for the detection of prey which is concealed-all these are features which stand in strict and harmonious relation to the mental powers of Man. But apart from these, they would place him at an immense disadvantage in the struggle for existence. This, therefore, is not the direction in which the blind forces of Natural Selection could ever work.'* If we imagine man to be descended from a monkey, for example, the creature which by Natural Selection made the first move towards the future man, would stand a poor chance with his former companions to maintain his position, and even existence, in the struggle for life. This seems to be fatal to the theory here combated; for the tendency would be for the intruder to be overcome, and the old stock to be thus preserved unimpaired.

Mr. Darwin's Descent of Man, published during the present year, is a work overflowing with facts, put together in a very interesting manner; but with the untempered mortar of free speculation, so as to make his conclusions utterly untrustworthy in themselves, quite apart from their being in direct contradiction to the statements of Divine Revelation. All through the work is to be traced a tone of arbitrary assumption and hypothesis; but so buried in the torrent of facts, that the sanguine reader is carried securely along, though the logical mind is perpetually receiving a shock. Did we know with certainty from some independent source, that all living things have been really derived by inheritance from an original monad, Mr. Darwin's book, which shows such great research and ingenuity, would have produced this *Primeval Man, pp. 65-67.

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result:It would have furnished us with some few scattered and fragmentary illustrations of the truth already known. I say 'few,' undoubtedly numerous as his facts are, in reference to the millions upon millions of lines of genealogical descent which must have been lost, and millions upon millions and millions beyond them of links which are missing in those lines of which present species are supposed to be the last. To reverse this process, however, and try to ascend from existing facts to the original monad, which is Mr. Darwin's aim, differs from the former as much as making a pyramid stand steadily upon its apex differs from balancing it on its base.

Mr. Darwin attempts to build his argument for the descent of man from some inferior ape-like animal upon a threefold basis: (1,) Similarity in the bodily structure of man and other mammals; (2,) Identity of character in the earliest stages of embryonic development; and (3,) The existence of rudimentary organs in man, apparently of no use to him, but of use in other animals. I will take up each of these points.

(1.) Bodily structure. Since the appearance of man in the world it has ever been obvious, that there is a certain resemblance between him and other mammals. They have two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth, four extremities (whether two arms and two legs, or four legs); and the points of resemblance have been greatly multiplied as knowledge has advanced. Comparisons, too, have been made between the habits of man and of the irrational creation, and men are said to be lion-hearted, chicken-hearted, cocky, hen

pecked, ravenous, eagle-eyed, ostrich-like, sheepish, pig-headed, swinish; a human being may be a dove, a lamb, a goose, a duck, a donkey, a snake in the grass, a bear, and a brute.

These are terms and

But now to be gravely

phrases perfectly familiar to us. told that these creatures are our cousins, though it may be of the millionth, billionth, or trillionth degree, is somewhat astounding, and-requires proof. I am happy to say that no proof whatever is given in Mr. Darwin's book. His theory is simply based upon pure speculation, flowing from certain points of resemblance; and illustrates very forcibly the loose and presumptuous nature of much of the philosophizing of the present day. It appears to me to be a disgrace to the spirit of the age, that such speculations, in which the very point aimed at is assumed, should be seriously accepted as representing scientific truth. Mr. Darwin is obliged to avow, 'connecting links have not hitherto been discovered' (vol. I. p. 185); we have no record of the lines of descent, these lines can be discovered' -should he not have said guessed at?-only by observing the degrees of resemblance between the beings which are to be classed' (p. 188)-all very good if it was known at starting that these lines exist; but altogether gratuitous and baseless in the absence of that à priori knowledge. He acknowledges that man's 'body is constructed on the same homologous plan as that of other mammals' (p. 185). Then why not be satisfied with this view? That it pleased the Almighty to make His creatures after a common plan, some parts being more developed in one class than in another, meets all the requirements; and, moreover, is not

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contradictory to the Scripture record. All that Mr. Darwin asserts, even of there being 'no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties' (p. 35)! would prove nothing for community of origin, were his assertion true; but could only point out a certain similarity of character in those particulars.

Mr. Darwin replies, however, that 'it is no scientific explanation to assert that they [the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat] have all been formed on the same ideal plan' (pp. 31, 32). But perhaps here a 'scientific explanation' is out of place. Science is knowledge derived from an examination of the laws which regulate the physical world when once things are come into existence. It has nothing to say to the reason of the laws with which things were at first endowed. If it pleased God to create animals according to a plan, we have to accept this; and it is out of place to seek for a 'scientific explanation' of what it pleased the Almighty to do. Precisely the same objection might be urged to Mr. Darwin's own conception of the beginning of things as unscientific, viz. of life with its several powers having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.'* We must have a beginning. But Science is incapable of showing what it was; it can only trace the phenomena of things as they are and were, after coming into existence. It is only He who made the world that can tell us of the beginning.

His theory has taken such hold upon him, that * Origin of Species, 1869, p. 579.

he perseveres as if persuaded that it is absolutely true. 'We are quite ignorant,' he writes, 'at how rapid a rate organisms, whether high or low in the scale, may under favourable circumstances be modified' (p. 200) -in fact, he should have added, we know not whether they can be permanently modified at all. 'We know,

however,' he goes on to say, that some have retained the same form during an enormous lapse of time'— and he should have said, that we have no evidence whatever that at the beginning of that enormous period any change occurred. The great break,' he continues, ' in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight'-to whom?-'to those who, convinced by general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution' (p. 200)—that is, who take for granted the thing to be proved! With respect,' he 'to the absence of fossil remains serving to connect man with his ape-like progenitors no one will lay much stress on this fact, who will read Sir Charles Lyell's discussion in which he shows, that in all the vertebrate classes the discovery of fossil remains has been an extremely slow and fortuitous process' (p. 201) -and, therefore, I would reply, if we knew that the theory is true, we should be sanguine that some day proof would be found in fossils; but as the whole is a gratuitous hypothesis, the entire absence of fossil proof is a stern rebuke to the speculators. 'The belief,' he goes on to say, 'that animals so distinct

says,