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CREATION.
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the length of the vast period of time which has been absorbed in their formation has been considerably enlarged. We now know that the huge mountains of the palæozoic, mesozoic, and cenozoic formations have taken not thousands, but millions of years in their growth. In the third place, we now know that all the countless fossils that are found in those formations are not 'sports of nature,' as was believed 150 years ago, but the petrified remains of organisms that lived in earlier periods of earth's history, and arose by gradual transformation from a long series of ancestors."
Thus, whatever be the true significance of the sevendays 'creation given in the book of Genesis, it is clear that the theologian's interpretation of the account is not one which can be regarded as satisfactory, in any sense of the word. The science of geology has demonstrated, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the world we inhabit is not less than hundreds of millions years old, and we have no alternative left but to reject the idea of its coming into being, for the first time, some six thousand years ago.
It is thus certain that there could be no beginning of the universe, which, consequently, must be taken to be eternal. But this is clearly fatal to the notion of creation which is entertainable only on the supposition of a commencement of the world-process in the midst of a continuous vacuum and inaction. Our conclusion will, no doubt, appear highly disagreeable to theism at first sight, but there is nevertheless no escape from it; for the world is crowded with features which forbid us lightly to admit a controlling Supreme Intelligence. According to Mr. Fiske, quoted by McCabe
“The fact stands inexorably before us, that a Supreme Will, enlightened by perfect intelligence and possessed of infinite power, might differently have fashioned the universe, so that the suffering
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