But what are the lessons to be learned from this great fact, and what
bearing has this fact on the old Bible doctrine of a literal Creation?
Life comes now only from preëxisting life. But at some time there was no
life on the globe. It does not take any great exercise of "philosophic
faith," as Huxley suggested, "to look beyond the abyss of geologically
recorded time" and recognize that at this beginning of things there must
have taken place a most wonderful event, essentially and radically
different from anything now going on, namely, the beginning of organic
life. But would not this be a real Creation in the old-fashioned sense
of this term? We cannot avoid this conclusion; nor is there anything in
either science or philosophy to indicate that this creation of the
living from the not-living was confined to _one mere speck_ of
protoplasm. It is absolutely certain that it required a real Creation to
produce life from the not-living at all; and it is just as reasonable
that this exercise of creative power may have taken place _in all parts
of the earth at the same general time_, as the Bible teaches. For if a
Being saw fit to create life at all, why should He stop with one or two
bits of protoplasmic units? An architect who can make his own bricks and
other building material, can surely build what he desires out of these
materials. Common sense tells us that, if the Creator really created
life in the beginning, He did not stop with a few specks of protoplasm
here and there over the earth. The ability to create life from the
not-living implies the ability to make full-grown trees or birds or
beasts in twenty-four hours, instead of waiting for months or years, as
is usual at the present time.
As we have already found regarding matter and energy, so of life. The
record in Genesis is confirmed, for modern science compels us to believe
in Creation as the only possible origin of life,--a Creation entirely
different from anything now going on, and one that can never be made to
fit into any scheme of uniformitarian evolution.