432 NINETEENTH CENTURY. pt. hi. 



take a very long time before their descendants could be any- 

 thing else, although they might begin to differ in many 

 points. 



Lastly, it enables us to understand why we find the lower 

 forms of life in the oldest rocks, and why gradually, as 

 animals multiplied and the struggle for life became greater, 

 more and more complicated forms should arise, from the 

 improvement and inheritance of specially useful parts ; so 

 that the higher animals have a greater number of different 

 parts to perform different actions, just as a civilized country 

 with a great number of skilled people in it, has men of 

 different trades and professions, one to brew and one to 

 bake, one to dig the ground, and to grow cotton and flax, 

 and another to weave them into garments. 



This will give you a very small glimpse of some of the 

 difficulties which are explained by the theory of natural 

 selection. The subject is so difficult to understand tho- 

 roughly, that you must not expect to have more than a 

 slight notion of it, and must be content for the present with 

 knowing that our greatest living naturalists, who have made 

 a careful study of living and fossil animals and plants, all 

 believe it to be true. 



And as this is so, it is extremely foolish to te prejudiced 

 against it, as some people are, by the idea that animals 

 formed in this way can be less God's creation than if they 

 were made in any other way. The whole history of science 

 teaches us that men, in all ages, have constantly taken false 

 alarm when it has been shown that God's ways are not our 

 ways, and that the universe is governed by far wider and 

 more constant laws than we had imagined in our little 

 minds. But in the same way as the planets are none the 

 less held in God's hand because we now know that it is by 



