TRANSMUTABLE. 93 



he states that he considers no living thing is 

 destined to transmit its unaltered form to a 

 far-distant posterity. If, then, the primordial 

 being was imperfect, and all the living beings 

 now on the face of the earth are imperfect, 

 you can form no notion whatever of the perfection 

 of Deity itself. Human reason consists essentially 

 in the power of comparison, and just as we are 

 able to understand what is good by comparing 

 it with evil, or what is true by comparison of 

 that which is false, heat by cold, wet by dry, 

 and so on; so it is by a comparison of the 

 works of nature, with our ideal notion of nature's 

 Creator, that the argument from natural theology 

 of the Creator's perfection is drawn. And if we 

 cannot believe in the perfection of the Deity, how 

 are we to believe that design, which is the most 

 wonderful of all the natural evidences of the God- 

 head, can be a reality. It is no answer to this 

 reasoning that secondary causes, as applied by Mr. 

 Darwin to the "variation" of species, display In- 

 finite Wisdom. Far from it! you can only compare 

 Mr. Darwin's uncertain, partial, intermittent law 

 of variation with the known facts of creative 

 wisdom and design, by allowing a degradation 

 of Divine Power, which I apprehend few will 

 be found to admit. 



If, for instance, as an anatomist, I look at 

 the human hand or foot, I see the most ex- 

 quisite adaptation of bone, ligament, muscle, 

 blood-vessel, and nerve, each performing a separate 

 function, and the whole constituting the most 



