itself
creation is incomplete, and there is room for development, which may be
continued till the whole possibility of creation is actualized. Here
is the foundation of what is true in the modern doctrine of progress.
Man is progressive, because the possibilities of his nature are
successively unfolded and actualized.

Development is a fact, and its laws and conditions may be
scientifically ascertained and defined. All generation is development,
as is all growth, physical, moral, or intellectual. But everything is
developed in its own order, and after its kind. The Darwinian theory of
the development of species is not sustained by science. The development
starts from the germ, and in the germ is given the law or principle of
the development. From the acorn is developed the oak, never the pine or
the linden. Every kind generates its kind, never another. But no
development is, strictly speaking, spontaneous, or the result alone of
the inherent energy or force of the germ developed. There is not only a
solidarity of race, but in some sense of all races, or species; all
created things are bound to their Creator, and to one another. One and
the same law or principle of life pervades all creation, binding the
universe together in a unity that copies or imitates the unity of the
Creator. No creature is isolated from the rest, or absolutely
independent of others. All are parts of one stupendous whole, and each
depends on the whole, and the whole on each, and each on each. All
creatures are members of one body, and members one of another. The
germ of the oak is in the acorn, but the acorn left to itself alone can
never grow into the oak, any more than a body at rest can place itself
in motion. Lay the acorn away in your closet, where it is absolutely
deprived of air, heat, and moisture, and in vain will you watch for its
germination. Germinate it cannot without some external influence, or
communion, so to speak, with the elements from which it derives its
sustenance and support.

There can be no absolutely spontaneous development. All things are
doubtless active, for nothing exists except in so far as it is an
active force of some sort; but only God himself alone suffices for his
own activity. All created things are dependent, have not their being
in themselves, and are real only as they participate, through the
creative act, of the Divine being. The germ can no more be developed
than it could exist without God,