uu-ERNATURA Nature

^93-

THE

SUPERNATURAL IN NATURE

THE

SUPERNATURAL IN NATURE
A VERIFICATION
BY FREE USE OF SCIENCE

JOSEPH WILLIAM REYNOLDS, M.A.
RECTOR OF ST ANNE AND ST AGNES WITH ST JOHN ZACHARY, GRESHAM STREET, CITY
PREBENDARY OF ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON : AND
AUTHOR OF 'THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLES*

VERBUM DOMINI MANET IN iETERNUM

THIRD EDITION

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TjRENCH, & CO., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1883

' Now, if the natural and revealed dispensation of things are both from
God, if they coincide with each other, and together make up one scheme
of Providence, our being incompetent judges of one, must render it cre
dible that we may be incompetent judges also of the other. Since, upon
experience, the acknowledged constitution and course of nature is found
to be greatly different from what, before experience, would have been
expected ; and such as, men fancy, there lie great objections against ;
this renders it beforehand highly credible, that they may find the revealed
dispensation likewise, if they judge of it as they do of the constitution of
nature, very different from expectations formed beforehand, and liable,
in appearance, to great objections — objections against the scheme itself,
and against the degrees and manners of the miraculous interpositions by
which it was attested and carried on.' — Butler's 'Analogy of Religion,'
Part II. Revealed Religion, Chap, iii.

Mpfzo R3S

TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND
JOHN JACKSON, D.D.,
LORD BISHOP OF LONDON,
THIS WORK
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED AS A SMALL TOKEN OF ESTEEM AND LOVE
FOR THAT GENTLE HOLINESS AND PURITY WHICH,
UNITED WITH WISE FIRMNESS,
RENDER HIM BELOVED AND HONOURED IN THE HIGH STATION
WHICH HE HAS BEEN CALLED IN THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD
TO OCCUPY.

" Though one were to allow any confused undetermined sense, which
people might please to put upon the word natural, it would be a shortness
of thought scarce credible to imagine, that no system or course of things
can be so, but only what we see at present ; . . . the only distinct
meaning of that word is stated, fixed, or settled; since what is natural as
much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e., to
effect it continually, or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miracu
lous does to effect it at once." — Butler's "Analogy of Religion," Part I.
Natural Religion, Chap. i.

SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT.
"NON PRQFICERE EST DEFICERE."
"Not noted,
But of the finer natures, by some severals,
Of head-piece extraordinary : lower messes,
Perchance, are to this business purblind." Winter's Tale.
To the Visitor of Sion College.
My Lord, This book went forth with its parentage unacknow
ledged, lest scientists, who boast that they have fought and-
won the intellectual battle against Christianity, should-Tefuse
to hear an argument drawn from their own line of things by
a clerical pen. Now that it has received and endured not a
little fearless criticism ; now that every line of its statement
appears to the author to remain unturned, and is allowed by
the thoughtful to be capable of further production into new
regions of thought ; it would be cowardice, not humility, to
shrink from the responsibility of authorship. Honoured by
your request so to do, I affix my name ; and being President
of Sion College this year, I have the honour to use that title
at the express wish of the Court of Governors.
I respectfully offer to you, the Visitor of that College, a
second edition of the work, as a mark of my sense of the
great forbearance, cordial sympathy, wise counsel, and effec
tive help, with which, to the utmost of your strength, you
encourage even the lowliest in the sacred ministry of our
Church. This College, your Lordship well knows, is not only used
for devotional, intellectual, and social meetings of the clergy ;
but is the place where those who conceive that the possession
of advanced science is incompatible with the childlike faith

viii Scientific Thought.
demanded by Holy Scripture, are encouraged to state the
extent and meaning of their discoveries.
A clear thinker, listening to the eloquence, acknowledging
the skill, and honouring the zeal of those who exhibit their
stores, is sadly conscious that — though, after all, science is
simply common sense applied to somewhat recondite matters
— scientific eyesight is not always scientific insight. Men of
scientific research often neglect scientific thought : a neglect
more sure to bring heartache than blossom to bring fruit.
The champions of materialism and agnosticism are most
defective in the method of scientific thought. They seem in
capable of rightly applying past experiences to new circum
stances. Not looking sufficiently at things in general, they
allow the enlargement of their partial and secular province to
diminish, and sometimes to destroy — in their own minds — the
vaster outlying regions. A kind of steeplechase philosophy is
in vogue. Specialism assumes the functions and honours of
universalism. Materialists, by strangest solecism, use mind
to subject Nature ; and then, mental control being established,
destroy mind, and give to matter the supreme capacity of
that which has been destroyed. Science makes the meaning
of things wider and more real, but they narrow all that is
sacred. Mr. Ruskin says of them — " The use of the word
' scientia ' as if it differed from ' knowledge ' is a modern
barbarism, enhanced usually by the assumption that the
knowledge of the difference between acids and alkalis is a
more respectable than that of the difference between vice
and virtue." Not possessing inner vision, they govern hard
from the outside instead of working up from within. They
advocate degradation ; for the changes which they further
involve transition, not from the lower to higher, but from
the higher to lower, degree of perfection.
This manifold error is a fault, partly due to the evil habit
of regarding the outer world of matter, and the inner world
of intelligence and emotion, as nothing more than the
concave and convex of the same substance : error gross and
grievous as — that pounds and pence make rich, and not
heart and mind which bless or curse for ever. They do
not adequately consider the whole of life, nor 'that advan-

Scientific Thought. ix
tageous and permanent moral changes — whether in nations or
individuals — are wrought not solely by direct action of outer
circumstances, but by spontaneous effort of nations and in
dividuals ; and that this constitutes the great distinction
between the living and the dead.
Further, though scientists admit more or less of spon
taneous action in Nature, strange to say, some assume univer
sality of rigid action in physical laws — which action is not
known to be true of any law at all, and, absurdly enough,
they apply it to religion and morals. They forget or wilfully
ignore the verity that mutual sympathy unites us one to
another, low to high, young to old, and puts into one life the
power of a thousand.
They put forth materialism, apart from Divine action, as
an explanation of the universe ; but have no buttresses with
which to replace the mainstays they are bent on withdrawing
from society. Materialism cannot admit the smallest spon
taneity, uniformity must be absolute and universal ; whereas,
every day that a man lives has a speciality which comes no
more, and wisdom tries to find because it prepares for the
morrow's gain. We know that advanced morality is never
found to continue apart from faith and worship ; and that all
the old civilisations, because they degenerated in moral tissue,
lost intellectual vigour and were smitten with decay. We are
aware that exact uniformity cannot be found anywhere, at
any time, or in anything ; and that materialism is unable to
explain any order of events, or any one thing in any order of
events. Our sense of sight cannot assure us that there is no
one in the dark ; our sense of hearing cannot be certain that
nothing inaudible is going on. The simplest facts known are
possibly, indeed probably, not ultimate, but made up of simpler
or more complex. Materialists, slighting these great truths,
mar the beauty of all their attainment. They have not insight
to discern that Christianity, even in its present sadly im
perfect development, as a matter of fact, is at the head of
science, the head of literature, the head of morals, the head
of civilisation, the head of the world.
Scientific thinking will enable our opponents to correct
their error, and to do every little well that the whole may be

x Scientific Thought.
a pleasure. Then we, too, shall amend many faulty interpre
tations as to Divine Existence, Creation, Providence, Natural
Law, and Overstepping of Rules. The truly intelligent do not
fear accuracy of thought and thoroughness of investigation.
It is not intelligence, but unintelligence, that disposes to
impiety ; a sort of savagery and brutality that leads to low
life, to uncleanness of body and mind, to turbulence of spirit
and conduct.
It is time that we be men ; time to raise on a scientific
assured basis the great superstructure of sacred emotion, of
pure morality, of right thinking, of wise conduct, and attain
all that is attainable by our present faculties. Whatever may
be said about the world's age, it is new and strange to every
one. No man, living or dead, has or can have had, exactly
the same experience. The poet is inspired, the soldier thrills
with the hope of glory, the statesman prepares conditions of
society, the theologian is instinct with Divine truth, and
every one, in use of his mental chemistry and moral power,
can tell something special of human experience. We walk
about here with a consciousness of the now, aware of the past,
and prepare for the future. We save that we may give, and
give that we may truly save ; use of the riddle makes every
user rich. Let none who have hope as princes wander about as
beggars. Let none choose for himself the sad task of gather
ing the flotsam and jetsam of a life wrecked by disappoint
ment, or be without part or lot in the coming truth and
glory. Not only the leaders of men, but rustics even, owe a
duty to society and to God, that the sacred faculty of faith —
the faculty which prompts our will to holy decision, be en
riched, enlarged, confirmed, in conception and enjoyment of
Him who is greater than ourselves, and whom the godly
praise — ' ' O Thou ! the Resurrection and Redemption,
The Godhead, and the Manhood, and the Life."
I respectfully thank those critics who — recognising the
almost insuperable difficulties which encumber any compre
hensive endeavour to verify revealed sacred facts and doctrines
by the subtle processes of modern science — welcomed the

Scientific Thought. xi
truth that separation of science and faith is to the weakening
of both ; while their union strengthens each, and gives birth
to sons and daughters strong and fair. There are critics
whose praise would be dispraise — "malis displicere magna
laus est ; " and there are carpers, not critics, to whom one
must say — " Quid caeco cum speculo ? "
The utmost care has been taken to render this edition
accurate. The arguments are carried to the outermost line
of verified science, but their validity rests on those grand
facts which remain immovable from aye to aye. For
various emendations I am indebted to the Reverend William
Kay, D.D., Rector of Great Leghs, and Honorary Canon
of St. Alban's, to the Reverend Professor T. G. Bonney,
F.R.S., and to Mr. John Henry Gurney, Northrepps Hall,
Norwich. My friend Mr. William Kitchen Parker, F.R.S.,
enabled- me to make several valuable improvements. To Dr.
P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S., who ably revised the whole work,
thanks are due for help which rendered some statements
more accurate. My friend Mr. Charles Lavers Smith, with
loving labour, care, and skill, prepared the excellent index. To
you, my Lord, belongs that high praise — "Sanctus sancte
sancta tractat." " He loved to serve — whose service saveth me,
In serving Him — I shall your servant be."
JOSEPH WILLIAM REYNOLDS.

President's House, Sion College,
London Wall.

