ising that we
should never have heard of any objection to Divine creation and
providential direction, if it had not been for a prevalent fixed idea,
that by "creation" _must_ be meant a final, one-act production _(per
saltum)_ of a completely developed form, where previously there had been
nothing. Such a "creation" would of course militate against _any_
evolution, however cautiously stated or clearly established. And no
doubt such an idea of "creation" was and still is prevalent, and would
naturally and almost inevitably arise, while nothing to the contrary in
the _modus operandi_ of Creative Power was known. What is more strange
is that the current objection should not now be, "Your _idea of
creation_ is all wrong," rather than the one which has been strongly
put forward (and against which I am contending), "There is no place for
a Creator."

(5) This is the only other _general_ point that remains to be taken up
in connection with the theory that all living forms are due to the
gradual accumulation of small favourable changes without creative
intervention. The objection is that we cannot obtain the inconceivably
long time required for the process of uncontrolled and unaided
evolution.

I am not here concerned to argue generally for the shortness or longness
of the periods of geological time; let us, for the purposes of argument,
admit a very wide margin of centuries and ages; but _some_ limit there
must be. The sun's light and heat, for one thing, are necessary, and
though the bulk of combustible material in the sun is enormous, there
must be some end to it. Sir William Thomson has calculated (and his
calculations have never been answered) that on purely physical grounds,
the existence of life on the earth must be limited to some such period
as 100 millions of years; and this is far too short for uncontrolled
evolution.

We know from fossils, that species have remained entirely unaltered
since the glacial epochs began, and how many generations are included
even in that! If no change is visible in all that time, how many more
ages must have elapsed before a primitive _Amoeba_ could have developed
into a bird or a Mammal?

In Florida Mr. Agassiz has shown that coral insects exist unchanged,
and must have been so for 30,000 years.

When we remember also the enormous destruction of life that takes place,
supposing that in a given form a few creatures underwent accidental
changes which were beneficial and likely to