avow, has yet been unable to pronounce a satisfactory decision. _Either way, it matters little_, _physically or morally_, either mode implies the same omnipotence, and wisdom, and foresight, and protection; and it is only your little religious sects and scientific coteries which make a pother about the matter,—sects and coteries of which it may be justly said, that they would almost exclude God from the management of his own world, if not managed and directed in the way that they would have it.” Now, this is surely a most unfair representation of the consequences, ethical and religious involved in the development hypothesis. It is not its compatibility with belief in the existence of a First Great Cause that has to be established, in order to prove it harmless; but its compatibility with certain other all-important beliefs, without which simple Theism is of no moral value whatever—a belief in the immortality and responsibility of man, and in the scheme of salvation by a Mediator and Redeemer. Dissociated from these beliefs, a belief in the existence of a God is of as little _ethical_ value as a belief in the existence of the great sea-serpent. Let us see whether we cannot determine what the testimony of Geology, on this question of creation by development, really is. It is always perilous to under-estimate the strength of an enemy; and the danger from the development hypothesis to an ingenious order of minds, smitten with the novel fascinations of physical science, has been under-estimated very considerably indeed. Save by a few studious men, who to the cultivation of Geology and the cognate branches add some acquaintance with metaphysical science, the general correspondence of the line of assault taken up by this new school of infidelity, with that occupied by the old, and the consequent ability of the assailants to bring, not only the recently forged, but also the previously employed artillery into full play along its front, has not only not been marked, but even not so much as suspected. And yet, in order to show that there actually is such a correspondence, it can be but necessary to state, that the great antagonist points in the array of the opposite lines, are simply the _law_ of development _versus_ the _miracle_ of creation. The evangelistic Churches cannot, in consistency with their character, or with a due regard to the interests of their people, slight or overlook a form of error at once exceedingly plausible and consummately dangerous, and which is telling so widely on society, that one can scarce travel by railway or in a steamboat, or encounter a group of intelligent mechanics, without finding decided trace of its ravages.