Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

If it be said that ‘natural selection,’ or, as Mr. Herbert Spencer better defines it, the ‘survival of the fittest,’ is too simple a cause to produce such fantastic variety— that, again, is a question to be settled exclusively by men of science, on their own grounds. We, meanwhile, always knew that God works by very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that the universe, as far as we could discern it, was one organization of the most simple means. It was wonderful— or should have been— in our eyes, that a shower of rain should make the grass grow, and that the grass should become flesh, and the flesh food for the thinking brain of man. It was— or ought to have been— more wonderful yet to us that a child should resemble its parents, or even a butterfly resemble, if not always, still usually, its parents likewise. Ought God to appear less or more august in our eyes if we discover that the means are even simpler than we supposed? We held Him to be Almighty and All-wise. Are we to reverence Him less or more if we find Him to be so much mightier, so much wiser, than we dreamed, that He can not only make all things, but— the very perfection of creative power— make all things make themselves? We believed that His care was over all His works; that His providence worked perpetually over the universe.