ON MIRACLES. 223 



(6) At l/ir Einrvrjoire of Man upon the Earth whether hij 

 Creation or Evolution. 



Let US make this a little clearer by illustration. Let us go 

 back in imagination 7,000, 60,000, 200,000 years, until we 

 reach a period when man did not exist upon the earth. At 

 that remote period man did not exist. But man now exists. 

 Whence and how did he come ? Either he was created im- 

 mediately, by the exertion of supernatural power, or he was 

 evolved from some pre-existing organism. There is no other 

 alternative. If man were created immediately, then a miracle 

 was performed; if he were evolved from some pre-existing 

 organism, then the uniformity of nature is not a fact. 



Let us, then, assume that man was evolved; let us concede 

 to the evolutionist the principle of life ; let us concede further 

 the development of successive and more complex forms, until 

 at last, man^s immediate ancestor (the anthropoid ape) is 

 reached. Up to this point man, his moral and intellectual 

 capacities, the splendid pui-pose in his eyes, has not 

 existed. But now, on the evolutionary hypothesis, the anthro- 

 poid ape gives birth to a man-child. The first baby '^new 

 to earth and sky " is born into the world ; the first infant 

 wail is heard, and is hushed by the brute mother. However 

 numerous the intermediate links, a moment . must, on the 

 above hypothesis, have come, when the brute became man, 

 a moment when the line between man and the brute was 

 drawn. There, on one side of that line, stands the brute 

 father and mother; here, on the other, stands the man-child, — 

 the rational being : and this is a miracle. Now, either the 

 process is still going on or it is not. If not, the operations of 

 nature are not uniform. 



Should it be replied that such cases of development, from 

 species to species, are exceptional and occur only at rare 

 intervals, and under exceptional circumstances, then I answer 

 that so vast a change as that of an ape into a man, if 

 occurring only once in the history of the world, is a 

 miracle, more diflScult to believe than the resurrection of 

 the dead. 



Sir Charles Lyell [Antiquity of Man, chap, xxiv.) may 

 be quoted here with effect : — " To say that such leaps 

 (as have received the name of atavism) constitute no 

 interruption to the ordinary course of nature, is more 

 than we are warranted in affirming. In the case of the 

 occasional birth of an individual of superior genius, there is 

 certainly no break in the regular genealogical succession. . . . 



