lution as
at present held, as a means of accounting for the introduction and
succession of animals. To what extent they may be weakened or
strengthened by the future progress of science it is impossible to
say, but so long as they exist it is mere folly and presumption to
affirm that modern science supports the doctrine of evolution. There
can be no doubt, however, that the Bible leaves us perfectly free to
inquire as to the plan and method of the Creator, and that, whatever
discoveries we may make, we shall find that his plans are orderly,
methodical, and continuous, and not of the nature of an arbitrary
patchwork.

Though science as yet gives us no certain laws for the introduction of
new specific types, it indicates certain possible modes of the
origination of varieties, races, and sub-species of previously
existing types. One of these is that struggle for existence against
adverse external conditions, which, however, has been harped upon too
exclusively by the Darwinian school, and which will give chiefly
depauperated and degraded forms. Another is that expansion under
exceptionally favorable conditions which arises where species are
admitted to wider new areas of geographical range and more abundant
and varied means of sustenance. Land animals and plants must have
experienced this in times of continental elevation; marine animals and
plants in times of continental depression. Another is the tendency to
what has been called reproductive retardation and acceleration which
species undergo under conditions exceptionally unfavorable or
favorable, and which in some modern aquatic animals produces
differences so great that members of the same species have sometimes
been placed in different genera. Lastly, it is conceivable that
species may have been so constructed that after a certain number of
generations they may spontaneously undergo either abrupt or gradual
changes, similar to those which the individual undergoes at certain
stages of growth. This last furnishes the only true analogy possible
between embryology and geological succession.

While, however, science is silent as to the production of new specific
types, and only gives us indications as to the origin of varieties and
races, it is curious that the Bible suggests three methods in which
new organisms may be, and according to it have been introduced by the
Creator. The first is that of immediate and direct creation, as when
God created the great Tanninim. The