed man of the dust of the ground," and then he moves him eastward to Eden, to the garden.
And, as I have shown, when the fall of man came, when the Drift destroyed the lovely Tertiary conditions, man was again moved eastward; he was driven out of Eden, and the cherubims guarded the eastern extremity of the garden, to prevent man's return from (we will say) the shores of Atlantis. In other words, the present habitat of men is, as I have shown, according to the Bible, east of their former dwelling-place.
In the age of man's declension he moved eastward. In the age of his redemption he moves westward.
Hence, if the Bible is to be relied on, before man reached the garden of Eden, he had been created in some region west of the garden, to wit, in America; and here he may have first developed the civilization of which we find traces in Illinois, showing a metal-working race sufficiently advanced to have an alphabet and a currency.
But in all this we do not touch upon the question of where man was first formed by God.
The original birthplace of the human race who shall tell? It was possibly in some region now under the ocean, as Professor Winchell has suggested; there he was evolved during the mild, equable, gentle, plentiful,
406 CONCLUSIONS.
garden-age of the Tertiary; in the midst of the most favorable conditions for increasing the vigor of life and expanding it into new forms. It showed its influence by developing mammalian life in one direction into the monstrous forms of the mammoth and the mastodon, the climax of animal growth; and in the other direction into the more marvelous expansion of mentality found in man.
There are two things necessary to a comprehension of that which lies around us--development and design, evolution and purpose; God's way and God's intent. Neither alone will solve the problem. These are the two limbs of the right angle which meet at the first life-cell found on earth, and lead out until we find man at one extremity and God at the other.
Why should the religious world shrink from the theory of evolution? To know the path by which God has advanced is not to disparage God.