as to render his utterances unworthy of attention, that his statement was a guess, without a single solitary fact in nature to sustain it, and much that looks quite in the opposite direction. "Natural Selection" is a phrase made of two words, which, in the senses ordinarily assigned them, are mutually exclusive. And yet in this enlightened age there are people who worship what Mr. John Fiske calls

a blind process known as Natural Selection, the deity that slumbers not nor sleeps (“ Destiny of Man," p. 23).

III. A WEAK POINT.

A WEAK point in the Darwin theory of the evolution of higher forms of life from lower ones, by natural selection and the survival of the fittest, was brought to the notice of the editor of the Christian Intelligencer, by an intelligent gentleman. He said that according to the Darwinian doctrine Man is the highest product of evolution, and, therefore, ought to exhibit natural selection in its highest and best exercise, and in him the survival of the fittest should have its supreme

illustration. On the contrary, we find, as a rule, that men and women mate unwisely, select unhealthy, physically inferior, partners, and by their selections keep alive and transmit to descendants physical infirmities and diseases. Tall men marry short women, men of vigorous health marry women who are weaklings, intellectual men select unintellectual wives, and so on. Nothing is more common. Yet in the persons of those who are the very culmination of evolution there should be found the perfection of natural selection. How exceedingly rare such a selection is among men. And as to the survival of the fittest, it may be urged that the very opposite has been embodied in the proverb found among all nations, that whom the gods love die young. Constantly, worthless, useless people live long. Of the majority of old men and women, known to be composed of very worthy people, it may be said they are not especially more fit to survive than were those of their generation who died in youth or middle age. What, then, is a theory good for which does not find in the creatures who are its climax an eminent

illustration of its correctness, or the highest and most convincing proof of its accuracy? According to Darwinism, Man ought to exhibit natural selection and the survival of the fittest in their perfection. Everybody knows he does not.

IV. IMPORTANT UTTERANCES.

ARGYLL.-The Duke of Argyll, in "Primeval Man," p. 75, quotes the following opinion of Darwinism, held by Professor John Phillips (in "Life--the Origin and Succession "):

Everywhere we are required by the hypothesis to look somewhere else; which may fairly be interpreted to signify that the hypothesis everywhere fails in the first and most important step. How is it conceivable that the second stage should be everywhere preserved, but the first nowhere?

SIR WILLIAM DAWSON, F.R.S., F.G.S., the Principal of McGill University, Montreal, speaks, in the seventh edition (1882) of the "Story of the Earth and Man," of the evolutionist doctrine as

the strangest doctrine of humanity, and supported by vague analogies and figures of speech which in

dicate that the accumulated facts of our age have gone altogether beyond its capacity for generalization.

REV. DR. DRURY:

Evolution, regarded as descriptive of a process in nature, has much, we thus see, to commend it, but it ought to be distinctly remembered and emphasized that it is as yet a mere theory, and must not be regarded as having more than an hypothetical value. In whatever form it be held, whether that behind which infidels and agnostics hide and defend their unwillingness to believe, or that which many Christians hold in conjunction with their faith in God and the Bible, it must not be lost sight of, that it is yet unproven, and may not properly be used for any other purpose, or in any other way, than is legitimate for an hypothesis.-Drury's "Truths and Untruths of Evolution," p. 21.

DR. ELAM.-In a series of articles on Evolution, in the Contemporary Review, vol. xxix., the Doctor says:

On a general survey of the theory of Darwin, nothing strikes us more forcibly than the total absence of direct evidence of any one of the steps. There is an abundance of semi-acute reasoning upon what might have occurred under conditions which seem never to have been fulfilled.

BISHOP ELLICOTT.-This learned man, who is the editor of "The Handy Commentary," expresses himself in plain terms on the present status of the doctrine of evolution. In his introduction to the Book of Genesis, he says:

Evolution is very far from having attained to the rank of scientific verity; it is at most an interesting and ingenious theory. Unfortunately for its temperate discussion evolution is now enwrapped by many of its partisans in the ugly pellicle of materialism, and for this there is in the Bible no place. While, therefore, I am content to leave all the processes of creation to those who make the material universe the object of their intelligent study, I object to their crossing beyond their proper limits, which they do in arguing that our enlarged knowledge of matter and its laws militates with a belief in a governing and law-giving mind; for material science can penetrate no further than to the phenomena of nature. It is the noble teaching of the Book of Genesis that creation was the work of an All-wise and Almighty intelligence, and that the Infinite Mind even called matter into being, and gave it those laws which scientific men study so wisely. I am content to believe everything which they prove in their own domain; but when they make assumptions in regions where they are but trespassers, it is mere waste of time to dispute with them. I cannot