22 The Destiny of Man. 



lords of creation, and after these had been 

 " sealed within the iron hills " there came 

 successive dynasties of mammals ; and as 

 the iguanodon gave place to the great Eo- 

 cene marsupials, as the mastodon and the 

 sabre-toothed lion have long since van- 

 ished from the scene, so may not Man by 

 and by disappear to make way for some 

 higher creature, and so on forever ? In 

 such case, why should we regard Man as 

 in any higher sense the object of Divine 

 care than a pig ? Still stronger does the 

 case appear when we remember that those 

 countless adaptations of means to ends in 

 nature, which since the time of Voltaire 

 and Paley we have been accustomed to 

 cite as evidences of creative design, have 

 received at the hands of Mr. Darwin a 

 very different interpretation. The lob- 

 ster's powerful claw, the butterfly's gor- 

 geous tints, the rose's delicious fragrance, 

 the architectural instinct of the bee, the 

 astonishing structure of the orchid, are no 

 longer explained as the results of contri- 