" La vente" est toute pour tous."— Paul-Louis Courier.
" De tous les miracles consignees dans les livres de l'Ancien Testament, le
plus e"tonnant nous parait toujours le premier mot de la Genese — ' Au
commencement, Dieu cre'a le ciel et la terre.' Le monde de l'esprit est
ainsi conquis d£s le debut, et la redoubtable fascination du dualisme est
vaincue. ... II a bien fallu que Dieu devoilit sa face pour que l'homme
. . . put reproduire ses traits augustes comme il l'a fait dans l'Ancien Tes
tament." — " Histoire des Trois Premiers Siecles de l'Eglise Chrdtienne,"
EDMOND DE PRESSENSi.

CONTENTS.

STATE OF THE CASE.

Growth of Modern Science .
Devotion to Science
Error of some Scientific Teachers
Error of some Religious Teachers
Unwise Separation of Science from
Religion
Lovers of Study .
For Whom the Book is Written
The Loss of Faith a great Loss

PAGE iI
I
2 2 2 33

Revelation and Science
Mistake and Misfortune of Mate
rialists .
Character of Present Scientific Dis
coveries .
Forms of Matter Accidental .
Process of Verification .
Omnia Cunctanti .

PAGE 4

STUDY I.
IS INTELLECT DIVORCED FROM PIETY?

The Divorce Improbable
The Religious Sense the Highest
Incapacity of Irreligious Men
The Great Reality underlying all
Things ....
Effort to Know the Unknown
The Principle of Noble Conduct
Need of an Ethical Ideal
Human Progress not always towards
Happiness
Inconsistency of Argument against
the Supernatural in Religion
Common Sense Believes
Morality based on Divinity .
Moral Element in Man
An Unwise Statement .
The Greatest Men are Believers
This allowed by Opponents .
Professors of Science ought to
satisfy Sacred Emotion .
Union of Intellect and Piety

8

999
10

n12 131415151616

Errors of Materialists . . .16
The Coming Man will unite Re
ligious Feeling with the Know
ledge of the Time . . -17
Two Principles of Government . 18
Example of Providential Interfer
ence  18
Confirmation by Three Opposing
Schools of Thought . . 19
Revelation a Special Message to
Intelligence 19
Erroneous View of Doubt . . 20
Use of Authority in Science and
Faith  20
Doubt, the Halting Step of Pru
dence ..... 21
Duty tries to he rid of Doubt . 21
Faith Implies Knowledge . . 22
The Single-eyed .... 22
Wilful Doubt a mark of Weakness
or of Insincerity ... 23

XIV

Contents.

Prolonged Doubt Wastes Life and

Where No Vision is the People

Hinders Progress .

23

Perish 

28

Personal Verification of Religion .

24

Christ's Morality the Highest

29

The Higher Verification

25

Opponents of Holy Scripture

29

Heights not yet Attained

25

Infidels not Whole or Comprehen

The Light of Nature not a Sufficient

sive Men ....
3°
Guide 
26
Errors of Materialists .
3°
The Arts Fail ....
27
The Secular School
3'
The High and Dry Light of Intel
Recapitulation ....
32
lect did not lead to Purity
27
The Best Thinkers give up the De
Ethics, Art, Science, Fail if put in
spairing Creed
32
place of Religion .
28
Piety the Crown of Intellect .
33
STUE
Y II.
THE
SUPERNATURAL.
Rash Denial of ...
34
Verified Theology
46
Universal Belief in the Supernatural
34
Verification by Scripture
46
The First Cause ....
34
Genius of Unbelief
47
Atheism Incapable of Proof
34
The Wording of Scripture
47
Denial of the Supreme is based
Against the Science of the Day .
47
on Ignorance ....
35
Growth of Power in the Words .
48
Must assume Existence of the
Inner Life of Meaning
48
First Cause ....
35
Continual Revelatory Character .
48
The Inscrutable Power a Reality
35
Misconceptions of Opponents
49
Manifestation of It .
35
Bible not Screened from Criticism
49
Personality ....
36
Figurative Expressions
49
Arguments against Personality .
37
Bible states Facts
5°
A Possible Existence Higher than
Scientific Account of Creative
Personality ....
38
Process 
5°
Delusive Argument
38
Truthfulness of Scripture
51
Personality, our Highest Mode of
Unlike all other Cosmogonies
5i
Conception ....
39
Exceeded the Knowledge of the
Revelation of the Godhead
40
Time .....
5>
I . Nature and our Consciousness
Narrowness and Idolatry of Mate
God's Autobiography .
40
rialists 
52
*.. Ground of our Moral Sense .
40
Two Reasons why they ought to
3. Foundation of our Religious
accept the Doctrine of Divine
Ideas 
41
Personality
53
4. Their Universality
41
Our Knowledge of God
53
5. Miraculous or Higher Modes
Mathematical and Spiritual Truth
54
of Divine Action .
42
All Religions claim Divinity of
Three Hypotheses as to Origin of
Origin ....
54
Things 
44
Summary .....
55
Atheistic
44
Priests of the Physical Universe
55
Pantheistic
44
Quotation, S. T. Coleridge .
56
Theistic
45
Contents.

xv

STUDY III.

THE THRESHOLD OF CREATION.

The Universe too Vast for our Com
prehension . . . -57
Wrong Conceptions as to its Origin 57
The Scriptural Account Misunder
stood  58
Infinity and. Eternity seen in Crea
tion  58
Creation Relatively Infinite and
Eternal  58
Elements of Space ... 59
The Statement, "Science has no
room for Miracles," convicted
• of Inadequacy ... 60
Union of Mind and Matter . . 60 '
An Unascertained Something . 61
Mechanical View of Nature . . 61
Is Everything in Nature Natural ? 62

Matter Known only by Mind
Matter Brought out of the Invisible
Creation of -Matter .
The Creation of Matter proximately
"thinkable" ...
The Visible World Permeated by
the Invisible .
Experiments ....
We are only Beginning to Know
Science Throws Light on Scripture
Beginning ....
Eternity and Infinity
No Time without Creation
The World Infinitely Vast and In
finitely Small ...
Bird's-eye View of the Argument
Translation from Jean Paul Richter

PAGE 63
646565 6667
6868 70
7i 7i7i 7273

STUDY IV.

RUDIMENTS OF THE WORLD.

Quotation from "Principia" .
Hypotheses concerning Primal
Matter ....
Structure of Matter
Only Few Elements Largely Used
Life-Throb of the Universe .
Change must have come from
Without ....
Vastness of Continual Change
Not more to be Got out of the
Atom than has been put in
Type of Nature's Book .
Printing of the Book
Clustering into Molecules .
Similarity of Molecules
Molecular Energy
The Molecule as a Solar System
Examples of Molecular Energy .

75 7576
79808081 828283 83 84
84 85
86

Mechanism of Worlds
Generation of Movement .
Curvature of the Straight Line
The Earth ....
The Planetary System .
The Connected Mass
Heat, Light, and Motion of the
Universe
Measurements of Time .
Glacial Epochs
Obliquity of the Ecliptic
Warm and Cold Periods
Scientists not Agreed
Ceaseless Change .
Creation Represents God's Majesty
View of Worlds
Memories Carried into the Future
Happiness, N. P. Willis b

86 86878788 89

90 91
92 92 93 94 949597 97

XV 1

Contents.

STUDY V.

ORIGIN OF LIFE AND THEORY OF RULE.

Ancient and Modern Physical Theo
ries  98
Inaccuracy of Physicists . • 99
Theories of Life . . . .100
Occulta Vis  101
Life a Mystery — Origin and Growth 102
Physical Science Explains the How 103
Scripture Reveals the Why . . 103
Arrangement of Living Particles . 103
Autogeny no Explanation . .104
The Vital Substance . . .105
One and the same for all . • i°5
Inexplicable ..... 106
Constructive Power . . • 106
Beginning of Life Denied . .107
Natural Genesis or Evolution . 107

Individual Developments
Natural Processes .
Union of Mind with Matter .
Our own and Angelic Intelligence
Great Minds search for Intelligible
Reasons .
Desire to Do Right
Governing Mind
Chess-board Theory
Physical Evil .
Parasites
Beneficence of Pain
Moral Lesson
Evil is Temporary .
Evil not Inconsistent with the Exist
ence of a Personal God .

PAGE 109noin in112»3»3 114
"5116
116 117117 117

STUDY VI.

THE CREATIVE WORDS.

Confessions of Science .
Statement of Scripture .
Scientific Statements not accepted
as Infallible
Create, means Divine Production
Nature's Progression is God's Way
of Doing Things
Thinking of Creation
Divine Mystery Revealed in Creative
Act . . .
Scriptural Conception of God, as
Holy Trinity, not formed of
Human Qualities .
Word represents the effluence of
Divine Will in Effectuation
" Word " is the Mediative Element
in Divine Action
Heavens Created Before the Earth .
As to Space between the first and
second verses, Gen. i.
As to Space being Furnished at
Once .

119120 120 121 121122 123

123 124124 125 125 126

The Spirit Moving upon Chaos
Work of the Spirit on Matter and
in our own Nature .
Convertibility of Energies
Primal Matter and Operation of
Energy .
The Coming In of Light
Evening and Morning .
Days of Creation .
The Firmament a Tenuity
The Germination of the Earth
Lights in the Firmament
Power of the Letter D •
The Waters Bring Forth
Moses Possessed a Scientific Spirit
His Statement Confirmed by Science
Sixth-Day Creation . .
Arrangement of Days Rhythmical
Evolution as applied to the Account
Man the Up-looking One
His Formation
The Image and Likeness of God

126
126127 127 128 128129129 '3'•3'
132 132
132 133133133
134 134'35"35

Contents.

xvn

Creation of Man as regarded by an
Evolutionist . . . .136
Mind is not Matter . . . 136
Errors as to Providence, God, Crea
tion  137

Power of the Book
Allowance to be made for Popular
Statements ....
Cannot be Proved Inaccurate

137138
139

STUDY VII.

INTERPRETATION OF THE DAYS.

Meaning of the Days
Accepted Facts —
I. The World is Ancient .
2. Creative Process Continuous .
3. Man Older than 6000 Years .
4. World Continually Changing .
Timid and Ignorant Reply
Statement as to Old World .
Remonstrance of the Thoughtful .
Characteristics of the Divine Ac
count .....
The Prophets not always Acquainted
with the Full Meaning of their
Prophecies ....
The Work and the Days a Parable
Seven a Sacred Number
Various Uses of the Word "Day"
Duration not Determinable

140 140 140 141 141
142 142 H3144

145145
H5
146
H7

Two Difficulties .... 148
Vast Separations . . . 148
Periods of Darkness . . .148
The Fourth Commandment . .149
Explanation of the Meaning . . 149
Chaldean Chronology . . .150
Why was not the True Interpreta
tion Given Earlier ? . . 151
Changes Rightly Made are Bene
ficial ..... 152
Theology becoming Sturdier . . 152
Genealogies are the Birth Line of
Christ  153
The Genealogies are not Chrono
logical  155
Genealogies not Accurate Measures
of Time  155

STUDY VIII.

