36 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



form from its first germ, and in the evolution of the entire 

 organic world. 



In this hypothesis I cannot sec anything that is either 

 abstractedly improbable, or that in the least tends to separate 

 the idea of Creative Design from the Organized Creation. 

 There is surely nothing more Atheistical in the idea that the 

 Creator, instead of originating each race by a distinct and 

 separate act (the notion commonly entertained), gave to the 

 first created Monad those properties, by the continued action 

 of which, through countless ages, a Man would be evolved, 

 than there is in the idea to which we are irresistibly led by 

 Physiological study, that the Creator has given such properties 

 to the first germ-cell of the human ovum, as enable it to 

 become developed into the human form in the course of 

 only a few months ; or in the idea, to which Astronomical 

 research seems to lead, that the Deity, instead of establish 

 ing the present system of the Universe by creating each star 

 and planet in its present form, setting it in a particular place, 

 and giving it a certain motion, produced this result by the 

 creation of Nebular Matter, and by the endowment of it with 

 certain properties, whose continued operation necessarily 

 wrought it out. If we believe that to the mind of the Deity, 

 the past and the future are alike present, and that His pre 

 science is so perfect as to comprehend all the results of the 

 plan on which He conducts the operations of the Universe, 

 we see His hand in the mode of creation supposed by this 

 hypothesis of development, fully as much as in the one com 

 monly attributed to Him. And if we believe that what we 

 call laws and properties of matter are nothing else than human 

 expressions of the constancy of the mode in which the 

 Creator operates, we see that the hypothesis coincides with 

 all which Science and Religion alike teach, respecting the 

 invariability of His mode of working. To imagine that the 

 Creator was obliged to interpose, or to exert some special 

 agency, for the production of new races of plants and animals, 

 every time that the conditions of the earth s surface became 

 incompatible with the continued existence of those previously 

 existing, and at the same time became prepared for others, 



