ON CREATION OR EVOLUTION. • 183 



These formidable witnesses must first be heard, and then 

 certain flagrant discrepancies in the tale "which they are sup- 

 posed to tell of terrestrial life must again be brought forward, 

 after which teleology, the old and incorruptible witness for 

 the opposite side, will be examined once more. 



Classification. — The now familiar tree of life, constructed 

 by evolutionists upon the ruins of many older and artificial 

 systems of classification, gives an excellent educational view 

 of natural history. It will serve its purpose admirably while 

 the pendulum of current science swings to the evolutionist 

 side. But the theory of creation is not among the class of 

 extinct beliefs, nor is that Book obsolete in which this theory 

 is enshrined, and in which it is announced as a fact, if one 

 society alone sends forth every year four million copies, or 

 portions of it, and it ])e translated into 320 languages and 

 dialects ; under which circumstances the arborescent view 

 of classification may still obtain when the delta shall have 

 been well passed. The knowledge of a Darwin or a Romanes 

 would hardly sufiice to test the statemeats made by the latter 

 in his remarkable chapter on classification. But if all be 

 allowed which is claimed,"* the "argument from ignorance," 

 which Bomanes ofters as the last ditch to the defenders of 

 special creation, proves a fortress of remarkable strength. 

 When the marvellous order which exists, as the plants and 

 animals of this globe are marshalled in review by an expert 

 in biology, it is positively trifling with the matter to allow 

 that this order, of immense duration in point of time, could 

 arise' by a process of natural selection, which Vv'ould bo 

 nothing if chance did not enter largely into it, and to refuse 

 to see this same order emanating from a Divine Power, whose 

 operations depend upon intelligence and will. Romanes 

 truly says, that if the defenders of the creation theory 

 explain by the hidden reasons which the Creator may have 

 had, those zoological and botanical affinities which exist, 

 they are bound to show some independent evidence for their 

 theory. Nothing can be more fair; and this the facts of 

 teleology — absolutely independent — will supplv. Classifica- 

 tion may be left ont of account as being equally in favour of 

 the two theories — opposed to neither. 



Geographical distribution. — In this department fiicts are 

 multitudinous, much valuable silt having been brought by 

 the tributaries of the evolutionary river. The most impor- 



* Darwin and after Darwin, part I. 



