188 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



passed through an embryonic state. The entire ma- 

 chinery of the organic world was set in motion in 

 such a way that there should be no hitch nor catch. 

 All had plenty to eat at once, though it is difficult 

 to understand how the lions and tigers got along 

 among the sheep and goats. As the cud-chewers 

 would require months to increase their numbers by 

 reproduction, it is not easy to see how the flesh-eaters 

 managed to live and not render extinct pairs and pairs 

 of creatures included in the original scheme! 



The radical evolutionist can not start his plan of 

 peopling the earth without supposing that in some 

 fortuitous way a monad got here spontaneously. He 

 presumes that nitrogenized slime called protoplasm- 

 was in a favorable condition to be vivified, and a stroke 

 of lightning, or some other " favorable influence," kin- 

 dled the vital spark. At this primeval birth was born 

 an organism that was capable of reproduction, and^ 

 of improving gradually, so that the variation would 

 establish a higher species. In time the advancement 

 and variability evolved all the plants and animals now 

 on earth ! The scheme is an interesting and ingenious 

 one, and accounts for many peculiarities in our flora 

 and fauna that before were mysterious. But to start 

 such an enterprise is attended with a stunning diffi- 

 culty at the outset. Is it not about as strange, won- 

 derful, and miraculous for a monad to spring into ex- 

 istence without any other progenitor than " fortunate 

 circumstances," as it would be for Omnipotence to* 

 create at once an adult elephant ? 



Inasmuch as the religionist and the evolutionist 

 encounter difficulties in attempting to defend their 

 peculiar views, it might be profitable for both to make 

 concessions, and live together without jealousies and 



