134 EXPLANATIONS. 



Author of nature. He adds — " They were created 

 by the hand of God, and adapted to the conditions 

 of the period." If he here means a special ex- 

 ertion of the powers of the Deity, having a regard 

 to special conditions, we part company, for my 

 object is to show that animals were indebted for 

 their gradations of advance to a law generally im- 

 pressed by the Deity upon matter, and that their 

 external peculiarities are owing immediately to 

 the agency of those very conditions to which they 

 are supposed to have been adapted. I contend 

 that there was no more need for a special ex- 

 ertion to produce (for instance) mammalia, than 

 there is for one to carry a human foetus on 

 from the sixth to the seventh, or from the eighth 

 to the ninth month. I had remarked in no irre- 

 verent spirit, but the contrary, that the sup- 

 position of frequent special exertion anthropo- 

 morphises the Deity ; I find a similar idea ex- 

 pressed by one who will not be suspected of 

 irreverence on such a subject, the pious and amiable 

 Doddridge — " When we assert," says he, " a per- 

 petual divine agency, we readily acknowledge that 

 matters are so contrived as not to need a divine 

 interposition in a different manner from that in 

 which it had been constantly exerted. And it is 



