PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. xllii 



nature (material and moral) is under the dominion of law and order P" 

 If, then, we are to decide in what manner the world was conducted in 

 the ages during which organic beings were coming into existence, 

 by the rule of experience, we must pronounce that it was in the 

 manner of law and order. This is a conclusion which it seems im- 

 possible to evade. It is the very heart and strength of the present 

 work. How does it affect Mr. Miller ? Law is admittedly the rule 

 of nature, miracle the exception an exception which we only know 

 of by historical means, and as having reference to a particular end 

 connected with human affairs. Whether was organic creation most 

 likely to have been so normal or so exceptional ? As a lover of 

 science, I cannot but blush in asking one of its intelligent cultivators 

 such a question, 



It suits Mr. Miller's purpose to overlook this general and funda- 

 mental argument, and assume that the question for experience to try 

 is, whether there be a law upon earth for the transmutation of 

 species. On the strength of what experience can show against that, 

 he affects to believe that the whole question can be at once settled. 

 Now the real position of the development hypothesis is this, It 

 being granted that the world is one of law and order, and conse- 

 quently that organic beings must have originated in accordance with 

 some law, it becomes us as reasonable beings to look about through 

 nature, in order to see if there be any such law still in operation, or 

 even uny traces of its operation in a past age. We hear of many 

 men who have believed it to be proved that living beings have ori- 

 ginated from inorganic elements in our own age ; but this is a doc- 

 trine not generally received, and we cannot found much upon it. 

 We see, however, that undeniably organic beings have appeared on 

 the earth in a certain order generally suggesting a progress from low 

 to high, and this throughout a long succession of ages ; we also see 

 a remarkable parit}' between these stages of progress and the succes- 

 sion of forms through which one of the highest animals passes in its 

 foetal history ; awaking the idea of a general gestative development 

 for animal life, as being that law of which we are in quest. Here we 

 do not pretend to have proved the existence of the law. But we 

 contend that, if any one has thoroughly received the doctrine which 

 experience points to, of there having been some law concerned in the 

 case, he will, if he is docile to reason, deem this provisional or hypo- 

 thetical view of creation, standing in so strong analogy to pro- 

 cesses actually exemplified in nature borne out by the positive 

 discoveries of geology considerably preferable to a hypothesis ot 

 miraculous creative acts which has no known facts in its favour 

 whatsoever, and stands in no traceable relation to anything known 

 in the frame of the universe. He may think that, by our hypothesis 

 the only one which even claims an affinit}' to nature he has been 

 allowed to see the veritable footprints of the Creator, while in the 

 other he only can see an incoherent dream. 



