selection is too simple a cause to produce such fantastic variety: that,
again, is a question to be settled exclusively by physical students. All
we have to say on the matter is--That we always knew that God works by
very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that the whole universe, as far
as we could discern it, was one concatenation of the most simple means;
that it was wonderful, yea, miraculous, in our eyes, that a child should
resemble its parents, that the raindrops should make the grass grow, that
the grass should become flesh, and the flesh sustenance for the thinking
brain of man. Ought God to seem less or more august in our eyes, when we
are told that His means are even more simple than we supposed? We held
him to be Almighty and All-wise. Are we to reverence Him less or more,
if we hear that His might is greater, His wisdom deeper, than we ever
dreamed? We believed that His care was over all His works; that His
Providence watched perpetually over the whole universe. We were
taught--some of us at least--by Holy Scripture, to believe that the whole
history of the universe was made up of special Providences. If, then,
that should be true which Mr Darwin eloquently writes--"It may be
metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and hourly
scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest;
rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up that which is good,
silently and incessantly working whenever and wherever opportunity offers
at the improvement of every organic being,"--if that, I say, were proven
to be true: ought God's care and God's providence to seem less or more
magnificent in our eyes? Of old it was said by Him without whom nothing
is made, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." Shall we quarrel with
Science, if she should show how those words are true? What, in one word,
should we have to say but this?--We knew of old that God was so wise that
He could make all things: but, behold, He is so much wiser than even
that, that He can make all things make themselves.