the assent of our best zoologists and botanists. All that they ask
us to believe is, that "species" and "families," and indeed the
whole of organic nature, have gone through, and may still be going
through, some such development from a lowest germ, as we know that
every living individual, from the lowest zoophyte to man himself,
does actually go through. They apply to the whole of the living
world, past, present, and future, the law which is undeniably at
work on each individual of it. They may be wrong, or they may be
right: but what is there in such a conception contrary to any
doctrine - at least of the Church of England? To say that this
cannot be true; that species cannot vary, because God, at the
beginning, created each thing "according to its kind," is really to
beg the question; which is - Does the idea of "kind" include
variability or not? and if so, how much variability? Now, "kind,"
or "species," as we call it, is defined nowhere in the Bible. What
right have we to read our own definition into the word? - and that
against the certain fact, that some "kinds" do vary, and that
widely, - mankind, for instance, and the animals and plants which
he domesticates. Surely that latter fact should be significant, to
those who believe, as I do, that man was created in the likeness of
God. For if man has the power, not only of making plants and
animals vary, but of developing them into forms of higher beauty
and usefulness than their wild ancestors possessed, why should not
the God in whose image he is made possess the same power? If the
old theological rule be true - "There is nothing in man which was
not first in God" (sin, of course, excluded) - then why should not
this imperfect creative faculty in man be the very guarantee that
God possesses it in perfection?

Such at least is the conclusion of one who, studying certain