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tear or the dew-drop as it rounds the star; active in the great forces that guide the rivers, roll the seas, and shape the mountains, as in the apparently tinier forces that gather or disperse the fleecy clouds, and regulate the growth or decay of the smallest flower -man has got the idea of an ordered nature, animated by a great thought, and guided by a great purpose. And the unity of nature suggests the higher unity of its author. The universal reign of law lifts us to the conception of the lawgiving and law-abiding God.

But, while we acknowledge that science has been helpful to our religious ideas, specifically to our conception of God, we must distinctly mark its limits. It has, indeed, done much to ennoble the mind, gladden the life, and ameliorate the sufferings, of man. The splendid discoveries of a Jenner have helped to arrest the march of a destructive pestilence; of a Simpson to still the fatal throb of pain. Science has almost infinitely enlarged our command over the resources of nature, over the pernicious and salutary agencies that sleep within and around us. But see how much lies beyond its province. Man has noble instincts and impulses that impel him to seek the true, to admire the lovely, to worship the good, to feel after and find the Infinite Perfection in which the true, and right, and beautiful, blend into a divine and personal Unity. Man has deep moral convictions of rights that are his due, of duties that he owes, of an eternal law he is bound to discover and obey. Man has sad and remorseful experiences, the sense of unfulfilled duties, of wasted hours, of sorrows that have turned the anticipated joys of his life into utter miseries, of mean and unmanly sins against conscience and heart, against man and

God, of losses unredeemed by gain, of the lonely anguish that comes in the hour of bereavement and throws across the life a shadow that no sunshine can pierce. And out of these mingling instincts and impulses, convictions and experiences, rise man's manifold needs, those cravings after rest, those gropings after a strong hand to hold and trust, those cries for pardon, those unutterable groanings after light shed from a Divine face upon his gloom, in which lie at once the greatness and the misery of man. Moments come to the spirit of man when these needs are paramount, and it feels as if nature and her laws were engines to crush the human heart by which we live. And in those supreme moments, whither does man turn? To science? Does not her talk then of nature, and law, and force, and invariable sequence, seem like the sardonic prattle of a tempter persuading to belief in a religion of absolute despair? Those are the hours, known to many a spirit, when the soul breaks through the thin veil of words woven by the spell of man, and seeks to stand face to face with the eternal Father.

2. Let us come, then, to the discussion of our question without the feeling that theology and science are opposed, or in any sense exclusive of each other. That question concerns Theism, the fundamental truth of theology: Does science, the latest and surest knowledge of nature, contradict the belief in a God who made and who rules the world? Now, one point it is here necessary to note-the question is raised not by science, but by scientific speculation. The physicist may think himself the incarnate antithesis of the metaphysician. He is nothing of the sort; he is often the

THE METAPHYSICAL PHYSICIST.

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metaphysician incarnate. The man who handles the ultimate problem of knowing and being deals with metaphysics. He need not speak the language of the schoolmen and discourse of Entities and Quiddities, the Absolute, and Infinite, and Unconditioned; he may use the terms of the latest physics, and speak of Matter and Force, Energy and Motion; but if his problems concern these as known to man and known by man, as the causes of the changes, the factors of the phenomena that constitute our ordered and intelligible world, then he is beyond all question a metaphysician of purest blood, speculative after the manner of his kind. These terms as known to physics have no relevance to our discussion, and so no place in it; before they can have they must be filled with a metaphysical sense, receive from mind or thought as much rational content as will fit them for their office.

We

What is matter? How do I know it? Has it any being save as known? Subtract mind, and what were matter? Deduct what mind gives to it, and what remains? The physicist may scorn these questions, but his scorn is a sign of his imperfect science. As a matter of fact he cannot, as we shall yet see, be speculative without giving them some sort of answer. have more than once watched a distinguished scientist work himself into eloquent astonishment over the infructuous abstractions of schoolmen and divines, but only as a prelude to his losing himself in a wilderness of metaphysics, where, becoming enchanted, he has lavished on his physically named metaphysical entities an affection that quite shamed Titania's admiring love of the illustrious weaver, only, unhappily, in his case the disenchantment has not been so clear or so complete.

We repeat then, that we have no dispute with natural science, properly so called, but only with what we may term scientific metaphysics. Now in order to an intelligent discussion one thing is necessary to simplify the terms as much as possible that we may reach the real points at issue. For the question is, especially on the scientific side, often so stated as to raise false issues and involve a false antagonism. For example, Professor Huxley, on Friday evening, placed in opposition to each other, the belief in evolution and "the belief in innumerable acts of creation repeated innumerable times." The distinction intended is obvious, it relates to the creative method, not to the creative cause, but it is so stated that evolution appears as at once a modal and a causal theory of creation. So, too, God and nature are often opposed; He is represented as supernatural, incapable of natural action, so distinct from nature that if He touches it He disturbs its order, interferes with its course; it is represented as independent, self-sufficient, self-sufficing, the home of known and measured forces whose ways and action can be observed and understood. Then combining the notions of a supernatural God and special creations, the two are held to be necessary to each other, while nature and evolution form an opposed unity, capable of performing all it once needed God and miracles to accomplish. As a consequence Theism is identified with one method of creation, science with another. Theism is made to involve "an endless succession of miraculous creative acts," to assume "the genesis of the heavens and the earth somewhat after the manner in which a workman shapes a piece of furniture;" but science recognises the method of

"THE MANLIKE ARTIFICER."

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nature, the action of the process it names Evolution. Theism is anthropomorphic, creation by a "process of manufacture," conducted by "a manlike artificer"; but the evolution science loves is natural, the way nature takes to create, multiply and maintain life. The series of antitheses culminates, of course, at the proper point: "the aim and effort of science is to explain the unknown in terms of the known," but theology endeavours to explain the known through the unknown, draws on our ignorance that she may the better interpret in her own interests our knowledge.

But are the assumptions on which these antitheses proceed valid? In what relation does the idea of special creations stand to the belief in God? How are God and nature related? Must we conceive creation by Deity as anthropomorphic? Is evolution a sufficient reason for the being of the order we know? Are matter, motion, force, better known terms than reason and will, and so more suited to state or express our ultimate interpretation of nature? Once we have discussed these questions, we shall be in a better position to discuss this: are there any adequate grounds for the belief in an eternal God who made the world?

II.

In what relation does the idea of special creations and a manlike creator stand to the belief in God? The ideas of special creation and design are thought to be indissolubly related, and alike necessary to Theism. It, they say, must conceive nature as framed by "the technic of a manlike artificer;" and it must conceive him as "acting by broken efforts, as man