inside to repair, or change, or enlarge it. But so to conceive the matter is to deify Nature and undeify God, make it not only independent of its Cause, but able so to limit as to annul His omnipresence and omnipotence. The action of incorporate mind is not supernatural. It can express whatever it thinks, feels, wills, in and through its physical organism, and no one ever names the expression "interference." And the immanent action of God is as the action of incorporate mind, as natural and as necessary. The supernatural and the action of God are not identical. Wherever Nature works He works. There is no point in the universe, as there is no moment of time, without His presence, or shut to His energies. "What do I see in Nature?" asked Fénelon; "God-God everywhere-God alone." And a far greater theologian, who had allowed "pie hoc posse dici naturam esse Deum,"* only paraphrased Scripture when he said, "Spiritus divinus, qui ubique diffusus omnia sustinet, vegetat et vivificat in cœlo et in terra."+

But hitherto our argument has been concerned with points formal and preliminary; now it must essay hardier and more positive work. Theism needs to be made out not simply compatible with science, but necessary to the scientific interpretation of the universe. The false and inconclusive thinking that sets God and Nature in opposition and inter-independence has to be brushed aside, but only * Calvin, "Instit.,” lib. i. v. 5. + Ib., lib. i. xiii. 14.

that Nature may the more evidently appear, as created, inexplicable, as creative, inconceivable, without God.

The world now is-once was not; man and his works areonce were not. How and why did they come to be? That question science rather delights to face than seeks to evade. Her search after the birth-time of the world has been so grandly victorious as to force her to attempt, from her own side and by her own methods, the perennial inquiry into its cause. Nature is uniform, works everywhere from within, grows, does not construct, bears and becomes, does not manufacture, and science, as her interpreter, expresses her method or process by development, evolution. The forms of inorganic nature have been developed by the operation of necessary mechanical laws; the forms of organic life have been evolved by the operation of natural forces. Variation, the struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest, explain the endless varieties of organized beings that have lived and are living upon the earth. The inter-active play of organism and environment, the creature and the medium in which it lives, has resulted in man and his works.

Now, there is no intention here of either questioning or denying evolution. Modern thought is too deeply penetrated with it to allow its exclusion from any scientific and speculative conception of the universe. Hegel lived before Darwin, and evolution was known to metaphysics long before it was adopted and naturalized by physics. Nature

was construed from the ideal earlier than from the real side. And the construction was comprehensive too, aimed at expressing the laws of both matter and mind, at explicating the histories alike of nature and spirit. Evolution in science need not startle us any more than evolution in philosophy. But as it now appears in science, there is one question it inevitably suggests-What does it explain or mean? It is, we are told, a theory of creation. But in what sense? a modal or a causal theory? Does it simply explain the method by which things came to be, or does it express their cause? Process or method is one thing, cause another. Simplifying the process is not the same thing as simplifying the cause. Granted the old handicraft theory replaced by "the struggle for existence," in which, by "survival of the fittest," Nature evolves more perfect forms and creates new species-what then? Simply the old inevitable question-Whence the "existence" to struggle, the "fittest" to survive, the Nature which is the arena of contest, whose potencies, too, perform so many wonderful things? The new creational process simply makes us confront the old question of cause-does no

more.

It is necessary to emphasize this distinction of a modal and a causal theory of creation. It is neither asserted nor assumed that our more distinguished evolutionists, philosophic and scientific, are blind to it; but it is often by their peculiar presentment subtly masked. The conclud

ing sentence of the "Origin of Species" will be remembered:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one; and that while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been, and are being evolved."

But it depends on the sense read into "beginning" whether it can be called "simple.". If the "few forms or one" be regarded in themselves, then they may be described as "simple;" but if they are regarded as the parents of the future, containing "the promise and potency" of the "endless forms" that have been and are to be, then they are exceedingly wonderful. They are simple as a beginning, but not as a cause. A process starts at the lowest point and culminates in the highest, begins with the least, ends with the most perfect. But the lowest does not explain the highest, is not the sufficient reason of its existence. The cause must be adequate, not only to the immediate, but to the ultimate effect, must continue active and operative to the end. If Nature is called in to qualify beginning, if the environment is made to co-operate with the organism, then we are but made to see a subtle complexity in the process, that exalts our sense of the infinite sufficiency, the universal activity and inexhaustible energy of the Cause. The method of Nature is but a creation or

result of the forces that have made Nature-their way of working, and only as these fontal or creative forces are known can the veil be lifted from the mystery of being. Even "spontaneous generation" would not, were it proved, be an ultimate explanation. As "generation" it could not, though styled "spontaneous," be held uncaused, and the generative force would remain no less mysterious than the evolution of the organism from the seed. The genesis of a form is not explained when it is shown how it came to be, but only when what caused it to be is made evident. Evolution has done the one, but not the other; has simplified our notion of the creational method, but not of the creational cause.

Evolution, then, as simply a modal, cannot be used as if it were a causal theory of creation. It has proved that the cosmic cause does not work as a handicraftsman, but has not disproved its being-has rather made it, if no greater necessity, a greater certainty. A beginning is now indisputable, demonstrable fact. Nature is not eternal, is created, evolved, but by what or whom? This problem has of late greatly exercised our scientific speculation. In dealing with it, it proceeds in a very extraordinary fashion. It builds on the psychological foundation of Hume a structure it was never meant to bear, and cannot possibly sustain. Hume saw that on the principles of his psychology no rational inference could be drawn as to the being of anything supra-sensible, and he drew none; that it