DAY I. — LIGHT.

Worlds previous to the Earth- World 1 56
Conception of Light and its Origin 156
Radiant Heat made Visible . .156
Electric Current Through Platinum
Wire  157
Primal Illumination of the Earth . 157
Transformation of Energy . . 158
Luminous Lines in Vapour of Atoms 159
Vibrations of Atoms . . . 159
Sound, Light, and Heat Waves . 159
Spectrum  160
Light Reveals a Vast Scheme . 160
The Medium of Light . . .161

Eyes of Insects . . . .161
Our Present Sight seems Rudi
mentary ..... 162
Various Lights . . . .162
Sensation of Light . . . .163
Work of Light . . . .163
The Recesses of Scripture contain
Deep Truths .... 164
Light a Revelation . . .165
Faith and Knowledge are Two
Hemispheres of Life . .165
Space and Time two sides of a
Ladder for Ascent of Life . 166

XV111

Contents.

STUDY IX.
DAY II. — "GOD MADE THE FIRMAMENT."

The Second Day's Work not
Blessed 
Firmament not a Transparent Floor
Ancient Poetic Phrases .
Knowledge of Ancient Sages .
Genius of Ancient Worthies .
Primeval Waters and Atmosphere
Dew Point ....
Establishment of a Firmament
Scientific Theory .
Division of the Waters .

1 68
168
169 169170
171172173173 174

Light of the Firmament .
Artificial Skies
Colours ofthe Firmament
Action of the Firmament
Perfumes, Vapour, ^Ether-waves
The Firmament a Co-operation of
Phenomena
Argumentum ad Hominem
Memorials of the Supreme
We ought to advance with our
Science .....

175
176 177178
178
179 1 So
180

STUDY X.

DAY III. — THE HABITATION OF LIFE.

Sacred Geology
Conception of the Creative Pro
cess 
Symbol of Stretching out and
Fashioning
Scientific Geology .
Early Chemical Condition of the
Earth ....
Nearer Portion of the Pathway
Cosmogenetic Era
The Molten Sphere and Atmo
sphere ....
Cooling ....
Crust of the Earth
Action by Organic Life
Organic Rocks .

182

182

183

185 185186 186
187 187188188

Life-Times of the Earth
Eozoic — Dawn of Life
Palaeozoic — Old Life .
Mesozoic — Middle Life
Neozoic — New Life .
Divine Inteferences
A Mechanical Conception not the
Highest ....
Invisible World
Changes are Subject to Law .
"The Undevout Astronomer
Mad" ....
We worship Godhead .
Life in Other Worlds
Life seems to be Nature's Great
Purpose' .
Life a Progress

189
190 191
191 192 193193
194 194
'95 196197

Growth of Plants .
Food of Plants
Substance of Plants
Functions of Plants
Passing into Life .

STUDY XI.
DAY III.— CREATION OF PLANTS.

198'99199199
200

Separateness of Animal and Vege
table Life .... 200
System of Vegetation . . . 202
Comprehensiveness of the Sacred
Account . . . 202

Contents.

xix

Classification Mutable . . 203
Order of Introduction . . 204
Succession of Vegetable Life . . 205
Plants without Sunlight ? . . 206
Plants grow in the Dark . . 207
Nature of the Earliest Vegetation . 207
Moses had a Moral Purpose in
View .... 208
Did Plants precede Animals ? . 208
Earliest Forms found Side by
Side . . . 208

,PAGE
Plants and Animals Necessary to
one another .... 208
Essentially Distinct . . . 209
Were Plants of Divine Origination ? 209
Natural Agency .... 210
Children ofthe Sun 2 II
Scientific Hypothesis . 211
Richter's Lesson . . . 211
Glimpse ofthe Transcendental . 212
The World a Study for Spirits 212
Enlargement of Knowledge . . 214

STUDY XII.
DAY IV. — THE SUN.

Two Dangers to be Guarded Against
Difficulties Confirm Divine Verities
Moses' Account Wonderful .
A Divine Product ....
Conceptions of Creation .
Progress not in a Straight Line
The Sun's Origin ....
Impact and Accretion
Condensation and Contraction
Rotation of Nebulous Rings
The Sun's Age ....
Not made on Fourth Day .
Assertion that it was made on
Fourth Day .
Measurement of the Heat .
Future Extinction
The Divine Account .
The Sun's Physical Constitution .
Body of the Sun
Opinions of the two Herschels .

215

Sun's Surface . . . .

225

215

,, Eruptions . . . .

226

216

Sun's Prominences

226

217

,, Metals . . . .

226

217

,, Envelopes .

226

218

Counterpart in Planet Saturn

227

219

No Theory Adopted .

227

219

The Sun's Rule .

228

219

Matter from other Systems .

228

220

Variations Produce Permanence .

228

221

Ruler of the Earth .

229

221

Lord of Earthly Life .

229

Obscuration of Light .

229

221

The Sun's Path through Space

230

222

Whence and Whither .

230

223

Advance of Planetary Orbits

231

223

Wider Circle than the Physical .

232

223

God's Riches are not our Poverty .

232

224

Littleness and Greatness

233

224

Our Greatness

234

STUDY XIII.
DAY V. — FISHES, REPTILES, BIRDS.

The Earth, Portion of a Grand
Scheme . . ' . . . 236
The Beginning was not by Agency
of present existing Laws . . 237
An Organism a Wonderful Mecha
nism  237

Plato, Darwin, Owen, as to Life . 238
Specific Nature of Life . . . 239
Six Characteristics of Living Things 240
Six Types of Animal Structure . 241
Simply arranged in the Divine Nar
rative  242
^3

XX

Contents.

Kinship of all Things . 242
In Unity Diversity .... 243
The Process of Life a Series of
Metamorphoses . . 243
Every Process a Prophecy . 244
Reproduction . . . 244
Reproductive Elements . 245
Primitive Life . 246
Advance in Life" . 246
Fish Life . 247

Amphibians, Reptiles, Lizards . 248
Affinities of Fish to Higher Life . 249
Transition to Birds . • 250
Classification of Birds • 25 l
The Bible Narrative . 252
Narrative by Plato - 252
Incapacity of Ancient Science 254
Revelation and Science . . • 254
False Kingdom of Man . . -255
True Kingdom of Man ¦ 255

STUDY XIV.
DAY VI. — CREEPING THINGS, BEAST, CATTLE.

Unreasonable Requirements . 257
As to not seeing a Creation . 257
All Phenomena are Manifestations
of the Great Unknown . . 258
Unwise Inquiry . . . 259
Creation a Divine Work . 259
A Work wrought by Mind . 260
I. Unity of Power . . 261
Rhythm of Motion . 261
II. Unity of Form ¦ . 261
Blood-Corpuscles . 261
Deviation and Return . . . 262
Repetition and Differentiation 263
III. Unity of Substance . . 263
All Protoplasm the Same . . 263
Vitality is the. Cause of Change . 264
Process of Variety . 264
Insects ... . 264
Snails . . . 265
Process of Adaptation . . . 265

Advance from the Sea . 266
Limitation of Structural Changes 267
Marsupials  267
Mammals  268
Heredity and Adaptation . . 268
Life ascends in many Paths . 269
Differences in Structure . . 270
Natural Origin of Species . 270
Variations from Primitive Type . 271
Atrophy and Development . . 272
Distinct Provinces of Life . 273
Persistence of Type . • 274
Embryonic Development . . 275
Like Parts but Separate Paths . 275
Progress and Variety of Life . . 276
Rudimentary Organs . . .277
Their Cause Unknown . . . 277
Nature cannot surpass Itself . .278
Natural and Supernatural are one
splendid Unity . . . 279

STUDY XV.
COMPARISON OF THE TWO DIVINE ACCOUNTS.

Two Modes of Existence
Double-sidedness of Nature .
Knowledge — a Revelation from In
telligence to Intelligence
One Account Creative, the other Re
demptive
Both Accounts by same Writer
Variety of Statement
Meaning of Generations
Trees of Life and Knowledge

281281 2S2 282283283 284284

Change of Divine Name . . 284
No Rain — Not a Denial of Previous
Rain  285
Going up of Mist .... 285
Mystical Character of the Second
Narrative .... 286
A Spiritual Reality . . . 286
Separateness of the Two Accounts . 287
I. Facts left out . . . , 287
2. Varied Arrangement . , 287

Contents.

XXI

PAGE
Man a Living Soul , , . 288
Separateness of Man from Animals
and Angels .... 288
' Living Souls of Lower Animals . 289
The Temptation . , . .289
Adam — Earthly and Heavenly . 289
Threefold Nature of Man . . 290
The Narrative Simple yet Grand . 290
Chaldean Account of Genesis . 291

Age of the Chaldean Tablets . . 293
Translation ofthe Fifth Tablet . 293
Corresponding Portion of Genesis . 294
Primeval Tradition . . . 295
Reasons for Retaining the Ancient
Narrative .... 295
The Twofold Account confirmed by
other Scripture . . 296
Growth of Divine Truth . . 297

STUDY XVI.

THE PRE-ADAMITE WORLD.

The Account of Creation, if True, is
Divinely Inspired ... . 299
A Revelation of Things not Known 299
The Heavens more Ancient than the
Earth . . . . . 300
Fall of Angels and of Man . . 300
Not Poetical and Figurative . . 301
Pre-Adamite Men .... 302
No Relics ofthe asserted Brute Con
dition  303
Savagery not Proof of Brutal Origin 304
Our Rude Ancestors . , . 304
Savages cannot Civilise Themselves 305
The Civilised become Savage . 305
Assertion as to Ancient Civilisation 307
Evolution of Man a Divine Process 307
Definite Progress .... 308
The Mystery of Advance . . 308

Two

Work of High Art ...
Essential Differences proceed from
Original Unity
Was Adam the First Man ?
Cainites . . _ .
Adamites and Men are not
Races . .....
Supposed Prior Psychical Man
Adam the First Man
Sin 
Death Prior to Adam
Freedom of the Creature rendered
Sin possible .
A Free World the Best World
Cure of Evil ....
Man not the Helpless Victim of Evil
Bringing Back of the Banished

3093°93°9310 3"
3" 3"
312 312 313
3H 315 3153i6

STUDY XVII.
MAN :— ORIGIN, NATURE, LANGUAGE, CIVILISATION.

Old and New Superstition
Fashioning of Man
Divine Breath in Man .
Spirit in Man
¦ Separation of Man from Brute
Plenary Memory . .
Higher Mental Processes
Man more than a Material Or
ganism 
Compared with his Meaner Brethren
The Human Soul . . . .
Assertion that the Soul is Mortal,
Unscientific ....

