within itself all the elements to be employed by Him in the production of all future creatures upon the earth. This cannot of course be shewn to be beyond Divine agency; but why introduce this system of tenanting our world? Did the old system bring God too near to us? Does not the agency of Omnipotence, which the Mosaic record so explicitly reveals, sufficiently account for a the appearances and results of creation? It does strike me that the creation of a primitive form, with the astounding capacity of being developed through unknown changes into a man, is a more miraculous act than anything narrated in Scripture. The principle of economy in the exercise of creative power is seen to be a universal law, but the evolutionist's theory stands in direct antagonism to this, and is a law of greatest possible waste of time and power. All in nature seems to be done by knowing how to do it, but how this truth is outraged and contradicted by this wearying, repulsive, and wasteful scheme of endless conflicts, and transmutations! To conceive a duck with webbed feet, and a spoon-shaped bill, living by suction, to pass naturally into a gull with webbed feet and a knife-like bill, living on flesh, in the longest possible time, and by the most laborious possible way, we may conceive it to pass from the one to the other state. The battle of life the ducks will have to fight will increase in peril continually as they cease with the change of their bills to be ducks, and attain a maximum of danger in the condition in which they begin to be gulls; and ages must elapse, and whole generations must perish, and countless varieties of the one species be created and sacrificed, to arrive at one single pair of the other. Truly this theory explains no difficulties, and requires for its acceptance more faith than the doctrine of a direct and immediate creation. It involves us in inextricable confusion and mystery. Life, thought, and volition, may be properties of molecules, as are weight and attraction, this we may for a moment allow, yet the question will arise whence comes this force or attribute which in man's nature is at once

material, vital, intellectual, and moral? Either it is God, or it comes from Him, or there is no God!

b. Mr. Darwin makes no profession of having proved anything, nor does he affect a demonstration. He has given an ingenious suggestion to account for certain facts which he leaves to time and observation to furnish evidence of its wisdom. Indeed, carefully read, his books do not even propound a theory, but a paradox, since he admits that facts are against him. He cannot

So

override the immutability of species, for while there may be a capacity of variation in species, it is certain that its class never changes. It is not merely that individual members have not had time to change, but there is a limit of variation fixed by a general law,―a neutralizing law which causes all variations within species to have a tendency to revert to the original type. This law naturalists can demonstrate by crowding illustrations. that this evolutionary scheme is a mere speculation, which, if it were true, might account, it is conjectured, for all organic structures. Still, as I have elsewhere inquired, what have men of science to do with dreams. and fancies? Science is the knowledge of facts, and their business is with them only. The safest principles of our knowledge do not permit us to assume facts, and then build a theory upon them, but rather first ascertain the facts, and then form the theory. Every one admits structural similarities in organic life, past and present; that there is a structural analogy, common to man and to the lower animals, and to a certain extent common also to the vegetable world, is a fact that did not require an elaborate defence, while, to account for the "origin of species" in this way is most gratuitous.

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But of course all our reasoning against this doctrine would have been worse than fruitless, if evidence of its truthfulness could have been produced. There is not the slightest proof forthcoming of transition types, and Mr. Darwin's fanciful explanations of the reasons why, are only redeemed from absurdity by the pleasant writing in which his views are propounded

