428 Anniversary Address. 



would rob our pursuits of their highest interests and their 

 noblest aims. 



Now, in proceeding to consider how far, if at all, by ac- 

 cepting Darwinism we must give up Natural Religion, we 

 must notice at once, that the disciple of Darwin is neither an 

 Atheist nor a Materialist, as some too hastily infer. 



He recoils, often as much as if he were not a Darwinite at 

 all, from the utterances of the Materialists, and their creed 

 of the spontaneous generation and evolution of all living 

 beings. 



Invited by Tyndall to project his vision " into the infinite 

 azure of the past, " (whatever that may mean), he fails to 

 discern with that distinguished Professor, " in nascent mat- 

 ter the promise and potency of every form and quality of 

 life." 



He reads, as we read, with a smile of amused amazement 

 the opinions of Haeckel, and other daring and advanced 

 evolutionists, that all creation is derived from some one form 

 or mere monad ; and that the body and soul (!) of the ani- 

 mated world consist of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen,- and nitro- 

 gen, with a small proportion of sulphur ; which component 

 parts, suitably nursed, become MAN. 



He does not opine, with Huxley, that the matter arises, 

 as does the man (!) in a particle of "nucleated protoplasm " ; 

 nor is he inclined to decide with Comte — even if the utter- 

 ance were intelligible, that " Life is the potentiality of atoms, 

 and mind a correlation of magnetic and psychic forces. " 



He wearies his puzzled brain with a selection of erudite 

 utterances of the same nature, whose meaning (if indeed 

 there be any at all) he fails to extract from the tangle ol 

 verbiage in which it Hes concealed ; and then he dismisses, 

 as having no claim on serious attention, the creed of materi- 

 alism, as being equally at variance with science, revelation, 

 and common sense, and destitute of any foundation in fact. 



No, even the most advanced disciple of Darwin allows the 

 existence of a Divine Creator, or to use his own language 

 " He must have a Creator to start with." 



So far, then, there is nothing that need cause alarm ; but 