318 3i83i83'9 319320320
321321321
322

The Bestial Theory . . .322
The Course of Transformation . 323
Human Reason .... 324
Free-Will . . . 324
Ancestral Ape . . . 324
I. Man considered as a Brute . 325
The Life Plan of Vast Compre
hension . ... » . 325
Special Process of Life . . 326
Evolution or Order of Progress . 326
Man did not grow out of Brute . 327
Infinite Series and Incalculable
Time not required . . . 327

XX11

Contents.

PAGE
Mental Phenomena . . . 328
Mosaic Statement Misunderstood 329
True Science fights False Science 329
Withering Branches of Humanity 330
Degradation Likely . . . 330
Elevation of LowJForms Unlikely 331
New View of Old Sin . . 332
The Chinaman .... 332
The Brutal Origin of Man con
trary to^History and Experience 333
II. Development of Language from
Animal Cries . . . -333
Man's Voice representative of all
Sounds  333
Man is Man by Speech . . 334
Co-ordinationnecessaryfor Speech 334
No Record of the Invention of
Language . . . .334
The Path and Progress of Lan
guage . . . • . .334
Veddahs in Ceylon . . 335
Dwarf Negrito Race . . 335
Other Low Orders . . . 335
Language an impassable deep be
tween Man and Beast . . 336
Language rather Organic than an
Organism . . . 336

Language Product of Organism
and Thought . . . .
Theories as to Origin of Speech
Divinity of Speech-Faculties
Man Began and Continues as ¦,
Learner ....
Roots of Words .
Base of all Languages the Same
The Frame and Spirit of Man give
Power to Speak
Ancient Languages
Language not Commensurate with
Mind ....
III. Human Development by Civil
isation ....
The Benefits are mixed with Evil
Old Athens
Ancient Cities
State of Masses in our Cities
How Civilisation ^is to be made
Beneficial and Lasting
Three Elect Nations .
Artificial Selection
Tendencies and Dangers of Modern
Civilisation
Christianity the Ground of our
Hope ....

337338
338 338339340
34034i
34i
342 342343343
343344
344
344 345
345

STUDY XVIII.

HUMAN LIFE :— PERSONALITY, INDIVIDUALITY, SPECIALITY.

The Nobler Parts of our Nature are
to be specially regarded
Life and Mind
Ancestral Heritage
Organic Life ....
Definitions of Life : Herbert Spence
G. H. Lewes, Descarte's .
Life a Self-propagating Endowment
Physics and Chemistry do but par
tially Explain
Personal Principle
Mechanical ' Self-adjustment or
Automatism .
Process and Totality of Personal
Existence
Our Personality is Real

347
348348
348 34935°
35°35i351
352352

Individuality .... 353
The Simpler Forms . 353
The True Life of Personality 354
Soul of the Beast . . . 354
Divine Personality and Indi
viduality  jet-
Natural and Experimental View 355
The Physician's View . -355
Idiosyncrasies .... 355
Morbid Tendencies . 356
Mistaken Notions . . 356
Histologist and Schoolboy . . 357
Individuality of our Life a Fact . 357
Inner Pavilions of our Being .' 358
Individuality of Power' and
Renovation . . . -.eg

Contents.

XXUl

PAGE
Speciality of Human Life . 358
Present Stage Rudimentary . 358
Brain Power .... 359
Mechanical and Chemical View . 360
Not applicable to the Mind . 360
Molecular Motion of the Brain . 360
The Physician's View . .361
Speciality of Ailments . .361
Speciality of Organisations . 362
Disturbances of the Higher
Faculties .... 362
The Moral Element . . .362
Transmission of Taint . . 363
Accumulated Evil . . . 363

PAGE
Degenerate Race . . . 364
Connection between Moral and
Material Condition . . . 3^5
Seeking Attainable Good . . 365
Human Freedom . . . 365
Human Motives .... 365
Difference between Bad and Good
Men . . . . . 366
Deterrent Motives . . . 366
Volition .... 366
Reverse of the Old Parable . 367
Knowledge not Sufficient . 367
Expansion ... . 368

STUDY XIX.

THE INVISIBLE.

The Studies have Confirmed our
Faith ....
Thought Reading Thought
Special Information
The Visible a Realisation of the
Invisible ....
A Procession from the Unseen
Three Hypotheses as to the Visible
Three Mysteries
Sophistries ....
Truisms .....
The Supernatural not Unnatural
Scientific Recognition of Interven
tion 
Two Classes of Miracles
Testimony, as to Miracles, Credible
Three Conditions .
Miracles are Sometimes Prophetic
God in the Universe, but not the
Universe .
Spectral Illusions .
Power of the Imagination
The Visible and the Invisible are
Connected . . . .
PrevisionDreams .....

3^93^9 37°37i37i372 373373374 375376376377 3773773783783793S0380
3Si

Some Dreams Possess an Occult
Power' ....
Vivid Power of Dreams
Not a Mere Play of the Fancy
Seeing from Within
Lord Brougham's Vision
Gradational Transition .
SomnambulismClairvoyant Somnambulism
Magnetic Sleep
Higher States
Discerning the Future .
Mechanical Action of Thought and
Memory ....
Many and Complex Factors in
volved in Prevision
The Energies and Laws Unknown
The Operation Capricious and
Erring' 
Occult Sciences yield no Explana
tion ....
Demons . . . . ¦
Spiritualism Modern and Ancient
Revival of Diabolical Arts
Why the Invisible World is Re
vealed ....

3813S2382 3§3 3§3
384 3S53§53«5386 38638738738S 389 3§939°
39039i 393

XXIV

Contents.

STUDY XX.

VARIETY IN NATURE.

Invariability of Law
Uniformity is not Fate .
A Platform for Variety .
Law, Platform for Miracle
Attempted Reconciliation — Law and
Will 
The Natural World but a small
portion ofthe Divine Dominions
Limitation of Uniformity
The Government of Free Creatures
necessitates Intervention
Matter as Example of Variety
Matter in Radiant State
Infinite Variety wrought by means
of a Few Elements .
Calculating Machine
Continual Intervention .
Molecular Theory of Gases
Variety and Structure Exist where
none can be Detected
Commonest Things Display Im
measurable Variety
Farina of Flowers, Leaf Arrange
ment ....
Sun not Source but Sustainer of
Organisms . ' .
Work of Light in Plant Life .
Peculiarities of Plants .
Life a Series of Surprises
Parents and Offspring — Like and
Unlike ....
Heredity ....
Structureless Germs marvellously
Complex ....
Evolution of an Individual
Circulation of the Blood
Variety seems aimed at as a Beauty
Coral ....
Birds of Passage .
Fishes 
Synthetic Types

394
394
395395396
397 380
397397398398399
400400401
402 4024034°3404405 405
406 406407407
407 408
408 408

Embryos are Different .

¦ 409

Variety Illustrated by Light . and

Sound ....

• 409

Eccentricities ....

• 409

Apparent Irregularities .

. 410

Consciousness

. 411

Varieties in Reproduction

412

Entozoa

• 413

Peculiarities amongst Fish

413

Males and Females

• 413

Bees ....

• 4H

Ants ....

¦ 4H

Red Ants

¦ 415

Aphidae .....

415

Transformations of Insects

. 416

Caterpillars .

• 417

Hymenoptera

• 4'7

Silent Members

. 418

Agency of Use and Disuse

• 419

Life as a Strategic Movement

¦ 419

Changes of Inorganic Matter

. 420

Chemical Surprises

. 420

Diffusion ....

. 420

Temperature ....

. 421

Potassium, Sodium, Ice, Water

. 422

Transformation of Sunbeams int

)

Flesh ....

. 422

Transformation of Sunbeams int

3

Mental Power

• 423

Astronomical Varieties .

¦ 423

Coloured Suns .

• 424

Changes in the. Light and Hea

t

of Suns ....

• 425

Different Simultaneous Phases

. 426

The Solar System .

. 426

Stages of Life's Variety

• 427

Future Catastrophes

. 428

Passing away of other Worlds

• 429

Unknown Energies at Work .

• 429

Communion of Spirit

• 43°

Contents.

XXV

STUDY XXI.

FOLLIES OF THE WISE.

Purpose of the Study
A Puzzling Truth .
Ancient Opponents
Science not Taught by Scripture
Bible as Viewed in Different Ages
Irreverent Opponents
Faults of Great Men
Charge against the Pentateuch
,, ,, Sacred Cosmogony
,, ,, all Revelation
Two Errors attributed to Moses
Moses Vindicated .
Fault-making Charges .
Fixity of the Earth
Movement of Sun and Stars .
Sun Miracles for Joshua and Heze
kiah . . . .
Providential and Natural Arrange
ments ....
Calculation as to Power expended
in a Miracle .
Miracles Associated with the Greatest
of Men ....
Universe of the Bible too Limited
The Common Chronology too
Narrow ....
Refusal of Scripture by Secularists
Unbelieving and Rash Interpreta
tions . . .
Irreverence of these Charges .
Narrowness of Scientific Assailants
of Holy Scripture .
Narrowness as it affects Theology
St. Paul charged with Error .
Fault found with the Eye
Defects of the Eye .
The Eye one of God's best Gifts
A Lecture at Sion College
Orthodoxy Abused
Science and True Doctrine are never
Contrary to One Another

43i 43i432432433 434434435 436
436437 438438438439 440 440 440441 441442443443445 446
446447
448449 45°
45i 452
453

The Best Men are Enfranchised
from Narrowness
Trial of the Professors by an Egg
By a Camel
By a Lion and Tiger .
By an Ape ....
Presumption of Subordinate Science
Assertion as to Matter .
Examined and Discarded
Scientific Conception of Matter
The Mechanical Theory does not
Explain the Origin of the
World 
Vortex-Rings ....
Theory of a Perfect Fluid
Matter apart from its Properties
Origin and Restoration of World
not accounted for by the Me
chanical Theory
No Intervention of the Deity?
Ascertaining the Existence of the
Unknown ....
Miracles are not a priori Impro
bable . ...
Consciousness leads us to an Untried
Universe  459
Revelation shown to be Scientific
and Scriptural
The Mechanical Theory tested by
Human Progress
Disproof of the Theory .
Genius and Emotion not measured
by Physics ....
Human Progress is Intermittent
Truth Admits no Lie
Work of the Clergy .
The Bible a Living Book
Cannot be Mechanically Explained
A Cure for Folly ....

453454 454
454 454455
455455 456

457
457 45745S

458458459459

460
461461
461462
462463 464
464
465

XXVI

Contents.

