280 CREATION BY LAW. 



going on in the inorganic world, why are we re- 

 quired to believe in the continual action of such 

 a mind in the region of organic nature ? True, the 

 laws at work are more complex, the adjustments more 

 delicate, the appearance of special adaptation more re- 

 markable; but why should we measure the creative 

 mind by our own ? Why should we suppose the ma- 

 chine too complicated, to have been designed by the 

 Creator so complete that it would necessarily work out 

 harmonious results ? The theory of a continual inter- 

 ference" is a limitation of the Creator's power. It 

 assumes that he could not work by pure law in the 

 organic, as he has done in the inorganic world ; it 

 assumes that he could not foresee the consequences 

 of the laws of matter and mind combined that re- 

 sults would continually arise which are contrary to 

 what is best, and that he has to change what would 

 otherwise be the course of nature, in order to produce 

 that beauty, and variety, and harmony, which even we, 

 with our limited intellects, can conceive to be the 

 result of self-adjustment in a universe governed by 

 unvarying law. If we could not conceive the world 

 of nature to be self-adjusting and capable of endless 

 development, it would even then be an unworthy idea 

 of a Creator, to impute the incapacity of our minds 

 to him; but when many human minds can conceive, 

 and can even trace out in detail some of the adapta- 

 tions in nature as the necessary results of unvarying 

 law, it seems strange that, in the interests of religion, 

 any one should seek to prove that the System of Na- 



