In former periods, they tell us, the earth was so warm that the present races of men and animals could not have lived on it, and the plants and animals of that age could not live now.

These very men are profuse in proving that the earth existed for ages before _man_ made his appearance upon it.

This being the case, we are compelled to acknowledge the creating power of God above the laws of nature, for there is no law of nature which can either create a new species of plants or animals, nor yet change one kind into another, make an oak into a larch, or an ox into a sheep, or a goose into a turkey, or a megatherium into an elephant, much less into a man.
Some men have dreamed of such changes as these, but no instance of such a change has ever been alleged in proof of the notion.

The most distinguished anatomists and geologists are fully agreed that no such change of one animal into another ever took place; much less that any animal ever was changed into a man.

Cuvier, from his comprehensive survey of the fossils of former periods, establishes the fact, "that the species now living are not mere varieties of the species which are lost." And Agassiz says, "I have the conviction that species have been created successively, at distinct intervals."[40] Revelations of God's special interpositions in the affairs of this world are thus written by his own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlasting granite of the earth's foundation stones.