The work was well done.

It was a marked advance on all that had appeared before, in matter, method, and spirit.

Looking back upon it now we can see that it was provisional, but that it was none the less fruitful in truth, and we may well remember Darwin's remark on the stimulating effect of mistaken THEORIES, as compared with the sterilizing effect of mistaken OBSERVATIONS: mistaken observations lead men astray, mistaken theories suggest true theories.
An effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it.
Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms has been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of orthodoxy.
No less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than the Rev.Prof.
Zoeckler says of this movement to demonstrate creative purpose and design, and of the men who took part in it, "The earth appeared in their representation of it like a great clothing shop and soup kitchen, and God as a glorified rationalistic professor." Such a statement as this is far from just to the conceptions of such men as Butler, Paley, and Chalmers, no matter how fully the thinking world has now outlived them.( 17) (17) For a very valuable and interesting study on the old idea of the generation of insects from carrion, see Osten-Sacken, on the Oxen-born Bees of the Ancients, Heidelberg, 1894; for Ray, see the work cited, London, 1827, p.

153; for Grew, see Cosmologia Sacra, or a Discourse on the Universe, as it is the Creature and Kingdom of God; chiefly written to demonstrate the Truth and Excellency of the Bible, by Dr.Nehemiah Grew, Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society of London, 1701; for Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises, see the usual editions; also Lange, History of Rationalism.

Goethe's couplet ran as follows: "Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenerschopfer, der Gnadig, Als er den Korkbaum erschuf, gleich auch die Stopfel erfand." For the quotation from Zoeckler, see his work already cited, vol.ii, pp.