ix ORIGIN OF MAN 133 



stable and permanent character, and brought about by the 

 influence of food, climate, and other surrounding circum- 

 stances. 



The evidences of the Divine government of the world, and 

 of the Christian faith, have been sufficient for us, notwith- 

 standing our knowledge that the individual was created 

 according to law, and that the race or variety was also 

 created according to law. In what way then can they be 

 affected by the knowledge that the somewhat greater modifica- 

 tions, which we call species, were also created according to 

 law ? The difficulties, which to some minds seem insuperable, 

 remain exactly as they were ; the proofs, which to others are 

 so convincing, are entirely unaffected by this widening of 

 scientific knowledge. 



Even to what is to many the supreme difficulty of all, the 

 origin of man, the same considerations are applicable. Believe 

 everything you will about man in his highest intellectual and 

 moral development, about the nature, origin, existence, and 

 destiny of the human soul ; you have long been able to re- 

 concile all this with the knowledge of his individual material 

 origin according to law, in no whit different in principle from 

 that of the beasts of the field, passing through all the phases 

 they go through, and existing long before possessing, except 

 potentially, any of the special attributes of humanity. At 

 what exact period and by what means the great transforma- 

 tion takes place no one can tell. If the most Godlike of men 

 have passed through the stages which physiologists recognise 

 in human development without prejudice to the noblest, 

 highest, most divine part of their nature, why should not 

 the race of mankind, as a whole, have had a similar origin, 

 followed by similar progress and development, equally without 

 prejudice to its present condition and future destiny ? Can it 

 be of real consequence at the present time, either to our faith 

 or our practice, whether the first man had such an extremely 

 lowly beginning as the dust of the earth, in the literal sense 

 of the words, or whether he was formed through the inter- 

 vention of various progressive stages of animal life ? 



The reign of order and. law in the government of the 

 world has been so far admitted that all these questions have 



