Obstacles Raised. 207 



vertebrates — was supposed to be perfectly unassail- 

 able and isolated ; but zoolog>' and anatomy have 

 revealed to us amphioxus, and embryology the 

 earlier stages of the tunicates. The evidence is now 

 conclusive that these forms which once appeared to 

 be among the most distant, are now the most closely 

 related. The affinities of the tunicates with inver- 

 tebrates are evident, and thus we may look far back 

 to that time when vertebrates did not exist, but 

 when the common ancestors, from which they and 

 the related invertebrates should diverge, held sway. 



It was even pretended that the evidence was in- 

 sufficient to show that variation was possible or could 

 be propagated. 



From every hand testimony was forthcoming. 

 The breeder could point to every domesticated ani- 

 mal — the horticulturist and pomologist to all culti- 

 vated plants — the systematist and zoogeographer to 

 the limits of species which varied with knowledge of 

 their distribution — the palaeontologist to the grada- 

 tion between the extinct forms and widely separated 

 living species, as well as to that between forms which 

 lived in successive earlier epochs. 



It was urged that the Darwinian theory was op- 

 posed to revelation, and subversive of Christianity. 



As students of nature and seekers after truth 

 alone — so far as nature is concerned — we only ask 

 whether the views of Darwin are true or not. But 

 now, from many a pulpit, and from the most en- 

 lightened of the clergy, we hear the claim that evo- 

 lution is in perfect accordance with revelation, and is a 

 witness to the power, prescience, and goodness of God. 



