ing up theories of evolution in pure wantonness or more superfluity of naughtiness; that it would have been quite possible, as well as more proper, to leave all such matters alone. Quicta non movere is doubtless a wise rule upon such subjects, so long as it is fairly applicable. But the time for its application in respect to questions of the origin and relations of oxist ing species has gone by. To ignore them is to imitate the foolish bird that seeks security by hiding its head in the sand. Moreover, the naturalists did not force these questions upon the world; but the world they study forced them upon the naturalists. How these questions of derivation came naturally and inevitably to be revived, how the cumulative probability that the existing are derived from preëxisting forms impressed itself upon the minds of many naturalists and thinkers, Mr. Henslow has briefly explained in the introduction and illustrated in the succeeding chapters of the first part of his book. Science, he declares, has been compelled to take up the hypothesis of the evolution of living things as better explaining all the phenomena. In his opinion, it has become "infinitely more probable that all living and extinct beings have been developed or evolved by natural laws of generation from preëxisting forms, than that they, with all their innumerable races and varieties, should owe their existences severally to Creative fiats." This doctrine, which even Dr. Hodge allows may possibly be held in a theistic sense, and which, as we suppose, is so held or viewed by a great proportion of the naturalists of our day, Mr. Henslow maintains is fully compatible with dogmatic as well as natural theology;

that it explains moral anomalies, and accounts for the mixture of good and evil in the world, as well as for the merely relativo perfection of things; and, finally, that "the whole scheme which God has framed for man's existence, from the first that was created to all eternity, collapses if the great law of evolution bo suppressed." The second part of his book is occupied with a development of this line of argument. By this doctrine of evolution ho does not mean the Darwinian hypothesis, although he accepts and includes this, looking upon natural selection as playing an important though not an unlimited part. He would bo an evolutionist with Mivart and Owen and Argyll, even if he had not the vera causa which Darwin contributed to help him on. And, on rising to man, ho takes ground with Wallace, saying:

"I would wish to state distinctly that I do not at present see any evidence for believing in a gradual development of man from the lower animals by ordinary natural laws; that is, without some special interference, or, if it be preferred, somo exceptional conditions which have thereby separated him from all other creatures, and placed him decidedly in advance of them all. On the other hand, it would be absurd to regard him as totally sovered from them. It is the grent degree of differenco I would insist upon, bodily, mental, and spiritual, which precludes the idea of his having been evolved by exactly the samo processes, and with the same limitations, as, for example, the horse from the palæotherium."

In illustrating this view, ho reproduces Wallace's well-known points, and adds one or two of his own. We need not follow up his lines of argument. Tho essay, indeed, adds nothing material to the discussion

of ovolution, although it states one side of the case modorately well, as far as it goes.

Dr. Hodge approaches the subject from the sido of systematic theology, and considers it mainly in its bearing upon the origin and original state of man. Under each head ho first lays down "the Scriptural doctrine," and then discusses "anti-Scriptural theories," which latter, under the first head, are the hea then doctrine of spontaneous generation, the modern doctrine of spontaneous generation, theories of development, specially that of Darwin, the atheistic charneter of the theory, etc. Although he admits "that there is a theistic and an atheistic form of the nebular hypothesis as to the origin of the universe, so there may be a theistic interpretation of the Darwinian theory," yet he contends that "the system is thoroughly atheistic," notwithstanding that the author "expressly acknowledges the existence of God." Curiously enough, the atheistic form of evolutionary hypotheses, or what he takes for such, is the only one which Dr. Hodge cares to examine. Even the "Reign of Law" theory, Owen's "purposive route of development and chango. by virtue of inherent tendencies thereto," as well as other expositions of the general doctrine on a theistic basis, aro barely mentioned without a word of comment, except, perhaps, a general "protest against the arraying of probabilities against the teachings of Scripture.

Now, all former experience shows that it is neither safe nor wise to pronounce a whole system "thoroughly atheistic" which it is conceded may be held theis tically, and which is likely to be largely held, if not

to prevail, on scientific grounds. It may be well to remember that," of the two great minds of the sev enteenth century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion; also that the nebular hypothesis-a natural consoquence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical discovery-has been denounced as atheistical even down. to our day." It has now outlived anathema.

It is undeniable that Mr. Darwin lays himself open to this kind of attack. The propounder of natural selection might be expected to make the most of the principle, and to overwork the law of parsimony in its behalf. And a system in which exquisito adaptation of means to ends, complicated interdependences, and orderly sequences, appear as results instead of being introduced as factors, and in which special design is ignored in the particulars, must needs be obnoxious, unless guarded as we suppose Mr. Darwin might havo guarded his ground if he had chosen to do so. Our own opinion, after long consideration, is, that Mr. Darwin has no atheistical intent; and that, as respects the test question of design in Nature, his view may be made clear to the theological mind by likening it to that of the "believer in general but not in particu lar Providence." There is no need to cull passages in support of this interpretation from his various works while the author-the most candid of men-retains through all the editions of the "Origin of Species"

the two mottoes from Whewell and Bishop Butlor.'

The gist of the matter lies in the answer that should be rendered to the questions-1. Do order and useful-working collocation, pervading a system throughout all its parts, prove design? and, 2. Is such evidence negatived or invalidated by the probability that these particular collocations belong to lincal series of such in time, and diversified in the course of Nature -grown up, so to say, step by step? We do not use the terms "adaptation," "arrangement of means to ends," and the like, because they beg the question in stating it.

Finally, ought not theologians to consider whether they have not already, in principle, conceded to the geologists and physicists all that they are asked to concede to the evolutionists; whether, indeed, the main natural theological difficulties which attend the doctrine of evolution-serious as they may be-are not virtually contained in the admission that there is a system of Nature with fixed laws. This, at least, we may say, that, under a system in which so much is done by the establishment of general laws," it is

But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this-wo can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws."—Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise,

"The only distinct meaning of the word 'natural' is stated, fized, or settled; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so—l. c., to effect it continually or at stated Umes—as what is supernatural or miraculous docs to effect it for once." -Buller's Analogy.