at once? But if it be so - which I cannot allow - what would the
theologian have to say, save that God's works are even more
wonderful than he always believed them to be? As for the theory
being impossible - that is to be decided by men of science, on
strict experimental grounds. As for us theologians, who are we,
that we should limit, … priori, the power of God? 'Is anything too
hard for the Lord?' asked the prophet of old; and we have a right
to ask it as long as the world shall last. If it be said that
'natural selection,' or, as Mr. Herbert Spencer better defines it,
the 'survival of the fittest,' is too simple a cause to produce
such fantastic variety - that, again, is a question to be settled
exclusively by men of science, on their own grounds. We,
meanwhile, always knew that God works by very simple, or seemingly
simple, means; that the universe, as far as we could discern it,
was one organization of the most simple means. It was wonderful -
or should have been - in our eyes, that a shower of rain should
make the grass grow, and that the grass should become flesh, and
the flesh food for the thinking brain of man. It was - or ought to
have been - more wonderful yet to us that a child should resemble
its parents, or even a butterfly resemble, if not always, still
usually, its parents likewise. Ought God to appear less or more
august in our eyes if we discover that the means are even simpler
than we supposed? We held Him to be Almighty and All-wise. Are we
to reverence Him less or more if we find Him to be so much
mightier, so much wiser, than we dreamed, that He can not only make
all things, but - the very perfection of creative power - MAKE ALL
THINGS MAKE THEMSELVES? We believed that His care was over all His
works; that His providence worked perpetually over the universe.
We were taught - some of us at least - by Holy Scripture, that
without Him not a sparrow fell to the ground, and that the very