Q. The following sentence occurs in “The Bible Treasury” for February, page 210. “There is nothing in scripture to exclude a succession of creatures rising to higher organization from lower, as the rule with a striking exception here and there, from the Eozoon in the Laurentian rocks of Canada to the mammalia which most nearly resemble those of the earth as it is.”
What reasons are there for supposing that creatures thus rose without a creative act?
Would not such an idea be out of analogy with the present creation, where God has made each after its kind? Gen. 1:11-12, 21-2511And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11‑12)
21And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24And 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. 25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:21‑25). C.O.A.
A. There is and can be no good reason for the notion that creatures rose from the lower forms as the rule to higher ones without God's creative act. The very word “creatures” implies as much. Scripture is most explicit that all things came into being through Him, and that apart from Him not one thing received being which has received being. All such unbelieving theories of development are therefore in rebellion against the word of God. A creative act introduced each new species.
2. The answer to the second query follows as a matter of course. Even the most prejudiced cannot fail to recognize that creation, vegetable and animal, is ordered on grand typical principles, and that species hold throughout, though admitting of large variation within fixed limits, an immense accession for use and beauty.