Compare _Hebrews 12:9_—“_the Father of spirits_”; _Num. 16:22_—“_the God of the spirits of all flesh_”; _27:16_—“_Jehovah, the God of the spirits of all flesh_”; _Rev. 22:6_—“_the God of the spirits of the prophets._” Bruce, The Providential Order, 25—“Faith in God may remain intact, though we concede that man in all his characteristics, physical and psychical, is no exception to the universal law of growth, no breach in the continuity of the evolutionary process.” By “_mere_ nature” we mean nature apart from God. Our previous treatment of the doctrine of creation in general has shown that the laws of nature are only the regular methods of God, and that the conception of a nature apart from God is an irrational one. If the evolution of the lower creation cannot be explained without taking into account the originating agency of God, much less can the coming into being of man, the crown of all created things. Hudson, Divine Pedigree of Man: “Spirit in man is linked with, because derived from, God, who is spirit.”
(_b_) But, on the other hand, the Scriptures do not disclose the method of man’s creation. Whether man’s physical system is or is not derived, by natural descent, from the lower animals, the record of creation does not inform us. As the command “Let the earth bring forth living creatures” (Gen. 1:24) does not exclude the idea of mediate creation, through natural generation, so the forming of man “of the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7) does not in itself determine whether the creation of man’s body was mediate or immediate.
We may believe that man sustained to the highest preceding brute the same relation which the multiplied bread and fish sustained to the five loaves and two fishes (_Mat. 14:19_), or which the wine sustained to the water which was transformed at Cana (_John 2:7-10_), or which the multiplied oil sustained to the original oil in the O. T. miracle (_2 K. 4:1-7_). The “_dust_,” before the breathing of the spirit into it, may have been animated dust. Natural means may have been used, so far as they would go. Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 39—“Our heredity is from God, even though it be from lower forms of life, and our goal is also God, even though it be through imperfect manhood.”