Survival of the Fittest. 463 



a mere matter of evidence, a sudden revelation might be 

 much more convincing than a gradual one, but it would be 

 quite out of analogy with causation in nature. Besides, 

 a gradual one might be given easily, and of demonstrative 

 value, as by making prophecies of historical events, scien- 

 tific discoveries and other things so clear as to be unmis- 

 takable. But a demonstrative revelation has not been made, 

 and there may well be good reasons why it should not have 

 been made. If there are such reasons, as, for example, our 

 state of probation, we can well see " that the gradual unfold- 

 ing of a plan of revelation, from earliest dawn of history to 

 the end of the world, is much preferable to a sudden mani- 

 festation sufficiently late in the world's history to be histor- 

 ically attested for all subsequent time." Gradual evolution, 

 as has been said before, is in analogy with God's other work. 

 If Revelation has been of a progressive character, then it 

 follows that it must have been so not only historically, but 

 intellectually, morally and spiritually, for in such sequence 

 could it be always adapted to the advancing conditions of the 

 human race. 



Thus it will be seen that all through the ages some mighty 

 influence has been at work, directly or indirectly, in prepar- 

 ing this earth by slow and gradual changes for a steadily 

 progressive succession of vegetable and animal life. That life 

 best fitted to meet new and changing conditions of environ- 

 ment being preserved by a process of natural selection. 

 And from a few primordial types, far simpler than the lowest 

 of existing structureless moners, or from some living proto- 

 plasmic mass, elaborated by some form of energy acting 

 upon inorganic nature, there have been evolved in the mil- 

 lions of years of earth-life our existing flora and fauna. 

 Man, the pinnacle of animal life, has come up through the 

 life that preceded him, and bears in the history of his devel- 

 opment from the ovum to the adult state the line of his 

 descent. Not only has his physical nature been evolved 

 through the action of natural laws impressed upon living 



