290 
ANTHROPOLOGY 
“ Evolution of Man,” as set forth by the author of the 
“Origin of Species,” although it may have points of question 
at the present moment trenchant thereon, there is nothing 
which can eventually make it antagonistic to sound Christian 
theology. The evolution theory has during these later times 
been making a steady progress and gaining ground. Within 
the next few years, there is not the slightest doubt, the 
facts touching on this august question will be greatly 
augmented. The points at issue will be reconciled, and 
those now deemed untenable will not improbably find further 
evidence to support them, the results of which will be to 
firmly fix this theory, as I have previously noted, on a 
basis at once compatible with scientific belief and sound 
Christian theology. 
Amongst the principles of evolution we find one enunci¬ 
ating that every individual has to undergo a severe struggle 
for existence, owing to the tendency to a geometrical rate of 
increase of all kinds of animals and plants, the consequence of 
which is that every variation of a kind tending to save the life 
of the individual possessing it, or enabling it more surely 
to propagate its kind, will eventually be preserved, and will 
transmit its peculiarity to the offspring; which peculiarity 
will, in its transmission, become more intensified until it 
arrives at the maximum degree of utility. (See Mivart’s 
“ Genesis of Species,” pp. 5-fi.) 
In this proposition we have a line to follow in our 
search for the “ Origin of man,” and there does not 
appear any great difficulty in arriving at the conclusion of 
the evolving of man from an inferior creature. The writer 
of the “ Origin of Species” speaks of “ life with its several 
powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a 
few forms or ova,”* and it must be conceded that Creation is 
not what many who are ignorant of the effect of natural 
laws regard it, a series of cataclysms and miraculous inter¬ 
ferences with the laws of Nature, during which some new 
form of life is belched into existence, but the very institution 
and working of those laws; for law and regularity, not 
arbitrary intervention, was the true patristic ideal of Nature. 
Hence, as Creation is the progress and fulfilment of the 
laws of Nature in the course laid down by the Creator, and 
the law of evolution leads to the existence of the fittest, 
it may be assumed that the Creator having the great object 
—the creation of man—in view from the beginning, ordains 
that these laws of Nature, so set in motion by His omnipotent 
* “ Origin of Species,” Fifth Edition, 1869, p. 579. 
