DARWIXISM AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 327 



gin, became at any moment the Word of God. In tlie history of 

 the individual, so far as his physical structure is concerned, sci- 

 ence can trace each step from the microscopic cellular germ to 

 the fully developed man. If we believe that man as man is an 

 immortal soul, though we can not say when he became so, or that, 

 strictly speaking, he ever did become so, we need not be surprised 

 to meet the difficulty again in the evolution of man from lower 

 forms.* 



In both cases man is what he is, whatever he came from. We 

 do not say a man is not rich because we have found out how he 

 made his fortune. We do not say the eye can not see because we 

 can trace it back to a speck of pigment sensitive to light. Whether 

 God formed man literally " from the dust of the ground," or raised 

 him by progressive selection to what he is ; whether, in scientific 

 language, man rose to manhood " by the final arbitrament of the 

 battle for life " ; f or whether, as Mr. Wallace thinks, there is a 

 certain amount of "unearned increment" to be accounted for, man 

 is still man, " the glory and the scandal of the universe." Dar- 

 win, feeling " the extreme difficulty, or rather impossibility," of 

 conceiving the universe as not being the work of " a First Cause 

 having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of 

 man," J is driven back into agnosticism by the question, " Can the 

 mind of man,, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a 

 mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted 

 when it draws such grand conclusions ? " * Yet when Darwin, in 

 all the wealth of his scientific experience, and all the strength of 

 his disciplined reason, gives us his matured judgment on the pro- 

 cesses of Nature, who would dream of saying, " How can I trust 

 the conclusions of a man who was once a baby " ? We trust him 

 for what he is, and not for what he was. And man is man, what- 

 ever he came from. And what is man ? — 



" Distinguished link in being's endless chain ! 

 Midway from nothing to the Deity ! 

 A beam ethereal sullied and absorpt ! 

 Though sullied and dishonored, still divine ! 

 Dim miniature of greatness absolute ! 

 An heir of glory ! a frail child of dust ! 

 Helpless immortal ! insect infinite 1 

 A worm ! a God ! " || 



What a piece of work is man [says Hamlet]. In action, how like an angel ; in 

 apprehension how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals ! 

 And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust ? ^ 



Man is a part of Nature [it has been said], and no artificial definitions can sepa- 

 rate him from it. And yet in another sense it is true that man is above Nature — 



* Cf. " Origin," p. 412. f " Descent of Man," p. 48. J " Life and Letters," i, p. 282. 



* Ibid. 11 " Night Thoughts," i. ^ Act ii, scene ii. 



