We are not yet ready for more than the most cautious tentative hypothesis. So far from being able to ascend from the monad to man, it is probable that every creature now living has lost all the members of its direct line of ancestry. A friend, W. Kitchen Parker, F.R.S., says, "We may liken the present animal creation to a high staircase: monad the first step, Homo the top one. Homo, however, does not-nor as for that do the others -appear to have gone up obliquely, but vertically; as if the staircase had been constructed perpendicularly, and all the substructure taken away afterwards; for it is all gone." How man rose up in the grand old garden, our science cannot explain. The vaunted statements and drawings of the genealogical tree are mere devices. We must use the most general and elastic language, and not allow sheep, antelopes, monkeys, and men, to run foul of each other genetically. "From some form, possibly nearer to man than any now known, by exaltation and exquisite fashioning of inner relations in adjustment with enlarged and more complicate outer relations, man may have come forth as from sleep-a prodigy" ("The Supernatural in Nature," second edit., p. 136).

Looking down from the height of our ascent, it behoves us not to become dizzy, lest we fall and wallow in a materialistic slough. We are rather to go on rejoicing in our heavenly destiny and gift of immortality. We have waited a whole eternity to be born, and now, being born, a whole eternity waits to see what we will do. Shall we make it a mass of foul loss and disappointment? To the Thinker most of us present tragedy enough. Would that we remember, "la carrière ouverte aux talens," the tools are to him who can handle them.

We are not mere children of the Earth, like Antæus, to sink and die, we are capable of more than that-the heights of bliss and honour. Nature is our step-mother, and she is prodigal enough of gifts: by "scattering from a single oak tree, as provender for pigs, what would plant the whole planet into an oak-forest," she shows, by that prodigality, what superabundance must be the possession of men who are gifted above all other earthly existences. It is time that we rouse ourselves-be true to our great estate, and remember-the real quality of our insight and our strength. Intellect requires faith to complete man, without faith he cannot put to full use all his faculties. Mental strength depends on the faith, lovingness, truth, patience, with which we diligently use our whole man. It is the lamp of God to enlighten the whole man. Without faith, intellect flickers with unsteady light and goes out in darkness. In old time angels came, took men by the hand, and led them from the City of Destruction. Faith, like an unseen angel, now leads men away from fear of evil and of death; puts a hand into theirs, leads them out gently to a good and bright land, and they look no more backward.

THOUGHT XX.

MECHANICAL VIEW OF THE WORLD.

"By sagacious windings and gradual insinuations you may so turn weak understandings that they will turn truth into error; turn fairest sunshine into blackest night, and purest goodness into foulest wickedness.”—From Note-Book.

“ τὸ δρώμενον ἤ πάσχον σῶμά ἐστι.”

"Facere et fungi nisi corpus nulla potest res.”

EPICURUS.

LUCRET., i. 444.

THE world possesses an endless variety of levers, wheels, cranks, springs: contains within itself an automatism of partially continuative and compensative powers. These do not ensure everlasting continuance; the compensative power is not creative; neither as to the past, nor the future, can we regard the universe as eternal. It is further evident, that it could not call itself into being-begin to act before it had any existence.

The world may be likened to a building, and we can think of the atoms and molecules self-positing themselves; of stone fitting to stone, and buttresses supporting the whole, by means of molecular affinities and repulsions. It is clear, however, that unless we impart something more than mechanical action to the materials

and shade; apart from energy to use them there will be no ocular sight; without some organic principles, some vital, discriminating influx or afflux, there will be no rational sight. There is, therefore, something more in life, in intellect, than solar energy can account for. Take the very lowest view-" Molecular forces determine the form which the solar energy will assume." These molecular forces, separating carbon and oxygen, do, by connection with the organic principle, whatever that may be, build up a cabbage or an oak. In like manner, by reunion of the carbon and of the oxygen, the molecular machinery, worked by organic energy, weaves the texture of a frog, or elaborates the form of a man. The conclusion is, we possess molecular potentialities and manifold organic principles which solar energy is incompetent to explain.

Professor Tyndall stated ("Belfast Address," p. 29), that he discerned in matter "the promise and the potency of every form and quality of life." This, so far as true, may mean that which is taught in Scripture (Gen. i, 11, 20, 24). Probably, the professor would have us understand that the potency is from the Almighty ; specially as he states (p. 30), "It is by the operation of an insoluble mystery that life is evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded;" but many infer from his words that he considers life and intelligence to be properties of special forms of matter; we, however, cannot understand how he could see the promise and potency of that about which, by his own confession, he knows nothing-or see the germs of the operation and evolution of that which, he confesses, is an insoluble

mystery." In most of these professorial and presidential addresses, the hard words crystallization, fermentation,

germination, mean-"we do not know." It is time for common-sense people to understand that when very clever men say "Suns resolve themselves into floræ and faunæ, that is, into vegetables and animals "—they only mean that the natural forces used by the Almighty are, so far as physically known, stored in terrestrial and solar sources; but that it is impossible to give an exhaustive account of any one of the changes characteristic of any living thing in nature.

Take the assertion, that without any exercise of Divine Mind, or direction of controlling Intelligence "the grand progression from the inorganic to the organic is by mechanical force," and carry it into practice.

Leave everything to its own so-called natural organizing, continuative, progressive powers. Will crab-stocks grow into apple trees; and the common sloe turn, of itself, into rich varieties of plums? Will the wild rose, by self-planting and automatic progress, attain the delicious fragrance, graceful form, delicate colours, unrivalled beauty, possessed by the queen of flowers? Do our breeders of stock attribute their choice "shorthorns," and "south-downs," to "natural selection"? Will noblemen allow their stud of hunters, or members of the Jockey Club their blood horses, to progress by natural equine development? Certainly not. Nature will not turn the roadster into a racer, and the hack into a hunter, but lead them back to the original stock. Nature does not help the cattle-breeder and feeder by always putting flesh of best quality in the right place, and giving to bone lightest form conjoined with greatest strength. The gardener, by care and skill, planting, grafting, budding, fertilization, use of new seeds, fresh stocks,

R