that man has been evolved from lower forms of life, that he is the result of an intricate growth through millions of ages, this conclusion will not so much as touch his present high mental and moral position. Be the pathway by which he has come to this position whatever it may, he now breathes the air, looks upon the light, hears the voice of nature in her countless tones, rests upon her fragrant lap, is conscious of a beating pulse; nay, more, he is a being glorified with the perception of beauty, with the sentiment of grandeur, with the radiance of fancy, and with the graces of culture; he is a being cheered by the warmth of friendship, by the sweetness of affection, by the associations of memory, by all that stirs a kindred and loving humanity; nay, higher still, he is a being crowned and sanctified by the sacred convictions of religion. Was man cradled in a little globule of protoplasm? Be it so. These words of Shakespeare remain as relevant and beautiful as ever: What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!" Shall we trace our descent from an ancestry of apes or of infusoria? Be it so. It still remains true that man is at a level of being which is a mountain of transfiguration, and which he has reached by an ascending pathway, bright and grand as the sloping beams of light that bridge the deeps of space from the horizon's edge up to the unbearable glory of the rising sun.

4. Another cognate misconception. A great many excellent people are afraid that, if they admit they have been developed from the lower forms of life, they are in danger of losing their souls and their hope of immortality. But if we are made out of the dust, where did we get our immortal souls? If we have developed out of some lower form of animal life, is there any more mystery about the soul than on the

other theory? I am what I am, on either theory. Mr. Darwin expressly maintains that his system of evolution does not negative the idea of a divinely-communicated undying soul as belonging to man. A subtle thinker, whose name is well known in this city, and whose philosophic genius is of a high order, the Rev. Allanson Picton, acutely observes that none of us can say at what moment the immortal soul is communicated to the child in the womb, and yet we do not doubt that the communication takes place. 14 In like manner, argues Mr. Darwin, referring approvingly to Mr. Picton, the immortal spirit may have been communicated to man by his Creator at some point in his natural evolution, although we are not able to fix that point. As I conceive, the theory of Mr. Darwin does not touch the question of my spiritual nature or my immortality. The truth is, I am what I am, whatever the channel through which the human race had its beginning. And for my destiny, since some power has shown itself capable of making me what I am, is it any greater wonder or mystery to suppose and believe that this same power, whatever it may be, shall also be able to continue the existence it has given? I am lost in the wonder that I live. It is no more wonderful to me that I may continue to live.

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5. This brings me to the last misconception of Darwinism to which I shall refer to-night-the common misconception, namely, that it is godless, atheistic, that it involves the exclusion of God and of design from the universe. In reply to this, I have to say, in the first place, that the contrast is not between evolution and creation, but between creation by evolution and creation by sudden and arbitrary successions.

18 Descent of Man, 2nd edition, 1874, p. 613.

14 New Theories and the Old Faith. By Rev. J. Allanson Picton, M.A., 1870, Appendix, p. 199.

16 Descent of Man, 2nd edition, 1874, p. 613.

When it is clearly apprehended that evolution gives us only the order, and leaves it as before for reason and faith to supply the cause, of the creation, the particular method advocated by the evolutionists is seen to be one that has illustrations of its own to supply concerning the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator. The scheme is so simple in its general principles, and so complex in its operations, as to give us the highest conception of wisdom; the present consummation of the plan in man is so noble, and it lends itself so fully to the hopes that arise out of the present experience of incompleteness, that the general idea of beneficence is at once suggested by it; while the difficulties of evolution arising from the sight of pain and failure, and the constant struggle of nature, are no greater in the theory than in the facts of creation.16

In the second place, I would say that the inclusion or the proscription of the ideas of God and of design is irrelevant to Mr. Darwin's object as an expounder of natural laws. A theory which either finds or denies design in nature is properly a branch of metaphysics, and if any reference to it occurs in a work of natural science, it must be regarded as a foreign addition imported from mental science. To say, therefore, as anti-Darwinians frequently say, that the denial of design is an essential feature of Darwinism, is a misapprehension of the proper distinction between mental and physical

16 Professor Huxley writes:-"In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges upon the service which the Origin of Species has done, in favouring what he terms the causal or mechanical' view of living nature, as opposed to the teleological or vitalistic' view. And no doubt it is quite true that the doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology. But perhaps the most remarkable service to the Philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer." "It is necessary

to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution.”—Critiques and Addresses, p. 305.

science, involving the absurdity of incorporating a metaphysical dogma with a fabric of natural science. To this bit of transubstantiation even Mr. Gladstone committed himself when, in his famous address at the Shaw-street College, he declared that in our time, "upon the ground of what is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation." 17 Darwinism, as a scientific entity, is an exposition of certain laws of nature; whether a true or false exposition must be decided by considerations germane to its own argument. It is not a Theistic or anti-Theistic, much less an Atheistic, system, whatever conclusions may be embraced on these subjects by Mr. Darwin and his followers or adherents. It is quite possible that Mr. Darwin, or any other evolutionist, may consider that he can deduce certain conclusions adverse to theism from his observations of nature. If he chooses to commit the absurdity of affirming that he has proved the non-existence of design, I can only wonder at the portentous metaphysical blunder which he perpetrates, but I am certainly under no obligation to assume that this palpable non-sequitur is a legitimate or essential portion of his

scheme.

It is plain, I admit, that Mr. Darwin, in his eagerness to bring all the phenomena of life under the operation of the laws of natural selection and evolution, has sometimes used language inconsistent with the ideas of theism and of design. If God created the universe and impressed its laws upon it, I, as a theist, am justified in believing that He intended the result, and I have a right to seek for divine ideas and purposes in nature. But Mr. Darwin is impatient with

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17 Address at the Liverpool Collegiate Institution, December 21st, 1872. 18 The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the

M

the feeble moralisings which natural theologians have often indulged in, and, in his reaction against their tendency to pick and choose among natural facts only those which support their own foregone conclusions, he has unnecessarily denied their logic, and used language which seems to imply that nature has nothing to teach us about God at all. On the other hand, it is equally plain that Mr. Darwin is not himself an atheist, since in many passages in his writings he refers to God as the origin and source of all things. In the Origin of Species he uses these words: "I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. A celebrated author and divine has written to me, that he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the void caused by the action of His laws.' "' 19 And in the final sentence of this book Mr. Darwin observes: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator 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." 20 In the Descent of Man, Mr. Darwin remarks of the question, whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the universe," that it "has been answered in the affirmative by the highest intellects that have ever existed." 21 It is difficult for me to believe that a man of such transcendent

teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe."-Professor Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, 1873, p. 307.

19 Origin of Species, 5th edition, 1869, p. 569. 20 Origin of Species, 5th edition, 1869, p. 579. 21 Descent of Man, 2nd edition, 1874, p. 94.