The Origin of the World According to Revelation and ScienceDawson, John William, Sir
Religion
The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science
Dawson, John William, Sir
Bible and science; Religion and science
There is another reason, hinted at by Buckland, Miller, and other
writers on this subject, which weighs much with my mind. All animals
and plants are constructed on a few leading types or patterns, which
are again divided into subordinate types, just as in architecture we
have certain leading styles, and these again may admit of several
orders, and these of farther modifications. Types are farther modified
to suit a great variety of minor adaptations. Now we know that the
earth is, at any one time, inadequate to display all the modifications
of all the types. Hence our existing system of organic nature, though
probably more complete than any that preceded it, is still only
fragmentary. It is like what architecture would be, if all memorials
of all buildings more than a century old were swept away. But, from
the beginning to the end of the creative work, there has been, or will
be, room for the whole plan. Hence fossils are little by little
completing our system of nature; and, if all were known, would perhaps
wholly do so. The great plan must be progressive, and all its parts
must be perishable, except its last culminating-point and archetype,
man. Tennyson expresses this truth in the following lines:
"The wish that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave;
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.
'So careful of the type?' but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, 'a thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go.
'Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more.' And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love Creation's final law--
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw,
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed--
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?
No more? A monster, then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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