is, the will of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence. It has been often said that the true poet is a seer, and in the noble verse of an American poetess, we find expressed what may prove to be the highest fact of science, the noblest truth of philosophy:

"God of the granite and the rose!
Lord of the sparrow and the bee!
The mighty tide of Being flows

Through countless channels, Lord, from thee;

It leaps to life in grass and flowers,
Through every grade of being runs,
While from Creation's radiant towers
Its glory flames in stars and suns."

We find in both Darwin and Wallace the recognition of God as the ultimate force of all the manifestations of terrestrial organisms. The inception of the natural selection hypothesis, in Darwin's mind, was evidently not through bias to atheism nor for atheistic purpose. It germinated in the genuinely scientific spirit, under impulse of large store of observed facts in his Beagle tour-impulse to generalize and include facts in one unifying law-the direction in which all modern thought is drifting. Natural selection, he claims, is the unifying law, is the key of the problem. He, with a master's power, has made use of this key amid much labor, wide, minute observation, much contumely, in a calm, incisive, broad, philosophio pirit, and to-day stands facile princeps among those of his generation who have given shape to modern thought. Britain, the Continent, America, are alike to-day widely and deeply feeling the influence of Darwin.

Avaunt and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!

... Hence, horrible shadow!

may put to fight Banquo's ghost; Darwinism will not thus down. That utterance which is able to arrest, hold, shape the thinking of the world, as Darwinism does to-day, is worthy more than a sneer, is worthy calm, serious thought.

Does the method of the introduction of life upon the earth urged by Darwinism, conflict with Scripture? No.

Darwin, in his "Origin of Species," ascribes the origin of terrestrial life to "one primordial form, into which life was first breathed by the Creator." Wallace makes God the author both of matter and organisms: "Matter as an entity," he says, "does not exist, force is a product of mind. My view exhibits the universe as a universe of will power." Huxley is rather inclined. to "expect," could he

"look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing physical and chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than a man recall his infancy, he should be witness of the rise of living protoplasm from not living matter." Yet this does not exclude God as the ultimate force giving rise to life by power manifested in law, through "not living matter;" he would simply deny the "interference" of God's working. It is simply, as Wallace says, "a question as to how God has worked" in the introduction of life npon our globe,-by "law," or by the "continual interference" method. Scripture does not detail the modus operandi of God in introducing life, it simply asserts the fact. The method we may give over into the hands of science, to work over and determine, knowing that whatever method it may finally fix upon, it can not be in conflict with Bible statement, for the Bible makes no statement on the matter.

Does the method of the rise of species, genera, etc., urged by Darwinism, conflict with Scripture? No.

When it is said, "God divided the light from the darkness, and called the light day," etc., God did not, by direct and continual interference every twelve hours, do this dividing, but did it by the law which courses the earth's rotation,-does it thus to-day. When When God said, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered unto one place, and let the dry land appear," not direct supernatural action of God accomplished this instantaneously, but the gradual operation of those same laws that in our day is ever modifying the distribution of land and water. If Darwinism claims, when in the same connection we read, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the waters the moving creature, let us make man," we are not here to introduce an entirely new method of God's working-direct action without intervening action of law-but still find God in the progressive, gradual, regular operation of law, there is here nothing to which hermeneutics can object-no conflict with Bible statement. How God collected and shaped the particles of dust needful for the first man's body, we are not told, but we may expect to find God here operating in law. Darwin's hypothesis is simply the announcement of one possible method by law of fashioning the first human body. There is nothing in Darwin's method conflicting with Scriptural statement,-Scripture makes no statement in the matter. And when Darwin claims that, although it is written, "God created man," yet that a natural process intervened, he does nothing more than commentators do in interpreting the old Jewish writing passim. Does the Darwinian hypothesis of the development of man's

intellectual and moral natures from some brute creature, lessen the dignity of man, or impair his responsibility? No.

The dignity and moral responsibility of man do not depend upon his "whence," but upon what he now is. It no more derogates from man to claim, with Darwin, that he has passed through the form, "in the dim obscurity of the past, in the early progenitor of all the vertebrata, of an aquatic animal, provided with bronchiæ, with the two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (e. g., the brain and heart), imperfectly developed; this animal being more like the larvæ of our existing marine ascidians than any other known form," than that he in each individual of the race to day, originates from a cell, than a larger mass of unconscious animated pulp, than the non-intellectual, non-moral babe. Not what I was untold centuries ago, or a few years ago, but what I find myself to-day, is the all-absorbing question. Is man to-day intellectually capable of abstract thought, deduction, generalization,-capable of perceiving moral distinctions, of comprehending the significance of the "ought" and the "ought not," feel them pressing in upon him in their absolute sovereignty over him? This, this alone, aside from all question of "whence," tells man of his intellectual dignity, of his moral responsibility, of his alliance with and his image of the One who is Absolute Intellect and Absolute Holiness.

