Picture - Cosmic Polymath

360 DESIGN IN NATURE
The Evolutionists evade this serious difficulty by saying that while the geological record is admittedly imper-
fect at present, there are good grounds for believing it will not remain so ; some gaps having been partially -filled
up of late years. The argument is more ingenious than convincing. Conjecture cannot take the place of positive
evidence. It is quite conceivable, and more than probable, that the Deity has placed boundaries to the great
leading races of plants and animals. Such an arrangement makes for law and order. Evolution and endless
modifications, for the most part, lead to confusion. As in the inorganic kingdom, crystals and other physical objects
are built up in the same way and according to rules to which there are no exceptions, so in the organic kingdom,
which is a differentiation and outgrowth of the inorganic one brought about by the introduction of life, there are
main lines of development which are never departed from to any extent, but which, if departed from, even to a
sUght extent, can be righted by a power of correction which inheres in the individuals through which the departure
takes place. The modifications in such instances are in no case indefinite. We have examples of this power of
righting in cultivated vegetables, which if left to themselves, sooner or later return to their originals. The same
is true of domestic or cultivated animals. The several varieties of pigeons return to the blue rock pigeon. There
are limits, moreover, to cross-fertiUsation. The mule and hinny are both barren, and similar remarks apply to
crosses in birds. Granting, however, that evolution in the widest sense obtains, it affords no proof of the non-
existence of a First Cause. Evolution beginning in the vastly remote past in a jelly speck of apparently homogeneous,
undifferentiated protoplasm, and ending, after infinite permutations in infinite time, in the most highly cultured
modern man, would, in some senses, be a more extraordinary creative feat than the formation of types at various
periods of the world's history. Evolution does not get rid of the Deity. Neither does it prove that life and the
formation of plants and animals are the result of spontaneous generation. No one has ever seen the birth of a new
plant or animal, and no chemist or physicist has been able to manufacture either.
Plants and animals are, in every instance, the product of pre-existing germs, seeds, or eggs. It has been again
and again shown that if the germs, seeds, and eggs which float in the air are rigorously excluded from organic solu-
tions such as are furnished by chopped hay and water, turnips and water, flesh and water, &c., the infusions are
invariably barren. This was shown by the illustrious Pasteur more than a quarter of a century ago, and the late
Professor Tyndall afforded convincing proof in the same direction. M. Pasteur found that if he trapped by long,
bent, crooked tubes, or destroyed by great heat, the infinitely minute germs, seeds, and eggs which are suspended
in the atmosphere, and prevented their getting into the organic solutions, the solutions invariably remained barren.
Tjmdall arrived at the same conclusion by another method. He made two small closed glass chambers with
shding doors, the interior of one of which he smeared with glycerine. These he kept in a still place and away from
draughts. After a considerable interval the germs, seeds, and eggs floating in the air in the glycerine chamber were
caught (trapped) on the bottom, sides, and top of the chamber. He then cautiously introduced equal portions
of the same organic infusion into the two glass chambers respectively, with the result that the portion in the
glycerine chamber (the air of which was, so to speak, filtered) invariably remained barren, while that in the non-
glycerine chamber sooner or later teemed with life. Other investigators equally competent to deal with the subject
obtained similar results by other and ingenious methods devised by themselves.
So far as is known at present there is no such thing as spontaneous generation or a creation of life de novo.
Spontaneous generation is for some a fascinating doctrine. It is delightfully vague, and gives a free rein to
the uneducated, and to those who are anxious to evade responsibihty by denjdng the existence of a God, and who
prefer to refer the universe, and everything it contains, to accident or blind chance. They say, without the faintest
tittle of evidence, that matter created itself, that it assumed motion as in the heavenly spheres, and that it ulti-
mately assumed Ufe as we know it on the earth in living plants and animals. Strangely enough. Professor Tyndall
latterly attributed a universal power to matter as apart from life. In like manner Mr. C. Darwin committed himself
to evolution and the development of man from lower forms. These great scientists were apparently carried away
in their enthusiasm by views which they at first accepted charily and with extreme caution. Where so many out-
standing evidences of design present themselves, it is difficult to make a wise selection of proofs. No doubt the
most astounding examples of design are revealed by the telescope when directed to the heavens. There we behold
what are practically unlimited matter, unhmited space, and unlimited power : great suns and solar systems ; untold
planets, satellites, and comets ; stars which in number exceed the sands of the sea ; the Milky Way with its
marvellous wealth of nebulae ; and, greatest marvel of all, the vast, ponderous heavenly bodies dehcately poised and
wheeling in space as lightly as if wholly devoid of substance.
Those stupendous orbs, the sizes and distances of which can only be approximately computed, thread their way
among each other with extraordinary exactitude, and, at times, with incredible rapidity—a rapidity so great that
mathematicians are at a loss to compute and the mind to grasp it. The heavenly systems, so vast and so various
as regards size, shape, and movement, cannot possibly be explained by any concatenation of circumstances into