TRANSMUTABLE. 233 



of the writer in the "Cornhill," I must take the 

 liberty of treating it with ridicule. 



I have made use of the various proofs of de- 

 sign and special creation, which are to be drawn 

 from the works of nature, or the beautiful struc- 

 ture of organized beings. But an equally strong 

 argument may be drawn in favour of both, from 

 the diseases with which the human body is af- 

 flicted. Nay, I doubt much, if a stronger case 

 against Mr. Darwin's views can be made out 

 from any other of the vast store of facts at our 

 command. 



There is nothing more wonderful in the whole 

 scheme of creation, than the mode by which a 

 broken bone is restored; or the protecting arm, 

 by which the vis medicatrix naturce resists the 

 encroachment of an aneurism, or the rupture of 

 a fatal abscess, which may be invading some vital 

 spot in the system. Now this preservative power 

 exists in all animal structures, in the lowest 

 zoophytes, as well as in man; and it clearly and 

 unmistakably displays the provision of a wise and 

 beneficent Being, for events which He alone knew 

 would happen, and without which the great world 

 He had created, would have been incomplete. 



But, though like structures have a similar 

 principle of reparation and conservation, the dis- 

 eases of the animals of creation, as every one 

 knows, are essentially different, arid in many cases 

 peculiar to the genus or family. Could these 

 diseases have been imposed on man, for instance, 

 by "natural selection?" How the whole mythical 



