Furthermore, we may be allowed to say that fifteen to twenty millions of years of the sun's heat at the rate it is now being expended, can be no reliable measure of the time required for the operations of geology, for the reason that its heat must have been emitted in proportion to the quantity it possessed at any time. When it was created without form and void as no doubt it was, the same as the earth, it would have no heat to emit, but that does not mean that it possessed no heat until it was formed into the brilliant globe that we cannot now bear to turn our eyes upon. Even when it became hot enough to show light sufficient to penetrate the "darkness that was upon the face of the deep," it may still have been an almost shapeless mass, and have continued more or less so until it was formed into the body of the fourth period, which may even then have been very different from what it is now. Thus geology would have not far from one hundred and fifty million years in which a very small fractional part of the sun's emission of heat would suffice for its operations. But we shall have more to say on this subject when the time comes.
It being, therefore, a matter beyond all question--to people possessed of the faculty of thinking, and of candour to confess that they cannot help seeing what has been set plainly before their sight and understanding--that the opening chapter of the book of Genesis plainly teaches that making--evolution--had a very large and active part to perform in the creation of the universe and--much more within our grasp--of the earth; we can come to the conclusion that the theory of evolution, instead of being new and wonderful, comes to be almost infinitely older than the everlasting hills, without losing any of its power of inspiring inexpressible wonder.
Looking back over the examination into the first chapter of the book of Genesis we have just concluded, we cannot conceive how it could ever have entered into the thoughts of man, that the state of vegetable and animal life on the earth, at the present day, must have been brought about by continual and unceasing acts of creation, when creation has been mentioned only on three occasions during the whole process described in the chapter we have analysed, that is, 3 out of 31 verses; and while the other processes which we have brought forward--making and spontaneous generation--have never been alluded to, perhaps not even thought of.