What is the difference between Microevolution and Macroevolution?

Here for the first time we meet with the idea of variety and of species, and consequently for the first time we meet with the significant words, "after his kind." They occur no less than ten times in this chapter, and always in connection with the appearance of some form of life, which had within itself power of reproduction. Here at the outset then is stated most emphatically a great law that is binding on all animate creation. However great and many the varieties which may occur, or be induced, within a species, there is no development into another species.

No idea has been more diligently propagated by unbelievers during the last century than that of evolution, and though Darwin's theories as to how evolution can have been brought about have been, we understand, largely abandoned, yet the idea itself is still clung to as affording an alternative to the disliked truth of creation. In Genesis 1, with Divine foreknowledge we have this ten times repeated fact, which flatly denies evolution, and in practice it is continually verified. No species ever has developed into another species. Every creature reproduces itself after its kind, and never into another kind.

The second point is that in this chapter, as soon as life is touched upon, life of such an order as involved reproduction of species, whether herb, tree, fish, fowl, creeping thing, or cattle, the immutable law which governs all such reproduction is laid down in the three words "after his kind." Here we have our attention called to a fact which is continually verifying itself in a thousand ways. Breeding and selection may modify a species within certain limits, but nothing can alter the species.

The words "after his kind" occur in the first of Genesis no less than ten times. They are the statement, we repeat, of a great FACT, and a denial of the much-vaunted theory of Evolution. Against this let us mention that Darwin in his book, The Origin of Species, frequently uses such phrases as, "The laws … are for the most part unknown;" "The causes … are most obscure;" "So profound is our ignorance;" "As we have no facts to guide us speculation … is almost useless;" "No explanation can be given of these facts." Indeed we have seen it stated that over eight hundred times he uses the phrase "We may well suppose. …" What a contrast to the "Thus says the Lord" of the Bible!

The Sixth Day — The Earth Peopled. On this, the last day of the Divine labor, the scene is transferred from the sea to the dry land, and beasts of every kind are brought forth from the earth. Details are not given. There are however, here as everywhere else, suggestive intimations which can be followed out by reverent study. It will be noticed that each creature is "after his kind," as in the previous days plant and marine animals were similarly created. This establishes the fixity of species. Of course, what these species were is not definitely declared, nor the general limits within which variety might be subsequently developed. As a matter of fact, in many animal species this variety is so great as to be scarcely believable, did we not have the clearest evidence for it. This may give us a hint that these varieties would include many apparently different species. One thing, however, is certain, that "after his kind" puts its stamp of individuality upon each class of plant and animal life. Evolution, therefore, meets with no encouragement from this Scripture, though as we have just said, we must be careful in any reaction from the extreme of infidel theory not to fall into the opposite one of making endless classes. A common unity underlies all animal creation. There are special adaptations in each class for work to be done. Just as distinctly, however, are the classes separated one from the other by barriers which cannot be transgressed.*

We must keep the difference between mongrel and hybrid clear in our minds. A mongrel is the offspring of two varieties in the same species. For instance, we might see a dog, which was half alsatian and half greyhound; or a barn fowl half minorca and half orpington. Such are the offspring of two varieties of the same species, and are FERTILE. Left to nature there is always the tendency with mongrels to revert to type, such as pouter pigeons, tumblers, etc., reverting to the original type of the species to which they belong, the common blue rock-pigeon.

On the other hand, hybrids are the offspring of parents of two different species. Left to nature these are very rare indeed. The commonest hybrid is the mule, the offspring of an ass and a horse, and very generally brought about by man’s arrangement. But hybrids are sterile, infertile, and CANNOT BREED. Nature stops the transmutation between two members of different species. That is the meaning of “after his kind.” That phrase alone kills the evolution theory, for theory it is without any proof in nature. The reason why this unhappy guess, dignified with the name of theory, should have deceived multitudes to the destruction of their faith in the Scriptures, is stated with devastating plainness and force in Scripture:

Page 443. "If mammalia vary, upon the whole, at a more rapid rate than animals lower in the scale of being, it must not be supposed that they can alter their habits and structures readily, or that they are convertible in short periods into new species. Mr. Darwin observes that bats might have made their way to distant islands by flight, for they are often ma with on the wing far out at sea. I have found it difficult to reconcile the antiquity of certain islands, such as those of the Madeiran Archipelago, and those of still larger size in the Canaries, with the total absence of small indigenous quadrupeds." As to change of forms, and animals getting to islands I have no difficulty one way or another. The truth of species remains. No one doubts the existence of varieties, or that they may become more or less permanent.

