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by the mechanical means at his disposal, he is constantly evolving all the 

 sounds and notes it is capable of producing. He is far removed from 

 the organ pipes ; and yet without his action on them they would not 

 sound. In a similar way, although the action of the Creator may have been 

 at first only such as to impress His omnipotence on that which He was pleased 

 to create, so that it might, by a series of self-developing laws, as they are 

 called, evolve first one form and then another, yet that is no proof that He 

 is not working the whole set of laws throughout, by His omnipotent agency. 

 "What I want to point out is this ; that the laws of nature cannot act by 

 themselves, or of their own independent motion. There must be an in- 

 tellectual agency working with and behind those laws, otherwise they would 

 be dead. This paper has called them blind laws." "Well, I have here a 

 short extract from a work by Professor Owen, who says, in a passage to whiA 

 I am unable at the present moment to give a more particular reference : 

 '* Natural evolution, by means of slow physical and organic operations, 

 through long ages, is not the less clearly recognizable as the act of an adap- 

 tive mind." Again he says : " The succession of species by continuously 

 operating law is not necessarily a blind operation." Also : " Organisms 

 may be evolved in ordinary succession, stage after stage, towards a foreseen 

 goal, and the broad features of the course may stQl show the unmistakable 

 impress of Divine volition." — I will now venture to refer to section 35 of 

 the paper we are discussing. The author has made some remarks on 

 chance, which I think are scarcely fair. He takes excejDtion to the use 

 of the word " chance " as implying something in relation to the operation 

 of kiws of which we are ignorant. Why, sir, that is the very meaning 

 of the word chance ; and I do not think the argument a right one to 

 urge against the term. If I take up some dice, and after rattling them 

 in a box I throw them down, I say the result is a matter of chance ; but 

 it is none the less by law that the numbers are thrown because I use 

 that term. I know that it is in accordance with certain laws only, but I 

 am not cognizant of the exact mode of their operation. And so when 

 Darwin enters into the laws of causation, he is the first to confess his own 

 ignorance, in the same way as one is led to say that the dice fall by chance. 

 Even the Scripture chroniclers speak in the same way. They tell us that 

 " By chance there aime down a certain priest that way ; " meaning that it 

 was by some means inscrutable to them, and which they did not understand. 

 The very fact of their using the word would imply that it was by God's 

 agency, although they speak of it in a human sense, as having been by 

 chance. In the same way although I should say if I were a Darwinian, that 

 natural selection might be brou^rht about by laws which I know nothing of, 

 I should still, as a Christian, hold that those laws are the appointed ends of a 

 superintending Creator. It is on this point that I think the paper is not 

 quite fair to Mr. Darwm. Still less is it fair to Dr. Tyndall. I hold in my 

 hand the October number of the Contemporary Review, which contains an 

 article on " Prayer " by Professor Tyndall. The paper we have heard to-night 

 most distinctly asserts that Professor Tyndall denies, and puts out of the 



