eral
law of nature. But when we enter on the examination of the dogma of
evolution, we find its parentage among ignoble superstitions; its
fundamental facts still lie in the darkness of ignorance and assumption;
and its reasoning is illogical and absurd.

The most prominent feature which arrests our notice as we look closely
at the theory of evolution, as presented by any of its prominent
atheistical advocates is, _its illogical and incoherent structure_. The
writer contradicts himself. The various parts of the theory do not hang
together. The alleged facts do not sustain the conclusions deduced from
them. Mr. Darwin's books especially abound in the most intolerable
assumptions of principles and facts, not only without proof, but in the
face of unanswered and unanswerable objections. And the theory is
useless for the purpose of its proposal. All this is utterly at variance
with the method of true science. None but a mind debauched by bigoted
attachment to a preconceived theory could overlook these fatal defects
in the system. Indeed both Darwin and Huxley admit that acceptance of
the evidence must be preceded by belief in the principle of evolution.
It is marvelous that any properly educated student of mental science
should accept a theory so incoherent, in which the rents are scarcely
held together by the patches. We can only exhibit a few specimens of the
multitude of these fatal inconsistencies and deficiencies.

The theory is useless as an explanation of the arcana of Nature. Mr.
Darwin is, by his own acknowledgment, a very ignorant man--ignorant of
the very things necessary for him to know before he can construct a
method of creation, and unable to explain to us what he sets out to
explain. He confesses himself ignorant of the origin and laws of
inheritance, by which his whole system hangs together; of the common
ancestors from which he alleges all creatures are derived; of the laws
of correlation of parts, though these are indispensable to development;
of the reasons of the extinction of species, which is the great
business, the very trade of his great agent, Natural Selection. He has
no knowledge of the duration of past ages, though that duration is an
essential element of his calculations. The spontaneous variations of
plants and animals are the very mainspring of his machine; but he tells
us he knows nothing of the laws governing them; nor has he any
information about the creation of the primordial forms, nor