directions, only a minute portion is intercepted by the earth or other
planets where some of it may be utilized for present or future life, so of
potential organisms, or organisms begun, no larger proportion attain the
presumed end of their creation.


"Destruction, therefore, is the rule; life is the exception. We notice
chiefly the exception--namely, the lucky prize-winner in the lottery-- and
take but little thought about the losers, who vanish from our field of
observation, and whose number it is often impossible to estimate. But, in
this question of design, the losers are important witnesses. If the maxim
'audi alteram partem' is applicable anywhere, it is applicable here. We
must hear both sides, and the testimony of the seed fallen on good ground
must be corrected by the testimony of that which falls by the wayside, or on
the rocks. When we find, as we have seen above, that the sowing is a
scattering at random, and that, for one being provided for and living, ten
thousand perish unprovided for, we must allow that the existing order would
be accounted as the worst disorder in any human sphere of action."


It is urged, moreover, that all this and much more applies equally to the
past stages of our earth and its immensely long and varied succession of
former inhabitants, different from, yet intimately connected with, the
present. It is not one specific creation that the question has to deal
with--as was thought not very many years ago--but a series of creations
through countless ages, and of which the beginning is unknown.

These references touch a few out of many points, and merely allude to some
of the difficulties which the unheeding pass by, but which, when brought
before the mind, are seen to be stupendous.