inorganic matter directly, as one might build up a vessel of clay and then vivify it. The new conception of God as creator finds its concrete, empirical representation in the act of expressing a thought or purpose into the spoken word. Creation is the phenomenalizing of will, so sublimely described in that ancient formula, In the beginning God spoke and it (the whole phenomenal universe) became.

The origin of the universe is thus the becoming phenomenal of an eternal purpose; the only alternative is to deny all origin, and to assume that the phenomenal universe itself is eternal.

Evolution the Mode of Creation of Organic Beings.-And, as we have seen, the great distinction between organic and inorganic matter consists in the evolving of the organic characters in an appreciable and often very slow course of time; whereas the qualities of inorganic matter were originally committed to the particular matter, which has continued to exist from the beginning without change.

The slowness and continuity of the process of organic evolution is thus an evidence of the continual presence of creative energy in the world, and the permanence of qualities of inorganic matter is evidence of the ultimate distinctness between the created and the Creator. The human mind is utterly incapable of accounting for intrinsic differences in the universe except by conceiving of some mode of their origination, and we have not explained their origin by simply saying that they have evolved.

The change which the speculations of the last fifty years have wrought in the notion of creation has been a most important and radical one. There has been substituted for the old idea of an artificer constructing a machine out of materials, with the addition of his making his own materials out of nothing, the higher conception of the transformation of a conscious purpose into physical action—the visible expression of invisible will.

The Properties of Matter Coexistent with it, and either Eternal or Created. The new notion of creation does not include the idea of the making of something out of nothing, but it does mean that what has existed already in one state of being

(which we describe under the simile of purpose of the eternal mind) becomes expressed in another realm of existence (which we describe in terms of form and function of living matter).

When we define matter as being of various elemental kinds, their differences being expressed by their behavior under sundry conditions, and called properties or qualities, we proceed on the assumption that these properties are characteristic of the particular kind of matter, and have been from its first existence, so that there is no evolution: the properties are either eternal or were immediately created as they are.

In the case of organisms it does not free us from the same conclusion, if we liken their characters to the properties of matter, and imagine that there is some original endowment of differences which gradually finds expression by evolution.

If we attempt to treat the characters of organisms as if they were properties of matter, we are forced to imagine infinite and inconceivable ultimate units, like atoms, of which the original organic matter of ancestral organisms was composed, and it has been found necessary to endow these units. with qualities of persistence and definition, of will and determination, of power over the environment in which they reside, and of judgment of the value of the to-be-attained morphological structure and functional activities of the organisms, which in the creational idea are ascribed to the will and mind of the Creator.

Any one who is not already prejudiced against the notion of God cannot fail to see in the theistic view of the Creator, in which eternal will and purpose constitute the powers and potencies back of phenomena, a more rational and satisfactory theory of the universe than the materialistic view in which the same powers and potencies,. invisible and infinitesimal, are made to be the endowments of an infinite number of undying, determinant, organic units.

Evolution does not apply to the Mode of Becoming of Chemical or Physical Properties of Matter, but is the Distinctive Characteristic of Organisms. In the case of chemical and physical properties, as related to particular material things and on the assumption that matter is not eternal, their creation can be considered only as having been immediate, since our whole science of physics

and chemistry is based on the assumption that these properties persist without change.

But in the case of organisms their characters are constantly changing, and evolution as a theory is based upon the assumption of not only constant but progressive change. The origination of the organic characters was not done all at once, but evolution as the mode of creation of organisms has been more or less continuous throughout the geological ages. It is this continuation of the process of phenomenalizing that distinguishes the mode of creation in the organic realm from that in the lower realm of inorganic matter. Whatever is characteristic of organisms was not created at once in any remote beginning, but has been unfolded by degrees, and there is no reason for supposing that the process is not still going on. Such expressions as "effort," "growth force," "conscious endeavor, “reactions, "producing modification." " "determination," "memory," etc., used in describing the phenomena of evolution, all express the notion of the pre-existence of some unphenomenal property, or power, or potency, which constitutes the cause of the particular characters which are acquired by organisms in the process of their evolution.

