Читать книгу Looking Back: An Autobiography - Merrick Abner Richardson - Страница 29

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"God made cattle and all other big walking things, and all the creeping things.

"The family of largest animals are called Dinosaur. Their fossil bones are found in the Rocky Mountains. They must have lived there on the plains before the upheavel of the mountains. Some of them were about one hundred feet long and twenty-five feet high. In New Jersey, geologists have dug up the fossil bones of an animal they call the Iguanodon, a sort of frog with a snake tail; when he sat up his head was about thirty feet high. Had he lived on men he would have eaten three for dinner. It seems that when those animals raised up on all four, like elephants, they lost their fish-like tails, except to use as fly whiskers. Those animals lived all through what is called the mammalian age in geology, or the sixth day in the Bible.

"Now, children, this twenty-fifth verse ends up the creation of the world and all its animals. Then God called a halt and said, 'Let us make something special.' What was it?" "Man, man," we said. "What was man to be like?" "Just like God himself."

"Is God an animal?"

"No."

"What is He?"

"Nobody knows."

"Think again, what did I read last Sunday about Christ at Jacob's well?"

"Oh, yes, God is a spirit."

"Then is man a spirit or an animal?"

"Both," I said.

"How so, Merrick?"

"Why, God made she-male man and he-male man of dirt, so they could have a lot of children. Then the image man, we cannot see, who was to do the thinking, was to have dominion, that means it was to boss themselves and everything else around. That is the man that goes to Heaven when he dies."

"How is that, Luna, for a boy of eight years old?" he said to mother.

"You are all right, Merrick," she said, drawing me to her for a kiss. "Now, you must try to govern yourself and not be so stubborn, even if you do think you are in the right. Let wisdom instead of spunk be your guide, and then the angels will be with you in your dreams and our pretty school-ma'am will not have to switch you so often."

"Pretty school-ma'am, eh! Why, she walks just exactly like a cow."