CREATION BY LAW. 279 



hundreds of cases in which that adjustment and develop- 

 ment do not occur. No doubt when one adjustment is 

 absent another takes its place, because no organism can 

 continue to exist that is not adjusted to its environ- 

 ment ; and unceasing variation with unlimited powers 

 of multiplication, in most cases, furnish the means 

 of self-adjustment. The world is so constituted, that 

 by the action of general laws there is produced the 

 greatest possible variety of surface and of climate ; 

 and by the action of laws equally general, the greatest 

 possible variety of organisms have been produced, 

 adapted to the varied conditions of every part of the 

 earth. The objector would probably himself admit, 

 that the varied surface of the earth the plains and 

 valleys, the hills and mountains, the deserts and vol- 

 canoes, the winds and currents, the seas and lakes 

 and rivers, and the various climates of the earth are 

 all the results of general laws acting and re-acting 

 during countless ages ; and that the Creator does not 

 appear to guide and control the action of these laws 

 here determining the height of a mountain, there 

 altering the channel of a river here making the rains 

 more abundant, there changing the direction of a 

 current. He would probably admit that the forces of 

 inorganic nature are self-adjusting, and that the result 

 necessarily fluctuates about a given mean condition 

 (which is itself slowly changing), while within certain 

 limits the greatest possible amount of variety is pro- 

 duced. If then a '''contriving mind" is not neces- 

 sary at every step of the process of change eternally 



