VIII. CREATION BY LAW.

arise which are contrary to what is best, and that he has to change what would otherwise be the course of nature, in order to produce that beauty, and variety, and harmony, which even we, with our limited intellects, can conceive to be the result of self-adjustment in a universe governed by unvarying law. If we could not conceive the world of nature to be self-adjusting and capable of endless development, it would even then be an unworthy idea of a Creator, to impute the incapacity of our minds to him; but when many human minds can conceive, and can even trace out in detail some of the adaptations in nature as the necessary results of unvarying law, it seems strange that, in the interests of religion, any one should seek to prove that the System of Nature, instead of being above, is far below our highest conceptions of it. I, for one, cannot believe that the world would come to chaos if left to Law alone. I cannot believe that there is in it no inherent power of developing beauty or variety, and that the direct action of the Deity is required to produce each spot or streak on every insect, each detail of structure in every one of the millions of organisms that live or have lived upon the earth. For it is impossible to draw a line. If any modifications of structure could be the result of law, why not all? If some self-adaptations could arise, why not others? If any varieties of colour, why not all the varieties we see? No attempt is made to explain this, except by reference to the fact that “purpose” and “contrivance” are everywhere visible, and by the illogical deduction that they could only have arisen from the direct action of some mind, because the direct action of our minds produces similar “contrivances”; but it is forgotten that adaptation, however produced, must have the appearance of design. The channel of a river looks as if made for the river, although it is made by it; the fine layers and beds in a deposit of sand, often look as if they had been sorted, and sifted, and levelled, designedly; the sides and angles of a crystal exactly resemble similar forms designed by man; but we do not therefore conclude that these effects have, in each individual case, required the directing action of a creative mind, or see any difficulty in their being produced by natural Law.