Will the verbal inspirationalists please tell us when God quit sending messages to the world couched in his own words? It may be that that kind of inspiration ceased before Paul began preaching. If so, Paul is no greater, _as an authority_, than Whitefield or Moody. There is no reason why we should not read the Bible just as we would any other book, with reason enthroned. POPULAR OBJECTIONS ANSWERED Note.--The following objections to evolution with replies thereto are taken from a debate which the writer and several anti-evolutionists conducted some time ago through the columns of a popular weekly. An opponent says: “The evolutionists are trying to rob God of the honor of creation by substituting certain natural laws for his omnipotent power. This world and all therein didn’t ‘just happen’; it was created on purpose. We oppose this Darwin heresy because it conflicts with the divinely-inspired word of God.... My opponent should be more positive in some of his statements and not say, ‘So-and-so is the opinion of scientists, if he would have us forsake our old beliefs and adopt his...’. In regard to that crust of conservatism of ours which he says is so thick and hard that the truth cannot percolate through it--I, for one, would rather have a defensive armor so tough that lightning could not ‘faze’ it than be so spongy as to absorb every _ism_ I came in contact with.” Is it a reflection upon the power, the glory, and the dignity of the Almighty to say that the creative act was by the operation of natural law--a slow, gradual, long-continued act--rather than a short, quick, mechanical, or supernatural, process? Before the dawn of science even the brightest minds, knowing little or nothing of the law of cause and effect, could not conceive of God as performing his mighty works save in some manlike manner. It seems that they had the idea--and a great many still have it--that during those six days of twenty-four hours each the Creator went about his work at his little old mud-mill, mixing and grinding the material, and shaping and moulding it into all sorts of animal forms on his potter wheel. It is time for the world to rid itself of the primitive idea that man originated as a sort of hand-made, table-turned piece of pottery. Others say that God merely “spoke” all things into existence. If that view be correct, then according to the rest of the Genesis story of creation God became so tired from this lingual feat of six days’ duration that he was compelled to take a rest at the week’s end. Is it possible that a God of infinite power and endurance should become so weary with a week’s work, either of hand or tongue, that he would require a rest? There is not the slightest evidence that God ever did an hour’s work save through natural law.