EVOLUTION AND DESIGN. 107 



conscious life, and Avhen man's intellectual life began {Dai- 

 ivinism, p. 474). 



I assume that life is an endowment from the Creator and 

 that its development is moulded by circumstance. 



Evolution therefore does not deny a Creator, but explains 

 the manner of His working, and the laws and secondary 

 causes through which He acts. These in their infinite 

 complexity and marvellous adaptation it is the province of 

 science to examine. 



If life flows direct from its Author, how is it as to cir- 

 cumstance ? Is this chance, is it the mere result of natural 

 laAv, or is it subject to ever present control? 



Naked chance is out of fashion. No one now teaches 

 that the Universe is a fortuitous concourse of atoms. But 

 dressed in philosophical garb, disguised as Natural Law, 

 chance is still much in vogue. 



Law without a Law Giver, — Force without control, is but 

 chance. The throw of the die is not less chance because it 

 falls by gravitation. There is no real difference between a 

 chance concourse of atoms and a chance coincidence of 

 circumstances, each alike must produce not Kosmos but 

 Chaos. 



Life and Circumstance from which the Kosmos springs 

 must be designed and controlled. 



The existence of evil in the system of nature has, however, 

 led some who admit a Creator and Author of life to suppose 

 that He has ordained fixed laws to work out their results in 

 nature without after control or interference. But is this 

 hypothesis logically consistent ? 



Grant that life and growth are endowments of a Creator, 

 but that the structure of each animal has been modelled in 

 its growth to its present form by the circumstances surround- 

 ing itself and its progenitors, by climate thickening its fur, by 

 food modifying its teeth, by distribution of land and water 

 changing a four-footed mammal into the likeness of a fish, 

 by struggle for existence eliminating the inferior types. 

 , What is that struggle but the competition of exuberant 

 life, its lorce due to and measured by the quantity and energy 

 of life. Tliat struggle therefore has the same source as life 

 itself; that cogent circumstance must be designed. W'hy 

 has the cod seven millicms of eggs, the elephant but one oft- 

 spring: yet each justly balanced against the destructive 

 forces to which it is exposed, and keeping its place in nature. 

 Is this difference chance or planned by the Giver of life ? 



