328 OF DESIGN. 



intelligent. An honest enquirer will feel obliged to freely 

 acknowledge, that no scientific observer has succeeded in 

 giving a clear and intelligible account of the changes which 

 succeed one another during the growth of the smallest par- 

 ticle of the simplest living form that is known. He may be 

 disposed to believe that some unborn chemist of the future 

 may some day succeed in ascertaining how the phenomena 

 are brought about, and may astonish the people of his day 

 by making a bit of living stuff in his laboratory. But, we 

 all know full well, that up to this very day, no approach to 

 such a result has been made, and that not even the very 

 simplest living thing has yet been built up by man out of 

 the non-living. 



The unprejudiced observer who has studied with care 

 the wonderfully minute details of structure of any organism, 

 or any part of an organism, and has tried mentally to 

 account for the changes which have occurred step by step, 

 will hesitate before he finally decides against the idea of 

 design. Whatever view he may be disposed to take, he 

 will not overlook the many circumstances which force upon 

 him the conclusion, that in all cases the order in which the 

 changes occur is certainly fixed and definite, and must have 

 been prepared for from the earliest moment of existence 

 in- fact, foreseen as it were, long before the matter of which 

 the developed structures were to be made could have 

 become a part of the living being nay, ere this matter 

 could have existed in a state in which it could be used for 

 the purpose of tissue-construction. 



It is difficult to conceive how such things are to be 

 explained by ordinary laws, although it has been confidently 

 affirmed, that all the phenomena of the living world are to 



