It follows, of course, from this that we are
to hold the story of the antiquity of the earth, the earth millions of
years old, instead of six thousand or ten thousand.
And then, in the third place, it tells us the story of the antiquity of
the human race.
All scholars, for example, as bearing on this I will give you just this
one illustration, know that there was a civilization in Egypt, wide-
spread, highly developed, with nobody knows how many ages of growth
behind it, there was this civilization in Egypt before the world was
created according to the popular chronology that has been generally
received until within a few years.
We know that man has been on the earth hundreds of thousands of years.
This is the next point in that story.
In the next place, they tell us a wondrous tale of the origin and
nature of man, tracing his natural development from lower forms of
life. When I say "natural," I do not wish you to think for one moment
that I leave out the divinity; for, according to this story of the
world which I am hinting and outlining now, God is infinitely nearer,
more wonderfully in contact with us, than he ever was in the old.
Natural, then, but divine at every step, so that we are seeing God face
to face, if we but think of it, and are feeling his touch every moment
of our lives.
No fall of man, then, on this theory. No invasion of this world by any
form of evil or any evil person from without. This story of the fall of
man came into the world undoubtedly to account in some philosophical
fashion for the existence of pain, of evil, and of death.
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