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23. The in-corning of animal species must have left our 
original potentially-endowed speck of protoplasm, myriads upon 
myriads of ages away, even according to the arguments of the 
Darwinian school. 
24. But the animal, when evolved, could not have lived 
without an atmosphere, neither could it have existed without 
the plant especially adapted to its organization. Man eats the 
ox, which derives its nourishment from grass; he also eats 
wheaten bread, the produce of a grass. Destroy the grasses, 
and man, with ail other mammals, would perish off the face of 
the earth. The bird feeds upon the fly, which comes from 
maggots, nourished by flesh, which again comes from grass; 
or it takes the caterpillar from the tree upon which alone 
the caterpillar can feed. Again we come back to the plant: 
I need not pursue this part of the argument further. 
25. Now mark ! The potentially-endowed plasm theory, 
and that of evolution, require in all this no interference of 
Divine Power. The sequence of events follows the laws im- 
planted in the first plasm. The Creator of that plasm has 
retired from the scene : there is no Providence- in nature. 
26. But let me pause here, and ask in all humility, if the 
whole theory of evolution and Darwinism is not placed out 
of court by the necessity that an atmosphere should have been 
created before the advent of life upon the globe ? Why should 
the same Power which created the one be denied the power of 
creating the other? Is the preparation for life to be considered 
specially creative, and life itself to be perfected without the 
supervison of the Creator ? The theory which allows the 
Creative Wisdom to exist before the coming of life into the world 
— exist, too, in all that grandeur, sublimity, and power which 
could form in an atmosphere the “ breath of life 33 — must indeed 
be deficient in probability, much less in truth, if it does not 
follow the same Creator into the great scheme of Life, Death, 
aud Immortality. 
27. Following the evolutionist, I must now ask into what 
animal form or forms was the vegetable first transmuted? 
Upon this point the evolutionist is silent, for he has floated his 
theory upon the unknown seas of speculation. 
28. In the vegetable world “ the plasm 33 has already worked 
out wonders without end. It has evolved the thousands of 
different forms which exist over the globe. It has ts adapted 33 
each plant to its peculiar soil aud climate ; it has provided each 
plant with a distinct and often widely different mode of propa- 
gating its own species. Some of the most beautiful provisions of 
the kind have been pointed out by Mr. Darwin himself in his 
admirable work on the Fertilization of Orchids. 
