DARWINISM. 31 



life of man these expressions are truthful and well- 

 chosen, but they do not mean to say the rocks are 

 as eternal as God, nor yet everlasting compared with 

 the existence of the globe. It may have taken ten 

 thousand centuries to rear up a mountain, and yet, if 

 we reckon the age of the globe on the scale of a man's 

 life, the mountain be but of yesterday. 



The immense antiquity, not only of the globe, but of 

 that thin crust of it open to our inspection, has been 

 ascertained by geology. Geology, again, has made it 

 certain that during millions of years, changes on the 

 earth's surface have been in continual progress, so that 

 not once merely, but many times over, continents and 

 oceans must have yielded to one another, yet by no 

 sudden, but ever by a gradual transposition, such as is 

 in constant progress at the present day. 



Seeing that the dwelling-place of living creatures 

 is thus continually and continuously changing, how 

 clumsy an arrangement it would have been had the 

 forms of life been made constant, instead of being 

 endowed, as they clearly have been, with a wonderful 

 power of adaptation. The question, be it remembered, 

 is not for a moment whether God has made the uni- 

 verse, but how He has made that portion of it which 

 He has enabled us to see and examine. Nor yet, to 

 be thoroughly accurate, is it in question how He has 

 worked, but how He has been pleased to exhibit His 

 operations to the reasoning minds of men. What is 

 worthy of God we cannot indeed judge. We can only 

 believe that the things which are, stand worthiest of 



