Part 31

And as we look back over those Days of Creation of which we have been reading, let us remember that each successive Day led up in perfect order to making his dwelling-place perfectly fitted for him, the creature of God apart from all others, specially formed for Himself. As has been beautifully said, "when the sea was gathered into one place and the dry land appeared, a secure footing was found for man; when the waters above the firmament were separated from the waters below, man, the highest of all created things, could look up"--all was done in reference to him, when as yet he was not.

We shall not read about the work of God on the Fifth Day in this chapter, but I want you to turn to the account of it given in the first chapter of Genesis, and you will see that there for the first time in the Story of Creation the word "life" is used. God speaks to us no longer of only inanimate or lifeless things, such as the sea and the dry land, the earth with its herbs and trees, and the two great lights which were made to give light upon it. He tells us now of creatures which live and move and have a being, each "after its kind"; each exactly fitted to enjoy life in the place prepared for it.

The story of the way in which God in His mighty and gracious working prepared earth and sea and sky to be the home of creatures which were yet to be brought forth and created, is very wonderful. But when we read of "the moving creature that hath life," and of "every living creature that moveth," we come to what is still more wonderful.

You remember in the history of the plagues in Egypt, that when the wise men tried to imitate what God was doing in sending His judgments upon the land, there was a point at which they stopped, and could go no farther, "This is the finger of God," they said.

What was that point? It was when they tried, by their enchantments, to produce one of the meanest, as we should say, of living things.

And so it has always been: man, the highest of God's creatures, apart from all the rest, is still a creature, and he never has been able to usurp the power which belongs to God alone.

It is true that man can destroy animals, and so hunt them down as to render them extinct; he can also, as we have seen, by great care and skill and long patience, produce what are called "varieties" of both plants and animals, increasing the size of leaves and blossoms twenty, thirty, even a hundredfold; but though he may talk of the formation of new flowers, with endless shades of colour, they are not really new, but only varieties of those already existing. You remember, when we were speaking of the "Green Earth," we learnt that never, from the beginning of his life on earth, has man produced a new kind, or species, of either plant or animal.

We must never forget this. God, who said to the mighty ocean, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed" (Job xxxviii. II), has also set a bound beyond which man, however great his powers may be, is not permitted to go. Life, in all its forms, from the lowest to the highest, belongs to God.

But perhaps you are asking why I said that we do not in the Story of Creation read anything about life till we come to the work of God on the Fifth Day. Are not the trees and plants alive? Do we not say of a blasted tree or withered flower, It is dead?

It is quite true that plants have a life which shows itself as we have seen in their growth, and even in some "sensitive" plants, by their shrinking from the touch. In the wheat-fields the order of the unfolding of the life of a plant "whose seed is in itself," may be seen, as we watch "first the blade, then the ear, afterwards the full corn in the ear." But this life is very different from that of the lowliest animal which has power to feel and to give expression to its feelings, power to move from place to place, and which shows in its own way of living an intelligence which is not seen in the very highest forms of vegetable life. At the same time it is true that in their lowest forms animal and vegetable life approach each other so nearly that it is often difficult to say where the one ends and the other begins.

But without the plants and their ceaseless work, as the "sleepless universal providers of the earth," as they have been called, all animal life would fail and die; for they are the means by which all the nourishment which is contained in earth, air, and water can be made of use both to themselves and to the animals.

And is it not very beautiful to see how God has made one part of His creation dependent upon another, and all dependent upon Him? Does it not show us His care for His creatures, and especially for that wonderful creature--the last and best of all, who was created for the earth and the earth for him--when we see, as we have seen so constantly, that before the inhabitants of earth, air, and sea came into being, He had caused the earth to bring forth that which should give to every living thing the means of sustaining life?

I have called this chapter, which does not speak of the work of God on any special Day of Creation, THE STONE BOOK. A wonderful book it is for those who can read it; its leaves are the successive layers of the earth's crust; its letters are not only the remains of plants, but the fossil-shells and bones of animals imprisoned there, which tell us that creatures, all in some way unlike any we now know, once lived and died, and are still to be found, not in their ancient forms in rushy mere of tangled jungle, but in "graves of stone and monuments of marble."

When we were speaking of the coal-mines I told you something about the remains of giant ferns, sedges, reeds, and mare's-tails of far larger growth than any now known, which have been found there. You are familiar with fossil-plants, but I do not think we have spoken much of fossil-animals, which are found in all except the oldest layers of rock--the first pages of the "Stone Book."

