Difference in Organisms.

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to the prophecy which of old looked forwards, fully developed science is to the prophecy which of old looked backwards." 1

The great truth, declared by Moses, is affirmed by science that, regarding organisms, the difference as to one another is of degree, not of kind: "in all living beings the matter upon which existence depends is the germinal matter (bioplasm), and in all living structures the germinal matter possesses the same general characters, although its powers and the results of its life are so very different." We are not warranted in thinking, though asserted by some, that vital energy and chemical energy are the same as mechanical power: nor that all substances are resolvable into one kind of matter, the primordial, out of which some surmise all the elements were evolved, "by the different grouping of units, and by combination of unlike groups, each with its own kind, and each with other kinds;" for there are secrets in every organism which we cannot hope to detect—barely to conjecture; things beyond our understanding, things outside the ordinary chemical and electrical affinities.

On the Sixth Day, God created, the flesh-eating animal, or wild beast: pan, cattle, or the herb-eating animal; and , creeping things, all the lower forms of life which are on the land; after their kind. The fierce and terrible are first mentioned because terrible; the others follow according to their apparent importance. It is probable that the order of life's appearance on earth was, first, with the lowest grades of vegetable and animal existence; and then, by progression, to the higher types; possibly according to the classes in which the flora and fauna are scientifically arranged. Animal life is thus classified-Protozoa, Colenterata, Annuloida, Annulosa, Mollusca, Vertebrata.

The arrangement in Scripture is probably rhythmical, not scientific, we have not only the six days apportioned into two triplets, so that the work of the first is completed on the fourth, that of the second on the fifth, and that of the third on the sixth; but the two triplicates are headed by the seventh or sabbath day. These triplicates themselves are "Testimony of the Rocks."

"Protoplasm, or Matter and Life: " Dr. Lionel S. Beale, F.R. S.

triple: in vegetation-grass, herb, tree; in light-sun, moon, stars; in life from the water-fish, bird, creature of length; in life from the ground-wild beast, cattle, creeping thing. Over all this life man is constituted king.

Pausing to look around, we observe-The evidence in favour of Evolution having shown some truth-though not the whole truth, it is one of the Bible's great triumphs to overcome all objections, difficulties, doubts, which arise on the supposition that the Divine narrative asserts the special creation of species. “The book does not so speak, as all may see who will."1 Plant, fish, bird, mammal, man, were framed by a continually ascending process from unity to diversity. The fundamental statements enabling us to see, as by a succession of dissolving views, that God is the source of all things: so that Nature, endued with energy, advances, grade by grade, until the earth is filled with life. Particulars of the process are not revealed, nor by what means the great gulf between the dead and the living was spanned, nor how the vital spark was first kindled. These were left for science to discover-if it can: the province of science being the discoverable, that of revelation the undiscoverable. We now, and rightly, regard it as perfectly natural that the stately oak should be developed from the tiny acorn; is that really less miraculous, less divine, than the production of the earth's primal and rudimentary forms? Is there not, indeed, between the inanimate ground and the acorn, between the acorn and the oak, a somewhat similar passage from the inanimate to the animate-a continual coming of life from the dead; which, though it does not seem to require the vital spark from heaven, as in the first operation, is not less wonderful than was the primal origination? If this be granted, the manifestation of God in Nature is credible and scientific; and grades of life are steps on God's great altarstairs by which life, onward advancing and upward ascending, approaches the ever-living One.

.Let us make man in our image" נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמְנוּ

Job (x. 9) said "Thou hast made me as the clay." God gave the spirit of life to the frame which he had formed 1 64 Cambridge University Sermon," Gen. i. 1: Rev. T. G. Bonney.

Creation of Man.

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out of the dust, and so man became a living soul-of the earth, earthy; but of the soul and spirit, heavenly. When nature-life, as distinct from spirit-life, had attained the summit of opulence and intensity in animal-life, then was created a form for spirit-life. The vegetative life had been subordinate to the animal, now animal life is made subordinate to the spirit, and Adam comes-the up-looking one, the moving principle of the earth's history.

We must not imagine that God's hands formed a clod of earth into human form, and, standing near, breathed into it from without the breath of life. The hand of God is the power of God, which, even in visible things, works invisibly. Man came into existence, as did also the other creatures, by Omnipotence acting invisibly; but, as to man, a solemn word of Divine self-determination and mysterious meaning preceded the creation. The Words of God, as we have said, represent the energy by which material is formed, fashioned, vivified-beasts in their impersonality, man in his personality; beasts by a distribution of existing materials, man by God's immediate formation, and, as it were, by God's breathing; so that he, in spiritual person, is akin to God, and rules as the God-man. The Breath of God did not become a living soul, but made man to be a living soul—a candle illumined by the Lord.

