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"Insects in all forms developed. Some took to the air with a formof flight very different and monstrous compared to our own. Theworld swarmed with all these new species of the living and mobileand the hungry, for creature fed upon creature just as it had alwaysbeen, but now with the animals, the feasting and killing was far moreobvious and happened not merely in minuscule but with giantskirmishes amongst lizards who tore each other to pieces, and greatreptilian birds who could glide down upon the lesser crawling things andcarry them away to their nests.
"The form of propagation began to change. Things were born ineggs. Then some spawn came live from the mother.
"For millions of years I studied these things, talking to God aboutthem, more or less absently, singing when I was overwhelmed withbeauty, going up to the heavens, and generally finding my questionsdisturbing to everyone as before. Great debates happened. Should wequestion nothing? Look, the spark of life flares monstrous and hotfrom the giant lizard as he dies! And again and again into the wombof God I was taken, just when I thought my agitation would give meno peace.
" 'Look at the scheme more closely. You are deliberately seeingonly parts of it,' He said to me. He pointed out as He had from thebeginning that waste was unheard of in the universe, that decay be-came food for others, that the means of interchange was now Kill andDevour, Digest and Excrete.
" 'When I'm with you,' I told Him, 'I see the beauty of it. Butwhen I go down there, when I roll in the high grass, I see differently.'
" 'You are my angel and my Watcher. Overcome that contradiction,'
He said.
"I went back down to the Earth. And then came the EighthRevelation of Evolution: the appearance of warm-blooded birds withfeathered wings!"I smiled. It was partly the expression on his face, the knowing,patient expression, and the emphasis with which he had described thewings.
"Feathered wings!" he said. "First we see our faces on the headsof insects, of lizards and monsters! And now behold, there is awarm-blooded creature, a creature completely more fragile and pulsingwith precarious life and it has feathered wings! It flies as we fly. Itrises, it spreads its wings, it soars.
"Well, for once mine was not the only outcry in heaven. Angelsby the thousands were astonished to discover that little beings ofmatter had wings so like our own. Feathers, such as the feathers thatcovered ours, made them soft and made them move through thewind ... all this now had its corollary in the material world!
"Heaven was stormy with songs, exclamations, outcries. Angelstook flight after birds, surrounding them in the air, and thenfollowing them and imitating them and following them to their nests andwatching as chicks were born from these eggs and grew to full size.
"Now, you know we had seen this entire question of birth,growth, maturity in other creatures, but in nothing that so resembledourselves.""God was silent?" I asked.
"No. But this time He called us all together and He asked us whywe had not learnt enough by now that we were not insulated fromsuch horror and pride. Pride, he said, is what we suffered; we wereoutraged that such puny, tiny-headed things, things that had reallyvery limited faces, actually, had feathered wings. He gave us a sternlesson and warning: 'Once again, I tell you, this process will continueand you will see things that will astonish you, and you are my angelsand you belong to me, and your trust is mine!'
"The Ninth Revelation of Evolution was painful for all angels. Itwas filled with horror for some, and fear for others; indeed it was as ifthe Ninth Revelation mirrored for us the very emotions it producedin our hearts. This was the coming of mammals upon the earth,mammals whose hideous cries of pain rose higher to Heaven than anynoise of suffering and death that any other animal had ever made!
Ooooh, the promise of fear that we had seen in death and decay wasnow hideously fulfilled.
"The music rising from Earth was transformed; and all we coulddo in our fear and suffering was sing in even greater amazement, andthe song darkened, and became more complex. The countenance ofGod, the light of God, remained undisturbed.
"At last the Tenth Revelation of Evolution. The apes walked upright!
Was not God Himself mocked! There it was, in hairy, brutalform, the two-legged, two-armed upright creature in whose imagewe had been made! It lacked our wings, for the love of Heaven;indeed the winged creatures never even came close to it indevelopment. But there it lumbered upon the earth, club in hand, brutal,savage, tearing the flesh of enemies with its teeth, beating, biting,stabbing to death all that resisted it梩he image of God and the proudSons of God, his angels梚n hairy material form and wielding tools!
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