278 



EXPLANATIONS 



cial creation. First, we should have to suppose, as pointed 



out in my former volume, a most startling diversity of 

 plan in the divine workings, a great general plan or sys- 

 tem of law in the leading events of world-making, and a 

 plan of minute nice operation, and special attention in 

 some of the mere details of the process. The discrepancy 

 between the two conceptions is surely overpowering, 

 when we allow ourselves to see the whole matter in a 

 steady and rational light. There is, also, the striking 

 fact of an ascertained historical progress of plants and 

 animals in the order of their organization; marine and 

 cellular plants and invertebrated animals first, afterwards 

 higher examples of both. In an arbitrary system, we had 

 surely no reason to expect mammals after reptiles ; yet in 

 this order they came. The Edinburgh reviewer speaks 

 of the animals as coming in adaptation to conditions ; but 

 this is only true in a limited sense. The groves which 

 formed the coal beds might have been a fitting habitation 

 for reptiles, birds, and mammals, as such groves are at 

 the present day ; yet we see none of the last of these 

 classes, and hardly any trace of the two first in that period 

 of the earth. Where the iguanodon lived, the elephant 

 might have lived ; but there was no elephant at that time. 

 The sea of the Lower Silurian era was capable of sup- 

 porting fish ; but no fish existed. It hence forcibly ap- 

 pears that theatres of life must have lain unserviceable, 

 or in the possession of a tenantry inferior to what 

 might have enjoyed them, for many ages ; there surely 

 would have been no such waste allowed, in a system 

 where Omnipotence was working upon the plan of minute 

 attention to specialties. The fact seems to denote that 

 the actual procedure of the peopling of the earth was one 

 of a natural kind requiring a long space of time for its 

 evolution. In this supposition, the long existence of land 

 without land animals, and more particularly, without the 

 noblest classes and orders, is only analogous to the fact, 

 not nearly enough present to the minds of a civilized peo- 

 ple, that to this day the bulk of the earth is a waste as fai 

 as man is concerned. 



Another startling objection is in the infinite local varia- 

 tion of organic forms. Did the vegetable and animal 

 kingdoms consist of a definite number of species adapted 

 to peculiarities of soil and climate, and universally dis- 

 tributed, the fact would be : n harmony with the idea of 



