NO PROOF OF EVOLUTION. 23 



sive transmutation of forms by descent from the lowest 

 to the highest grades. It is not a legitimate induction 

 from the facts of the case, nor a deduction from any 

 established principles. Seeing that the conditions of 

 life are fundamentally similar for all living beings, it 

 would be surprising, indeed, if there was not a unity 

 of plan recognisable in their organisation. We can 

 conceive of nothing more perfect than what we find, 

 and anything conceivably different would have been 

 less perfect. Every living thing — extinct or existing 

 — in short, has held or holds a place important in the 

 plan of the Almighty, Wise, and Beneficent Creator. 

 The transitions of form — the homologies and 

 analogies of structure — observable in the organic 

 kingdoms cannot be admitted, then, as indicative of 

 any such thing as a progressive development, whereby 

 animals have by chance or spontaneously, or by 

 Natural Selection — whichever you choose to call it — 

 been transmuted from a lower to a higher grade of 

 organisation. Among the astonishingly numerous 

 and varied forms of animal life, a certain resemblance 

 we have seen may, indeed, be traced indicative, as 

 before observed, of a unity in the conception and 

 design of the whole, — the same creative power being 

 manifested in the worm which is so magnificently 

 displayed in the human body. But though all organic 

 forms thus resemble each other, no two kinds are 

 exactly alike. There is a line of demarcation by 

 which each kind or form is, and has been, circum- 

 scribed. 



