The Relation of Science and Religion.pdf - Online Christian Library

202 SCIENCE AND RELIGION.relation of the vegetable kingdom with lowerorders of animals. Facts now recorded in multitudesof scientific journals, and more elaboratetreatises, illustrate wonderful minutenessof contrivance and completeness of adaptationin the works of nature, giving to the rangeof knowledge possessed only a century ago anaspect of insignificance. What the microscopehas done by enlarging the range of humanvision, subdivision of labor among scientificinquirers, and proportionate concentration,have done, in the way of embracing the vastand complicated field. of observation lyingopen to all eyes. The results exalt to agreatly higher place in our appreciation theevidence of design in the world. The consequenceis that while t'he line of thought followedby Paley, in what he designated NaturalTheology, has become a thousand-foldmore interesting, the familiar and now almostantiquated illustration of the watch, taken asa model of human design, by the comparativesimplicity of its adjustments, seems strangelyinadequate to represent even in the most temporaryform, a minr~teness of design quiteoverwhelming to the hulaan mind in its attemptsto bring it within a uniform scheme.