hairs of our head were all numbered; that the whole history of the
universe was made up, in fact, of an infinite network of special
providences. If, then, that should be true which a great
naturalist 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 all that is good; silently and insensibly
working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the
improvement of each organic being, in relation to its organic and
inorganic conditions of life,' - if this, I say, were proved 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 physical science, if she gives us evidence that
those words are true?"

And - understand it well - the grand passage I have just quoted
need not be accused of substituting "natural selection for God."
In any case natural selection would be only the means or law by
which God works, as He does by other natural laws. We do not
substitute gravitation for God, when we say that the planets are
sustained in their orbits by the law of gravitation. The theory
about natural selection may be untrue, or imperfect, as may the
modern theories of the "evolution and progress" of organic forms:
let the man of science decide that. But if true, the theories seem
to me perfectly to agree with, and may be perfectly explained by,
the simple old belief which the Bible sets before us, of a LIVING
GOD: not a mere past will, such as the Koran sets forth, creating
once and for all, and then leaving the universe, to use Goethe's
simile, "to spin round his finger;" nor again, an "all-pervading