man in his childhood to apprehend God, or at least to feel him distinctly in the universe, and the only mode by which he could make this realization was according to the mode of his own activities. This method is recognized by the inspired writers, as is particularly evident in examining that noble theological primer, Genesis. There God is represented as working by the day as a simple laboring man would work; he fashions and makes, speaks and consults, much like the primitive workman. Again, we are told in one place in the Psalms that the heavens are the work of his fingers, and in another place that they are the work of his hands; and God's action is described in many similar terms throughout the book. This early mode of apprehension is often spoken of in a derogatory tone as anthropomorphic; but when man attempts to realize the modes of action of Deity, he must interpret them by his own, and the modern mechanical theory of the universe is just as anthropomorphic for men of to-day as was the primitive one of immediate bodily agency. Man came, however, soon to execute his purposes through second causes-machines-but they were for the most part at first simply instruments whereby he advantageously adjusted his own force to the forces of nature without him. Such were the simple mechanical powers, lever, wheel, pulley, etc. Man early brought some part of the animal creation under subjection; but it was some time before he learned to harness the forces of nature and make them do his will. But man's machines needed constant supervision, and there were breaks in their action which had to be filled by the direct personal agency of a man. Such being the condition of man's action through second causes, the action of God was naturally conceived of in the same way. The universe was, indeed, a machine, but there were breaks where the direct personal agency of God appeared. But machines were made with fewer and fewer breaks. The progress of invention has introduced a great amount of self-regulating apparatus, until, in some machines, measurably perfect automatism is secured. When a part of a machine, which requires a human agent to keep it at its function, is so made that it runs itself without the intervention of man, we say that it works automatically. When the boy, as the story is, who attended the valves of a steam engine, fixed strings so that they should do his work for him, he achieved an automatic invention. There are now machines for making pins which are so automatic in their action that a piece of wire introduced at one end of the machine, comes out at the other end as finished pins. In a pin manufactory we would soon, however, find a personal human agent at work, and the automatism would be seen to be imperfect. Suppose that a machine or workshop were so constructed that, the material being placed in a self-regulating hopper, situated outside the shop, there should come out at the other end a perfect locomotive. A machine which should be so automatic as this is perfectly conceivable, and may in the distant future be made and worked. Automatism is obviously a measure of intelligence displayed in design. The fewer men required in a shop, and the more the operations are carried on by automatic machinery, the more intelligence is evinced in design. A skewer whittled by a savage shows far less design than a pin coming from a machine designed by the civilized man. The pin machine evinces far more intelligence in its construction than an ordinary lathe, and a locomotive machine would call for much greater intelligence than a pin machine. If automatism be a mark of high human intelligence may we not expect that the infinite intelligence of God would employ, if not an actual, at least a practical infinitude of second causes, in his work? If an automatic locomotive-machine is a sign of very great intelligence, how much greater intelligence would an automatic universe-machine exhibit? We perceive that a lack of automatism in a human machine is a defect, and similarly breaks in nature would seem to be a defect. To suppose that in the shop of nature we shall come to many breaks in the mechanism, where science cannot find physical causes, but where we must suppose an unseen Creator directly manipulating, this would seem to denote an imperfect intelligence. Entering such a locomotive workshop as we have imagined, we would find no workman. We might scientifically investigate each process to its minutest detail, and show perfectly how it all works, and have nothing to say of a personal agency. So in the vast machine-shops of nature science seems to indicate that we might wander for ages, minutely examining everywhere, and never come upon the personal divine agent at work. We may describe an unknown antecedent as a personal divine agent, only to find automatic mechanism on the discovery of the actual antecedent. If this universe be an infinitely automatic machine, we might expect that a scientist, absorbed in watching processes and orders of changes, would form a strictly mechanical theory of the universe, and deny final causes, just as we might expect an ant to form a strictly mechanical theory of a locomotive-making machine. We are further led to this theory of a perfect automatism in the universe by the general similarity between man's invention and those of nature. Man has in his invention consciously or unconsciously initiated natural mechanism. This analogy between man's industry and nature's is very perfect, and