We may go further still. If we are at liberty to admit an interval of indefinite length between the creation of the world and the work of the Six Days, there is certainly nothing which forbids us to suppose that, during this period, the earth should have undergone many revolutions, and have been peopled by countless tribes of plants and animals, which, as age rolled on after age, came into existence, and died out, and were succeeded by new creations. We cannot, perhaps, see the use of all this, nor can we penetrate the motives the Great Creator might have had in bringing into existence such a boundless profusion of organic life. Granted: but then we have studied the Sacred Text to little purpose if we have not yet realized the solemn truth that, to our poor and feeble intellects, His judgments are incomprehensible, and his ways unsearchable. Did He not set His stars in the remotest regions of space, far beyond the reach of unaided human vision, and did they not shine there for ages, though man could see them not? And for ages, too, did not the wild flowers spring up, and bloom, and decay, in many a fair and favored spot of this beautiful Earth, where there was none to admire their splendor, none to inhale their sweetness? Then again, look at that marvellous kingdom of minute animalcules, in number almost infinite, which only within the last few years the microscope has revealed to our wondering eyes. They swarm around us in the air, in the earth, in the water. Millions of them would fit in the hollow of your hand; many hundreds might swim side by side, without crowding, through the eye of a cambric needle. And they too, we can hardly doubt, must have flourished for centuries in countless myriads, unseen and unknown by man. It is impossible for us, in our present imperfect state, to understand the motives of an All-wise Creator in this profuse expenditure of his goodness, this lavish display of His power. How then can we presume to say that He may not have good reasons, though inscrutable to us, for peopling this Earth with many tribes of plants and animals, through a long cycle of ages, before it pleased Him to fit it up for the habitation of man? “Who is he among men that can know the counsel of God? or who can find out His designs? For the judgments of mortal men are hesitating, and uncertain are our thoughts. For the corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly dwelling presseth down the mind that museth upon many things. And hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth: and with labor do we find the things that are before us. But the things that are in heaven who shall search out?”[133]