The children had been with me to the Museum in the town in which we lived, and had looked with wonder at the huge creatures whose skeletons have been built up bone by bone, after being taken from their rocky tomb--for this earth of ours which has seen so many changes has been rifled of her treasures; not the gold and silver, coal and iron with which she is so richly stored, but the wonderful specimens of God's work in bygone ages which He has allowed us to see; so that we cannot doubt that such creatures once existed, though we may know nothing with certainty as to the time of their first appearance in the sea and on the dry land, and can only guess at the kind of life they lived.

You remember that we spoke, in the chapter about the earth's crust, of the "fire-made rocks," which were once in a liquid state from intense heat (we could not expect to find any remains of plants or animals there, and none have been found), and of the "water-made rocks," which have been gradually accumulated by the action of water in wearing down the land. These rocks lie in layers, and fossil shells, plants, and bones of animals have been found in them, as we have already seen.

But how did these fossils get into the rocks? And how is it that they have been found in all countries and at all heights above the sea?

Before I try to answer these questions, I must tell you that when geologists speak of "rock" they mean everything which has gone to form the crust of the earth, whether clay, or loose sand and gravel, or the hard heavy granite which some of us had seen crowning the Dartmoor tors.

It is thought that the huge creatures whose bones have been found at different depths in the earth's strata were buried there when the "rock" which formed the layers was soft; perhaps in the mud of lakes, or in peat or sand at the mouths of rivers. Then, as time went on, their softer parts perished, but the harder turned to stone, thus forming the "letters" in the stony pages from which those who study the earth try to read something of its history. Then, as sea-shells are found inland, deeply buried in the hills, it is thought that the land in which they were buried has been raised by earthquakes, or thrown out by volcanoes: or was altered in position at the time when the earth's foundations were overflowed with a Flood, and "the waters stood above the mountains." As geologists read the Stone Book, like the writing of Eastern lands, backwards--as they search deeper and deeper into the crust of the earth, they speak of its Old life, Middle life, and New life: but we must remember that they do read backwards, calling the older life what is really the younger. And we must also bear in mind that many of the words used in what is called science--especially those relating to the study of the earth--betray our ignorance rather than prove our knowledge. The marking off stages in the life-history of the earth, and speaking of its Old, Middle, and New Age has been done to help in the study of its crust. Nothing is known, however, with certainty about these different periods or where one ends and another begins, and no one knows whether the first, or oldest, layer has yet been discovered. One geologist says, "I have found it," and presently another penetrates a little deeper, goes a little farther back, and finds one lower still. Nor can anyone say certainly where a fossil-fern or the mummy of an old-world fish appeared for the first time, and though many plants and animals which are found in a fossil state have long been extinct, yet there are many more which appear at a very ancient date and have continued unchanged to the present time.

There is a famous cliff in Dorsetshire upon which may be read, almost as upon a map, the record of the changes which have passed over it during its life-history.

On examining the strata, or layers which lie one above the other, geologists find the first, or lowest of all, to be Portland stone, which was formed by the accumulation of lime at the bottom of the sea.

The second layer shows that this sea-bed in time became dry land, and was covered with soil--what had once been the seashore gradually giving place to a forest.

But how do we know that such a wonderful change was wrought in process of time?

We have clear proof that it was so from the vegetable soil still remaining, and the numbers of trees the remains of which are embedded in the rock, many of them standing upright as when growing.

The third layer seems to show, from the limestone and the fresh-water shells embedded in it, that the level land where the forest grew sank lower and lower until it formed a hollow which in time became a lake.

The fourth layer, which "ends this strange, eventful history," gives evidence of the whole land having been again covered by the ocean, and again raised above the waters!

If we were studying geology together, I should like to take you with me to the Museum, and we would first look at the fossils which are believed to belong to the most ancient time of life upon the earth; then we would pass on to those belonging to the second or "middle" stage, and then to the third, or "new" stage, letting these wonderful stones, taken from mountain height or deep sea bottom, or from the depths of the earth itself, tell their own eloquent story.

But what I should like you to remember is that geologists of our own time tell us that the lowest layer of the earth's crust which has yet been explored appears to be made of vegetable remains, so crushed and altered by time and by the tremendous pressure of rocky layers lying above it, that though it is probably of the same material as that which forms the coal-measures, it resembles the blacklead of which pencils are made much more than the coal which you know is what has been formed by the decay of buried forests and jungles.