122 Page 410. "Lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck of the giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched himself up in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until by continued efforts, and longing to reach higher, he obtained an elongated neck. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simply suppose that, in a season of scarcity, a long-necked variety, having the advantage in this respect over most of the herd, as being able to browse on foliage out of their reach, survived them, and transmitted its peculiarity of cervical conformation to its successors." How perfectly ridiculous all this is about giraffes! Who ever heard there were once short-necked giraffes? Or how came it that we have not long-necked gnus or antelopes from the same cause? All this is trash.

Page 411. "Every naturalist admits that there is a general tendency in animals and plants to vary; but it is usually taken for granted, though we have no means of proving the assumption to be true, that there are certain limits beyond which each species cannot pass under any circumstances, or in any number of generations. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace say that the opposite hypothesis, which assumes that every species is capable of varying indefinitely from its original type, is not a whit more arbitrary, and has this manifest claim to be preferred, that it will account for a multitude of phenomena which the ordinary theory is incapable of explaining." When it is said "it is no more arbitrary" to suppose it may vary and make a new species, than to suppose it may not, the answer is in the paragraph which follows, "Should we find that a variable species can no longer be made to vary," it is ordinary human deduction to say it cannot. It has been tried under all known circumstances and it does not. To assume, "it might under more favourable circumstances, or if more time were allowed" is more arbitrary. All existing proof is that it does not - to assume it might is then more arbitrary than to believe it will not. But hybridisation is a strong proof against it, because out of the deduced species there is no propagation. God has made a manifested barrier, allowing sufficient to show it cannot go beyond its kind so as to form a species. When it is said "community of descent is the hidden bond" - naturalists looking for an unknown plan of creation - I do not know what wise men are seeking after, but every simple one believes in genealogical descent making species, and it is plainly stated in Genesis 1.

123 We must not confound the ascertaining of species by marks and the facts of species by genealogy. The forms determining species are mere guesses of science, whereas true species genealogically has its own constancy - it does not hybridise. Varieties may have been created, arise in many ways; forming species is another thing. Difference of forms is classification, not species. He says, page 439, "Among the fossils brought in 1858 by Mr. Hayden from the Niobrara valley in Nebraska, Dr. Leidy describes a rhinoceros so like the Asiatic species, that he at first referred it to the same, and, what is most singular, he remarks generally of the pliocene fauna of that part of North America, that it is far more related in character to the post-pliocene and recent fauna of Europe than to that now inhabiting the American continent." The fact of the pliocene fauna of Nebraska being more like the living European than American throws the whole matter into question - does not finally prove against any system but makes all doubtful.

142 As to change of species, I must say, though I cannot enter into it here, there is no ground for asserting it. Mummies and geology all give us the same continuous species, as has been fully shewn, and no passing from one to another. Facts fail the assertors of it; and facts only are of any worth here. And as to evolutionism, while within the same species there is clearly development from the sperm to the plant, from the ovum to the full-grown creature, species appear perfect in starting, though in the kind of creature there is, as a general rule, progress up to man himself. And, so far from the stronger driving out the weaker during the subsistence of a race, the stronger are those that disappear.

But it may be urged,—Is there not the evolution of the pouter pigeon from the common rock pigeon, the Gloire de Dijon rose from the dog rose, the Cox’s Orange Pippin from the crab apple stock? It is impossible to use the word evolution here, for never, left to nature, did the pouter spring from the rock pigeon, nor the Gloire de Dijon rose from the dog rose, nor the cultivated apple from the paradise stock. All this comes about by man’s efforts, NOT BY NATURAL SELECTION, and when man ceases his efforts these intensive products revert back to their original condition.

A. There is and can be no good reason for the notion that creatures rose from the lower forms as the rule to the higher ones without God's creative act. The very word "creatures" implies as much. Scripture is most explicit that all things came into being through Him, and that apart from Him not one thing received being which has received being. All such unbelieving theories of development are therefore in rebellion against the word of God. A creative act introduced each new species.

The answer to the second query follows as a matter of course. Even the most unprejudiced cannot fail to recognise that creation, vegetable and animal, is ordered on grand typical principles, and that species hold throughout, though admitting of large variation within fixed limits, an immense accession for use and beauty.

Here (Genesis 1:21) for the first time we meet with the idea of variety and of species, and consequently for the first time we meet with the significant words, "after his kind." They occur no less than ten times in this chapter, and always in connection with the appearance of some form of life, which had within itself power of reproduction. Here at the outset then is stated most emphatically a great law that is binding on all animate creation. However great and many the varieties which may occur, or be induced, within a species, there is no development into another species.

No idea has been more diligently propagated by unbelievers during the last century than that of evolution, and though Darwin's theories as to how evolution can have been brought about have been, we understand, largely abandoned, yet the idea itself is still clung to as affording an alternative to the disliked truth of creation. In Genesis 1, with Divine foreknowledge we have this ten times repeated fact, which flatly denies evolution, and in practice it is continually verified. No species ever has developed into another species. Every creature reproduces itself after its kind, and never into another kind.