THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 10] 
throughout the world, every variation, even the 
slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving 
and adding up all that is good; silently and insen- 
sibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity 
offers, at the improvement of each organic being, in 
relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of 
life, — if this, I say, were proved to be true, ought 
God’s care and God’s providence to seem less or more 
magnificent in our eyes? Of old it was said by 
Him without whom nothing is made—‘ My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work. Shall we quarrel 
with physical science, if she gives us evidence that 
those words are true 2?” 
And—understand it well—the grand passage 
I have just quoted need not be accused of substi- 
tuting “natural selection for God.” In any case 
natural selection would be only the means or law 
by which God works, as He does by other natural 
laws. We do not substitute gravitation for God, 
when we say that the planets are sustained in 
their orbits by the law of gravitation. The theory 
about natural selection may be untrue, or imperfect, 
