effected by natural processes, as are modifications of the created by influences from within and without. As to seeing a creation, whoever saw an evolution? Embryology, and the passage of invisibles through the visible into the invisible, are as much symbols and illustrations of creation as they are of evolution. No one can solve the ultimate mystery of the universe. If the evolutionist thinks that he has settled. it by declaring-"The egg was before the bird, not the bird before the egg; we answer-Whence the egg? However many and separate acts, different in degree and kind, may or may not precede the flash of life, the old truth remains firm as ever—“ Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every plant; and out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field." We would know how matter, if created, was created-unless by Deity; and, if not created, how the eternity of its existence is more comprehensible than the Christian's belief-that matter, and all other phenomena, are manifestations of the Great Unknown. If the many thousand impulses of energy do not proceed from Hidden Energy, science belies its own teaching. Mr. Herbert Spencer asks1-"Why should not omnipotence have been proved by the supernatural production of plants and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour?" We reply-It is proved. The inquirer knows very well that Nature is a splendid miracle, that plants and animals are produced everywhere throughout the world from hour to hour by omnipotence. The inquirer has stated again and again-" All phenomena are manifestations of the Unknown." Suppose, however, that the proof came otherwise, or by quicker process; that men did see, day by day, light flash out of darkness, the living rise up out of the dead, and things wholly unlike grow from like things; so that every kindled fire, every dawn of day, every oak from the acorn, every man from a scarcely visible ovule, appealed to them; would they believe? Would they not rather exclaim that man was a sudden evolution, that the oak grew naturally very quickly, that fire was the result or act of combustion, and that the 1 "Principles of Biology," vol. i. p. 339. Creation a Divine Work. 259 sun rose according to mechanical law? What proof can be given that wilful men will not misinterpret? Could we devise any procedure that might not be explained away? If fullgrown men fell from the clouds, is it not likely that a theory -as of aerolites, would explain their fall as a natural event? Is the life of every individual now, and the present continuance of species; the growth of every harvest, and production from hour to hour of plants by natural succession; less wonderful than was the beginining of these things? Go back to the ultimate-Did protoplasm make itself and evolve the energy of life? Does the accounting everything self-produced, or, which is the same, produced by Nature's own power, explain the difficulty? Why, denying miracles, it asserts a really incredible marvel; puts the Spirit of Divinity into stocks and stones; makes men like those Fetish-worshippers who adored the spirit of steam in the engine, and prayed to the cranks and joints! There is an inquiry on the page already referred to-" To what purpose were the millions of these demonstrations which took place on the earth when there were no intelligent beings to contemplate them? Did the Unknowable thus demonstrate His power to Himself?" Surely, philosophers do not imagine that they only are to be cared for; fondly dream that beings like themselves are the greatest things in heaven and earth? that there is no God beside them? that Nature and God, Space and Matter, Time and Energy, are superfluous; unless men look on and admire? If they want that mental range which touches other beings-other worlds; if they are so small, that they judge all Nature from her feet of clay; and are without the will to lift their eyes and see her godlike head; we are sorry for them. Creation does not, necessarily, imply an abrupt appearance; but, simply, a Divine work. Any and every type of life may have begun with imperfect, and attained highest state after many ages of existence. We know that organic form, whether of vegetable or animal, continues the same only so long as inward conditions and outward circumstances remain unchanged; it was so in the past, it will be so in the future; anything otherwise, except by Divine Power, would be impossible. If it were not, the jest and mad freak of Mephistopheles might be true "Wine grapes of the vine are born, Faust. Opponents of the Supernatural seem to forget that is it not enough for the auditory and optical nerves to have a sensation, the intellect must reflect. The material ear and eye give work for the mental ear and eye. Everything visible conducts to the invisible. Not only so, it is impossible for any man to know all sciences, he cannot know one, cannot know one thing perfectly in any one science; every science, and everything in every science, speedily passes beyond knowledge, and is lost in the unknown. That the universe possesses a due correlative and complement in the unseen is a conclusion more and more forced upon physicists by the grand doctrine of the conservation of energy. It is gross presumption to bring up from the depths of ignorance the assertion-"All life, motion, intelligence in the world, are mechanical-as Vaucanson's