that the Mosaic Record points to a special interference on the part of the Creator.  How that interference took place we are not informed.  Very possibly it may have been the result of other laws which lie wholly out of the reach of our powers of observation.  But whatever may have been its character, it does not in any way imply change or defect in the original plan, unless we know, (what we do not know, and cannot ascertain) that such interference formed no part of the original design.  Everything bears the marks of progressive development, and there is nothing improbable, but rather the reverse, in the supposition that such a plan should include special steps of advance to be made when the preparation for them was completed.

The Mosaic Record tells us nothing about the method by which God created the different varieties of plants and animals.  All that we read there is just as applicable to a process of evolution, as to any other method which we may be able to imagine.  But it is remarkable that what Moses does say is just what is required to make Mr. Darwin’s theory possible.  So far then as the lower orders of creation are concerned, the hypothesis of development, modified by the admission of uniform superintendence and occasional special interferences on the part of the Creator, may be accepted as being the most satisfactory explanation that can be given, in the present state of physiological science, of the Scriptural Narrative.

But we have yet to consider this hypothesis as applied to man in Mr. Darwin’s latest work.  We naturally recoil from the thought that we have sprung from some lower race of animals—­that we are only the descendants of some race of anthropoid apes.  So long as it is asserted that we are no more than this, we may well be reluctant to admit the suggestion.  But if it be admitted that to a physical nature formed like the bodies of the lower animals, a special spiritual gift may have been superadded, the difficulty vanishes.  All Mr. Darwin’s arguments with reference to physical resemblances may then be admitted, and we may allow that he has given a probable explanation of the method by which “the Lord God formed the Adam, dust from the ground” while we maintain that the intellectual and moral faculties of man are derived from a source which lies beyond the investigations of science.

The conclusions to be drawn from this investigation may be briefly summed up as follows:—­

1.  There is every reason to conclude that the process of Creation was carried on, in great part, under the operation of the system of natural laws which we still see acting in the world around us:  such laws being so far as we are concerned only an expression of an observed uniformity in the action of that Being by whom the Universe was created and is upheld.

2.  That inasmuch as the development of a new state of things differs from the maintenance of a condition already existing, the working of these laws was necessarily from time to time supplemented by special interferences of the Creator, but that such interferences formed parts of the original design, and are not indications of anything in the shape of change or failure.