STUDY XXII.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

the

the

Knowledge of God
Highest Life ....
Nature a Splendid Miracle .
Demonstration of Miracles
Two Mysteries
How Did God Create the World ?
Personality of God
Pantheistic Theory degrades God
Spiritual Personality
Summary of Various Studies .
The Kingdom of God .
Philosophy of History and Religion
Natural Philosophy of Religion
Religion not an Evolution
Secularism cannot account for Re
ligion ....
Scientific Thought accepts
Supernatural .
Successive Stages of Doctrine
Three -Great Facts .
Universal Conviction as to
Supernatural .
Christianity not an Evolution
Moral Order ....
Art and Science
Savages do not Advance
The Holiest Life .
Noble-minded Heathen
Desire for Immortality not created
by Culture
Ancient Poetic Fancy
,, Myths
Gods of the Lower Races
Ancient Truth — One God
Doctrine of Souls .
Two Faiths .
Ghost Souls .
Recognition of Spirits .
Future Life — Zulu Theology
Two forms of Doctrine
Four Regions of the Dead
Future Retribution
Heathen, Jewish, Christian
Theories .

466467
468 469469470
470 470471471
472473473
473
474
474474475 475476477 477478
4784784794794S0
480481 4814S1 4S2482 482483 483 483

Power and Doctrine of Holy Scrip
ture
Predictive Power
The -Lowest Form
High Power in Scripture .
Human Consciousness
Latent Sanses - .
Sir Humphry Davy .
Definite Examination of Holy
Scripture
Unity of the Bible
Variety of the Bible .
Statement of Events .
Dominant Idea .
Union of Morality with Religion
Moral Code Peculiar .
The Old Testament and Human
Nature ....
Christianity not an Outgrowth
Human Nature
Scripture not an Evolution
Peculiarities of Scripture
Characteristics of Scripture .
The Truths Objective and Sub
jective ....
The Writers of the Books
The Books ....
Predictions and Doctrines
Prophecies concerning the Messiah
Curiosa Felicitas of Bible
The Bible Universal
The Bible Unique .
One Book, Product of many Men
The Seers have Embalmed their
History ....
Work for Science and Literature
Work in the World
Sustained by Miracles .
Miracles Changed as to Sphere of
Action ....
The Character of Christ
His Claim of Universal Dominion
The Claim Vindicated .
Continual Growth-Power of Truth

THE SUPERNATURAL IN NATURE.

STATE OF THE CASE.
"Je voudrais faire quelque progres nouveau dans la connaissance des choses
divines." — Emile Saisset.
The age in which we live reasonably boasts of great growth
in knowledge and useful application of that knowledge.
This breadth and accuracy, unless we exercise due care, will
enrich the race at the expense of the individual. It is no
longer possible for a single mind to occupy the whole domain
of investigation. The student must limit his labours to one
field of science ; to one tree, branch, or even leaf of know
ledge ; if he will add any new thing to the intellectual store
of mankind.
That is a noble devotion which abandons vast mines of
research, and concentrates every energy to carry one single
line of inquiry to the furthest limit. Such devotion, for the
sake of accuracy and of discovery, involves great sacrifices :
not the least of these, though often overlooked, is a narrowing
of the student's own intellectual and emotional nature. The
eye, turned continually upon objects near and small, loses
the faculty of far-seeking and wide discernment. The mind
wholly given to one study and its special methods loses power
and discrimination as to outlying provinces of thought.
Nowhere is the evil effect so plainly seen as in those
students of physical science the minuteness and mechanical
nature of whose investigations render them like the carpenter
who will have everything made of wood, or as the blacksmith
\ B

2 State of the Case.
who recommends iron. Their leaders must be pained to find
that having scorned the statements of Scripture as too
human— rendering the work of creation too man-like — they
are reduced to the absurdity of endeavouring to find a
mechanical equivalent for the world, in which the ultimate
atoms turn the key of every mystery, and possess, in some
incomprehensible manner, the promise and potency of all
terrestrial life.
Some of our religious teachers err by another kind of one-
sidedness. Knowing but little of physics, they use exploded
arguments, and seek to maintain untenable positions. No
wonder that the Sacred Cause, which they endeavour to
champion, is imperilled rather than vindicated.
Such an unnatural separation, on the one hand, of Science
from Religion and holy sentiment, is a surrender, by the
implicated physicists, of an honourable position ; and reduces
Science to an occupation of sheer curiosity and selfish utilita
rianism. A separation, on the other hand, of Religion from
Science, gives to our clergy the impossible task of explaining
the universe without the aid of positive knowledge ; and leads
to a hard dogmatism, oppressive to the spirit of a true
student in natural science. As a result, even the verities
of Divine Revelation, true independently of belief or unbelief,
are not handled with sufficient force to obtain the conviction
of scientific intellect, nor so pleasingly set forth as to win
the affections of a devout will. Partly owing to this, truths,
which the greatest of mankind have thoroughly investigated
and undoubtedly accepted, are now refused by the unspiritual ;
who, not being able to detect the soul by physical analysis,
nor to find God by means of microscope and telescope, nor
by any unbelieving efforts to obtain a view of the Eternal
Spirit, assert—" The existence of the Soul, the Being of God,
the Divine Revelation, have no other foundation than the
devout aspirations of believers."
It is true that there are, specially in the medical profession,
men with keen unconquerable love for scientific study ; who^
not possessing special religious convictions, not having any
particular expectation of pecuniary advantage, devote them
selves, " heart and soul," with intense unselfish devotion, to

Those against whom we Reason. 3
the study of their own branch of science. These men save
life and beautify it, their love of science is a sacred love, and
it may be that with them " laborare est orare."
" The thought of their laborious years doth breed
Perpetual benedictions : not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be bless'd :
* * * * *
Not for this we raise
The song of thanks and praise ;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward -things,
* * * * *
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the dawning light of better day."
Slightly altered from Wm. Wordsworth.
For the sake of these and other truth-loving men, in danger
of being beguiled by the sophisms of an imperfect science,
this book is written ; that, obtaining clearness of knowledge
as to the ancient founts of inspiration, and gathering strength,
they may say —
" Wherefore should we be silent, we who know
The trance of adoration, and behold
Upon our bended knees the Throne of Heaven,
And Him who sits thereon ? "
In a scientific work no apology is needed for the statement
in detail of scientific facts. They are needful for instruction
of the unlettered, and useful to all as exhibiting the bases
of real argument ; but the highest reason for their intro
duction is that the true discoveries of science are themselves
revelations of the Divine Presence and Work — a psalmody
of Wisdom and Power.
We do not deal with the controversies amongst believers,
nor with Scepticism in some of its rationalistic doubts ; but
with those who deny supernaturalism, who refuse to believe
in a personal God — our Creator, our Preserver, our Father.
We undertake a conflict the momentous nature of which in
volves our highest interests : nothing less, on the one hand,
than the loss of everything which can elevate man ; and, on
the other, his degradation to a brute-nature. Those who trifle
with unbelief should well understand this ultimate issue, and

4 State of the Case.
draw back while there is time. It is well that the Materialist
undeceive himself as to the imaginary benefits delusively
hoped to result from his philosophy. Egyptian, Assyrian,
Grecian, Roman experience, should enable him to see that
to unfaith men takes from them everything which can pre
serve from evil and lead to good. It is well for him to
be aware that without a sense of, holiness, of devotion to a
Higher Being, degradation ensues. " Deum ndsse, est vivere ;
Deum nescire, mori."
While employing physical and metaphysical arguments
against the Materialist, we contend for a Revelation in an
Inspired Record as an essential bulwark against error, and
the only infallible guide to religious truth ; as the corrective
of scientific generalisations which would banish God from the
world ; and as the teacher of spiritual laws co-ordinate with
those physical laws which a scientific generalisation has
revealed. Indeed, physical science is the sister and handmaid
of Revelation ; no lasting antagonism can exist between
them ; nor will man lastingly receive a religion that requires
antagonism. Science has not yet advanced far enough to
establish perfect accord with Revelation, but is tending
thither; and, when attained, the generalisations of science
will no longer be doubtful but assured. Our aim is to
promote that agreement by showing the correspondence
between truly scientific conclusions and Holy Writ ; by
exposing hasty generalisations which appear contrary to
Revelation ; by making it plain that science is knowledge as
exact as is possible to finite wisdom ; and that scientific
truths, like spiritual, have for ever been descending from
heaven to men.
Materialists forget all this. By mistake and misfortune,
astonished by unprepared emergence from comparative igno
rance of physics to wider information, they deny that there
is any science or commanding intellect apart from their own ;
not knowing that the sublimest achievements of our nature
are by spiritual scientific insight. To be great, they must
not only use the microscope of observation, but the far-
sighted telescope of imagination, and verify the vision. Then
they will be aware that former insurrections against Divine

Ancient Rebellions against Divine Truth. 5
Truth were sustained by men of brilliant parts, of dazzling
wit, of refined culture, of fascinating manners ; but, when the
tumult had subsided, Sacred Verities were found more firmly
established, having called forth in their defence the highest
intellectual powers that human nature ever displays. The
Greek, the Roman, the Celt, the Teuton, rebelled against the
Revelation which God gave to one family of mankind ; but
the Divine Oracles, because they are Divine, prevailed all the
more. We have now greater learning, and higher power of
criticism, but the Sacred Documents will endure a far more
searching test than any they have yet received. It will again
be proved, that men are not happy until pure intelligence
finds relief and solution for the perplexities of existence by
those acts of beneficence and high morality which are only
intelligible and possible through the conviction of direct
relations between God and man ; relations which bring into
the horizon of earthly existence the lofty proportions of
that celestial fane which God has built ; wherein countless
myriads of beings present glorious worship, and serve in
splendid occupation :
" There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,
But, in his motion, like an angel sings ;
Still quiring to the young-eyed Cherubims. " Shakespeare.
Observation confirms this. Those acquainted with scientific
progress must be struck with the fact that, of late, the more
brilliant achievements have been made in dealing with the
unseen. The microscopist, the chemist, questioning the
ultimate particles of matter ; those who occupy themselves
with the mysteries of molecular vibration ; bear the victorious
wreaths of successful discovery, and show that every atom
teems with wonders not less incomprehensible than those of
the vast and bright far-off suns.
This connection of all visible things with the invisible,
and of life with germs that possibly are not organised in the
sense of being eggs — possibly, in themselves, dead as the
inanimate matter and putrefiable substances out of which
they creep as living things, — is evidence, amounting to
scientific proof, that there is a continual going forth from the