is very clearly treated by M. Janet in his book on final causes, and, in fact, this is the principle which he employs and defends throughout the whole work. It would seem strange, if an analogy, which is so complete in other respects, should fail in such an important point as automatism, and if natural machines be automatic, it would be strange if they were only so imperfectly, as is the case with man's machines. On the whole, then, it seems to me that the theory of evolution destroys beyond resuscitation the argument from ignorance. Evolution asserts the universality of second causes, the universality of law in space and time; it makes as a broad and sweeping generalization, that toward which science has been progressing through the centuries, viz: that there are no breaks in nature so far as we have gone, and that we are not likely to find any. Such a theory gives free scope to the scientist to search for second causes, and he naturally exults in it. Evolution greatly expands our conceptions of the universe; it declares that finite man may never hope to reach to the end of the works of the infinite God; and, interpreting God's industry by man's, we are further led to believe in a perfectly automatic universe-machine. Suppose that we even accept Herbert Spencer's hypothesis that the universe reproduces itself by successive involutions and evolutions, do we thereby, as many theists have supposed, take a rather atheistic position? If we may accept it as a proof of the intelligent wisdom of God that a species of animals should be continued in existence by natural generation, rather than that each individual should be fashioned of clay by the hand of God, as Luther considered the best way, so a universe, continuing itself by a natural reproduction, would illustrate on an infinitely larger scale the intelligent design of God. Teleology has been called a "carpenter theory," but a teleology which views the universe as a practically infinite automatic machine, would forever destroy the force of any such epithet. From the point of view of physical science we think that such a view of the universe commends itself to teleology; but, as even physicists are recognizing, there is more than mere mechanism in the universe. It is a good sign that such scientists as DuBois Reymond and Tyndall do plainly say that consciousness and volition are mysteries to physical science and will ever remain so. They are phenomena sui generis. God is immanent in this universe through intelligence and will, and he, the First Cause, comes into connection with the first causes he has made at every point and especially through the revelation. of himself in Christ Jesus, "who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him and unto him, and he is before all things, and in him all things consist." A well-known authority on Natural Thelogy has kindly sent the writer the following quotation from the late James Clerk Maxwell, which admirably sums up the whole matter: "Great Principle of all we see, Unending continuity! By thee are all our angles sweetly mended. By thee are our misfits adjusted. And as I still in thee have trusted, So trusting, let me never be confounded! Oh, never may Direct Creation Break in upon my contemplation! Still may thy causal chain, ascending, Appear unbroken and unending. But where that chain is lost to sight Let viewless fancies guide my darkling flight ARTICLE III.-THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF BELIEF IN GOD. If the problem of theology could be solved only by a process of reasoning; if the yearning of religion could be satisfied only by an exercise of will, the cause of theological truth and religious practice would indeed have much to fear in these days of criticism and negation. For who by searching can find out God, or rise by his own might into the Infinite! Yet the former is precisely what British apologists for the last three hundred years have been boasting that they could accomplish. The latter is precisely what the more recent New England theology has been urging its disciples to perform. The two sides, the speculative and the practical, are here as everywhere closely united. The man who regards the belief in God as a product of his own reasoning is sure, however artfully he may try to conceal it under ill-fitting scripture quotations, to represent the life of God in man as the product of the human will, and vice versa the man who relies on the unaided ability of the human will in matters of conduct is naturally jealous of any attempt to mark the limitations of the intellect in matters of speculation. A distinguished defender of the logical method of arriving at a belief in God and divine realities is wont to say that if we cannot come to a knowledge of God in this way we are atheists. It is a sad fact that multitudes of men who find themselves unable to reach a belief in God by such a process do, with more candor than truth, profess themselves agnostics and atheists. There are, however, those to whom the whole logical proceeding, when it assumes to be in itself an adequate proof of the Divine Being, appears as questionable and unsatisfactory as the most avowed agnostic could claim, who nevertheless refuse to accept for themselves the title which the professor above alluded to assigns them. They may, perhaps, be pardoned for taking a wicked delight in knowing that the great body of German divines from Schleiermacher to Dorner; the entire school of Coleridge and Maurice |