consideration, could be lengthened out sufficiently to accomplish the
change.

At any rate, if any particular example be disallowed, the general
objection must be admitted to be weighty.

Now the intervention of any system of created designs of animal
form--however little its details be understood--and the production of
variations under _divine guidance_ which would lead more directly to the
accomplishment of such forms as the complicated flowers of orchids above
described, would unquestionably tend to shorten the requisite time.
There would, by a process of reasoning easily followed, be an immediate
reduction of the ages required, within practicable limits, though the
time must still remain long. More than that is not necessary. The
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.