His words are remarkable: "The Eternal Sovereign arranges a solar or an astral system by dispositions imparted primordially to matter; He causes, by the same majestic means, vast oceans to form and continents to rise, and all the grand meteoric agencies to proceed in ceaseless alternation, so as to fit the earth for a residence of organic beings.
But when, in the course of these operations, fuci and corals are to be for the first time placed in those oceans, a particular interference of the Divine power is required; and this special attention is needed whenever a new family of organisms is to be introduced,--a new fiat for fishes, another for reptiles, a third for birds; nay, taking up the present views of Geologists as to species, such an event as the commencement of a certain cephalopod, one with a few new nodulosites and corrugations upon its shell, would, on this theory, require the particular care of that same Almighty who willed at once the whole means by which infinity was replenished with its worlds ?" ...

"Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for Creative Intelligence, that it should be constantly paying a special attention to the creation of species, as they may be required in each situation throughout those worlds at particular times?
Is such an idea accordant with our general conception of the dignity, not to speak of the power, of the Great Author ?" ...

"It would be distressing to be compelled to picture the power of God as put forth _in any other manner_ than in those slow, mysterious, universal laws which have so plainly an eternity to work in."[53] Such is the author's presumptuous decision on a matter which is far "too high for him." We offer the following remarks upon it: _First_ of all, let it be observed that, unless on the principle of absolute Atheism, which he professes to repudiate, he cannot but acknowledge that _once_, at least, the power of God must have been put forth _in another manner_ than "in those slow, mysterious, universal laws" of which he speaks; and that, even if he could succeed in disproving "repeated interferences of creative power," he could in nowise dispense with a primitive act of direct, immediate, supernatural creation, since he does not profess to believe in the eternal existence of matter and its laws.

We find, indeed, that even in the subsequent acts of a continuous, but mediate creation, he is compelled to acknowledge a supernatural power as acting, in each individual case, according to established natural laws; for he says expressly, "There cannot be _an inherent intelligence in these laws_; the intelligence appears _external to the laws_, something of which the laws are but as the expression of the will and power.

If this be admitted, the laws cannot be regarded as primary or independent causes of the phenomena of the physical world.