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our Great Creator some men have rushed desperately to con- 

 clusions, unworthy of true science, dishonouring to our 

 Almighty Maker, and at variance with common sense. 



27. The philosopher Lamarck and his more modern disciples 

 in the Darwinian school of thought, undertake to account 

 for the origin of things in Nature. Setting aside the plain 

 statements of the Bible, which represent God not only as 

 the Great Creator, but as the eternal Distributor of all things, 

 they tell us that the laws of Nature are in themselves executive, 

 wholly irrespective of the Almighty, except, perhaps, in the 

 creation of the original plasm. The Divine Being is thus 

 excluded from His works, and this, I need hardly say, re- 

 duces Him to a kind of moral nonentity ! Thus the Creator 

 (if even acknowledged to be such) is placed in solitary grandeur, 

 according to the philosophy of Epicurus, looking down as it 

 were at the progressive development of His plan, from the 

 potentially endowed plasm in the far, far distant past, till it 

 assumes, after countless and ill-shapen transmutations. His 

 own Divine image and likeness ! This theory runs directly 

 counter to the principle of unity of design, traceable in all 

 the works of God. It is, in fact, the deification of Matter. 



28. But let us apply the principles to a particular case. 

 Lamarck endeavours to account for the extreme length of 

 the neck of the giraffe, from the fact that it is a creature of cir- 

 cumstances. He tells us (how far back he does not say) that 

 originally the length of its neck was not greater than that of 

 the elephant. But the giraffe having to obtain its subsistence 

 from the leaves of trees, high up out of ordinary reach, 

 saw indeed the tempting morsel but knew not how to seize 

 it. It was this that suggested to the animal a series of vi- 

 gorous and well-directed jerks, until in time the vertebrie 

 became gradually extended. Each succeeding race of giraffes 

 left to its immediate posterity a legacy of elongation, till in 

 the lapse of ages we find this creature of circumstances the 

 architect of its own fortunes. 



29. In like manner it is said that water-fowl originally were 

 not endowed with web feet. They were like the common hen, 

 but being creatures of circumstances, and having to seek their 

 food among the reedy banks of lakes and ponds, the instinct 

 of self-preservation evolved those necessary movements of the 

 feet and legs, which in process of time terminated in the 

 production of web. Now there is not a single particle of 

 proof for all this. It is based simply on conjecture, and we 

 are asked to accept it as the best conceived idea of the origin 

 of the present state of things in the world around us, so far as 

 it relates to the analogy between plan and form. 