6 State of the Case.
unseen to the seen ; evermore an awakening of life from the
dead ; which, whether called evolution or creation, renders
the universe a sort of enchanted valley ; and adds a strange
unlooked-for confirmation to expectation that the forms which
matter assumes are not its real substance — not essentials, but
accidents. Whether any piece of matter shall take the shape
of solid, of liquid, or gas, seems a question of temperature and
pressure.1 Who can tell the fixed and unvarying elemental
form of matter ? Has it any such form ? Is it a mere con
dition of energy, or force in loco ? Ought we to regard
it as endowed with the faculty of assuming every variety of
shape according to the mere accidents of environment ?
Truly, the world we live in is one of marvels ; and if we regard
it as a manifestation of the Divine Being, the mysteries are
analogous to those of the written Revelation : profound and,
as to essence, inscrutable.
Verification of the whole argument, on any extended scale,
being impracticable for one man, a portion of Holy Scripture
has been selected for tentative positive criticism ; a portion
which, as the first Divine word, and as intimately related to
physical science, presents, in connection with peculiar diffi
culties, strange facilities for that accurate definite examination
which can alone content our age. Indeed, if there is any
evidence of a Divine Mind discernible in the structure of Holy
Scripture, such evidence is the best possible proof that our
faith has sufficient basis in reason to warrant every sensible
man in accepting it as the instrument of his trial. Should the
investigation give reasonable satisfaction, it will afford ground
for belief that the same process may be successfully applied
1 Raoul Pictet has shown that we may hope to bring the molecules of a gas
into such close contact that they will form a liquid, by fulfilling certain conditions.
The gas must be pure, enormous pressure must be available, and the means of
producing intense cold, and of subtracting heat at very low temperatures Under
a pressure of 270 atmospheres, at a temperature of 200 F., oxygen is still a gas •
but under the influence of a sudden expansion which lowers the temperature to
about 360 Fa liquid is produced, and this state of oxygen gas has a density
identical with that of water. Nitrogen has been condensed, expanded liquefied
in the same manner ; hydrogen also. This latter was solidified under influence of
the extreme cold produced by expansion. Atmospheric air, when freed from
carbonic acid gas and treated in the same way, becomes solid. See an admirable
abstract of Pictet's work by Mr. Hartley of King's CoUege.— Popular Science

Meaning in the World's Work. 7
to other parts of the Sacred Volume. The present verification,
carried along a hundred lines of research, will prove that there
is meaning in the world's work and in our earthly discipline ;
a supreme and attainable good to strive after ; and that life is
worth living, because of Intelligence at the heart of things.
To our Father we say —
" Illi sunt veri fideles Tui qui totam vitam suam ad emendationem disponunt"
Imitatio Christi.
To our readers we say — " Omnia cunctanti," everything to
those who wait : for as splendour from galaxies of stars afar
off, goes forth in different periods of time, and arrives at the
earth in widely separated intervals ; there are beams of -truth
travelling from the Great Source which have not yet shone
upon our mind, but will surely gladden us. When the grass
has withered and the flower faded, when the Scripture Record
has a new setting in the light beyond the veil, we shall find,
some to our glory, some to our shame, that " the Word of God
abideth for ever."

STUDY I.
IS INTELLECT DIVORCED FROM PIETY ?
" Christianity did not appear in a barbarous age, nor win acceptance because
nations were unintelligent. The Greeks were people of highest natural power in
freshest vigour, with radiant intellect pervading the sense of youthful beauty. The
Roman is a symbol of the bold and clever leader, with whom to dare is to do.
Men ofthe early Church were of earnest, heavenly minded character— their saintly
aspect was in itself a revelation. "
It has been very confidently asserted " that we have not to
reckon with religion, its day is gone by, the best minds of our
age have forsaken theology, take no account of it, and this
is preparatory to a general abandonment of belief in the
Supernatural." The statement is improbable. All that we know of faith
and intelligence assures us that the sum total in the twentieth
century will be the offspring of the nineteenth, as the nine
teenth is of the eighteenth, and must be — unless special, that
is miraculous, illumination be given. It may be taken as
certain that whatever change takes place in the symbols by
which religious faith is expressed, religion, in all essential
respects, will remain unchanged. Summarily to throw away
ancient beliefs and institutions, to discard the growth and
universal experience of moral discipline, can in no case be the
work of an individual intellect, or of one age. There ever
has been in the past, and, judging from analogy, there ever
will be in the future, a recognition of Deity by the highest and
purest intelligences.
Lord Bacon says — " Are we disposed to survey the realm
of sacred or inspired theology, we must quit this small vessel
of human reason, and put ourselves on board the ship of the
Church." It were better not to quit "the small vessel of
human reason," but to use intelligence as a Divinely kindled
lamp, and this intelligence will burn brighter if fed with the

Manifestation of the Unknown. 9
oil of faith : for the religious sense, the highest which we can
entertain, is based upon the aspiration and endeavour after
complete fulness of life.
It is easy to understand that men of hard mechanical mind,
" who," Scaliger roughly said, " lick the vessel but never touch
the pottage," have little or no sense of religion ; but it is not
easy to understand by what right, with least power to judge
of the Supernatural, they assume authority to decide that
the world is nothing but matter, containing only material
organisms. Why, if our own material organism is governed
by intelligence, shall not the universe be governed by Intel
ligence !
They say — " There is no actuality in the Supernatural, no
reality in any knowledge we can obtain of it ; " but they are
well aware that the appearance of things is not the essential
reality, and that every phenomenon is the manifestation of an
unknown energy, though incomprehensible in the abstract ;
consequently, the phenomenon is a token of the Super
natural ; therefore, the Unknown is knowable so far as He is
manifested, unknowable in His essence as the infinite and
"eternal. Every fact in history, even if it occupy but a moment
in time, is rooted in an unsearchable past, and enters an end
less future ; the first link hides in the past eternal, and the
last vanishes in the future eternal ; all Nature, on one side,
touches the seen, on the other, the unseen. It is an essential
part of our nature to be conscious of the Power underlying all
— the Great Reality.
In essence God is ever unknown, as everything else is
essentially unknown. No term can be used in precisely the
same sense of essence and of the phenomenon, of man and
of God ; there is, none the less, an analogy. In human or
limited fashion, we know the Unknown ; and the effort to
know more, to co-ordinate emotional consciousness and intel
lectual cognition, is the highest, purest, most strengthening
exercise of our reason.
We all admire and applaud the noble Roman, Regulus, who
voluntarily returned to torture and death rather than violate
duty to his country and faith plighted to an enemy. Who
could interpret that man's life and mind by their material

10 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety?
conditions ? or, interpreting, would, according to material
conditions, have interpreted aright — making hardest task the
best delight i We commend Andrew Fuller, who, willing to
lose his life in order to serve his country, would not do a base
thing to save it. Does not every good man say — " I would
be virtuous for my own sake, though no man should know it ;
and clean for my own sake, though no one should see me " ?
The reality, the animating principle of such holy conduct,
resting on universal emotional consciousness of God, is more
active and powerful in life than that which is merely intel
lectual : " Sanctus sancte sancta tractat."
The fact, moreover, " that no human being, and no society
composed of human beings, ever did or ever will come to
much, unless their conduct was governed and guided by some
ethical ideal,"1 renders our acceptance of that ideal not merely
a requisition of common sense, but an indispensable condition
to true and lasting welfare. We appeal to the good and the
great, whether the highest and best ethical ideal is not found
in the Bible ? We ask those of high moral nature, whether
recognition of Divine love and purity does not make them
affectionate and reverential ? Whether the things which have''
been surely believed among us are not the root of national
and individual morality ? Whether they do not take that
place in the heart which, otherwise, superstition would usurp ?
Whether it is not right to urge the pure in spirit to maintain
these things in integrity ? If our race lose faith in the soul's
immortality, in Providence ; if, on the intellectual side, we lose
the recognition of Deity ; and, on the emotional side, a yearn
ing for closer union with Deity ; we can neither attain nor
retain the virtues, happiness, and true civilisation of well-
ordered communities.
There are, indeed, many reasons for supposing that human
nature will expand its powers, and occupy a wider sphere of
knowledge and action than the present ; but that advance
ment, if made without the establishment of harmony between
our knowledge and our aspirations, will rather bring more
anxious cares and sharper pains than augment enjoyment or
secure and enlarge our peace. Appalling facts of the most
1 Critiques and Addresses : " Prof. Huxley.

1 <<,

Irrational Opposition to the Supernatural. n
grim and gloomy aspect prove, as Bishop Butler said, that
" Mankind are for ever placing the stress of their religion
anywhere than upon virtue;" and experience shows that
sceptical men, denying Divinity, pave the way to sensualism
and thence to superstition. It is equally certain that the
habits, usages, and propensities of millions of our fellows are
not leading them forward to goodness and happiness.
This being matter of fact, the manner of argument against
the Supernatural is surprising. We are told — "The teach
ing of Jesus carried morality to the highest point attained or
even attainable by humanity. The influence of the spiritual
religion has been rendered doubly great by the unparalleled
purity and elevation of His own character ... so that the
'imitation of Christ' has become almost the final word in
the preaching of His religion, and must continue to be one
of the most powerful elements of its performance." 1 It " is
the highest conceivable by humanity. ... Its perfect realisa
tion is . . . extinction of rebellious personal opposition to
Divine order, and the attainment of perfect harmony with
the will of God." 2 Now, would it be believed that, imme
diately preceding, we find these words — " The disciples, who
had so often misunderstood the teaching of Jesus, during His
life, piously distorted it after His death " ? 3 We are to believe
that disciples, capable of receiving, keeping, and handing down
to future ages, the highest system of morality attainable by
humanity — in the light of which they lived, and for the
truth of which they died — " piously distorted " that system !
This " spiritual religion " of " sublime simplicity and moral
grandeur," putting all other systems to the blush, " uniformly
noble and consistent," is really built on " mere human delu
sion ! " Now, no folly is greater than this : to regard the
Bible as morally true, yet full of wilful lies ; pure, yet defiled
by hypocritical assumption of supernatural power and autho
rity ; recording the highest attainable morality, yet disgraced
by superstition and jugglery of wonders. As if a thing could
be really of heaven and heavenly, yet animated by the devil
with the breath of delusion and deceit ; inspired with highest
1 " Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 487.
2 Ibid. p. 488. 3 Ibid. p. 486.

