"Here again, however, I must remind you that creation, as maintained against such materialistic evolution, whether by theology, philosophy, or Holy Scripture, is necessarily a continuous, nay, an eternal influence, not an intervention of disconnected acts. It is the true continuity, which includes and binds together all other continuity.
"It is here that natural science meets with theology, not as an antagonist, but as a friend and ally in its time of greatest need; and I must here record my belief that neither men of science nor theologians have a right to separate what God in Holy Scripture has joined together, or to build up a wall between nature and religion, and write upon it 'no thoroughfare.' The science that does this must be impotent to explain nature, and without hold on the higher sentiments of man. The theology that does this must sink into mere superstition.
"In conclusion, can we formulate a few of the general laws, or perhaps I had better call them general conclusions, respecting life, in which all palæontologists may agree? Perhaps it is not possible to do this at present satisfactorily, but the attempt may do no harm. We may, then, I think, make the following affirmations:
"1. The existence of life and organization on the earth is not eternal, nor even coeval with the beginning of the physical universe, but may possibly date from Laurentian or immediately pre-Laurentian times.
"2. The introduction of new species of animals and plants has been a continuous process, not necessarily in the sense of derivation of one species from another, but in the higher sense of the continued operation of the cause or causes which introduced life at first. This, as already stated, I take to be the true theological or Scriptural as well as scientific idea of what we ordinarily and somewhat loosely term creation.
"3. Though thus continuous, the process has not been uniform; but periods of rapid production of species have alternated with others in which many disappeared and few were introduced. This may have been an effect of physical cycles reacting on the progress of life.
"4. Species, like individuals, have greater energy and vitality in their younger stages, and rapidly assume all their varietal forms, and extend themselves as widely as external circumstances will permit. Like individuals also, they have their periods of old age and decay, though the life of some species has been of enormous duration in comparison with that of others; the difference appearing to be connected with degrees of adaptation to different conditions of life.
"5. Many allied species, constituting groups of animals and plants, have made their appearance at once in various parts of the earth, and these groups have obeyed the same laws with the individual and the species in culminating rapidly, and then slowly diminishing, though a large group once introduced has rarely disappeared altogether.
"6. Groups of species, as genera and orders, do not usually begin with their highest or lowest forms, but with intermediate and generalized types, and they show a capacity for both elevation and degradation in their subsequent history.
"7. The history of life presents a progress from the lower to the higher, and from the simpler to the more complex, and from the more generalized to the more specialized. In this progress new types are introduced and take the place of the older ones, which sink to a relatively subordinate place and become thus degraded. But the physical and organic changes have been so correlated and adjusted that life has not only always maintained its existence, but has been enabled to assume more complex forms, and that older forms have been made to prepare the way for newer, so that there has been on the whole a steady elevation culminating in man himself. Elevation and specialization have, however, been secured at the expense of vital energy and range of adaptation, until the new element of a rational and inventive nature was introduced in the case of man.