tion of gnostic, Manichean, and pantheistic errors, and of materialistic and idealistic speculations. They begin by asserting the essential distinction between God and nature, the supernatural order and the visible universe, the material and intelligent creations. They affirm that matter, the physical basis of all visible things, is God's handiwork; that it is essentially good and not evil; that the world. came into being through Him; that it was the product of His wisdom and love; that it deserves our reverent study as a manifestation of the divine Creator; and that by study of the wonders of the universe we can come to the knowledge of ourselves and God.

And here let me remark, in passing, on the failure of recent attempts to discredit the evidential argument from nature in proof of the truths of religion. What St. Paul said nearly nineteen hundred years ago is as true to-day as then, that the invisible things of God may be understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and godhead.* Against the denial of this fact, based on supposed scientific discoveries, a reaction has already set in; it is admitted that those discoveries,

* Rom. i: 20.

instead of weakening, have strengthened that branch of the evidences of natural religion. God is more clearly revealed in His intelligence, power, and love, the more closely we study His works. To quote Mr. Gore, in his recently published Bampton Lectures: "

66

"If Charles Darwin and the scientific world whom he represents have materially altered, yet they have not fundamentally impaired the evidences in nature of divine purpose or design, nor have they touched the argument (to many minds the irresistible argument) from the beauty of nature to the spirituality of the Being which it reveals."—Lecture II.

Creation is the work of an almighty and benevolent God; a mirror which reveals Him. As we look into that mirror we are held to it by a strange fascination. What is the secret of that fascination? It arises, unquestionably, from the perception of a relationship between nature and ourselves. What is the place of man in the universe of wonders? Let us proceed to consider this point.

It is a striking remark of Emerson, that "the roots of all things are in Man." To Catholics this is a familiar thought. It is said that man, in his progress from obscure embryonic rudiments to the state in which he emerges from the womb into the

outer world, passes through many a stage of lower life. And nowhere is Catholic theology more bold or more masterful than in its account of man in this relation to the universe. Let us hear the words of a great teacher on this point:

"God, in creating the heavens and the earth, created two worlds in one : a world invisible and celestial, the city of spirits; and a world terrestrial and visible, the country of material bodies. Until man appeared on the earth, there were sensitive life and vegetative life, but there was no intelligent life. . In creating man, God joined together spirit and body in the unity of a single being, in such a way that the being of the soul is also the being of the body; and in consequence, in this marvellous creature, the spirit has a corporal being and a corporal life, while the body receives a spiritual being and a spiritual life; the intelligence has, as it were, a material personality, while the material is elevated to a species of intelligent personality; so that in man we find this material body of ours speaking and acting as the spirit speaks and acts, to which the lower is united substantially without confusion. Matter and body are associated with spirit in man, for the worship of God and for the service of religion.”*

This is man; the minor mundus, as he has been called; matter and spirit in one person; represent

*“La Raison Philosophique et la Raison Catholique : Conferences by Father Ventura de Raulica." Paris, Gaume Freres, 1854.

ing and including two worlds; having the entire created universe summed up in him. According to St. Thomas Aquinas:

"Man is not only in touch with the intellectual order by way of his intelligence, and with the material order through his senses; but also, being both spirit and body, he is in himself a summary of the conditions of all bodies and of all spirits. Like God, he is independent of every other created being; he is intelligent, like the angels, and at the same time he has the sensitive life of the brute, the vegetative life of the plant, the augmentative life of the mineral, the inert existence of inorganic beings; and thus, uniting in himself the elements of all beings, the forces of all lives in creation, he produces all the effects thereof and embraces all its harmonies; he is, in short, the world in small, the summary, the abridgment of the world, mundi summa et compendium.'"

Such is man, and this is his place in the universe. And here we come to that stupendous fact in the history of creation which consigns to relative insignificance the questions so much discussed, about the mode of creation, the age of the world, protoplasm, evolution, and the like. The fact referred to is that of the Incarnation. The Creator

has come into His own universe, and has taken it bodily (6μatinos)* into Himself, in assuming

* Col. ii. 9.

our humanity. We assert, as Catholics, while repudiating pantheistic ideas of consubstantiation, commingling, or identification, that God, the personal Creator, by whom all things were made and do consist, was pleased to unite and join together in His person two natures, absolutely diverse and distinct; and that, of these two, one was substantially a summary of the created universe. "Homo factus est." You know that it was human nature, and not a human person, through which the Incarnation was effected. Jesus Christ was not an individual of our race, one in number of Adam's line, born in the natural order, and, subsequently to such birth, united to God. That would not have been incarnation at all in the Catholic sense of the word. But a nature, and not a person, was joined to the Godhead, ἀληθῶς, τελέως, αδιαι ρέτως, ασυγχυτών. And therefore, whatever relation man sustains towards the other orders of creation and the kingdoms of nature, the same does Christ, as man, sustain to them. He, being perfect man, is related to the visible and material creation as truly as to the intellectual and spiritual world.

He also may be called the microcosm, the minor mundus, mundi summa et compendium. And to think of Christ as now an abstract