the direct interposition of a supernatural hand at certain stages or crises, and that extreme extension of the Supernatural into and through the Natural which Professor Bowen reaches in the assertion that each individual living organism, as well as every new species, originated in a special act of creation. This, the complete assimilation of specific to individual origination, is simply Darwinism, expressed in less appropriate language. What the one calls "special act" the other, along with the rest of mankind, calls general process. The common principle of the Divine ordination of Nature, which the philosopher here asserts in a paradoxical way, the Darwinian implies, or even postulates, on appropriate occasions. The Darwinian Naturalist, I mean, not the monistic and agnostic philosopher,- from whom, so far, we have kept as clear as has Mr. Darwin in every volume and every line.

Suppose now that we are shut up to Nature for the evolution of the forms of living things. As theists, we are not debarred from the supposition of supernatural origination, mediate or immediate. But suppose the facts suggest and

inferentially warrant the conclusion that the

course of natural history has been along an unbroken line; that account for it or not.

the origination of the kinds of plants and animals comes to stand on the same footing as the rest of Nature. As this is the complete outcome of Darwinian evolution, it has to be met and considered.

The inquiry, what attitude should we, Christian theists, present to this form of scientific belief, should not be a difficult one to answer In my opinion, we should not denounce it as atheistical, or as practical atheism, or as absurd. Although, from the nature of the case, this conception can never be demonstrated, it can be believed, and is coming to be largely believed; and it falls in very well with doctrine said to have been taught by philosophers and saints, by Leibnitz and Malebranche, Thomas Aquinas, and Augustine. So it may possibly even share in the commendation bestowed by the Pope, in a recent sensible if not infallible allocution, upon the teaching of "the Angelic Doctor," and make a part of that genuine philosophy which the Pope declares to stand in no real opposition to religious truth. Seriously it would be rash and wrong for us to declare that this conception is opposed to theism. Our idea of Nature is

that of an ordered and fixed system of forms and means working to ultimate ends. If this is our idea of inorganic nature, shall we abandon or depreciate it when we pass from mere things to organisms, to creatures which are themselves both means and ends? Surely it would be suicidal to do 80. We may, and indeed we do, question gravely whether all this work is committed to Nature; but we all agree that much is so done, far more than was formerly thought possible; we cannot pretend to draw the line between what may be and what may not be so done, or what is and what is not so done; and so it is not for us to object to the further extension of the principle on sufficient evidence,

I trust it is not necessary to press this consideration, though it is needful to present it, in order to warn Christian theists from the folly of playing into their adversary's hand, as is too often done.

But I am aware that we have not yet reached the root of the difficulty. We are convinced theists. We bring our theism to the interpretation of Nature, and Nature responds like an echo to our thought. Not always unequivocally: broken, confused, and even contradictory sounds are sometimes given back to us; yet

we listen to and ponder them, they mainly harmonize with our inner idea, and give us reasonable assurance that the God of our religion is the author of Nature. But what of thoseyou will say - who are not already convinced of His existence? We thought that we had an independent demonstration of His existence, and that we could go out into the highways of unbelief and "compel them to come in;" that "the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world were clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made," "so that they are without excuse." We could shut them up to the strict alternative of Divinity or Chance, with the odds incalculably against Chance. But now Darwinism has given them an excuse and placed us on the defensive. Now we have as much as we can do, and some think more, to reshape the argument in such wise as to harmonize our ineradicable belief in design with the fundamental scientific belief of continuity in nature, now extended to organic as well as inorganic forms, to living beings as well as inanimate things. The field which we took to be thickly sown with design seems, under the light of Darwinism, to yield only a crop of accidents. Where we thought to reap the golden grain, we find only tares.