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in accordance with unalterable "law." There is no appearance of a power extra to force and matter, destroying the one or the other, creating the one or the other, altering or suspending any law; nor is it possible that law should be suspended or altered, or that matter and force should bo increased or diminished in amount. Very well. But all this is true, whether we talk of natural productions or of man's productions; and what would it prove of man's productions-of a steam-engine, a cotton machine, or a page of printed matter? The printed page is a result showing design; it is also the product of the printing machine, which is itself a result showing design; and to this extent it bears some analogy to organisms, in which we think we see design, notwithstanding that they are shown to be produced from other organisms with similar marks about them. When it is contended that the printed page shows marks of design, is it at all to the point to insist on the undoubted fact that it is the product of something else; that so much energy or force was used in producing it; that this force previously existed in another form; that it is impossible to create or destroy, or alter the amount of force; that certain laws of motion, pressure, and leverage came into play in producing the sheet, and that these laws are unalterable? Nobody disputes these things, and you have not shown that the printed sheet is not the result of a set purpose steadily carried out. Is it any more to the point to talk in the same way when it is contended that the human body, for instance, is a designed structure; when we are not speaking of the creation of matter or force, or of the annihilation of either, but only of their re-arrangement; when we are not contending that any law of nature is

violated or altered or suspended, but only that they are made to operate in a certain way? It is not to the point, except on the assumption that Divine action must differ essentially from human action—an assumption which we believe to be a mistaken one, and which secms to result from metaphysical views of the Deity, which the facts of nature do not support. In the case of man's works, the objection only shows the means by which designed results have been effected, and proves that matter, force, and "law" are necessary pre-requisites if they are to be effected at all. In the case of the works of nature, the objection, in our opinion, does but prove the same thing.

What is meant by the term "creation," as applicable to the origin of living things? Not the calling into existence out of nothing, for that the evolutionists declare to be inconceivable, and their opponents cannot show any reason for holding.1 All the living forms of the world have come to be from the dust of the earthfrom the oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, which, by complex combination, make the original protoplasmic matter. It is now proved to us that the process was not instantaneous, but has occupied myriads of ages; one species being slowly evolved from another by natural causes. The question, therefore, is reduced to this, Has the course of evolution been designed and guided, or not? In either case it is evolution; but if it has been guided it is creation also, and evolution is the method of creation. As this question relates only to the redistribution

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1 The Hebrew word 2 (Bara), Genesis i. 27, means, according to Gesenius, to carve out, to form by cutting. By comparison of Gen. i. 27 with Gen. ii. 7 and 22, it will be seen that the carving or creating is from pre-existing material.

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of matter and energy, so as to form living things, we must start with the existence of matter and energy; and as all forms of energy are resolvable into motion, we start with matter and motion.

A first lesson in astronomy convinces us that celestial phenomena result largely from motion; the earth's rotation giving day and night, its revolution in conjunction with the parallelism of its axis giving the seasons. The heat and light of the sun, which are as needful as these motions, are themselves proved to result from smaller motions in the particles of the sun or its envelope, propagated in millions of small waves across all the intervening gulf. In the same way, all the light and colours, the temperatures and sounds of earth, are reduced by modern physicists to forms of motion; the rose is red, the live coal is hot, the harp-string sounds, because of a peculiar agitation imparted to the particles—the same agitation always for the same result to the same eye, and hand, and ear. With light and heat go electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity; all these forces being so related between themselves, and all of them so connected with motion, that they may safely be regarded as modifications of each other, and as modes of motion. Sulphuric acid owes its properties to the motions of its particles, and the same is true of soda; when these two bodies come into contact, the clashing of the two sets of particles generates a new series of motions, and the resulting sulphate of soda has new properties. Nor can we stop short of the world of life: animal and vegetal bodies are built up of molecules, of wonderful complexity indeed, but the same in their elements as those of the inanimate world, and having properties resulting from their collocations and motions.

Hypothetic fluids, imponderable matters, specific ethers, and other inventions, says Mr Grove, are passing away, and the day is approaching when the two fundamental conceptions of matter and motion will be found to explain physical phenomena.1

The laws of motion are as necessary and immutable as the fact of the existence of space; and as soon as matter moves, the laws are exemplified, and phenomena begin to fall out. The first law of motion is, that a body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless operated upon from without. The second law is, that the change of motion is proportioned to the force impressed, and is produced in the same right line in which that force acts. The third law is, that reaction is equal to action, and in the contrary direction. These are the laws which the particles, molecules, or atoms of matter must necessarily observe in all their travels and collisions. Pushed out of one path they must take some other, but the new states and relations will always spring out of those immediately preceding, and everything is brought about by way of natural consequence.

All this being so, it is clear that a redistribution of matter and energy is all that takes place in the building up of any structure, whether it be a printing-press, an animal body, or a planet. "Give me matter," says Kant, "and I will build the world." It is clear also, that whatever intelligence or will-force may be exerted to direct the course of the redistribution-man's or that of some higher being-the laws or principles concerned are the same, and therefore the method of

1 Discourse on Continuity. By W. R. Grove, Q.C., &c. Longmans, 1867, p. 311.

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action must be the same in principle. If, therefore, a Creator works in the universe, He works essentially as man works—man is a creator-and so the question becomes this, Does the world present us with any appearances like those which man's intelligence produces ? And we contend that it does; as, e.g., in its animal structures.

Mr Spencer we know would object to this argument of parallelism. He says,1 "The artizan does not make the iron, wood, or stone which he uses, but merely fashions or combines them. If we suppose suns and planets and satellites, and all they contain, to have been similarly formed by a 'Great Artificer,' we suppose merely that certain pre-existing elements were thus put into their present arrangement." This is no doubt so. "But whence the pre-existing elements?" he asks. With this we contend we have nothing to do. He proceeds, "The comparison helps us not in the least to understand that; and unless it helps us to understand that it is worthless. The production of matter out of nothing is the real mystery, which neither this simile nor any other enables us to conceive; and a simile which does not enable us to conceive this, may just as well be dispensed with." If our inquiry is how matter was produced out of nothing, such a simile had better be dispensed with; but if we are asking how the present dispositions of matter came about, and especially how matter came to have those forms which we see in living bodies, so many of which forms lead all writers on the subject to talk of mechanism and contrivance (if only for convenience and to make themselves understood), then the simile is quite to the purpose. The production of matter out of 1 First Principles, p. 34.

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