THE KINSHIP OF LIFE. 5! 



part of our common knowledge, have been declared con- 

 trary to religion, and Christian men who knew these 

 things to be true have suffered all manner of evil for 

 their sake. We see the hand of the Almighty in Nature 

 everywhere ; but everywhere he works with law and 

 order. We have found that even comets have orbits ; 

 that valleys were dug out by water, and hills worn down 

 by ice ; and all that we have ever known to be done on 

 earth has been done in accordance with law. 



Darwin says : " To my mind it accords better with 

 what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the 



Creator, that the production and ex- 

 Darwin s words. . . ' , , . , , 



tmction of the past and present inhab- 

 itants of the world should have been due to secondary 

 causes, like those determining the birth and death of an 

 individual. When I view all beings, not as special crea- 

 tions, but as lineal descendants of some few beings who 

 lived before the first bed of the Silurian was deposited, 

 they seem to me to become ennobled. 



" There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its 

 several powers having been originally breathed by the 

 Creator into a few forms or into one, and that while 

 this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed 

 law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms 

 most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are 

 being evolved." 



With the growth of the race has steadily grown our 

 conception of the omnipotence of God. Our ancestors 

 felt, as many races of men still feel, that 

 they were forsaken unless each house- 

 hold had a god of its own, for, numer- 

 ous as the greater gods were, they were busy with 

 priests and kings. The people could hardly believe 

 that the God of their tribe could be the God of the 

 Gentiles also. That he could dwell in temples not made 