duck which ate and digested its food; or as the flute-player of the same artist." Why, those mechanisms were the work of mind, and maintained by mind. Even so, the beautiful arrangements of Nature, in their uniformity and variety, in that which we understand and in that whereof we are ignorant, bring us to the acknowledgment of Mind. The modes of action according to natural law cannot be arranged in scientific form, have no ultimate explanation, until represented to our mind as the work of Intelligence. We naturally seek for, and are not satisfied till we find, tokens of Intelligence, like, but infinitely greater than our own, in the moving power. If our argument is badly worked "Though you see a Churchman ill, In the Church continue still." To obtain a conception as to order and will in creation; try, by scientific imagination, to get a view of their reality in a triple truth concerning Vitality: 1. Unity of Power, 2. of Form, 3. of Substance. 1. Unity of Power. All the physical activities of vitality are for maintenance of the body, for changes in its positions and parts, for continuance of the species. If we add activities of consciousness, intellect, volition, the scheme embraces the highest forms of life, and covers those of the lowest creatures. The activities are propagated and maintained by a rhythm of motion. Light consists of undulations. The rays of heat, the movements of electricity, the motions of projectiles, are rhythmical. The rhythm is compound; there are solar, planetary, terrestrial rhythms; but the most numerous are in the phenomena of life. There are rhythms in muscular action, in blood circulation, in contraction and expansion of the lungs, in the periodic need of food and repose, in the increase and decrease of life, in the successive changes of organic forms. Indeed, the whole life of plants and animals, in so far as it is physical, exhibits rhythmical transformations of energy. The rhythm of poetry and music are the outcome of rhythm in sensation, intelligence, emotion. This energy, so far as the earth and our physical life are concerned, centres in the sun; and from the sun, mechanically and chemically, come that aptitude and power by which atoms of salt crystallise, and amorphous fragments arrange and rearrange themselves into special structures; by which atoms of albumen, fibrine, gelatine, or the hypothetical proteinsubstance take specific shapes. 2. Unity of Form. If a drop of human blood be taken, kept warm, examined under high microscopic power, there will be seen structureless corpuscles in marvellous activity, capable of change as to form and individual movement—they are minute portions of undifferentiated protoplasm. Not of the same shape or size in the human organism, as in beast or fowl, in reptile and fish, in worm and plant, but there is a general likeness in the peculiarity: "Traced back to its earliest state or form, the nettle arises as man does, in a particle of colourless protoplasm." 1 So arising, life diverges into the different vital "Physical Basis of Life:" Prof. Huxley. activities, balancing of functions, changes of condition, growth, adaptation, individuality, morphological and physiological development. Not by the development of individuality from the germ, as if the germ contained the perfect organism in miniature; but by that persistence of rhythmical force acting upon the living particles, and developing the intrinsic aptitude, or polarity, into the plant or animal by what may be called special endowment. How strong the action is may be exemplified by the Bignonia. A fragment of the leaf, small as a hundredth-part of the whole, placed in fit soil and kept at suitable temperature, will become a complete plant. Other organisms have like power; a common polype may be cut into very small pieces, from every piece will grow a perfect animal. This process in development of form is subject to continual change, but within definite limits; for, as no natural process works any, even the slightest, difference in the properties of any molecule; this unchangeableness of the molecule tends to bring about that balancing of function which causes a return from variabilities to the original form or stock. "Further, the progress of Nature being mainly in the direction of differentiation of functions once combined, it has a limit backward in the most general forms and conditions, and forward in the most specialised. This is the history of the individual, and probably also of the type, of the world itself and of the universe; and for this reason material nature necessarily lacks the eternity of its Author." Any living body, having diverged from the normal course, will, so soon as the accidental causes of deviation have expended their force, return to equilibrium by that power which physicians call "vis mediatrix naturæ." The increase and decrease of species, their range and degree of perfection in likeness and unlikeness, are not by metamorphoses of confusion, but by a worldwide process giving unity of form, improvement, and advance. The process may be partially explained-" The first centre. of sarcode, or indifferenced organic matter, however originated, yet with certain definite tendencies to formal character and course of growth (as in a Foraminifer, e.g.), buds forth a second "The Origin of the World,” p. 342: J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S. 1 |