The paleontologists, with Cuvier at their head, are all against him. Then why should species constantly tend upwards? In the downward, as in the upward career. we should be directed to intermediate types, but we are not told of any, nor can we find them for ourselves. Then the facts of geology are against this theory of the origin of species, and although Mr. Darwin tries hard to shew the imperfection of geological records, yet hai his theory been tenable, some proof of it would have been found in the fossils of past ages. We are safe in abiding by the truth above-named, that the unity o species is regulated by a double law, like the centrifugal and centripetal forces, one of which may admit e variation within the species itself, and the other o which drags it by an irresistible chain back to its original type. Illustrations of alterations among animals may be true as long as they are confined to variations within the species, but not beyond. Then bear in mind that in reference to man you have something more to provide for than an organic or anatomical structure; you have his intellect and his conscience to account for, as well as his brain. Has a physical and perishing organism, produced a reflective, self-knowing, and immortal spirit? "All the higher endowments, our apprehension of truth, our consciousness of duty, our self-sacrificing pity, our religious reverence,-are on this theory of human evolution merely transformed sensations; the disinterested impulses are refinements spun out of the coarse fibre of self-love; the subtlest intellectual ideas are but elaborated perceptions of sight or touch; and the sense of right, only interest or fear under a disguise." To quote further; "the doctrine of evolution, setting itself to show how the greatest things may be brought out of the least, fills us with fear whether perhaps mind may not be last instead of first, the hatched and full-fledged form of the protoplasmic egg; whether at the outset anything was there but the raw rudiments of matter and force; whether the hierarchy of organized beings are not due to progressive

differentiation of structure, and resolvable into splitting and agglutination of cells; whether the intellect of man is more than blind instinct grown self-conscious, and shaping its beliefs by defining its own shadows; whether the moral sense is not simply a trained acceptance of rules worked out by human interests, an inherited record of the utilities; so that design in nature, security in the intuitions of reason, divine obligations, and the law of conscience may all be an illusionary semblance, a glory from the later and ideal days thrown back upon the beginning, as a golden sunset flings its light across the sky, and, as it sinks, dresses up the East again with borrowed splendour. This doubt, which besets the whole intellectual religion of our time, assumes that we must measure every nature in its beginnings; admit nothing to belong to its essence except what is found in it then; and deny its report of itself, so far as they depart from that original standard. It takes two forms, according as the doctrine of evolution is applied to man himself, or to the outward universe. In the former case, it infuses distrust into our self-knowledge, weakens our subjective religion, or native faith in the intuitions of thought and conscience, and tempts us to imagine that the higher they are the further are they from any assured solidity of base. In the latter case, it weakens our objective religion, suggests that there is no originating mind, and that the Divine Book of the world is but the latest phase of its finished surface, instead of the incandescence of its inmost heart."* The development theory is regarded as a javelin in the hand of the sceptic, which has been eagerly caught at by the adversaries of the gospel, who have wielded it in support of materialism. Professor Vogt, of Geneva, exults over the fall of the Biblical Adam, as he terms it, meaning the disproof of his existence, and avows his inability to entertain the idea of a Creator. This theory undertakes with a minimum of initial capacity, to account for the maximum of

* Mr. Martineau, "Contemporary Review." April, 1872. p. 608.

human genius, and character, and in times like ours, opens the way to very dangerous opinions regarding man's moral and spiritual nature, his obligations to society, and his responsibility to God.

d. It so far removes the Creator from us, that some of its greatest living expositors reject as we have seen the presence and agency of an "Originating Mind." Unless common words be accepted in a very uncommon sense, this theory directly tends to a denial of the exercise of either creative power, or superintending intelligence, in the formation and development of nature. It is true indeed that a gradual unfolding of the creative plan, and the maturing of it by rules of growth may be entertained without any prejudice to piety, but the direct and logical tendency of development is to dispense with God, and to lodge the power of indefinite evolution in the first seeds of things. Design can have no place in this system, so much so that a perfect and complex human eye is due to no forethought, but comes by accident of some assumed "natural selection." But I need not repeat what has been already stated. May we not inquire, if man's nature be a development, and not a creation, are other developments to follow? What will be man's further transmutation? He must have been in his present stage of being an immeasurable length of time; will his next be that of a flying spirit?

Then as another serious objection to the transmutationists I would mention, without dilating upon it, their contradiction of Scripture. The records of the Jewish historian have not yet been disposed of, and are not likely to be, for modern science is adducing increasing evidence of their trustworthiness. All our definite knowledge is substantially comfirmatory of the Mosaic account. Earth's great antiquity, the order of creation, and the manner of creation, are all becoming strengthened by scientific researches. It is felt that socalled laws of nature are only instruments, never producing or originating causes, but involving, as their necessary correlative, the existence of an Intelligent