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connected. The theory of ancestral derivation and the survival 
of the fittest is one which from its nature can hardly, if at all, 
be made a subject of experimental investigation, or even of 
observation in the records of the past. So far as it may be 
accepted, it must rest mainly on the estimate which may be 
formed of its own inherent probability ; though, doubtless, an 
underlying feeling that the phenomenon must in some way be 
explicable by natural causes has contributed not a little towards 
its propagation. 
The theory, I need hardly say, is highly ingenious ; but any 
variation which we can actually observe goes but an infini- 
tesimal way towards the bridging over of the interval which 
separates extreme forms, such, for example, as an elephant 
and a mollusc. Indeed, Darwin himself, as I am informed, 
was of opinion at first, that we required at least four or five 
distinct centres to start with. The theory has been accepted 
by many eminent biologists with a readiness that is puzzling 
to an outsider, especially one accustomed to the severe demands 
for evidence that are required in the physical sciences. I think 
a large number of scientific men would admit that it is very 
far indeed from being admissible to the rank of a well- 
established theory, however ingenious as a hypothesis ; true 
possibly as accounting for permanent or sub-permanent 
differences between allied forms, but not conceivably bridging 
over the great gulf which separates remote forms of life. 
As to the origin of life itself, it was not intended on this 
theory to account for it, and the experimental researches of 
our foremost scientific men are adverse to the supposition of 
its production by spontaneous generation. Granting the origin 
of life by a creative act, we are not very closely concerned, 
theologically speaking, with the mode of creation. The Scrip- 
tural account of the creation seems, indeed, to imply succes- 
sive creative acts ; and the supposition that there were such 
relieves us of certain scientific difficulties, by placing those 
difficulties outside the domain of science, and falls in with 
what we are taught to expect in the future. But there is one 
point in which I think theology is more deeply involved, and 
respecting which it becomes a serious question whether there 
is any real scientific evidence in opposition to what seems at 
least to be the teaching of revelation ; I allude to the creation 
of man. In the account of the creation it is distinctly stated 
that man was separately created, “ in the image of God,” 
whatever that may imply. Nor is this a point in which by a 
wide licence of interpretation we might say the language was 
merely figurative ; that we can afford to understand it so, for 
that Scripture was not given to teach us science. Our whole 