12 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety?
wisdom, yet everywhere penetrated and pierced with tales and
marvels of the most puerile character, inserted by those who,
in all other things, were gloriously wise and true. We are to
believe, on the one hand, " no supernatural halo can brighten
its spiritual beauty, no mysticism deepen its holiness, in its
wisdom it is eternal ; " 1 but to hold, on the other hand, " the
falsity of all miraculous pretension ; " that St. Paul worked no
miracles ; that the birth, marvellous death, resurrection, and
ascension of Jesus, are " pious distortions ; " that the Apostles'
testimony is full of falsehoods ; that " upon all grounds of
reason and experience the supposed miraculous evidence, by
which alone we could be justified in believing the Divine
Revelation, must be pronounced mere human delusion."2
What a comment on the inspired words — " I work a work in
your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a
man declare it unto you " ! (Acts xiii. 41). It reminds one of
a sarcastic speech — " I believe that the philosophers of every
age are equally foolish, but that the common people gradually
increase in wisdom." 3
"We feel that common sense shows no difficulty in the
way of belief in miracles ; surely the Power who made all
things may again, at any time, create or annihilate force or
matter, and interfere with natural laws at His pleasure."*
Common sense sees that the argument of unspiritual men
must be pushed to the bitter end ; and, if it be true doctrine,
all providence, all government, all Divine interest in human
affairs, must be banished from our thoughts. If these men
are right, all men of piety are wrong. Kant should not have
said — " Two things impress me with awe : the starry heavens
without, and the moral law within." Those vastly our
superiors in wisdom and virtue, whom we contemplate with
involuntary admiration — admiration kindling emotions of love
— are in nowise to be followed. We must take for guides
men who say — " There was no Creation, and is no personal
God. The Old and New Testaments are legends ; incarnation,
redemption, glorification, are fond delusions." Hume, un-
1 " Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 489. * Ibid. p. 480.
3 " Social Pressure," by the author of " Friends in Council."
* " Protoplastic Theory of Life : " J. Drysdale, M.D.

Intelligent Adaptation in Nature. 13
believer as he was, declared—" The whole frame of Nature
bespeaks an intelligent author ; " but now the words of Goethe
— " Matter can never exist and be active without mind," are
made to mean that matter is eternal, and that the combina
tion of matter into diversified forms of beauty, and the
wonders of organic life, are without design, and unguided by
intelligence. The eye was not made to see, nor the ear to
hear ; the complex and compact apparatus of the human
mouth was not arranged to breathe, to taste, to eat, to talk ;
nor legs and feet to walk and run; nor heart and. lungs to
circulate and purify the blood ; verily, " Nihil tam absurdum,
quod non quidam philosophi dixerint."
The man of common sense, the man of real science too,
John Hunter to wit, sees that the eye did not make itself, nor
man make it, nor his parents, nor any other man ; yet, that it
was made by One who understood the transmission, reflection,
and refraction of light ; how to make lenses of different
powers, adjust them for clear perception of near or distant
objects ; how to make and use most ingenious mechanical
contrivances, in order to turn the eye in every direction, and
increase or diminish light ; how to place the eye so as to be
of most service, protected from injury, moistened from time
to time, and able to open or shut. Common sense is sure
that Divine Intelligence made the eye ; and, in duty bound,
worships God.
If there is no Supernatural in Religion and Nature ; then,
of course, morality is without Divine sanction ; there is no
vindication of right, no retribution for the good. Mistakes
there may be, but certainly not sins ; and Herbert can be
defended, who declared lust and passion to be no more blame
worthy than hunger and thirst ; and Hobbs, that right and
wrong are but quibbles of the imagination ; and Bolingbroke,
who held that the chief end of life is to gratify our passions ;
and Hume, who deemed humility a vice rather than a virtue.
We may tell those who are sensual as swine, fierce as wolves,
knavish, petulant, wayward, that there is no Judgment to
come. Monsters of cruelty are not monsters, nor blame
worthy. Those who break the law, knowing that they shall
escape the law, whom we account deserving of ten times more

14 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety?
punishment, are to be free from all punishment if they take
care of their health.
Human nature is outraged by such doctrine. We feel that
the moral element is the centre of our structure ; " peccatum
non est natura, sed vitium naturae ; " our consciousness of right
and wrong says — "there will be, there must be, a future
reckoning." Every temptation that we resist, every pure
impulse discreetly yielded to, every noble thought that is
encouraged, every sinful desire that is extinguished, every
wrong word that is withheld, enriches our character and
testifies of a higher life. Present before any audience the
spectacle of a pious, loving, watchful mother, whose son
requites her unselfish, unwearied efforts for his welfare by
barbarous murder, that he may seize the little savings only
hoarded by self-denial for his benefit. Will the spectators
applaud that act ? Will they not instantly, passionately,
without doubt, stigmatise it as wrong, wicked, base, abomin
able turpitude ? Then place before them the life of Christ,
good and gentle, promising to His own hurt and changing
not ; denying Himself, helping the unfortunate and unhappy,
dying amidst the taunts and scoffs of His murderers ; and
praying, while He dies, that God will forgive them. The
whole audience will admire and approve. In every language
the voice of the multitude will be, " That man is a good man,
He is a man of God." While human nature remains the
same, so long as common sense continues, virtue will have
a sort of glorious pattern coming from God and returning
to God.
Notwithstanding, we are unwisely urged to abandon the
Divine Record of this God-Man and of Creation. Mr. Herbert
Spencer writes thus against the Bible doctrine of Creation :—
"Many who in all else have abandoned the aboriginal
theory of things still hold this remnant." Then, speaking of
a man who has not abandoned it, he says — " Catechise him,
and he is forced to confess that it was put into his mind in
childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he has
long since rejected. Why this fragment is likely to be right
while all the rest is wrong, he is unable to say. May we not
then expect that. the relinquishment of all other parts of this

The Greatest Men are Believers. 15
story, will by-and-by be followed by the relinquishment of
this remaining part of it ? " 1
If all other parts of the story had been disproved, then the
narrative of Creation might be imperilled ; but, as intelligence
widens,- piety deepens. Those difficulties in the Holy Word
which appear contrarieties, accurate investigation so con
ciliates that faith is confirmed. They are like knots in the
oak which strengthen it, as knots in the net which retain. So
far from the aboriginal theory being all wrong, a really
scientific investigation confirms the sacred truths, and makes
our knowledge of them more accurate. Men of honourable
name, world-heroes, historians, poets, the ablest students of
Nature, are not atheists ; nor are they secularists. The
Newtons, Bacons, Boyles, Faradays, Harveys, Hunters, are
Christians. If Materialists have lost the Spirit of Divinity,
is there neither Spirit nor Divinity for other men ? Take
Socrates and Cicero, who lived and died before Christianity
appeared ; or Voltaire, who rejected it ; or Napoleon, who
regarded it with the genius of a statesman : all recognised
Divine handiwork in the Creation. In every man, worthy of
the name, there is a longing for higher fulness of life, a closer
walk with God, which, whether formulated in the symbols of
science or of Scripture, is the very essence of all religion. It
is not well known, but it is true, that a singularly large pro
portion of the leading scientific men of the day are devout
Christians ; and we may safely hold that religion which, in
time past, by definite expression in creeds and ceremonies,
preserved reverence and holiness of thought and feeling, will
be preserved, not destroyed, by science.
Opponents are in part aware of it : " If Nature have in store
a man of the requisite completeness — equivalent, let us say, to
Milton and Helmholtz rolled into one — such a man, freed by
his own volition from ' society,' and fed for a time upon the
wild honey of the wilderness, might be able to detach religious
feeling from its accidents, and realise it to us in a form not
out of keeping with the knowledge of the time." 2 Another
writes — " The army of liberal thought is, at present, in very
1 "Principles of Biology,'' vol. i. pp. 335, 336.
2 " Fragments of Science," pref., 2nd ed. : Prof. Tyndall.

1 6 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety ?
loose order, and many a spirited freethinker makes use of his
freedom merely to vent nonsense. We should be the better
for a vigorous and watchful enemy to hammer us into cohesion
and discipline ; and I, for one, lament that the Bench of Bishops
cannot show a man of the calibre of Butler of the ' Analogy,'
who, if he were alive, would make short work of the current
a priori infidelity." 1
Now, in reality, the scientific work is not so much for the
priest as for the professor. Science, less than religion, can
stand alone ; but must freely combine with all right efforts for
the betterment of our race. Men of science are priests of the
material universe ; why do they not, seeing that the feelings
of awe, reverence, wonder, worship, are woven into the texture
of their nature, give reasonable satisfaction to holy emotion ?
Theirs is the privilege of removing the apparent antagonism
between Science and Religion — the abiding terror of timid or
superficial minds ; theirs the high aim to unite moral power
with intellectual achievement ; and all the more because out
of their province, from men of their companionship, flows the
poison-stream of unbelief which destroys the ignorant.
The man, whether priest or professor, for whom the
wedding-bells have to be rung at the union of Intellect and
Piety will come : " I hope and believe, that when the world
is older, and when the mutual relations of all branches of
knowledge are as well understood as are now, for instance,
the relation of chemistry to the theory of electricity, the
scientific progress which began by rejecting religion as the
basis of science, will finally accept religion as not indeed
the basis, but the summit and crown." 2 Meanwhile the theo
logian and the student of Nature must ask each other — " How
readest thou ? " For the book of Nature and the book of
Scripture are the two books which were meant to be com
pared, and can never be antagonistic : " altera posse docens,
altera velle Dei.""
The opposition of Materialists to the Biblical manner of
looking at things, is due to the fact that they prefer cosmic
or physical symbols to those which are human; forgetting
; Scientific Education : " Prof. Huxley.
' Scientific Bases of Faith," Introd. : Joseph John Murphy.

