CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXIV, Issue 8, 10 January 1890, Page 4

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THB EdXTGB Of THE " EvEKIKO MAIL," Sin— " A simple searcher after truth " regards Evolution as likely to help in evolving "cosmos" out of "chaos," but those who, like myself, boliove in th« Soripture dootrtne of " Creation," musli view it as 'sending rather to substitute oh&oa for Divine order. Such, too, is tbe opinion of Sir J. Dawson —if 1 may bo allowed Bgsin to quote from hte work. "It removes," ho saya, "from th? study of nature the ideas of final oauee and purpose; and the evolutionist, instead of regardicg the world as a work of consummate plar, skill, an£ adjustment, approaches nature as ho wonld a chaos of f ellen rooks, whioh may praaen* forms of alettes and grotesque' profiles of men And animalt, bat they ere all foriatioui and wit&ottl sijnifto >n«," Is fee evolutionism - scheme preferable io the conception of the Hebrew PB»lraist: "0 Loa», how manifold are thy works lin wisdom nsfc Thon made thsm aal t " la Darwin's hypothesis of tha origin of man, quoted fry yocr correspondent, more akin to cosmos than the b«li?f that, as | His crowning creative ao% " God a&id, Let us make man in our imngr, after our likenes?; and lot them have dominion," &c; or, Rgain, " Thou bast made bim a little lower than »he angola," Tho hypoJhesis, ii is said mast not be too hastily Bet down as dirproved. The onus probandi, howevsr, lis ' with Ihosa whoadvftnes it; a-d tho fact is, tbat no proof has yet been fucnisufd, ehhsr from the phenomena of nature as at present observed, or in those revealed to as by goology. The main reliance is placed on a Bet of attempted deductions, none of whioh, when weighod, nor all of. them put together, can be oonsid4red in the least conclusive. Of these I may instanoe oue— the likenesß of type or plan between man and oth#r mammals, the skeleton of man being constructed on the Bame principles ac that of an opa or a dog, thus tending, it is enid, to prove a common ancestry, But it is qutie as readily explicable on tbe supposition of e&on and all bting independent creations of an All-wise Designer — jastasmoy the constructions of human skill, e.g., the steam eDgine, whioh, with a Uinforrn principle, the ao'ion of steam in o:>nneocion with piston and cylinder, admits of an infinite variety ot forms to suit various purposes. The Darwinian hypothesis, your oorreapondent considers, " exhibits little truoe of inherent absurdity;'' but even be. I tras*, will hardly think other thau absurd tho Idea of Labboßk, adopted by Darwin, that the begiuniugs of theology wore in the brain of some ape, whioh, crossed in love, or pining with old and hunger, first oonooivad " the dread of ovil to come."— l am, tea.. G.W.G.