and night, seasons and years, and the vegetable kingdom, before any animal creation. We then come to the formation of animals which are to inhabit this convenient abode, and which are described as taking place in the following order: first the water animals, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field, "each after its kind"; then, and finally, the creation of man. Respecting his creation, we are told that it was the purpose of the Almighty to make a being after a very different "image" from that of any other creature on the earth; and whatever may be the true interpretation of the language employed, whether man was created literally "in our image, after our likeness," or according to an image and a likeness of which his Creator had conceived, there can be no doubt that what Moses described as the purpose of God was to make a being differing absolutely from all the other animals by a broad line of demarkation which is perfectly discoverable through all the resemblances that obtain between him and all the other living creatures. To this new being there was given, we are told, dominion over all the other animals, and the fruits of the earth were assigned to him for food; he was formed out of the dust of the earth, the breath of life was breathed into his nostrils, and he became "a living soul." Let us now see if this statement of the creation of man is so "grossly anthropomorphic" as is supposed. You are aware that Buffon, who was certainly no mean naturalist or philosopher, and who was uninfluenced by the idea that the book of Genesis was an inspired production, reached the conclusion that a study of nature renders the order of man's creation as described by Moses a substantially true hypothesis. "We are persuaded," said Buffon, "independently of the authority of the sacred books, that man was created last, and that he only came to wield the scepter of the earth when that earth was found worthy of his sway."[112] You evolutionists will say that this may be very true upon your hypothesis of his gradual development out of other animals, through untold periods of time. But now let us see whether Moses was so grossly unscientific, upon the supposition that God created man as he describes. If man was created, or molded, by the Deity, he was formed, in his physical structure, out of matter; and all matter may be figuratively and even scientifically described as "the dust of the earth," or as "clay," or by any other term that will give an idea of a substance that was not spirit. If Moses had said that man's body was formed out of the constituent elements of matter, or some of them, he would have said nothing that a modern believer in special creations need shrink from, for he would have stated an indisputable fact. He stated in one form of expression the very same fact that a modern scientist would have to state in another form, whatever might have been the mode, or the power, or the time in or by which the constituent