the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we are capable of conceiving-namely, the production of the higher animals-directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." Here then, according to his own showing, inheritance, external conditions, use and disuse, struggle for life, and natural selection, are all fulfilling their parts as co-factors in one great law, and it is strange that in the face of this admission he should labour to ascribe to one cause what would have been much more philosophically and satisfactorily ascribed to the many. He admits, too, the "original breathing of life into a few forms or into one form," and yet unaccountably appeals throughout his argument to chance and nature for all subsequent development, as if these blind deities were aught without the direction of the same original life-breathing Impulse! If science is constrained to admit a Divine origination of life, why should she be ashamed to confess to an equally Divine sustaining of its subsequent manifestations? If we are compelled to invoke a creative act for a beginning we cannot comprehend, why should we shrink from appealing to the same cause for subsequent diversities we cannot explain? But for this weakness or vanity, the erroneous in these so-called "theories of life" had met with a kindlier tolerance, and the true with a readier acceptance.

If, as these theorists assert, the question be merely this: Has or has not the Creator endowed inorganic matter with the power of assuming, under the influence of certain forces, an organic form? and has or has not the Creator further ordained that under certain external phases of nature these

forms shall be transmuted into other and altered forms of organisation? then the subject assumes a purely physical aspect, and they are bound, like the mathematician and chemist, to prove their case by the ordinary rules of physical induction. Given the scales, fins, and gills of a fish-what the conditions and what the amount of time necessary to transmute them into the scutes, paddles, and lungs of a marine reptile? Given the scutes, membranous fore-arms, and stomach of a flying reptile-what the phases of change and what the amount of time required for their transformation into the feathers, wings, and gizzard of a bird? Or, given the four hands with partially opposable thumbs, the low facial angle, and the jabbering half-reasoning instinct of a monkey-what the force of conditions, and what the term of time for their development into the two-handed dexterity, the erect aspect, and the eloquent ratiocinations of a philosopher of the nineteenth century? If the question be one of purely physical import, such are the formulæ the developists are called upon to frame, and such are the problems that await their solution. This task they have hitherto failed to accomplish; and as yet the place of sterling proof is usurped by plausible assumption. The evolution of life, however, in all its multifarious forms and aspects—its cosmical functions and relationships-its orderly appearings and disappearings at certain geological periods — its bearings on the intellectual and moral position of Man —all this and much more that instinctively interweaves itself with our innermost thoughts of time and destiny, must surely rest on a broader and deeper foundation. It is-if anything we shall ever comprehend the gradual unfolding of a predestined plan, the expression of a Divine thought, which it is our high privilege as well as duty to interpret; but depend on it, we altogether err in our method of interpretation if we attempt to associate life

with physical agency in any other way than the mere medium through which creative power has chosen to manifest itself to our observation. In vain does Mr Darwin taunt that this is a mere "dignified way" of putting the question better surely to rest satisfied with a dignified belief we are unable to prove, than seek unsatisfactory shelter under a cold undignified materialistic assumption! For our own part, believing as we do that Life in all its relations-its incomings and outgoings in time-its modifications in form, and its distribution over space-are under the incessant operation of fixed and determinable laws, we are as free to entertain the question of vitality as we are to entertain the formation of a stratum of sandstone or the aggregation of a mineral crystal; but this we cannot do unless at every stage of our reasoning we associate a superintending with a creative intellect. And we have yet to learn wherein the variation of a natural law, or the variation of a well-known form of life-even to the tenthousandth degree-is less an act of creation than the original establishment of that law, or the original calling of that life-form into existence.

[Advent of Man.]

The study of life, palæontologically regarded, necessarily involves the creation and first appearance of Man; and on this subject much discussion has taken place, unprofitable alike to science and the cause of Christian theology. So far as geological evidence goes, we have no traces of man or of his works till we arrive at the Superficial Accumulations the coral-conglomerates, the bone-breccias, the cavedeposits, and the peat-mosses of the current period. It is true, that so far as the earlier formations are concerned, the

evidence is purely negative; but taking into account all that palæontology has revealed touching the other families of animated nature, the fair presumption is, that man was not called into being till the commencement of the current geological era, and about the time when, in the northern hemisphere, the sea and land received their present configuration, and were peopled by those genera and species. which (with a few local removals and still fewer extinctions) yet adorn their forests and inhabit their lands and waters.

It has been often argued, that up till this time the world was altogether unfit for the habitation and support of Man -its physical conditions being so unstable, and its flora and fauna being unsuited for his sustenance. Now, while we at once admit a physical as well as a moral fitness in all things created, and that no creature was brought on the stage of being till external conditions were suited alike for the maintenance and genial development of its existence, we must guard against any hasty generalisation that is not absolutely warranted by the facts of geology, and which, in its ultimate bearings, is quite as materialistic and physical as any other that has been advanced to account for the phenomena of vital development. The idea of a generally unstable and convulsed world during the earlier geological epochs is altogether disproved by the facts we have over and over again repeated, even if it were not abhorrent to all philosophical notions of a law-regulated cosmos; and the alleged absence of plants and animals necessary for man's sustenance scarcely rests on a surer foundation. It is true, and a beautiful corroboration of the fitness of physical conditions, that all the flowers, and fruits, and cereals, all the domesticated animals-the horse, ox, and sheep-on which man in temperate regions so much relies for the comforts and necessaries of existence, are unknown till the latest geological epochs - the means of support

occurring simultaneously with the object to be supported. But while this holds true, and is fitly applicable to a beefcooking, bread-eating phase of human progress, it is not strictly applicable to man in all his conditions; and it is quite conceivable (geologically speaking) that inferior races of men may have existed in much earlier epochs. The flora and fauna of the oolite are extremely similar to those of Australia, where we know that an early aboriginal race have for ages hunted in the bush and camped on its grassy karoos. The inhabitants of the South Sea Islands live exclusively on palm-fruits, on farinaceous roots, and the fish of the surrounding ocean: now, palm-fruits and farinaceous roots abound in the lower tertiary and in the oolite, and we see nothing in the fishes of those periods that would render them inedible or unnutritious. The Esquimaux, to whom the very names of tree and wheat are unknown, and who exist on fish, seal-oil, and whale-blubber, among the extreme rigours of the north, attain even there a certain amount of civilisation; and such a lowly race would have found precisely similar conditions in Middle Europe during the glacial era, when icebergs floated in our seas, and whales and seals were stranded in our estuaries.

We mention these things not from a conviction that man existed during those early epochs, but simply as an argument to show that his first appearance, at whatever period, must have been in accordance with the general plan of vital development, and not in obedience to any phase of external conditions, and that we may fairly expect, in the progress of geological discovery, a much higher antiquity to be proved to the human race than is now usually assigned it. And even now, proofs are not wanting in the lakedeposits, the bone-caves, and peat-mosses of Southern Europe, to connect man with the latest pliocene fauna, and to render it possible that he contested the same cavern