The largest happened when the last and highest mountains were raised. As a consequence, the period called the Drift followed, when the reindeer made his home in the vicinity of England. Most tropical animals were destroyed. A new race of placential mammals was to be introduced; the type of which is found in the sea, able to endure the revolutions of the Drift. Hence the wisdom displayed in selecting this animal, as a representative of morning.
7. The Scripture claim of special providence is in harmony with the defence of the same in science. Providence is general, when wrought out in due course of law; special, when it is a power added to nature. Special providence is not a rule of action, but the exception. Science claims this much in nature. I refer to the admissions of such men as Huxley, Tyndal and Darwin. Prof. Huxley says: “No scientist of the present day will venture the affirmation, that matter is eternal. Should one be found, his brethren would rise up in court, and object to his testimony, as he would be incompetent to testify.” If not eternal, it was created by God’s special power. Prof. Darwin says: “Some of our brethren have tried by experiments, to prove spontaneous life from inorganic matter, but they have failed, and, from the nature of the case, they must ever fail.” “There must have been a first life, I think five forms, I know there must have been one from which life could proceed.” Special providence again is needed to start life. The same principle would apply as many times as the earth may have lost its living forms. Sir Charles Lyell would assure you that the fires of the Carboniferous period alone deprived the earth of all land and fresh water animals, plants and seeds, at least one hundred times. Yet it was supplied between each. Prof. Tyndal says, “Do you ask me 'May inert matter rise up and live?’ I answer directly, 'No, life must have been created.’” Here then in science are the Deists’ endorsements of exactly what every enlightened Christian believes in reference to the covenant of salvation. This is the doctrine of the science of today, viz: that “God made all matter at one and the same time; that by special power he put all parts in motion at one and the same time; that his eye is over all, ready to supply what is needed above what the machinery of nature can perform.” Carry out this principle, and you have the manifestations of the true God in Jesus, and every Bible theory of the New Covenant.
Section 6.
The Work of the Sixth Day.
1. Beasts, with a perishable spirit, are the evening of the sixth day. Man without an immortal spirit is the morning. Here we shall find the grandest contrast of any of the six days. Historic man is the morning, extending to the end of God’s work, in reference to matter.
Duration ceases to be measured at the close of this day. Solomon alludes to the contrasts found in this day. “Who knoweth the spirit of the beast, that goeth downward; and the spirit of man, that goeth upward?” For a long time these animals, without a spirit to be preserved, ruled the earth as kings, “without any one to till the soil.” Jungles and forests, mountains and dales, lakes and caves, alike afford no facts inconsistent with this statement of Moses. Should science ever confirm the existence of a race prehistoric, resembling man, it will doubtless be shown that they were not a contrast with beasts, and have no connection with our race.
2. Our race undoubtedly sprang from Adam less than six thousand years ago. Prehistoric man, like evolution, rests upon the hypotheses of men, always unsafe; but in this case unsupported by a well-attested fact. The former may claim the intuitions of that class of persons ever looking up the genealogy of Cain’s wife; the latter has the common sense of the average man against him. Upon this subject, as upon every other upon which the Bible pretends to speak, “If they speak not according to what is written, it is because there is no truth in them.” By special revelation man saw that by a special providence of God, he caused the ground to become the mother of man; and from this creation proceeded, by the same special providence, a help-meet for man. She has ever proved herself the great help in the march of civilization. Facts show that man gloriously contrasts with the highest types going before.
3. It is not yet a settled question that the air, for any number of thousands of years before Adam, was sufficiently cleared of deadly gases as to admit of human breathing. On looking upon the coal veins of Pennsylvania, we need no argument to show that man could not have breathed the carbon that hung in the air of that period of deposit. The mute faces of the coal beds of Ohio forbid man’s existence then, although these succeed the former by millions of years. Geologists agree that the Pacific deposits of coal have been this side of the great upheavals of the large mountains. If man had been living then, the carbonic acid of the air would have strangled the life out of him. When we take into consideration how very slowly a continent rises out of the ocean, and that both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts had to rise over five thousand feet to expose their fruitful valleys; and also how very long a period had to elapse after, before the air would be laid into the ground by vegetation, we shall readily see the force of this proposition, viz: The very calculations which science has given us bring the deadly gases very near to the time given in Genesis for the creation of our present race.
The volcanic periods of the world’s history argue against the early habitation of the Earth by man. Every volcano is a vent for the escape of deadly gases, caused by the consumption of oils and coal in the Earth’s strata. The enormous quantity of coal consumed is but faintly indicated by the amount of ashes thrown out. The mountains give evidence of recent volcanic disturbance, greatly exceeding the present. Ancient river beds are found into whose channels the debris of the mountains had been dragged by the great ice-flow, until leveled over to the height of several thousand feet; then the volcanic era covered, in places, this drift fifty or sixty feet thick; thus preserving the silt from being dragged away, as the waters receded. The fact that we had a coal period following, shows that man in the volcanic period, and for thousands of years after, could not breathe the air. Our active volcanoes are reduced to about three hundred. Still the air is polluted in many ways. Smelting works, forges and gas plants all pollute the air. Every cesspool, every whiff of burning tobacco, adds its quota to air-corrupting. Each year contributes to deposit a portion of the remaining carbon of the air. Rich valleys of warm zones are not yet healthy. We still go to the mountains for invigorating air.
5. Evidently, we have not yet reached the climax of good breathing air. Nature discourages the thought, that man could have continued his race, in any time, much previous to that given for the creating of Adam. The morning of the sixth day is in progress. Prophecy presents the coming man greatly improved over the present. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”
6. This morning ends, when the angel stands one foot upon the land, his right hung over the sea, with his left hand pointing to heaven, proclaiming that time shall be no longer. “And God rested from all his labor.”