Ussherian chronology is not of Divine revelation, though some persons speak of it as if it was.  There is not the shadow of a reason to be gleaned from the Bible, nor from any other source, that the commencement of orderly development, the separation of land and water, earth and sky, and the subsequent provision of designs for organic forms of life and the first steps that followed the issue of the design, began six thousand years ago, or anything like it.  It can be shown, indeed, that historical man, or the specific origin of the man spoken of as Adam, dates back but a limited time; and it is calculable with some degree of probability how far; but that is all.  We are therefore in no difficulty when ample time is demanded; but we are in the greatest straits when the illimitable demands of a slowly and minutely stepping development, perpetually liable to be checked, turned back, and even obliterated, have to be confronted with other weighty probabilities and calculations regarding the sun’s light and heat, and the duration of particular geologic eras.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DESCENT OF MAN.

We now approach a special objection which always, has been (and I shall be pardoned, perhaps, for saying always will be) the crux of the theory of unaided, uncreated evolution—­the advent of reasoning, and not only reasoning, but self-conscious and God-conscious MAN.

Here again the lines of argument are so numerous, and the details into which we might go so varied, that a rigid and perhaps bald selection of a few topics is all that can be attempted.

But I may remark that naturalists are far from being agreed on this part of the subject.  Agassiz rejects the evolution of man altogether.  Mr. St. G. Mivart, while partly admitting, as every one else now does, the doctrine of evolution, denies the descent of man.  Mr. Wallace, the great apostle of evolution, opposes Darwin, and will have none of his views on the descent of man; and Professor Huxley himself says that, while the resemblance of structure is such that if any “process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, the process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of man,” still he admits that the gulf is vast between civilized man and brutes, and he is certain that “whether from them or not, man is assuredly not of them.”

The first difficulty I shall mention is, however, a structural one.  Supposing that an ape-like ancestor developed into man, on the principles of natural selection; then his development has taken place in a manner directly contrary to the acknowledged law of natural selection.  He has developed backwards; his frame is in every way weaker; he is wanting in agility; he has lost the prehensile feet; he has lost teeth fitted for fighting or crushing or tearing;