180 REV. G. F. WHIDBORNE, M.A., ON QUESTIONS INVOLVED 
8. Next, therefore, taking 'Theism definitely as our basis, 
and acknowledging to the full all that the existence of 
the Almighty Creating and Controlling Power means, we 
may proceed to inquire how far evolution, either extreme or 
partial, may be taken as an established fact, or be regarded 
as a probable or possible explanation of the method of 
Creation. 
We certainly have now an adequate reason for its 
possibility ; but we have in the same factor equal reason 
for the possibility of other methods of Creation. There are 
multitudinous data proving correspondence and similarity 
and relationship between different kinds of beings, but it 
can no longer be argued that these of necessity point to 
community of origin, but only to the unity of that 
Intelligence by which they were arranged. For we have 
found that we are dealing with “workmanship ”; and the 
investigation therefore is no longer limited to the mere 
mechanical tracing out of consecutive changes in advancing 
organization, but enters the higher sphere of the consideration 
of the plun and purpose of tie great Worker—the Worker 
whose power, once discerned, must be acknowledged to be 
only describable as infinite. In His working, order and 
connection and similitude and correspondence appear on 
every hand; but these are not necessarily proof of unity 
of origin in the works themselves, but only of a com- 
prehensive plan of the Author. Hence to gauge their true 
bearing on the former question, they must first be weighed 
in detail in the light of the latter. Is it not possible that the 
shutting off of this latter consideration, now scientifically fash- 
ionable, is really the great weakness of evolutionary doctrines? 
For instance, the first difficulty, noticed above, is at once 
swept away by a recognition of the Divine plan of creation. 
The present cosmos thus becomes the foreseen goal towards 
which the action of evolution may have been directed 
throughout preceding ages: and so the present state of 
animate nature becomes a definite basis for the i inquiry upon 
evolution. It is, however, a priori, equally easy to imagine 
that its Author willed to bring it about from a single prim- 
eval origin or protoplasm, or that He willed its various 
elements to come into existence as separate creations at 
different times. It hes with us, therefore, to examine all 
obtainable evidence and seek therefrom to ascertain, more or 
iess clearly, His methods and His plan of work. ‘The question 
thus becomes one of pure scientific research, unbound by the 
