The Creator's wonders on land and the transition to land animals

So through all these things the Creator wants you to stay awake, so that by your hope in God you may escape the harm they can do. But let us now run back up from the depths and flee for refuge to the mainland. For the wonders of creation, coming upon us one after another like waves, have led our discourse under water by their continuous and successive assaults. And yet I would be surprised if our mind, once it encounters the greater marvels of the land, does not again run away to the sea like Jonah. It seems to me that our discourse, having fallen among countless wonders, has forgotten its measure, and has suffered the same thing as those who sail on the open sea: with no fixed point by which to judge their movement, they often do not know how far they have traveled. This seems to have happened to us as well: as our discourse ran through creation, we did not perceive the sheer number of things said. But even if this august theater loves to listen, and the telling of the Master's wonders is sweet to the ears of His servants, let us anchor our discourse here and wait for the day to render what remains. And when we all rise, let us give thanks for what has been said, and ask for the completion of what remains. May there also be for you, in the partaking of your food, table-talk about all that came to you this morning and all that our discourse brought this evening. And may you be overtaken by sleep with thoughts about these things, so that even while sleeping you enjoy the daytime's gladness, and may it be possible for you to say, "I sleep, but my heart is awake," meditating night and day on the law of the Lord, to whom be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Homily 8: On birds and water creatures. 8.1 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth a living creature according to kind: four-footed animals and creeping things and wild beasts according to kind." And it was so (Genesis 1:24). The command came walking along its path, and the earth received its own adornment. There, "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living creatures" (Genesis 1:20); here, "Let the earth bring forth a living creature." Is the earth then ensouled? Do the foolish Manichaeans have any ground for putting a soul into the earth? It is not because He said "Let it bring forth" that the earth brought out what was stored up within it; rather, the One who gave the command also granted it the power to bring forth. For when the earth heard, "Let it sprout the herb of grass and the fruit tree" (Genesis 1:11), it did not bring out grass it had hidden within itself; it did not send up to the surface a palm tree or an oak or a cypress that had been stored away somewhere in its hollows. No, the divine word is the nature of the things that come to be. "Let the earth sprout": not "let it cast out what it has," but "let it acquire what it does not have," since God grants the power to be active. So now also, "Let the earth bring forth a living creature": not the one stored up within it, but the one given to it by God through the command. And then the argument will turn back against them in the opposite direction. For if the earth brought out the soul, it left itself bereft of soul. But their abomination is obvious immediately. Why, however, were the waters commanded to bring forth creeping things of living creatures, while the earth was commanded to bring forth a living creature? We reason, then, that the nature of swimming things seems to share in a life that is somehow less complete, because they live in the thickness of the water.