ADVENT OF MAN. 213 



with physical agency in any other way than the mere me- 

 dium through which creative power has chosen to manifest 

 itself to our observation. In vain does Mr Darwin taunt 

 that this is a mere "dignified way" of putting the ques- 

 tion : better surely to rest satisfied with a dignified belief 

 we are unable to prove, than seek unsatisfactory shelter 

 under a cold undignified materialistic assumption ! For 

 our own part, believing as we do that Life in all its rela- 

 tions its incomings and outgoings in time its modifica- 

 tions in form, and its distribution over space are under 

 the incessant operation of fixed and determinable laws, we 

 are as free to entertain the question of vitality as we are to 

 entertain the formation of a stratum of sandstone or the 

 aggregation of a mineral crystal ; but this we cannot do 

 unless at every stage of our reasoning we associate a su- 

 perintending with a creative intellect. And. we have yet 

 to learn wherein the variation of a natural law, or the 

 variation of a well-known form of life even to the ten- 

 thousandth degree is less an act of creation than the 

 original establishment of that law, or the original calling of 

 that life-form into existence. 



[Advent of Man.] 



The study of life, palseontologically regarded, necessarily 

 involves the creation and first appearance of Man ; and on 

 this subject much discussion has taken place, unprofitable 

 alike to science and the cause of Christian theology. So 

 far as geological evidence goes, we have no traces of man or 

 of his works till we arrive at the Superficial Accumula- 

 tions the coral-conglomerates, the bone-breccias, the cave- 

 deposits, and the peat-mosses of the current period. It is 

 true, that so far as the earlier formations are concerned, the 



