_B._ Never, sir, never: the hand of true science can never rise as the antagonist of revelation: revelation, rightly understood, must ever find in science a brother, a protector, a friend. _A._ How would you maintain your position, if the geologists should arrive at a final conclusion on the subject, and declare positively that men existed in the world twenty or thirty thousand years ago? _B._ They have arrived at such a conclusion already; that is to say, they have, in a stratum which cannot be less than twenty thousand years old, unearthed some skeletons of a mammal resembling man. But let these skeletons resemble ours ever so closely, I, for one, am not prepared to concede that these creatures, when they existed, were men in the sense that we are. Revelation declares quite explicitly that the present race is not more than six thousand years old. _A._ What theory, then, must we adopt respecting these human-shaped fossils? Why do you deny that they were men like us? _B._ Tell me what a human being is, and I will answer your query. _A._ The definition would be a somewhat prolix one. _B._ It will be sufficient for our purpose that you admit two points regarding the existing race. _A._ The first? _B._ That man _has_ a body. _A._ Good. The second? _B._ That man _is_ a soul, a spiritual being. _A._ Good. _B._ Well, then; answer me this: Were the men whose remains are now being discovered, of a spiritual nature, and endowed with minds? Might they not rather have been mere mammals, shaped indeed in the same external mould as that in which the Creator intended, when the time should come, to form his masterpiece; but not as yet tenanted by that divine nature which would have entitled him to rank with the race existing now? _A._ Such questions it is hardly the province of geology to solve. But it may fairly be asked, What right have we to suppose that beings ever existed who were men only in shape, but who were destitute of the spiritual nature? Does the Bible allow us any margin on which to base such a belief? Do the sacred writers mention the creation of two human races, one endowed with merely an animal nature, the other possessing a spiritual nature? _B._ Scripture does so in passages which I shall point out presently. But first, concede to me this one point, admitted by many theologians already, that in the first and second chapters of Scripture, the term 'day' has an ambiguous meaning--that the days were vast geological eras. _A._ Granted. _B._ The first human creation spoken of by Moses is that mentioned in Gen. i. 27, where, immediately after recording the creation of the inferior animals, it is said that 'God created man in his own image,' etc. Thus the visible and external creation has received its top and climax: the animals have found a master. After that, we are told that 'the evening and the morning were the sixth day.' Then the second chapter is opened, and the seventh day is described as forming a vast interval of rest.