I entreat you to weigh these words, which have not been written in haste; and I entreat you also, if you wish to see how little the new theory, that species may have been gradually created by variation, natural selection, and so forth, interferes with the old theory of design, contrivance, and adaptation, nay, with the fullest admission of benevolent final causes—­I entreat you, I say, to study Darwin’s “Fertilization of Orchids”—­a book which, whether his main theory be true or not, will still remain a most valuable addition to natural Theology.

For suppose that all the species of Orchids, and not only they, but their congeners—­the Gingers, the Arrowroots, the Bananas—­are all the descendants of one original form, which was most probably nearly allied to the Snowdrop and the Iris.  What then?  Would that be one whit more wonderful, more unworthy of the wisdom and power of God, than if they were, as most believe, created each and all at once, with their minute and often imaginary shades of difference?  What would the natural Theologian have to say, were the first theory true, save that God’s works are even more wonderful that he always believed them to be?  As for the theory being impossible:  we must leave the discussion of that to physical students.  It is not for us clergymen to limit 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 time shall last.  If it be said that natural 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