rence affecting if
possible still more deeply the foundations of philosophic faith.[16] He
heads his paragraph _Matter is Force_, and goes on to argue that matter
is essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularly
understood, does not exist. Then in a couple of pages he goes on to
argue "that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually
_is_, the will of higher intelligences, or of one Supreme Intelligence."
But the whole tenor of his book is thus demolished; since evolution, if
it means anything, means the interposition of natural law between the
will of the one Supreme Intelligence and the universe. And on this
theory Mr. Wallace's criticisms on Mr. Darwin and others are impious,
being criticisms upon parts of the will of the one Supreme Intelligence.

Similar instances of self-contradiction could be given, did space
permit, from almost every advocate of evolution.

Our space permits the exhibition of but a single instance of the
inherent incoherency of the theory. There is nothing in which all the
atheistic evolutionists are more emphatic than in the exclusion of
design from the universe. All their arguments and sneers are leveled
against the idea, that the adaptations of Nature were designed or
intended by an intelligent mind; and the theory of evolution is welcomed
chiefly because it enables them to give some account of the order of the
world, without any acknowledgment of a providence guiding it to some end
or purpose. But yet all these same evolutionists proclaim progress as
the great law of Nature, and expend themselves with wonderful eloquence
in tracing the progress of nebulae into worlds, and of worms into men.
They glory in progress of the past, and prophesy progress in the future,
apparently in the most childish unconsciousness, that the very idea of
progress involves design, and that the fact of progress asserts
providence. Nor is there any escape by alleging necessity of Nature,
which is merely endowing the designer of progress with omnipotence as
well as omniscience.

The illogical character of the theory is still further manifested by the
failure of its alleged facts to sustain the consequences deduced from
them. Suppose all the facts alleged by the atheistic evolutionists were
granted, how would they do away with the evidence of the being and
government of God? as they loudly allege they do. Let it be granted that
all men grew up from monkeys, and the monkeys from w