These are what I would term the five fatal objections to evolution as at present held, as a means of accounting for the introduction and succession of animals. To what extent they may be weakened or strengthened by the future progress of science it is impossible to say, but so long as they exist it is mere folly and presumption to affirm that modern science supports the doctrine of evolution. There can be no doubt, however, that the Bible leaves us perfectly free to inquire as to the plan and method of the Creator, and that, whatever discoveries we may make, we shall find that his plans are orderly, methodical, and continuous, and not of the nature of an arbitrary patchwork. Though science as yet gives us no certain laws for the introduction of new specific types, it indicates certain possible modes of the origination of varieties, races, and sub-species of previously existing types. One of these is that struggle for existence against adverse external conditions, which, however, has been harped upon too exclusively by the Darwinian school, and which will give chiefly depauperated and degraded forms. Another is that expansion under exceptionally favorable conditions which arises where species are admitted to wider new areas of geographical range and more abundant and varied means of sustenance. Land animals and plants must have experienced this in times of continental elevation; marine animals and plants in times of continental depression. Another is the tendency to what has been called reproductive retardation and acceleration which species undergo under conditions exceptionally unfavorable or favorable, and which in some modern aquatic animals produces differences so great that members of the same species have sometimes been placed in different genera. Lastly, it is conceivable that species may have been so constructed that after a certain number of generations they may spontaneously undergo either abrupt or gradual changes, similar to those which the individual undergoes at certain stages of growth. This last furnishes the only true analogy possible between embryology and geological succession.