DESIGN A PROMINENT FACTOR IN NATURE 359 



for taking in and dealing with extraneous food, and a swimming tail to enable the young fish to catch it, are being 

 provided. The alimentary canal would be of no use without the swimming tail, and the two are consequently 

 developed together or synchronously. In the developing fish as in the developing frog, the accidental trifling modi- 

 fications extending over protracted periods claimed for the production of organs and the several kinds of animals 

 are wholly and entirely wanting. The Darwinian theory and evolution break down even in their boasted strong- 

 hold of development. If the swimming tail can be developed before our eyes, and while we are, so to speak, watch- 

 ing, there is no need to assume an infinity of accidental trifling modifioations extending over practically unlimited 

 time for its production. If the arguments for " natural selection " and " evolution " miscarry in cases of structural 

 development which can be studied from day to day, and which are perfected in a few weeks or months, they ought 

 to be discredited and abandoned. The development of a swimming tail is clearly a predetermined natural process, 

 and has no connection either with " natural selection " or with " evolution." If the swimming thing had to wait 

 for its swimming tail until formed by " natural selection " and " evolution " it would simply be non-existent : it 

 would die of inanition while its swimming tail was in process of formation. There is no proof that the accidental 

 trifling modifications which are said to occur from time to time in plants and animals, and which, according to the 

 theories of " natural selection " and " evolution," are necessary to the production of the organs of plants and 

 animals, and plants and animals themselves, are constant and cumulative. The missing links and gaps in plants 

 and animals in present and past time are wholly opposed to these theories. 



§ 68. Design a Prominent Factor in Nature. 



Of design it may truly be said circumsfice. It everywhere reveals itself to the careful observer. There is an 

 eternal fitness in things — a fitness which has obtained from the earliest times and obtains now. Evervwhere there 

 is adaptation to environment. There is nothing out of joint, although to the finite mind, attempting to grasp the 

 infinite, there are many things which are incomprehensible. There are cause and effect, law and order, and con- 

 tinuity which proclaim a great First Cause as potent to-day as it was when the world was first created. There is also 

 a persistent supervision of everything the universe contains as regards inorganic matter and physical force, and as 

 regards organic matter and vital and mental force. Everything is interdependent. The organic kingdom comes 

 from and returns to the inorganic one. Plants live upon the soil, the air, and the moisture and ingredients which 

 these contain. Animals live upon plants and upon each other, and all, sooner or later, are resolved into the elements 

 found in the earth, water, and air respectively. The sun, the great representative of force, heat, and light in our 

 universe, is to be directly or indirectly credited with the movements of the earth and those marvellous cosmic 

 changes which result in day and night, the seasons, the rise and fall of the tides, and various other phenomena on 

 which the hfe and well-being of plants and animals depend. The elements form the tissues and substances of 

 plants and animals through which they have, so to speak, a right of way. Plants and animals are incessantly taking 

 in and giving out inorganic matter. They are, at no period in their histories, absolutely and identically the same. 

 There is a constant give and take, an endless series of reactions as between hving and dead things, which cannot 

 possibly be accounted for by chance, and which necessitate the operation of an all-ruling Providence. 



It matters not in what direction we turn. Everywhere there is evidence of law and order in the inorganic 

 and organic kingdoms, and it is the continued adaptation of the one to the other throughout the ages that more 

 than any other thing proves the existence of an Omnipresent God. All physical and all vital phenomena are 

 conditioned : they have their boundaries beyond which they may not go. While the phenomena in question are 

 the outcome of law, a slight degree of variation is permissible to living things which have in themselves a corrective 

 power — a power which enables them to depart from, and return to, their originals. The variation is, in every 

 instance, trifling in amount, and confined as to time and place. It is thus we explain types and varieties in plants 

 and animals. 



All research, so far, goes to prove that plants and animals are created according to types, the types being, as 

 a rule, well marked, but, in some cases, shading off and becoming modified, and maldng it difficult to discover the 

 type. These modifications have been seized upon by Evolutionists as a proof that all plants and animals are the 

 outcome of a continued evolution from lower to higher forms, a conclusion by no means warranted by the facts. 

 In the majority of cases the types can readily be made out, and they are distinguishable alike by the kind and 

 degree of development, and the distribution of the types in time and space. 



The geological record shows, in many cases, an advance, maturation, and dechne of a type. It also displays 

 gaps in the flora and fauna which, while they are quite consistent with the separate creations of types, and the 

 modifications, within hmits, of these types, are inconsistent with, and destructive of, the theory of evolution, which 

 logically requires unbroken continuity. 



