33 DARWINISM. 



His wisdom and goodness, whatever faults may seem 

 in them to our rashly-judging short-sightedness. But 

 comparing theories of creation according to human 

 notions, is it a nobler conception that God should 

 have made successively groups of beings to fill the 

 world, and then swept them away to make room for 

 others nearly like them ; each time, as it were, im- 

 proving on His first idea, and so arguing the imper- 

 fection of what had gone before by the very improve- 

 ment of what followed ; or that, foreseeing the perfect 

 types from the beginning, He should have called into 

 existence seeds of life capable, under the laws He gave 

 them, of rising in successive generations through count- 

 less ages, to endowments of the noblest order, to a 

 conscious life, to a reasoning faculty, to a moral sense, 

 to a knowledge of God? In such an origin there is 

 for man no degradation, since the lowliness of his 

 parentage has ever been traced back to the dust of 

 the ground ; and the lowest form of life is higher in 

 our imaginations than the dull brute earth. Indeed, 

 if we desire to exalt our self-appreciation, whether is 

 it grander for us to have been the work of an instant, 

 or to have been elaborated with Divine care through 

 millions of ages ? Will not any miracle in our behalf, 

 however stupendous, seem more credible on the latter 

 than on the former supposition? When we see what 

 Development has already done for the human species, 

 we can the more readily imagine what, under the same 

 Lawgiver, it may do in the future for the individuals 

 of our race. When we find it possible or probable 



