EVIDENCE OF DESIGN. 137 
Fairhurst says, in his “Organic Evolution Considered :” 
“The simple substances which constitute the earth are of 
such kinds and are found in such relative quantities as 
not only to render life possible, but also to contribute to 
the well-being of man as an intelligent and moral agent. 
I look upon the concurrence of all these things, accord- 
ing to any theory of chance, as being entirely impossible. 
The conditions that must be fulfilled before living beings 
are possible are so complex that nothing short of the wis- 
dom of a Supreme Intelligence could have produced 
them.” . (cf. Rom. 1, 20.) 
This view has found support in a most unexpected 
quarter. No less a person than Alfred Russel Wallace, 
famed as the discoverer, independently of Darwin, of the 
principle of Natural Selection, in his last book, “Man's 
Place in the Universe,’ (1903) defended a position so 
subversive of every cherished belief (or unbelief) of 
scientists that it easily ranks as the greatest literary sen- 
sation, in the domain of natural science, of the century. 
Wallace assembled all the latest astronomcial and other 
scientific discoveries and all knowledge bearing on the 
subject announced in his title. He deduces therefrom 
the theory :—First, that the earth or solar system is the 
physical center of the stellar universe. Second, that the 
supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the 
production and development of a living soul in the perish- 
able body of man. 
“Modern skeptics,’ says Wallace, “in the light of 
accepted astronomical theories (which regard our earth 
as utterly insignificant compared with the rest of the 
universe) have pointed out the irrationality and ab- 
surdity of supposing that the Creator of all this unimagin- 
able vastness of suns and systems should have any special 
interest in so pitiful a creature as man, an imperfectly de- 
veloped inhabitant of one of the smaller planets attached 
