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Show 234: ])AR WINIAN A. their surroundings then, as those which flourish and bloom around us are to their conditions now. Order and exquisite adaptation did not wait for ~an's coming, nor were they ever stereotyped. ~rganlC. ~ ature-:-by which I mean the system and totahty of livmg thmgs, and their adaptation to each other and to the worldwith all its apparent and indeed real stability, should be likened not to the ocean, which varies only by tidal oscillation~ from a fixed level to which it is always returning but rather to a river, so vast that we can neither di's cern its shores nor reach 1. ts sources, wh ose onward flow is not less actual because too slow to be observed by the ephemerm which hover over its surface, or are borne upon its bosom. Such ideas as these, though still repugnant to some, and not long since to many, have so possessed the minds of the naturalists of the present day that hardly a discourse can be pronounced or an investigation prosecuted without reference to them. I suppose that the views here taken are little, if at all, in advance of the average scientific mind of the day! I cannot regard them as less noble than those which they are succeeding. A~ able philosophical writer, Mis? F~ances Power Cob be, has recently and truthfully sa1d: "It is a singular fact that, when we can find out ho~ anything is done, our first conclusion seems to b~ that Go~ d.td not do it. No matter how wonderful, how beautiful, how mtlmately complex and delicate has been the mach~n~ry which has worked, perhaps for centuries, perhaps for m1lhons of ag.es, to bring about some beneficent result, if we can but catch a glimpse of the wheels its divine character disappears." I "Darwinism in Morals," in Theological Review, April, 1871. SEQUOIA AN]) ITS IIISTORJ:..._ 235 I agree with the writer that this :first conclusion is premature and unworthy- I will add, deplorable. Through what faults or infirmities of dogmatism on the one hand, and skepticism on the other, it came to be so thought, we need not here consider. Let us hope, and I confidently expect, that it is not to last; that the religious faith which survived without a shock the notion of the fixity of the earth itself may equally outlast the notion of the fixity of the species which inhabit it; that, in the future even more than in the past, faith in an order, which is the basis of science will not--as it cannot reasonably-be dissevered fro~ faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion. |