THEISM A ND EVOLU TION. 307 



periods in the earth's history, certain elemental atoms 

 have been commanded suddenly to flash into living 

 tissues?" ' And Huxley ridicules the notion that " a 

 rhinoceros tichorhinus suddenly started from the 

 ground like Milton's lion, 'pawing to get free its 

 hinder parts,' " " and facetiously speaks of the im- 

 probability of " the sudden concurrence of half-a-ton 

 of inorganic molecules into a live rhinoceros." 



A grave objection, quotha ! As if a belief in 

 creation necessarily connoted the grotesque assump- 

 tions which he attributes to those who are not of his 

 mind. Huxley and Darwin set up poor, impotent 

 dummies, and forthwith proceed to knock them 

 down, and then imagine they have proven the 

 views of their adversaries to be untenable, if not 

 absurd. A reference to what has already been said 

 respecting absolute and derivative creation, and a 

 recollection that creation by and through second- 

 ary causes is not a supernatural, but a natural act, 

 will show how much ignorance of the clench there 

 is in the difficulty suggested by the two naturalists 

 just named. 



Darwin's Objection. 



Once more, Darwin speaks of a man building a 

 house of certain stones found at the base of a preci- 

 pice, and selecting those which, from their shape, 

 happened to be most suitable. And in referring 

 to this matter he writes : "The shape of the frag- 

 ments of stone at the base of our precipice may be 



1 " The Origin of Species," vol. II, p. 297. 



2 Life of Darwin," vol. I, p. 548. 



