In the first place, Evolution is not itself a cause. It is no force in itself. It has no originating power. It is simply a method and law of the occurrence of things. Evolution shows that all things proceed, little by little, without breach of continuity; that the higher ever proceeds from the lower; the more complex ever unfolds from the more simple. For every species or form, it points out some ancestor or natural antecedent, from which by gradual modification, it has been derived. And in natural selection, the influence of the environment, sexual selection, use and disuse, sterility, and the variability of the organism, Science shows us some of the secondary factors or conditions of this development. But none of these are supposed by it to be first causes or originating powers. What these are, science itself does not claim the right as yet to declare. Now, it is true that this unbroken course of development, this omnipresent reign of law, is inconsistent with the theological theories of supernatural intervention that have so often claimed a monopoly of faith. But independent of all scientific reasons, on religious and philosophical grounds themselves, this dogmatic view is no longer to be accepted. For if God be the God of all-seeing wisdom and foresight that reverence conceives him to be, his work should be too perfect from the outset to demand such changes of plan and order of working. The great miracle of miracles, as Isaac Taylor used to say, is that Providence needs no miracles to carry out its all-perfect plans. But if, I hear it asked, the huge machine of the universe thus grinds on and has ever ground on, without interruption; if every event is closely bound to its physical antecedent, life to the cell, mind to brain, man to his animal ancestry and bodily conditions,--what other result will there be than an inevitable surrender to materialism? When Laplace was asked by Napoleon, on presenting to him his famous essay on the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the stellar universe, "Why do I see here no mention of the Deity?" the French astronomer proudly replied: "Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis." Is not that the natural lesson of Evolutionism, to say that God is a hypothesis, no longer needed by science and which progressive thought, therefore, better dismiss?