192 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



men who knew these things to be true have suffered 

 all manner of evil for their sake. We see God's 

 hand in Nature everywhere ; but everywhere he 

 works with Law and Order. We have found that 

 even comets have orbits ; that valleys were dug 

 out by water, and hills worn down by ice ; and that 

 all we have ever known to be done on the earth 

 has been done in accordance with law. 



What, indeed, do we mean by special creation 

 as opposed to natural selection ? What knowledge 

 or idea have we of it? We no longer picture the 

 Creator as fashioning men and dogs and horses of 

 clay, and then breathing into them the breath of 

 life. If each of the half million species which we 

 now know, and each of the millions of species now 

 extinct, has been the subject of a special creation, 

 then special creation is but another name for the 

 law by which species are produced. We under- 

 stand in some measure the method of birth, the 

 method by which individuals are created. Why 

 should we think, in fact, that species are created in 

 any other way ? Why is not the method of crea- 

 tion of species, as of individuals, the method of 

 birth? We have, in fact, abundant evidence that 

 the method of creation is the method of birth; and 

 amxong all the mysteries that surround us there is 

 none more wonderful than this. God made us as 

 God made all things, but He made us in God's way. 

 God may be great enough, in the words of Kings- 

 ley, not only to *' make all things, but to make all 

 things make themselves." Ornne vivitm ex vivo, 

 ** All life from life," is a maxim of the older natural- 

 ists ; and neither the materialist, to whom all life is 



