We have now to consider the question of development, in reference
to the Mosaic Record of the last two days, and to the known facts
to which that record has relation. The account of the third day's
work has also a bearing on the subject, but as the same
considerations will to a great extent apply to animals and to
plants, it will not be necessary to make any special reference to
it.
The facts in favour of the theory of development are these:--1.
The different classes of plants and animals are not separated by
broad lines of demarcation, but shade insensibly into each other.
2. The characteristics of the same species are not constant; the
lion, for instance, the horse, the elephant, and the hyena of the
present day differ in many minor points from the corresponding
animals of the Tertiary period, so that unless there was a
possibility of spontaneous change, we must assume successive
creations of animals, with only trivial differences. 3. In all
animals there are minute individual differences, and if under any
circumstances these differences had a tendency to accumulate, they
might in the course of time result in great structural
modifications. 4. Man has been able to take advantage of this fact
and by careful selection to mould the breeds of domestic animals
to a certain extent in accordance with his own wishes.
The theory of development assumes that for the care of man other
forces might be substituted, which in a long course of ages might
result in changes of far greater extent than those produced by
human agency. The forces assigned are natural selection and sexual
selection. The difficulties in the way of this hypothesis have
been already considered, and only require to be briefly re-stated.
1. As regards modifications of organs already existing, the two
alleged causes are insufficient to account for the results which
we witness, since in each individual case the concurrence of many
contingent causes, continued through a long series of ages, is
required to produce the result. But the probabilities against
such, a concurrence in any one case are enormous, and against
their concurrence in a large number of cases the chances are
practically infinite.
2. That such causes do not at all account for cases in which an
entirely new organ is developed, such as mammary glands--or for
the case of man, in which intellectual superiority is accompanied
by a loss of physical power.
3. That from the nature of the case it is impossible for us to
ascertain that natural or sexual selection has ever acted to
produce a single modification, however small, and that the results
of man's superintendence have not as yet passed beyond certain
narrow limits, so that there is no justification for the
assumption that such modifications are capable of being carried to
an unlimited extent.
We see that in the only case in which change is known to have been
brought about, it has been the result of choice and design. If
then there is a probability that choice and design may have been
exercised by a power higher than man, there is no longer any
reason to doubt but that results much greater than any to which
man can attain may have been brought about by the same means. And
in fact the advocates of the theory of development do virtually
admit the existence and action of such a power, whenever they have
recourse to assumed "laws" to account for phenomena for which
their naked theory can give no reason. For, as has been shown,
law, if it is to be assigned as an efficient cause, and not merely
as the statement of observed facts, can only be regarded as the
expressed and enforced will of a higher power. And there was no
reason why those minute variations themselves, which are the basis
of Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, should be considered casual. Instead
then of natural selection, or sexual selection, let us suppose
that the selection took place under the superintending care of the
Creator, and was directed towards the carrying out of His designs,
and then we shall have no reason to doubt but that all results
which consisted only in the modification of existing organs may
have been obtained by the operation of those laws which we term
natural, because they express modes of operation with which we are
so familiar that we look upon them as automatic.
But there are other results for which no natural laws with which
we are acquainted will thus account. Just as no mechanical laws
within our knowledge will account for the rotation of the earth,
so no physiological laws yet discovered will account for the
changes when totally new orders of being came on the stage--when
the course of life took, as it were, a new point of departure. But
it is precisely at these points that the Mosaic Record points to a
special interference on the part of the Creator. How that
interference took place we are not informed. Very possibly it may
have been the result of other laws which lie wholly out of the
reach of our powers of observation. But whatever may have been its
character, it does not in any way imply change or defect in the
original plan, unless we know, (what we do not know, and cannot
ascertain) that such interference formed no part of the original
design. Everything bears the marks of progressive development, and
there is nothing improbable, but rather the reverse, in the
supposition that such a plan should include special steps of
advance to be made when the preparation for them was completed.
The Mosaic Record tells us nothing about the method by which God
created the different varieties of plants and animals. All that we
read there is just as applicable to a process of evolution, as to
any other method which we may be able to imagine. But it is
remarkable that what Moses does say is just what is required to
make Mr. Darwin's theory possible. So far then as the lower orders
of creation are concerned, the hypothesis of development, modified
by the admission of uniform superintendence and occasional special
interferences on the part of the Creator, may be accepted as being
the most satisfactory explanation that can be given, in the
present state of physiological science, of the Scriptural
Narrative.
But we have yet to consider this hypothesis as applied to man in
Mr. Darwin's latest work. We naturally recoil from the thought
that we have sprung from some lower race of animals--that we are
only the descendants of some race of anthropoid apes. So long as
it is asserted that we are no more than this, we may well be
reluctant to admit the suggestion. But if it be admitted that to a
physical nature formed like the bodies of the lower animals, a
special spiritual gift may have been superadded, the difficulty
vanishes. All Mr. Darwin's arguments with reference to physical
resemblances may then be admitted, and we may allow that he has
given a probable explanation of the method by which "the Lord God
formed the Adam, dust from the ground" while we maintain that the
intellectual and moral faculties of man are derived from a source
which lies beyond the investigations of science.
The conclusions to be drawn from this investigation may be briefly
summed up as follows:--
1. There is every reason to conclude that the process of Creation
was carried on, in great part, under the operation of the system
of natural laws which we still see acting in the world around us:
such laws being so far as we are concerned only an expression of
an observed uniformity in the action of that Being by whom the
Universe was created and is upheld.
2. That inasmuch as the development of a new state of things
differs from the maintenance of a condition already existing, the
working of these laws was necessarily from time to time
supplemented by special interferences of the Creator, but that
such interferences formed parts of the original design, and are
not indications of anything in the shape of change or failure.
3. That many of the events recorded in the Mosaic Record are of
the nature of such special interferences, while others point to
remarkable developments of particular forms of organic life.
4. That these interferences thus recorded occur at the exact
points at which natural laws, so far as science has yet been able
to ascertain them, are inadequate to produce the phenomena which
then took place, and that the developments are proved by geology
to have taken place at the points indicated.
5. That the six days into which the work is divided by Moses do
correspond to the probable order of development--that in three of
them, the third, fifth, and sixth, this correspondence is marked
by facts ascertained by Geology--that the fourth, in which no
terrestrial phenomenon is recorded, corresponds to a very long
period in the Geological record in which no indications of any new
development are found--while the first and second indicate a state
of things which the nebular hypothesis renders highly probable,
but of which no positive information is within the reach of
science.
Admitting then that there is something in the way in which the
days are spoken of which we are at present unable to understand,
we may yet confidently assert that such a record could not have
been the product of man's thought at the period at which it was
written. It is utterly impossible that it should have been the
result of a series of fortunate conjectures without any foundation
to rest upon, and scientific foundation there was none, for there
is every reason to believe that the sciences which might perchance
now supply some foundation are entirely the growth of the last
three centuries. There is then only one conclusion that we can
draw, that it is a revelation from the Creator Himself, and that
if there is anything in it which seems inexplicable or erroneous,
that appearance arises from our own ignorance of facts, and not
from any error on the part of the Author.