who are
we, that we should limit the power of God? 'Is anything too hard
for the Lord?' asked the prophet of old; and we have a right to ask
it as long as time shall last. If it be said that natural selection
is too simple a cause to produce such fantastic variety: we always
knew that God works by very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that
the universe, as far as we could discern it, was one organisation of
the most simple means; it was wonderful (or ought to have been) in
our eyes, that a shower of rain should make the grass grow, and that
the grass should become flesh, and the flesh food for the thinking
brain of man; it was (or ought to have been) yet more wonderful in
our eyes, that a child should resemble its parents, or even a
butterfly resemble--if not always, still usually--its parents
likewise. Ought God to appear less or more august in our eyes if we
discover that His means are even simpler than we supposed? We hold
Him to be almighty and allwise. Are we to reverence Him less or
more if we find that His might is greater, His wisdom deeper, than
we had ever dreamed? We believed that His care was over all His
works; that His providence watched perpetually over the universe.
We were taught, some of us at least, by Holy Scripture, to believe
that the whole history of the universe was made up of special
providences: if, then, that should be true which Mr. Darwin says--
'It may be metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and
hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the
slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all
that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever
opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in
relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life,'--if this,
I say, were proved to be true, ought God's care, God's providence,
to seem less or more magnificent in our eyes? Of old it was said by
Him without whom nothing is made--'My Father worketh hitherto, and I
work.' Shall we quarrel with physical science, if she gives us
evidence that these words are true? And if it should be proven that
the gigantic Hura and the lowly Spurge sprang from one common
ancestor, what would the orthodox theologian have to say to it,
saving--'I always knew that God was great: and I am not surprised
to find Him greater than I thought Him'?

So much for the giant weed of the Mor