' IN THE BEGINNING " 3 



us as much as she can, and she is still tirelessly searching, and learning, and 

 seeking to know more. 



What Science tells us to-day about the answer to the question, " How 

 did God make the world ? " is, and always will be, associated with the name 

 of a famous man, Charles Robert Darwin, born at Shrewsbury in 1809, who 

 died in 1882, and whose tomb is in Westminster Abbey. 



In his young days, people who thought about the origin of life felt it was 

 almost impossible to believe the old view that all the forms of life had been 

 specially and separately made by God ; they saw how closely related they 

 were ; and about some, indeed, they wondered whether they were animals or 

 vegetables. But they could not find any explanation or theory that would 

 agree with the facts. A few very great men went so far as to declare that all 

 the different species had sprung from one another ; but even then they could 

 not explain their origin. 



After many years of the greatest toil and study, Darwin wrote his book 

 The Origin of Species, in which he gave what he believed to be the explanation. 

 He found that men and animals and plants were not specially created as they 

 are, but that these forms of life which we now see have grown out of other 

 forms ; and so on back into the past, until there was but one, or at the most a 

 few very simple forms in which life came into this world. And this explanation 

 of the different forms of life growing out of one another is called " Evolution." 



His book created a tremendous stir ; many people thought it was down- 

 right wicked, especially those who had been brought up to believe that the 

 Creation story in Genesis was literally true. 



But to-day every one acknowledges that it is the only explanation of life 

 that fits the facts ; and that, instead of denying God, it shows us more of His 

 power, wisdom, and glory. So Darwin believed it would, for he ends his book 

 with these words : 



" There is 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, whilst 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." 



What Darwin discovered was this that there always has been a great 

 competition between living things, a struggle for life. Watch, for example, 

 the plants growing in a small bed, and see how, if they are left alone, the 

 stronger ones will crowd the others out. That is an illustration of what has 

 always been true of all life. There is not room for everything to live ; and 

 therefore those die out which are the least suited to live under the conditions 

 in which they find themselves. But the young ones vary among themselves, 

 and those that vary so as to adapt themselves best to their surroundings are 

 able to survive, while the rest die. 



This explanation Darwin called " Natural Selection," but to-day it is 

 known as " the survival of the fittest " ; and it helps us to understand why 



