OF DESIGN. 327 



from pabulum to structureless living matter, and from this 

 to new compounds of extraordinary properties or structures 

 of marvellous perfection and endowments, to believe that 

 the phenomena connected with growth and formation, 

 occurring as they do in all the countless living forms around 

 us, were each and all ordered, designed, and predetermined \ 

 perhaps ere a vestige of life had appeared, and that they suc- 

 ceeded one another according to a preconceived plan in a 

 definite order and sequence. It shall also be admitted that 

 it is even more difficult for one who has been well trained in 

 scientific enquiry, and has investigated nature with his own 

 eyes, to feel quite sure that the formation of every structure 

 of every living thing, is certainly due to the exercise of 

 some agency or power of an order or kind, totally distinct 

 from that to which the agencies, the results of the working 

 of which he has any knowledge or experience, unquestion- 

 ably belong. 



Nevertheless, and notwithstanding these admissions, it 

 will, I believe, be found to be more in accordance with 

 reason to accept such views, than it is to attribute the 

 phenomena referred to, to the ordinary properties and 

 forces of matter. Indeed, as far as we know anything of 

 these last and their working, we know that they are not 

 competent to effect the changes in question, or changes 

 allied to them even in a remote degree. 



An intelligent and honest observer may reasonably 

 hesitate to accept the view that all structures and organs 

 have been designed and constructed by an all-powerful 

 Maker, but he who refused to admit that no adequate scien- 

 tific explanation of the growth, say of a blade of grass or 

 a hair, had yet been discovered, would be neither honest nor 



