378 DAR WIN AND E VOL UTION. 



far from new knowledge and new facts enabling us to 

 bridge the chasm which separates the lifeless from the living, 

 we can at this time only boast of being a little better able 

 to form a conception of the tremendous width and impass- 

 able nature of the gulf which intervenes between all living 

 and all non-living, than was possible for our ancestors. So 

 far from Darwin having exterminated miracle, miracle in 

 some sort, as I have remarked, constitutes a necessary part 

 of his system. He may have attempted to change some- 

 what the seat and mode of its operation ; but what miracle 

 has in these last days lost, so to say, in the extent of the 

 area of its application, it has gained or more than gained in 

 the intensity and far-reaching character of its influence. 

 Every living thing is to be regarded as to some extent an 

 inheritor of the results of that one stupendous primseval 

 miracle when the non-living, for the first time, lived. So 

 far from excluding miraculous or supernatural influence, the 

 evolution of Mr. Darwin, as I have said, actually starts from 

 miracle. Other forms of the evolutional idea start from 

 what is scientifically impossible and unconceivable in 

 thought. Nay, notwithstanding all that has been urged to 

 the contrary, no one has succeeded, even by the aid of any 

 working hypothesis, in removing those early life changes of 

 which all subsequent variations in form, structure, com- 

 position, character are but a consequence, out of the origin 

 of mystery. Mr. Darwin has not ventured to suggest when 

 and where the first preliminary change which he conceives 

 to occur in the matter of the body commences, which is 

 supposed by his hypothesis to usher in the stupendous 

 modifications, which increase and accumulate until a new 

 species of being results. Neither does he say one word 



