LESSONS IN GEOLOGY. 383 



sustaining the development theory, new discoveries as a rule 

 being favorable to that idea. 



While the testimony is fragmentary, and the evidence incom- 

 plete, yet there is scarcely a botanist, zoologist or geologist of 

 note, who does not believe that some form of development was 

 God's method of creation. Progress means the laying aside of 

 ideas which are the result of limited knowledge, and the accept- 

 ance of other ideas, the result of wider information. The world 

 had to give up the Ptolemaic theory, had to accept the theory of 

 universal attraction, had to give up the idea that the earth was 

 not more than 8,000 or 10,000 years old, had to give up the 

 corpuscular theory of light, had to accept the theory of conserva- 

 tion of energy, had to change its theory as to the treatment of 

 the insane. These and many other changes hare been ma^e, as 

 the result of wider knowledge, and these changes were made with- 

 out detriment to any, but rather resulted in benefit to all. So if 

 we have to give up the idea of special creations, and accept the 

 idea of development, no damage will be done. 



Some persons object to the theory of evolution as atheistical. 

 Dr. Asa Gray, a strict Presbyterian, Prof. Joseph Le Conte, an 

 earnest Christian, Dr. Alexander Winchell, a Methodist, and hosts 

 of others equally prominent as believers in God, would unite with 

 Prof. John Fiske in saying, " The doctrine of evolution asserts as 

 the widest and deepest truth, which the study of nature can dis- 

 close to us, that there exists a Power to which no limit in time or 

 space is conceivable, and that all the phenomena of the universe, 

 whether what we call material, or what we call spiritual, are 

 manifestations of this infinite and eternal Power." 



