PREFACE xix 



special acts of creation ; and even now I find myself 

 unable to depart from this belief. Nature most clearly 

 and with no uncertain voice proclaims that if there has 

 been evolution from lower to higher forms it has not 

 been by slow and gradual processes ; for such processes 

 could by no possibility have left the geological record 

 a tabula rasa in the matter of intermediate forms. 



If I be asked in what conclusion, then, do I rest, I 

 can only answer, in this, that I know nothing. The 

 way of God in creation baffles me by its mystery. Of 

 the mode of evolution Nature tells us nothing. 



I must in all honesty confess that logically, as the 

 matter presents itself to my mind, the argument is in 

 favour of those who believe in the doctrine of special 

 creations as our fathers believed in it. 



Though the doctrine does not recommend itself to 

 me and I am unable to accept it, I am nevertheless 

 constrained to acknowledge that it does not seem 

 more difficult to accept it than to believe in the im- 

 parting of the principle of life to the first monocellular 

 bit of protoplasm : for this was nothing less than a 

 special act of creation. 



The graduated scale in the ascent of being from 

 the earliest organic forms to its crowning point in 

 man, reveals to a certain degree the thought of God 

 in His scheme of creation, while it still leaves in 

 deepest obscurity the method and processes of the 

 Divine action. 



One thing stands clear and certain to reason, to 

 wit, that the Deity did not intervene to suspend the 



