106 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING 



merits fitted to serve in a general sufficiency for all contin- 

 gencies ; himself, of course, necessarily living in all such, 

 arrangements, as the only means by which they could be, 

 even for a moment, upheld. Were the question to be settled 

 upon a consideration of the respective moral merits of the two 

 theories, I would say that the latter is greatly the preferable, 

 as it implies a far grander view of the divine power and dig- 

 nity than the other. For one thing, it places the leading 

 divine attribute of foresight in a much more sublime position. 

 " If," says Dr. Buckland, contemplating the possible establish- 

 ment of this doctrine " if the properties adopted by the ele- 

 ments at the moment of their creation adapted them beforehand 

 to the infinity of complicated useful purposes which they have 

 already answered, and may have still further to answer, under 

 many dispensations of the material world, such an aboriginal 

 constitution, so far from superseding an intelligent agent, ivould 

 only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and poiver that 

 could comprehend such an infinity of future uses under future 

 systems, in the original groundwork of his creation.' 1 ' 11 



It is now to be remarked that what has been ascertained of 

 the actual history of organic beings upon earth, is in no respect 

 out of harmony with this idea of their creation after the 

 manner of law. We have seen that these did not come at 

 once, as they might have been expected to do if produced by 

 some special act, or even some special interposition of will, on 

 the part of the Deity. They came in a long-extending suc- 

 cession, in an order, as would appear, of progressive organiza- 

 tion ; grade following grade, till, from a humble starting-point 

 in both kingdoms, the highest forms were realized. Time, we 

 see, was an element in the evolution of Being, as it is in the 

 reproduction of an individual at the present day. At the be- 

 ginning of geological investigation, it was thought that some 

 immediate external conditions ruled the appearance of par- 

 ticular classes of animals at particular times : as that the 

 absence of dry land was the cause of the late commencement 

 of terrestrial animals ; that there being for a long time only 

 reptilian land vertebrata, was owing to an overcharge of the 

 atmosphere with carbonic acid the store from which came 

 the chief material of the abundant vegetation of the carbo- 

 nigenous age ; and so forth. But it is now seen that the 

 progress of the animal world was, in its main features, inde- 



1 See Proofs and Illustrations, No. 2. 



