Wilmington daily commercial., 1876-11-15

ance, we admit, but it was the performance
OF pettifogger, and detracted very mate
rally from the popular respect which had
been accorded to the man and his utter
ances.
1t is to be presumed that Mr.. Darwin's
principal apostle would present his facts
and his arguments in the most convincing
way possible 10 him. He took three even-
ings for the tack, and had the field all to
himself; but we do not hesitate to say that
he failed in the " demoustratlve evidence"
offered in his closing lecture to fulfill the
promses made in the first two. Had he de-
monstrated the soundness of his theory,
people would have believed in it. That
the most of them did not, ought to be re-
garded by Mr.. Huxley as evidence-worthy,
at least of his consideration-thath his ''de
monstrative evidence" demonstrated moth
ing. For let it be remembered, the religious
mind of the country is not as much afraid
Of the theory of evolution as it was, and is
not proof against conviction, as it might
once have been. 1t has apprehended and
accepted the fact that it takes as great
power to originate an order of beings
through evolution ss by a direct act of cre-
ation and that to bind up all the possibili-
ties ard poteneies of life i'll protoplasmic
masses, or ascidian cells, is as marked an
exhibition Of Almightiness and infinite in
ence the perfected creatures which we
know, and whIc we are.
We do not he itate TO sag that the audi
ences which assembled to listen to Mr. Hux-
ley were Jrac5abe audiences. They were
not cnly tractable, but they were capable.
They were fully adequate to the under
standing Of his theory, and the weighing of
his evidences and arguments; and we have
yet to learn that he largely, or even appre-
.s,l,I L.
Piles. Men went away feeling that, after
all, the theory of evolution was nothing but
theory-that it is still so much an hypothesis
that it lays no valid claim to place in
science. Ger tainly, Mr.. Huxley shook no
soundy reasoning mans belief in God
as the author OF all life. "In the begin
ming God created the heaven and the
EARTH" When that beginning was,-how
many ages that beginning covered, nobody
pretends at this day to know. Everybody
knows, however, that stream can rise no
higher than its fountain. If the conduits
and receptacles into which that stream has
been poured are capable of retaining it,
and incapable of conducting it further,
it may not rise 80 high. 1t
| seems to us repugnant to human reason
that low form of life, uninformed by q
higher life, has the power to evolve a form
of life higher than itself. There is not an
| analogy OF nature which does not militia 9
againet such conclusion. There are none
of the lessons of science which do not lead
directly away from it. God may work tow
ard creative ends through processes Of evo-
luton, or he may not. A horse may have
been derived from three-toed animal, one
of whose toe nails spread into hoof, with
its wonderful tarsus and metatarsus, or he
may not. A man may have descended, OF
assembled, from a monkey, or he may have
been created by divine fat. It matters
very little, 30 long as God is recognized at
the author of life, and the designer Of its
mulGtudinous forms.