NECESSARY BELIEFS. 77 



Go back, however, to the time when, as some say, 

 the types of all germs were only four in number. 

 Darwin has never committed himself to materialistic 

 evolution. He has always asserted that the first 

 living germs were brought into existence by the 

 Creator of all things. But now, if you put into 

 these first germs a constitution that will develop on 

 one line into vertebrates, on another into radiates, 

 on another into articulates, and on another into mol- 

 lusks, you have four fundamental forms of life, as 

 Agassiz taught. Even when you reduce these Plym- 

 outh Rocks to four, you do not reduce the number 

 of words in your constitutions at all. In the four 

 constitutions of the vertebrates, articulates, radiates, 

 and mollusks, are contained implicitly all the provis- 

 ions which your millions and millions of constitu- 

 tions, developed from the four, contain explicitly. 

 These four constitutions might be reduced to one, 

 and yet contain no fewer syllables. In the mystic 

 constitution of your original germinal matter you 

 have the sum of all the provisions of the multitu- 

 dinous constitutions developed from it, to show, that, 

 when God landed on the bioplasmic shore which he 

 had himself created, he landed with a plan. [Ap- 

 plause.] There was in the cabin of the May- 

 flower which preceded the first germinal matter, a 

 compact drawn up, and in it were the possibilities of 

 all divergences from the first life, or the syllables 

 describing all the multitudinously interlaced forms 

 of vegetation and animal existence in this tropical 

 forest. Whatever there is wonderful in develop- 





