id they understand the production of brass, a
composite metal? How was it that man always met man wherever he went on
the globe? Five thousand years ago the varied races were known to be
distinct as now, and yet man was formerly said to be but about six
thousand years old. Could one thousand years have produced the changes
then evident, while five thousand succeeding years have scarce altered
these different races? These and many other difficulties led thinkers to
question whether man might not look much farther back into the past for
his origin, and whether the same laws which had governed the birth,
continuance, and distribution of other animals were not always in action
to produce in him kindred results. The old belief, that all men
descended from one man, began to be shaken; and good, honest, faithful
Christians expressed their doubts of the matter. It was surmised that
they were created in numbers. The old idea, that animals were all
created in individual pairs, was found to be incompatible with the
discovery of animal remains, in profusion, in rocks which were mud ages
before any Adam could have existed to give them Hebrew names. Then,
breaking away from the theological bonds, there sprang into active
thought men of far-reaching minds, who began a thorough reconstruction
of the whole theory of creation. The handwriting on the wall was NATURAL
LAW. All creation, man included, was but the result of one undeviating,
unceasing, eternal, all-pervading law, and the state of the universe at
any given moment was the state of evolution which that universe
exhibited. Behind this law was the great inscrutable Spirit-power.

The infinite number of varied, aggregated facts stored up by man's
patient study of this universe are irrelevant here, in a sketch of the
progressive advance of his knowledge of creation. Those who desire to
examine the evidence which has led to this verdict must go over the
records themselves, or accept, out of their own convictions, the result
of the examination. To entirely comprehend the Darwinian idea, one
should be, to a certain extent, familiar with the principles of science.
In other words, he should know more or less of what Darwin knows. He
should be familiar with the general results of man's study in the
different branches of science. He need not be an astronomer, a
physicist, a geologist, a zoologist, a botanist; but he should have a
general acquaintance with the results of the labors of those