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inorgauic principles, under its own peculiar power and force, yet there is not 

 the least evidence to show that the mere laws which govern inorganic matter 

 could of themselves have led to a single vital organism. If this is so, it will, 

 I apprehend, be a point for discussion to-night ; and it is one, no doubt, to 

 which Mr. Henslow will himself refer when he replies. It has also struck 

 me on this point — and Mr. Henslow will probably agree with me— that if, as 

 he has said, man is the antecedent type of perfection held in view through- 

 out, then, so far as we can speak at all of any work of God, man must be 

 held to combine within himself, mentally and bodily, what, for want of a better 

 word, we must call a series and coalition of antecedent ideas, wrought into a 

 unity, and carried upwards into a new and higher and altogether distinct 

 living kind, or creature ; that there must have been a gradational ascent 

 towards this result ; and that although Mr. Henslow may deny, while others 

 affirm, that there are any distinct groups of ideas — any distinct species — that 

 have been observed and identified in creation, of which all the varieties of 

 creaturely results have been but, if I may so say, dialectic forms, yet still, 

 unless we admit that there are ideas in the Divine mind according to which 

 the Divine Being has been continually at work, we are literally without any 

 words or terms by which we can express anything we think on the matter 

 at all, and the whole of our attempts at speculation will have to give way. 

 This is the course of thought which has been very much in my own mind. 

 Another matter that I should like to mention is this : Mr. Henslow has 

 shown us with truth, although his words perhaps impinged rather violently 

 on our feelings, that even that wonderful organ the eye is not in itself perfect. 

 Probably no single eye has ever been absolutely perfect ; but it has occurred 

 to me that that is hardly so forcible an objection or bar to the argument from 

 design as it seems, for in truth the argument from design simply goes to this, 

 tliat in the case of the eye or any similar analogous instance, it is the idea which 

 is clothed in the eye, which is in itself so infinitely perfect an idea as to be 

 an argument for design. There is no person who holds the argument from 

 design but would admit, — owing to what he himself would call accidental 

 causes, diseases, and so on, arising from the infinite combinations of circum- 

 stances to which human creatures or any others are liable, — that with the ideal 

 intent and perfection of the eye there must actually be joined imperfec- 

 tions in that organ, just as the eye itself is clothed in flesh. No one who 

 upheld the design argument would admit that it was an answer to say that 

 these instances of defective eyes proved that the eye was not absolutely 

 perfect ; on the contrary, we should contend that when we came to consider 

 the perfection of thought, purpose, and plan, exhibited in the eye, any inci- 

 dental failure in that perfection did not in the least degree derogate from 

 the merit of the argument from design. (Cheers.) Perhaps I have now 

 trespassed further than I should have done upon the meeting, but with very 

 great sincerity I propose a vote of thanks to Mr. Henslow, and I do it with 

 the more pleasure, because I believe it to be of the highest conceivable 

 value that Christian gentlemen who would shrink with the greatest fear and 

 trembling from any wrong, lest they should grieve God or any child of God, 



