CREATION BY EVOLUTION
downs on the surface of the earth are relatively less than the irregularities on the skin of an orange. Now picture to yourself the rocks of the Alps before they were folded and raised, and you will see that they must have occupied a greater area, as a folded tablecloth does when you smooth it out. Thus you can appreciate that some of these masses of rock have been shoved many miles and thrust over other masses. Naturally, in such a process the original succession has been disturbed.
Now the evidence for these movements does not entirely depend on the fossil remains of living creatures. Such folding and thrusting can be followed in the rocks of Finland, which contain no fossils at all. But the presence of fossils in the rocks, if we admit the evidence from undisturbed areas, is of much help in working out the succession of the disturbed rocks. The evidence is of just the same nature as that on which we rely in tracing the history of some ancient cathedral that has often been partly pulled down and rebuilt.
The evolutionist does not base his conclusions on evidence from these disturbed areas, where indeed the fossils are too often shattered and obscure. He is content to take the far larger areas of the earth, where the succession is clear and the rocks are only a little tilted. Wherever in such a succession we are able to trace the history of a single group of organisms, we find it perfectly continuous and regular. Gaps there may be, but the more we explore and study the fewer are the gaps. This continuous history always shows a gradual change from the oldest to the newest forms, and at no point is it possible to say that there was an entirely new creation.
It is not easy to find a great thickness of rock that was laid down continuously through many thousands of years.
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