Does Darwinism, by the process of development of man from a monad, during untold millions of years, render the gulf between man and God wider than does the hypothesis of his direct creation? No.

The man who rises by slow development to moral consciousness from a cell, we regard no whit more widely separated from God than was Adam, created (as some suppose) instantaneously. God is equally near every moral creature of his universe, whether angel spoken (mayhap) into full moral conscious by instantaneous fiat, or man, the cell, the vegetative pulp, the mere eating, breathing, sleeping animal, and after process of years the moral creature, or man risen into the moral creature by process of development, yet more prolonged through ascidian, reptile, quadrumane. Not the length of time consumed by the creature in attaining a moral nature, is the measure of God's intimacy with the creature, but the simple fact of the creature's possessed of a moral nature.

Darwinism, we thus find, does not conflict with Scripture. Further, Darwinism commends itself to us by being in the current of the most advanced modern thought,-generalization, a unifying of phenomena under law, the reign of law. Buckle, in the extreme

application of this tendency, discards the idea that even human action "depends on some capricious and personal principle peculiar to each man, as free will, or the like," but claims that "men's actions only form part of one vast scheme of universal order." Quetelet, by statistics, seeks to prove that crime itself is subject to law. The (so called) "science" of sociology is created in our day by impulse of this same tendency. The tendency is found everywhere in modern thought; Darwinism lying in this current so far commends itself to us.

We may, then, enter upon the examination of Darwinism, free from prejudice against its hypotheses as anti-scriptural; we may come to it as something in tune with the present current of thought, generalization. We may treat it as a mere scientific question, involving in its proof or disproof no scriptural statement, having only a scientific interest, and to stand or fall as it gives or fails to give facts to sustain its hypotheses.

But this is to be noted: Darwinism does not in its most trustworthy expounders (however sciolist) claim to be proven; it is merely set forward as probable; and our inquiry is, Does this hypothesis present us with sufficient probability to decide us to accept it provisionally? III. Origin of Life, Species, etc.

Huxley, while denying that he has evidence sufficient upon which to base a "belief," yet has an "expectation" that "living protoplasm has originated from not living matter." This view cannot be called Darwinian, yet being put forth by one of Huxley's prominence, who favors Darwin's hypothesis, deserves notice. Being only an "expectation," presenting us no grounds for "belief," the view has no claims upon our scientific faith. Further, in this "expectation Huxley has to assume that "the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions," never known to exist;-this is simple assumption and not science, and a hypothesis requiring this assumption has no claim upon us. Further, Huxley assumes a power to exist in "not living matter," by simple change of conditions, physical and chemical, which it has never been known to exhibit under any conditions, the originating of life. He himself declares his positive disbelief that any man has yet "brought not living matter into those conditions by artificial means as to cause it to assume those properties we call 'vital""; he thinks "M. Pasteur's experiments have given the doctrine of spontaneous generation a final 'coup de grace.'" The recent claims of Dr. Bastian1 as to spontaneous generation, must be held in abeyance until further tested.

1 Beginnings of Life.

Darwin does not attempt to determine the origin of life, claiming his hypothesis is concerned simply with the origin of the variations and adaptations now found in organisms. But he incidentally speaks of life being "breathed into " the first organism or organisms -and speaks of these as being "created"-clearly here recognizing God as the originator of life upon our globe. And as to the number of original creations, he says, page 419:

I believe that animals have descended, at most, from only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants which have ever lived on this earth, have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.

Is Darwin's hypothesis of the rise of all life-vegetable and animal—from "one primordial form," sustained by evidence sufficient to commend it to our scientific faith?

He claims analogy leads him to this belief, but analogical argument is of weight only in removing objections, not as basis of a hypothesis. Further, legitimate argument from analogy is argument drawn from something of the same in kind as that to which it is applied; but Darwin can give us no case of a world of organismsvegetable and animal-arising from "one primordial form into which life was first breathed," and from this form, by natural selection, such variety of species, genera, etc., as our world presents, has been evolved; and yet just this he needs to do to give us, for his hypothesis, even the weak support of an argument from analogy. Analogy can give us no help in framing a hypothesis of the origin of life, species, etc., in our world; we never saw life originate in a world. void of life, we never saw any species originate; supposed analogy here is glamour.

Two tendencies thrust the mind towards Darwin's view of the origin of terrestrial life, species, etc. One of these tendencies is indicated in that of Herbert Spencer: "The special creation of plants and animals seems a satisfactory hypothesis, until you try and picture to yourself definitely the process by which one of them is brought into existence." This difficulty some seem to think is lessened by lessening the size of the animals created. This is utterly fallacious. Seek, e. g., to picture to yourself Huxley's "protoplasm," originating from "not living matter," that "not living matter" being operated upor by "physical and chemical conditions" we do not know anything about, and I doubt whether you can "picture to yourself definitely the process," etc., any more, or nearly so much, as by the special 1Species, 185, Amer. ed., 1860.