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wast created, in the land of thy nativity." The Greek word KTίw and its derivatives seem to be used in the New Testament just as Bara in the Old, with only one exception,* in which it bears the more classic meaning of a human institution.†

As to the second objection, that of banishing the idea of God to an incalculable distance, that objection. is strong or weak according to our conceptions of the Most High. If we believe in the God of Epicurus, who set the world a-spinning, and then retired into inactivity, we certainly lessen the little interest we can have in such a Being by widening the distance that separates us from the period when He handed over His creation to the guidance of physical laws. If, however, we believe in the God of St. Paul, in whom "we live and move and have our being," and "by whom all things consist," the sustainer as well as the giver of life, it becomes a matter of no theological importance in what way He created each species, and development or evolution, if established, becomes merely the gradual carrying out of His mighty scheme of creation.

Yet we need hardly wonder at the attitude which religious men have generally assumed towards this

* 1 Peter 11. 13.

The son of Sirach says that the physician ought to be honoured because the Lord created him: He also created the drugs out of the earth (ex ys, Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. 1, 4). In another place (Ecclesiasticus xvii. 1) it is said that out of the earth man himself was created. In the so-called Wisdom of Solomon (xi. 17), we read that the Almighty hand created the world out of amorphous matter (éž åμóppov üλns).

theory, when we recollect how eagerly it has been caughtat by opponents of Christianity, and how some of its ablest advocates, especially on the Continent, have wrested its teachings in support of materialism.

There is however another aspect of the argument. Every student of the Bible is familiar with the continuous revelations of religious truth through the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets, Christ and the apostles, and the dependence of the later on the earlier; and he may fairly expect to find an analogous continuity and correlation also in nature. Law and order imply design; sudden transitions might be due to chance.

When the Darwinian theory of the origin of species is extended to the human race, there arise other objections. It is clearly inconsistent with a literal interpretation of Genesis ii. 4-24; but from time immemorial many Jews and Christians have taken this second account of the creation of man in a more or less figurative or allegorical sense, and in the present controversy few seem to have felt themselves bound to a literal exegesis. Far more potent against this theory as applied to ourselves are an unwillingness to recognize the monkeys, apes, and gorillas as our poor cousins; a sense of the enormous gulf between them and us; the impossibility of imagining at what stage a transition could take place from the brute to the "image of God;" and a fear lest the admission of development to account for man's bodily frame should

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open the way to dangerous opinions regarding his moral and spiritual nature.

However, I must continue my confession. During the early controversies on this theory there came into my mind certain objections to the influence of natural selection of a similar nature to those which have been so ably brought against it by St. George Mivart. That the "survival of the fittest" plays an important part in the economy of nature, seems to me beyond question; but that it has been the sole or even the principal means of bringing about the wondrous variety of organized beings, is quite another matter. Glancing to the best of my ability over the whole of animated nature, I am disposed to say as the Duke of Argyll says with special reference to the humming-birds: "If I am asked whether I believe that every separate species has been a separate creation-not born, but separately made-I must answer, that I do not believe it. I think the facts do suggest to the mind the idea of the working of some creative law; almost as certainly as they convince us that we know nothing of its nature, or of the conditions under which it does its glorious work." * The problem of the method of creation is a grand one, and modern science lures us on with the hope of a solution. At present we are in the early stage of crude guesses, or at best of partial glimpses yet whatever further insight may be gained, we may rest assured that the Christian will continue "Reign of Law," chapter v.

*

to exclaim as the Psalmist did when reviewing the animate world, but with an ever-widening intelligence, "O Lord, how manifold are Thy works; in wisdom hast Thou made them all!"

It may perhaps be expected that I should say something about spontaneous generation, the vital force, or the physical basis of life, or that I should consider whether any people has ever raised itself to a civilized condition without influences ab extra; but however interesting these questions may be in themselves, I do not know any declaration of Scripture that is affected by their solution one way or the other.

Far otherwise is it with the use that has been made of the uniformity of natural laws as an argument against miracles, special interpositions, and the efficacy of prayer. The constancy of law is everywhere recognized by students of nature, while the doctrines impugned stand on every page of the Bible. It is the connection between the premiss and the conclusion that is doubtful. To discuss it fully would lead us into metaphysical arguments, and in regard to prayer would necessitate a theological inquiry as to the legitimate objects of supplication. I will simply observe that this permanency of the order of nature is no new doctrine. Common observation has always affirmed it. The Scriptures assume it, else a miracle could have no meaning; and while they assert that the ordinary sequence has at times been changed, they assign a special cause (generally the accrediting

of a Divine messenger) to produce the new effect. Nor is the impossibility of a deviation from the general laws a new doctrine of science; it is only the modern form of the old question whether Jupiter was subject to Fate, or Fate to Jupiter. Yet the great attention lately paid to physical laws has certainly rendered men less disposed to believe in miracles; but on the other hand it has rendered the evidence from miracles more conclusive where they are believed. It has also a depressing effect upon religious faith unless we bear in mind that there may be influences which we cannot measure with our galvanometers, or weigh in our most delicate balances; and that while our wills are constantly modifying the manifestations of force, there may be a Supreme Will more free and more potent to act in a way which no experience of ours can possibly predict.

It may be said that, independently of these special points of collision, there is an irreconcilable opposition between natural science and the Scriptures in their general view of the operation of God: the one refers everything to His agency, the other is impatient of the supernatural; thus science, instead of hearing in the thunder" the voice of the Lord," strives to gain a clear conception and a measure of atmospheric electricity; or, instead of acknowledging life as the gift of the Almighty, she endeavours to show its correlation with the chemical and physical forces. I admit the difference, but not the contradiction. The world is

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