Moses opens the record of the sixth epoch by the words, "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature, after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so." Geology confirms this by declaring, as it were, that then her modern history commenced. Then began the present aspect of field and forest; and modern types of animals were introduced and became predominant. Many of the species of both plants and animals were identical with those still living. Further, one of the most noteworthy facts connected with the first mammals (or milk-giving animals), is the suddenness of their appearance in great numbers, and of all, or nearly all orders, even the highest, except man.
Lastly, we are told, "And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (Gen. i, 26). Thus from scripture we learn that the closing and completing work of the creation was man.
Geology triumphantly confirms the revealed fact that submarine animals, land vegetation, reptiles, birds and quadrupeds, were all of them in existence, successively and collectively, before the first of the human race. Further, that the earliest remains of men, yet discovered, indicate that they were distinctly and perfectly human, as much so as any race now living, and were not in any sense an intermediate link between man and the ape. When his habitation was prepared, and the materials of the forest and of the mine were all ready for his use, then, and not till then, did man appear. Thus the record of Moses, and the record of nature bear each other witness. The same narrative told by the ruler of Israel four thousand years ago, is also told in its own expressive language by the very earth on which we tread, as if it were "graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever."
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CHAPTER XIII.
SCIENTIFIC PROOFS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE.
TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURES—DOCTRINE OF THE SADDUCEES—REMARK OF NAPOLEON—SPIRIT CONTROLS MATTER—MICROSCOPIC ATOMS— PROTOPLASM—ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS OF LIFE—INFIDEL THEORIES—WISDOM OF SOCRATES—HERBERT SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY—FACULTIES OF THE MIND—CONSCIOUSNESS—PERCEPTION— MEMORY—IMAGINATION—JUDGMENT—CONSCIENCE—VOLITION—ABERCROMBIE'S RECORD—TALLEYRAND—MILK POISONING.
The inspired records uniformly teach that man has a spiritual nature distinct from the body, the union of which with the body produces that which, for want of a better term, we call our present life. The union of some of these celestial spirits with bodies of earthly matter forms the visible world of mankind. They teach us, also, that the existence and conscious faculties of the soul continue after the death of the body. Death is referred to in the scriptures as giving up the ghost, or spirit; and very many passages refer to the condition of disembodied spirits after death. In the account of the creation of Adam, we read that "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul," thus making an evident distinction between the body and the soul. In various parts of the Old Testament we find references to disembodied spirits, and various enactments in the Mosaic law against consulting them by means of divination and necromancy.
The Sadducees denied the separate existence of spirits; but, in our Savior's famous argument with them. He showed that the Old Testament clearly taught this doctrine when it represented God as saying, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," adding, "He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living." (Mark xii, 26.) Thereby teaching that these persons, although their bodies had been long dead, were still living. So, likewise, St. Paul speaks of being absent from the body, yet present with the Lord. St. John declares that he saw the souls of those who had been slain for their testimony of Jesus. (Rev. vi, 9.)
In examining the scientific evidence of these scriptural views concerning a spiritual existence, it will be necessary to inquire into the origin of life as exhibited in physiology. This is confessedly a difficult question, yet one of great importance, since, driven from the sciences of astronomy and geology, infidelity has sought to entrench itself in natural history as in a citadel. Yet, even here, the ground crumbles beneath its feet; and the time is not far distant when a man, having a scientific education, will be ashamed to avow himself an infidel.
We have seen that astronomy and geology bear testimony to the truths revealed in the scriptures; so, likewise, does the science which treats of the functions of living beings.