ling of the waters of
these oceans caused them to deposit the various salts and earths which
form the worlds in the form of mud, which afterward hardened into rock,
or vegetated into trees and men. Thus, it is clearly demonstrated that
there is no need for the Creator if--if--if--we only had somebody to
make these primeval oceans--and somebody to mix them together![3]

The development theory of the production of the human race from the mud,
through the mushroom, the snail, the tortoise, the greyhound, the monkey
and the man, which is now such a favorite with atheists, if it were
fully proved to be a fact, would only increase the difficulty of getting
rid of God. For either the primeval mud had all the germs of the future
plants and monkeys, and men's bodies and souls, in itself originally, or
it had not. If it had not, where did it get them? If it had all the life
and intelligence in the universe in itself, it was a very extraordinary
kind of God. We shall call it the _mud-god_. Our atheists then believe
in a god of muddy body and intelligent mind. But if they deny
intelligence to the mud, then we are back to our original difficulty,
with a large appendix, viz: _The paving stones made themselves first and
all atheists afterward._

The whole theory of development is utterly false in its first
principles. From the beginning of the world to the present day, no man
has ever observed an instance of the spontaneous generation of life.
There is no law of nature, whether electric, magnetic, odylic, or any
other, which can produce a living plant or animal, save from the germ or
seed of some previous plant or animal of the same species. Nor has a
single instance of the transmutation of species ever been proved. Every
beast, bird, fish, insect and plant brings forth after its kind, and has
done so since its creation. No law of Natural Philosophy is more firmly
established than this, _That there is no spontaneous generation, nor
transmutation of species._ It is true there is a regular gradation of
the various orders of animal and vegetable life, rising like the steps
of a staircase, one above the other; but gradation is no more caused by
transmutation than a staircase is made by an ambitious lower step
changing itself into all the upper ones.

To refer the origin of the world to the laws of nature is absurd. Law,
as Johnson defines it, is a rule of action. It necessarily requires an
acting agent, an object designed in the action,