ee logically weakened (though it may be
practically) by viewing that order as reached by a process of evolution,
since that process also must have been designed, planned, adapted to its
purpose, and divinely superintended.

Accordingly, we find that many philosophers, and some divines,
acknowledge a process of the evolution of God's great idea, and adore
him for the growth alike of forests and firmaments, regarding evolution,
thus conditioned, as profoundly religious. St. Augustine, and St. Thomas
Aquinas, of old, and many modern speculators, have assented to the
theory of evolution as perfectly consistent with belief in God, as its
Author. It is utterly illogical to allege that evolution has banished
final causes. Grant it all its facts, and these facts proclaim God.

It is evident, however, that evolutionists are not confident of the
ability of the facts which they are able to allege to sustain their
theory, since they are perpetually postulating assumptions necessary to
their argument, but which are utterly unproved, and incapable of proof.
Mr. Darwin is the most notorious offender against inductive science in
this respect. I have now before me a list of eighty-six assumptions of
this sort in the Origin of Species alone. Those in his other works are
too numerous to mention. He continually mistakes his own assertions, or
even his own mere conjectures, for proof, and refers back to them, and
builds further assumptions upon them accordingly; and he assumes facts
unproven and incapable of proof; and principles which he must know are
denied by his opponents. We can only take a few instances at random.

He assumes that all dogs are developed from wolves (Descent of Man, page
48); that the instincts of animals are developed (page 38); that
language was developed (page 53); that there is a wider interval between
the lamprey and the ape than between the ape and the man, thus begging
the question of man's brutality (page 34); that the savage is the
original state of man (page 63); that parental instincts are the result
of Natural Selection, after owning utter ignorance of their origin (page
77); that the ideas of glory and infamy are the workings of sympathy
(page 82); the heredity of moral tastes (page 98); that the standard of
morality has been rising since the giving of the ten commandments (page
99); that our ancestors were quadrupeds (page 116); that there have been
thousands of generations (page 125); that breeds have t