The evidence afforded by the order and adaptations in nature to the existence of a God : a lecture, delivered in connection with the Christian Evidence Society, June 21, 1872 / by Charles Brooke.

  • Brooke, Charles, 1804-1879.
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The evidence afforded by the order and adaptations in nature to the existence of a God : a lecture, delivered in connection with the Christian Evidence Society, June 21, 1872 / by Charles Brooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    It would appear then that the surface of our globe has been adapted to the exigencies of its present inhabitants not by any sudden act of creation, but by a gradual and progressive development, requiring count- less ages for its accomplishment; and that as we descend in the order of strata that have successively formed a part of the earth’s surface, the type of organi- zation is generally successively lower, and also gene- rally more and more remote from existing or more recent types : from these facts it may not unreason- ably be inferred that the beneficence of the Creator has ever been exemplified in adapting the organization of His creatures to the conditions and circumstances under which they existed. But a new theory of successive development has re- cently been promulgated, the obvious tendency of which is to supersede the necessity of creative intelligence; al- though, perhaps, the author of the theory of “ Natural Selection,” and probably some of his followers, may not be disposed to admit the validity of this inference. The theory of natural selection assumes that advances in development have taken place not by design, but by accident, or the force of circumstances, and that in the struggle for existence the individuals evincing an imperfect development have been annihilated ; and thus that advanced development has ever held its own against inferiority, until existing perfection was at- tained ; and as a crowning point, the theory does not exclude the development of man from the lower