EVIDENCE OF DESIGN. 133 
ing department is seen in the locomotive. There is a 
plan, a likeness, a similarity, which runs through all 
steam-engines, whether they be found in the mine, in the 
mill, beneath the deck of the steamship, or on the rail- 
road track. But the locomotive is not formed from the 
mine engine; it is made new, and is a distinct type. And 
yet, the same principles are seen in both. Even so it is 
with the genera of animals. The whale and the ele- 
phant both have backbones, jointed limbs, warm blood, 
and a hundred homologous organs. They are both 
mammials, both are sagacious, and are gifted with acute 
senses. But otherwise they are unlike as the monster 
locomotive that pulls the heavy train over the Sierras, and 
the compound engines of the Vaterland. Similarity of 
structures argues powerfully for unity of plan, but by no 
means proves identity of origin. 
The evidence of design in nature conflicts with the 
idea that all things in the organic domain have come to 
be what they are by chance. But it agrees perfectly with 
the Christian view of animal nature. What is that? It 
is that God created the different classes of existences in 
the strict sense; that is, that he created them separate 
classes and species, each with its own peculiarities and 
habits, while, at the same time, they rise one above the 
other in general and steady order, with certain general 
organs and functions, which run through nearly all ex- 
cept the lowest classes, each higher class having also 
some distinct and additional peculiarities not found in 
those below it. In other words, to the Christian the 
steadily ascending scale in the work of creation is only 
the unfolding or development of the great plan of crea- 
tion that was in the mind of God. He believes that God 
did not create one or more simple cells or germs, and 
cause all higher forms to be evolved from them, inter- 
fering only once or twice (when the backbone appeared, 
