For many of the most signal works of God have been manifestly framed on the principle of gradual growth, and matured by a process of progressive development.

We see in the natural world a small seed deposited in the earth, which, under the agency of certain suitable influences, germinates and springs up, producing first a tender shoot, then a stem, and branches, and leaves, and blossoms, and fruit; and every herb or tree, "having seed in itself," makes provision for the repetition of the same process, and the perpetuation and indefinite increase of its kind.

The same law is observed in the animal kingdom, where a continuous race is produced from a single pair.

And even in the supernatural scheme of Revelation itself, the truth was gradually unfolded in a series of successive dispensations; the First Promise being the germ, which expanded as the Church advanced, until it reached its full development in the Scriptures of the New Testament.

These and similar instances may suffice to show that, both in the natural and supernatural Providence of God, He has been pleased to act on the principle of _gradual and progressive_, as contradistinguished from that of _instant and perfect_ production; and they may seem, at first sight, to afford some natural analogies in favor of the radical idea on which the various modern Theories _of_ Development are based.