es of this road, but the rivers are not bridged, the
chasms not filled, nor the mountains tunnelled.

When men attempt to roll the hypothesis of evolution along the
road of the nebular hypothesis of worlds, and even beyond to the
production of vegetable and animal life, mind and affection, the
gaps in the road become evident, and disastrous.

A soul that has reached an adoration for the Supreme Father cares
not how he has made him. Doubtless the way God chose was the best.
It is as agreeable to have been thought of and provided for in the
beginning, to have had a myriad ages of care, and to have come
from the highest existent life at last, as to have been made at
once, by a single act, out of dust. The one who is made is not to
say to the Maker, "Why hast thou formed me in this or that manner?"
We only wish the question answered in what manner we were really
made.

Evolution, without constant superintendence and occasional new
inspiration of power, finds some tremendous chasms in the road
it travels. These must be spanned by the power of a present God
or the airy imagination [Page 190] of man. Dr. McCosh has happily
enumerated some of these tremendous gaps over which mere force
cannot go. Given, then, matter with mechanical power only, what are
the gaps between it and spirituality?

"1. Chemical action cannot be produced by mechanical power.

"2. Life, even in the lowest forms, cannot be produced from unorganized
matter.

"3. Protoplasm can be produced only by living matter.

"4. Organized matter is made up of cells, and can be produced only
by cells. Whence the first cell?

"5. A living being can be produced only from a seed or germ. Whence
the first vegetable seed?

"6. An animal cannot be produced from a plant. Whence the first
animal?

"7. Sensation cannot be produced in insentient matter.

"8. The genesis of a new species of plant or animal has never come
under the cognizance of man, either in pre-human or post-human ages,
either in pre-scientific or scientific times. Darwin acknowledges
this, and says that, should a new species suddenly arise, we have
no means of knowing that it is such.

"9. Consciousness--that is, a knowledge of self and its
operations--cannot be produced out of mere matter or sensation.

"10. We have no knowledge of man being generated out of the lower
animals.

"11. All human beings, even savages, are capable of forming certain
high ideas, such as those of God and duty. The