218 
statement which he has made, <c of some of the more remark- 
able phenomena of organic production/’ it has been his object 
u mainly to show that they are all more or less closely related 
together by a chain of similarity of a very marked and un- 
mistakable character; that, in their simplest forms, they are 
indeed, in so far as our powers of observation enable us to 
know them, identical ; that, in the lower grades of auimal and 
vegetable life, they are so similar, as to pass by insensible 
gradations into each other; and that, in the higher forms, 
while they diverge most widely in some of their aspects in the 
bodies belonging to the two great kingdoms of organic nature, 
and in the larger groups distinguishable within each of them, 
yet it is still possible, from the fundamental similarity of the 
phenomena, to trace in the transitional forms of all their 
varieties, one great general plan of organization.” 
His address aims at the advocacy of the doctrines of evolu- 
tion, as alone suited to explain “ the continuous series of 
gradations, as well as the consistent and general plan of organi- 
zation.” This, the President considers, “ must have been the 
result of a gradual process of development, or of derivation 
one from another.” But if, as I have shown before, Creation 
is looked upon as the result of the plan of one Almighty mind, 
the Logos or Word of God, we are at once furnished with the 
explanation of the general harmony, in the same sense as in 
criticism we can discern a unity of design and a recurrence 
of type in the woi’ks of any great poet, painter, or architect. 
We learn almost certainly to distinguish any peculiar style, 
not because one line is the father of another, but because the 
same foiunative mind models the whole. The general relations 
of the groups of metals and the arrangement of the elements 
in nature, are as remarkable instances of the a l ox t^f X ro ^ ,<K,, / 
‘ppovrjcng of the Logos, as the relations of animated beings ; 
and, in this case, there can be no possible question of 
“ evolution ” or “ derivation one from another.” 
The whole doctrine expounded in the address to which I 
have alluded is based upon the following statement : — “The 
germ constituting the basis of a new formation, whether it have 
the form of spore, seed, or ovum, is of the simplest kind of 
organization ; and the process by which a new plant or animal 
is produced is necessarily one of gradual change and of 
advance from a simpler to a more complex form and structure; 
it is one of evolution, or, as I would rather name it, develop- 
ment.” 
This appears to me to be a misconception of the whole 
