4. Mr. Spencer has a great deal to urge against "the current theology," and he treats of some of the theological difficulties in which those who espouse the hypothesis of special creations entangle themselves.[63] I have nothing to do with the current theology. I do not borrow from it or rely upon it, and do not undertake to disentangle its professors from any of the difficulties in which they may have involved themselves. The only question that interests me is, whether the objections propounded by this philosopher as an answer to the hypothesis of special creations present insuperable difficulties to one who does not depend upon the current theology for arguments, explanations, or means of judgment. I shall therefore endeavor to state fairly and fully the chief of the supposed difficulties, without considering the answer that is made to them by those who are taken as the representatives of the current theology. Put into a condensed form, one of Mr. Spencer's grand objections to the belief in special creations of organized beings is that it involves a deliberate intention on the part of the Creator to produce misery, suffering, pain, and an incalculable amount of evil, or else that there was an inability to prevent these results. Omitting for the present the human race, and confining our first view to the other animals, the earth is largely peopled by creatures which inflict on each other and on themselves a vast amount of suffering. The animals are endowed with countless different pain-inflicting appliances and instincts; the earth has been a scene of warfare among all sentient creatures; and geology informs us that, from the earliest eras which it records, there has been going on this universal carnage. Throughout all past time there has been a perpetual preying of the superior upon the inferior--a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong. In almost every species, the number of individuals annually born is such that the majority die of starvation or by violence before arriving at maturity. But this is not all. Not only do the superior animals prey upon the inferior, for which there may be suggested some compensating benefit by the sustentation of a higher order of life through the death of the lower, or by leaving the most perfect members of a species to continue that species, but the inferior prey upon the superior, and organisms that are incapable of feeling have appliances for securing their prosperity at the expense of misery to organisms capable of happiness. Of the animal kingdom, as a whole, more than half, it is said, are parasites, and almost every known animal has its peculiar species. Passing over the evils thus inflicted on animals of inferior dignity and coming to man, we find that he is infested by animal and vegetable parasites of which two or three dozens may be distinctly enumerated; which are endowed with constitutions fitting them to live by absorbing the juices of the human body, furnished with appliances by