He believes that the
earth's surface has been very gradually prepared for man and the
existing animal races, that vegetable matter has through a long series
of generations imparted fertility to the soil in order that it may
support its present occupants, that even beds of coal have been stored
up for man's benefit. Yet what is more accidental, and more simply the
consequence of physical agencies, than the accumulation of vegetable
matter in a peat-bog, and its transformation into coal? No scientific
person at this day doubts that our solar system is a progressive
development, whether in his conception he begins with molten masses,
or aeriform or nebulous masses, or with a fluid revolving mass of vast
extent, from which the specific existing worlds have been developed
one by one. What theist doubts that the actual results of the
development in the inorganic worlds are not merely compatible with
design, but are in the truest sense designed results? Not Mr. Agassiz,
certainly, who adopts a remarkable illustration of design directly
founded on the nebular hypothesis, drawing from the position and times
of revolution of the worlds so originated "direct evidence that the
physical world has been ordained in conformity with laws which obtain
also among living beings." But the reader of the interesting
exposition [5] will notice that the designed result has been brought
to pass through what, speaking after the manner of men, might be
called a chapter of accidents.
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