The Evolutional Idea an Enlargement of the Conception of God as Creator. On the assumption that the ideas of creation and Creator are fundamental to a rational explanation of the universe and such an assumption seems to be a logical necessity to account for any intrinsic heterogeneity-we observe that the effect of adding the idea of evolution to creation enlarges the conception of creation by making it a continuing process instead of an ancient act, and brings God into the midst of the present universe.

The purpose of the living God then becomes immanent by continuously phenomenalizing itself into living form. God thus becomes a living, present, active reality in the existing universe, and the course of the evolution of organisms becomes in a true sense the history of creation. This term “Schöpfungsgeschichte" was chosen by Haeckel for the title of his treatise on the laws of evolution, and in one of its closing chapters he acknowledged that there are only two ways of accounting for the original organisms-spontaneous genera

tion or creation.* Both of these hypotheses are alike in recognizing that nothing in the visible universe is capable of accounting for the properties of living matter.

Evolution as an Account of the Course of the History of Creation a Gain upon the Older Idea of Arbitrary Creation, but not a Satisfactory Substitute for Creation.-Evolution as a theory of the mode of the orderly appearance of heterogeneity among organisms. is a great gain upon the older theory of creation, which found no natural or regular method in the history, but only an arbitrary and unfathomable complexity and heterogeneity.

That this order of sequence is correlated with genetic succession, and is thus bound up with the organic nature of the evolving beings, is a most rational inference from the facts observed.

But evolution as a theory of origins, as an attempt to explain why things are as they are, as a philosophy of the cause of organic diversity, is an utterly inadequate substitute for creation. And we find the most zealous advocates of pure scientific observation unable entirely to avoid the inquiry Why are things as they are?

Consideration of Causation Indispensable to a Thoughtful Study of Nature. In our studies we may for a time confine our attention to the "course of nature," entirely excluding all consideration of matters not pertaining strictly to definition and classification of the facts actually observed and measured; but sooner or later we must think, and when we think the question of cause, and the nature of the relation of cause and effect, inevitably arise.

A scientist, so ardent for the elimination of everything unscientific from science as Mr. Huxley, was not unconscious of something beyond, as is illustrated by the following quotations.

In the admirable study of the "crayfish" as a typical organism we find the following definition: "The course of nature as it is, as it has been, and as it will be is the object of scientific inquiry; whatever lies beyond, above, or below this is outside science;" but such a definition only follows the state

* Vol. I. p. 348.

ment that "the phenomena of nature are regarded as one continuous series of causes and effects, and the ultimate object of science is to trace out that series."

*

And in the same essay the remark is made that" Under one aspect the result of the search after the rationale of animal structure thus set afoot is Teleology, or the doctrine of adaptation to purpose; under another aspect it is Physiology."

If we admit into the discussion of science the question as to the causal relation of one thing or event to another, the consideration of a supreme cause necessarily comes into the case. As is tersely phrased by Whewell: “In contemplating the series of causes which are themselves the effects of other causes, we are necessarily led to assume a supreme cause in the order of causation, as we assume a first cause in the order of succession."+

Causes not Discovered by Observation, but Discerned by the Reasoning Mind. In the scientific study of organisms it is possible to separate in our minds the act of observation from the act of the associating one observed fact with another as cause and effect. It is one thing, however, to observe, note, measure, define, and classify organisms and their structures and functions, and quite another thing to state that a particular structure and function is caused by a particular preceding structure and function or by any other preceding conditions of the world.

For instance, there can be no dispute that the heat of the sun, the various conditions of moisture, of air and soil, incident to the spring season, are the direct causes of the leafing out of the elm-trees on the street side; but it is far from the truth to say that these conditions of environment have had any causative agency whatever in producing the elm leaves, when the elm leaf is considered as differing from a maple leaf. The mere association of two phenomena together does not determine the one to be the cause of the other.

The fact that we are familiar with and understand the effects of heat and moisture, and do not understand the operation of the more hidden biological forces, does not influence

*The Crayfish," p. 3.

Nov. Org., III., x. § 7.