Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

We were taught— some of us at least— by Holy Scripture, that without Him not a sparrow fell to the ground, and that the very hairs of our head were all numbered; that the whole history of the universe was made up, in fact, of an infinite network of special providences. If, then, that should be true which a great naturalist writes, ‘It may be metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being, in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life,’— if this, I say, were proved to be true, ought God’s care and God’s providence to seem less or more magnificent in our eyes? Of old it was said by Him without whom nothing is made— ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’ Shall we quarrel with physical science, if she gives us evidence that those words are true?”