This illumining we are not to apprehend as endowing with spirit, but rather a creating in the soul of spirit-elements to become man's true spirit-form. The Breath of God is that Divine energy which created the God-willed spiritual human personality.

Man in the "image of God" means the ideal, or sort, or kind. In the "likeness of God” means the relation or order of spirituality essentially distinguishing him from brutes. Man is neither, as to his body, the precipitate of the spirit; nor, as to his soul, the sublimate of matter. He is a combination of both in Divine origination as to the body, and by inbreathing as to the soul. The body, thus fashioned, is to receive at the resurrection a re-fashioning of glory; and the soul, now possessing not only the life which God wrought in matter when He made the brute, but that life in union

of soul and spirit which was effected by Divine inspiration, receives yet higher blessing and energy through the incarnation of Christ; for the Son, the form of God in heaven, assumed the fashion of man on earth that He might fill the earthen vessel with heavenly treasure. Thus, also, the Word of God is a living voice of good tidings bringing immortality to light. First the natural body, then the spiritual body.

If we are called to explain the creation of man, so as to help an evolutionist in his endeavour to accept the Bible account, we suggest-From some form, possibly nearer to man than any now known, by exaltation and exquisite fashioning of inner relations in adjustment with enlarged and more complicate outer relations, man may have come forth as from sleep-a prodigy. There are existing illustrations. The crawling creature leaps forth a beautiful vision of sportfulness in the light. The leaps and surprises in animal life to higher forms are numerous. The intellectual power of a great man— the man of a million, as it contains a promise and potency of greatness for all; may be taken as a recurring symbol of that exaltation by which, after the dust had become flesh, the flesh attained capacity for spirit. In other words-" God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

Materialists assert-" That which we call spirit disappears with the dissolution of the individual material combination."1 There is no proof of such positive statement, nor is proof possible. Matter is only known by mind; and while maintaining that the smallest particle of a grain of sand is utterly and for ever indestructible, we cannot think that our inner personal individuality, all that by which we understand the mechanism of worlds, is extinguished at death as by the extinction of a light. We do not know, probably never shall know, how matter is able to assume consciousness; how, then, are we to believe that materialists know there is nothing more in the universe than matter? If we accept the words of Locke as to all our ideas depending upon the senses— nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu "—we add the correction of Leibnitz-“nisi intellectus ipse."

1 "Kraft und Stoff," p. 13: Dr. Büchner.

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Power of the Book.

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As to Providence, God, Creation, we are told-" What this or that man may understand by a governing Reason, a universal soul, a personal God, etc., is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves." So we are to give up every hope as to the future, cast to the winds all reverence for God, and believe-not that God created all things out of nothing, but that all things created or evolved themselves out of something very little better than nothing. A man may as well say-" There is nothing behind the door "-simply because he cannot see through the door; as deny the Divine act of causation, because he cannot detect the occulta vis - the Hidden Energy.

Accurate investigation of the Creative Words enables strong men to check naughty little ones, who count it a stroke of wit and genius to scoff at those things which greater minds worship. Progressive elucidation and research by scholarly process may be compared to that operation in nature which, little by little, rolls away the morning mist from a splendid landscape; as every successive word and statement is rescued from ignorance and misrepresentation, fuller meaning, richer beauty, ever-growing power of sacred verity, go forth as matter for deeper investigation and for solution of mysteries, which will exercise the intellect of future ages. The dogmatism descending to puppyism which places something infinitely less than a tadpole at one end of the series, and man at the other, and professes to know all about it, must be rebuked with calm and simple statement. One line of thought is sufficient. The Book, abused by Secularists as of barbaric origin, mightily rules the intellect, emotion, conscience, of the civilised world; and wherever intellect is enlightened by it, or morals are purified by it, or conscience is instructed by it, men live rightly for mutual welfare and the glory of God. Materialists, abusing the doctrine of Evolution, assert that an infinitesimal something, by imperceptible accretion and infinite variation, during immeasurable time, became worlds of life and beauty, apart from God, and without any ordering of Providence. Writers of the Bible, especially Moses,

"Kraft und Stoff," p. 43: Dr. Büchner.