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sistent with the great phenomena of nature. The existence of thousands and 
thousands of what this theory is pleased to denominate imperfect animals 
side by side, undestroyed in the great hypothetical struggle for existence, is an 
inconsistency which has not been touched upon, and for which not the slight- 
est explanation has been accorded. The lowest forms of life those contain- 
ing the simplest forms of organs that the records of the rocks have shown to 
have existed from the remotest periods of the earth’s history— are those 
found still in existence, as simple, as unimproved by the law of natural 
selection, as ever they were. The very creatures that ought from their weak- 
ness to have been “ improved off the face of the earth” by Mr. Darwin’s stern 
law, still hold their own ; while the more gigantic and powerful— the huge 
saurian, the colossal mammoth, the armour-plated armadillo of vast dimen- 
sions— these and their like have perished, while their weaker representatives 
remain as an evidence that some other and better law than that of Darwin s 
must be sought for to explain the phenomena of the animate world. I can find 
no harmony whatever in this theory ; to me it is full of jarring discords. Study 
the animate structures of the world as they are displayed to man s intelligence, 
either in those of the present existing plants or animals, or as manifested in 
the records of the rocks showing their history in the past, and you will find 
a hymn of the profoundest harmony running through the whole. The men 
who have best interpreted the laws of animate nature have been those who 
had the keenest sense of this harmony,— the perception of the harmony 
arising from the perfect wisdom, the perfect evidence of design, running 
through the whole of the Creator’s handiwork. Newton and Kepler could 
catch the sound of the music of the spheres ; Galen admitted the hymn of 
nature. The greatest discoveries in science have been made by men whose 
souls were filled with the perception of the universal harmony pervading 
creation. For what is harmony ? Does it not involve the perfection of 
symmetry ? What is musical harmony ? You say two sounds are har- 
monious when they make a perfect concord in your ears. Two sounds may 
produce what we call a discord, two others a concord ; the one most un- 
pleasant and the other most agreeable to our sense of sound. What con- 
stitutes the difference between them ? The physical philosopher tells us that 
the concord is produced by two vibrations having a certain mathematical 
coincidence in certain simple proportions between their waves. Moreover, 
he can make the musical harmonious note register itself on a vibrating plate 
or string, and manifest itself to the eye by various contrivances. But all 
these show a geometrical form of perfect symmetry, causing us to recognize 
the fact, that the perception of harmony by the ear is caused by its power of 
interpreting the symmetry of the vibrations producing the harmonious 
sound. Hence the effect produced on the eye by the painter’s skilful 
arrangement of colour, and of light and shade is called harmony . But 
I hold the existence of higher harmonies than those of ear and eye. I 
believe man to be created with the power, if he will cultivate and use 
it, of perceiving the subtle harmony, subtle and inexpressibly beautiful, 
which runs through the whole of creation. What is this beautiful subtle 