1 n <

The Coming Man. i 7
that both are relatively inadequate, and both indeed equally
anthropomorphic : due, also, to ,the error of counting
psychical changes as nothing more than an undulatory dis
placement of molecules. Further, they make morality, even
in the highest stages, nothing better than enlightened selfish
ness ; and yet, again, to the ignoring of this other fact, that
only those who apprehend in full subjective faith the mysteries
of revealed religion, are capable of reasonable, sufficient,
accurate knowledge as to the life of God in the soul, and as
to the record of God in Creation and Redemption. Lord
Bacon observed — " The subtilty of nature far transcends the
subtilty of the human understanding ; " but professors of
naturalism, forgetting that moral and religious faculties have
equal authority and reality with those purely mechanical,
interpret only the material structure of things. Using their
mind to destroy mind, even while professing to live in the
light of intellect, they assert, Matter is king.
' ' He that hates truth shall be the dupe of lies :
And he that will be cheated, to the last
Delusions strong as Hell shall hold him fast.
For men go wrong with an ingenious skill ;
Bend the straight rule to their own crooked will ;
And with a clear and shining lamp supplied,
First put it out, then take it for a guide." Cowper.
Not so the coming man, " the Milton and Helmholtz rolled
into one : " realising religious feeling " in a form not out of
keeping with the knowledge of the time," and aiming at the
highest possible culture of individuals and of the race, he will
think in essentials as did Abraham, as did the pious cloistered
monk, as did the true puritan, as do now the holy in heart ;
but he will utter his thought in the language of a man — not
in that of Nature's childhood, go beneath the symbolic super
stratum, teach our faith to rest on the underlying spiritual
principle ; not explain Scripture as a book which fell from
Heaven, but as written by holy men who were moved of
God ; one side all human, one side all Divine — iravra Qua ml
avOptlnriva iravra.
This coming man, " Milton and Helmholtz rolled into one,"
c

1 8 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety ?
will not be an Antichrist to deny the Father and the Son ;
nor that man of sin who, by subtlety and force, shall renew
the old delusion that men can be happy without God ; but
we may expect clear proof that there are only two principles
on which the system ofthe universe can be explained, i. A
Personal Intelligence creating, sustaining, ruling — this is the
Christian hypothesis, and will be preserved. 2. A supreme
power, but no Supreme Being ; an invisible principle, not a
personal God — this really atheistic, is called the Pantheistic
notion, and will be destroyed.
It will be shown that only two principles of government
are possible in the world — I. Providence. 2. Law. Provi
dence, foreseeing, arranging, applying. Law, ordering, sub
ordinating, invariable. Providence, without law, would be
uncertain and capricious. Law, without providence, is an
absurdity. The doctrine of providence requires interventions.
The doctrine of law adjusts and limits varieties of motion
and life. The two principles, when applied, merge into one
process ; for as there is a world of mind, besides that of
matter, and as our own mind subordinates matter by acting
upon the intelligible order in it, we have proof of a twofold
mental action : our own, in ascertaining and using the intel
ligible order ; another, as manifested in that order. Provi
dence then is the soul of law, and law is providence in action;
in other words, God governs by law — " Deo est Natura, quod
fecerit." Consequently, intellect cannot be divorced from
piety ; and no truly scientific man should say — " There never
has been, and never will be, any intervention in the operation
of natural laws." 1
It is certain, then, that the origin and maintenance of law
are by an ordaining Intelligence. Take an illustration of
highest order— the Divine Individuality of Christ Jesus. He
lived 1800 years ago, and was confessedly the crown and
perfection of humanity. He could not have been the product
of an atheistic, or of a pantheistic system of the universe : for
perfection, by either system, is only attainable as the ultimate
outcome, as the indefinitely remote completion, of a well-
nigh immeasurable period of evolution. The Perfect Man,
1 "Conflict between Religion and Science : " Prof. Draper.

Revelation a Message to Intelligence. 19
therefore, must be regarded — not only on Scriptural, but
on scientific grounds — as a providential Manifestation of
the Divine Personality. The early appearance of Perfect
Humanity, and in an age, by itself, wholly incapable of
producing such a type, was, in itself, a miracle. Such a break
of continuity is conceivable and practicable only on the
supposition of a Personal Ruler of the universe ; of a Law
giver higher than His own laws, manifesting Himself equally
in the orderly sequence of Nature, and in those extraordinary
Revelations which, as varying and enlarging that orderly
sequence, we call miraculous.
We obtain the same truth from three representatives of
opposing schools of thought : " The Life of Christ," by Dr.
Farrar ; " Ecce Homo ; " and " Vie de Jesus," by M. Renan.
They agree on two great facts — 1. That primitive Christianity
is the true religion. 2. That Jesus, by whom it was given, is
the One around whom universal history gathers. Hence it
follows that the life of Christ was a real life. He undoubtedly
lived and taught as the New Testament substantially repre
sents. Christ was the highest and purest Intellect the world
ever possessed ; we have example and proof that purest faith
is married to highest reason.
Revelation, the Divine warrant for piety, far from opposing
Intelligence, is a special message to our intelligence ; unites
the reasoning power of the philosopher, the imagination of
the poet, and the inspiration of the seer. This trinity of
graces renders the power of the Bible— one book — greater
than that possessed by the whole literature of Greece — many
books. This one Book, from a nation despised by all in
former, and by some in present time, holds the world in
awe. It is read and preached in hundreds and thousands of
churches. It is in the cottage of the lowly man, and abides
with the honourable ; it weaves the literature of the scholar,
and sweetens the common talk of life. It enters the closet
of the student, the king's chamber, the counsel-hall. In sick
ness and sadness, in perils and partings, in life and death, it
tempers our grief to finer issues, and gladdens joy with yet
brighter hopes. Our best prayers are in " its storied speech,"
which tells of earthly duties and heavenly rest, as if Plato's

20 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety?
wisdom, Newton's science, and Milton's art, had sought to
make it beautiful and good. No other book, sacred or
profane, can pretend to the suffrages of so many men of great
genius, of so many intelligent and educated adherents from
so many nations and races, or has formed, like it, " a succes
sion of men heroically bent on making it universal." A Book
— thus winning Reason's highest triumphs, the crown of poetry,
and glorification by art, revealing wisdom from the depths,
morality from the heights, and transforming the death-angel
into a heavenly messenger — approves itself to the best and
wisest of our race, unites intellect and piety in sacred bonds.
Professor Huxley, in his lecture on the " Advisableness of
Improving Natural Knowledge," said — " The improver of
natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority
as such. For him scepticism is the highest of duties ; blind
faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise,
for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved
the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the
keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind
faith. . . . The man of science has learned to believe in
justification, not by faith, but by verification."
This is only half true. Making holes and filling them up
again is a waste of labour. A continual undermining of
foundations renders even the firmest fabrics insecure. Autho
rity is practically admitted into natural science. Of course,
observers must maintain their independence ; and science
progresses not altogether authoritatively but experimentally ;
if, for example, we doubt whether there is on the floor of the
deep ocean a thing called Bathybius, the doubt may arise
from our knowledge of the analogy of Nature ; but he who
counts " scepticism the highest of duties " should even doubt
concerning his doubt, and deny actuality or reality to know
ledge. The truth is— " Theological habits of thought are
relatively useful, while scepticism, if permanent, is intellec
tually and morally pernicious." l It is well to dig about trees,
not to uproot them ; and we all know, as to Scripture and
science, theology and therapeutics, that the mass must wait
outside and receive the result on authority. " To bring into
1 " Cosmic Philosophy : " John Fiske.

Root of Doubt is Want of Knowledge. 2 1
doubt in any way (and it is of little moment in what way, or
on what pretext), that which the common sense of mankind
has always assumed to be certain, is, if not to shake the
evidence of all truth, yet to paralyse the faculty by which
evidence of any kind is seized and held." x
Even in natural knowledge the researches and discoveries
of the most self-reliant investigators are worked out upon
the foundation laid by previous authority, whether that
authority be censured, or amended and confirmed ; and must
be matter of faith to most men, only to be justified by those
who have power to verify. Would a learned professor call it
intelligence or stupidity, for common men to deny everything
that they do not know by their own actual verification ? Is
the professor's own authority to be absolutely rejected ? Is
he never to give dogmatic expression of belief? Must the
botanist try every statement of the astronomer ; and the
patient demand proof, in the physician's prescription, that
the drugs will heal ? Or are godly men, with their prayerful,
scholarly, critical, historical investigations, the only men whose
authority we refuse ?
Doubt, in itself, is not a mark of knowledge ; at the best, it
is the halting step of prudence in pursuit of knowledge, but
a contemptible thing indeed when flaunted as an encourage
ment to godless unbelief. What saith another professor ? —
" We encounter our sceptical ' as if.' It is one of the parasites
of science, ever at hand, and ready to plant itself, and sprout,
if it can, on the weak points of our philosophy. But a
strong constitution defies the parasite, and in our case, as
we question the phenomena, probability grows like growing
health, until in the end the malady of doubt is completely
extirpated." 2
As to the comfort of doubt, that is downright nonsense,
there is no comfort in it ; uncertainty ancL,suspense are full of
discomfort. Duty, far from delighting in it, does her best to
get rid of it ; and, obtaining confidence of conviction, reposes
and rejoices in the truth : " La Philosophic est une tentative
incessante de l'esprit humain pour arriver au repos."
1 " Physical Theory of Another Life : " Isaac Taylor.
- " Scientific Use of the Imagination : " Prof. Tyndall.

22 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety ?
" He that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty, scaled,
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun.
Tennyson, Ode on the Death ofthe Duke of Wellington.
The argument strengthens in the region of morality and
religion. Irresistible mathematical evidence would confound
all characters and dispositions ; subvert rather than promote
the purpose of the Divine Counsel, which is to produce obedi
ence as the free-will offering of love. Do we then ignore
reason in religion ? Certainly not. Religion is intensely
practical, and not less experimentally realised and verified in
the soul of a devout man than is science in the mind of a
physicist. Faith implies knowledge of some ground for
reliance ; and, as knowledge becomes definite, the faith, con
fessed in our creed, is understood in the explicit and implicit
meaning ; and is expressed in our symbols as definitely,
clearly, precisely, as is any problem in science. The .shallow
ness, sometimes imputed to devout men, belongs rather to the
narrower mental sphere of objectors, who set a higher value
on a little technical knowledge than on good sense, exercised
and approved by greater general knowledge. Revelation is
made to reason, not to unreason ; and reason is that founda
tion on which Divine revelation erects a spiritual super
structure. There is without doubt in the "single-eyed," and in them
alone, a sense of certainty in relation to Scripture, " which is
neither the offspring of reason, nor the result of culture ; but,
like life itself, a direct inspiration of the Almighty."1 To
such men the Bible carries its own evidence ; and truth, like
wisdom, is seen by its own light. " Sol facit ut solem videas ;
Deus facit ut videas Deum." This spiritual discernment, the
property of millions who never framed a syllogism, is the
work of that faculty by which we recognise excellence. Hence,
we conclude that the material frame of man is to human intel
ligence what human intelligence is to piety.
1 " A Story ofthe Bible," p. 29 : Interpreter Series.

Reasonableness of Faith. 23
Faith shrinks not from inquiry which has truth for its aim.
To take the excuse of the head out of the way of the heart is
well, to clear the mind helps to purify and elevate emotion.
Certainly we would not have doubt come in at the window
because inquiry is denied at the door ; but a great hurt and
injustice are done when, to use Dr. Johnson's illustration, the
Apostles are tried once a week for forgery. It is well for an
age to be occupied in proving its creed ; but reason, the basis
of faith, must not become its substitute. Wilful continuance
in doubt, so far from being an evidence of superior wisdom,
indicates little love of truth, weakness of will, and insincerity
of purpose. Anybody can doubt, and doubt more as con
cerning truth than error. Even the seeking of proof implies
not only a want of belief, but a lack of knowledge as to the
things to be proved ; and the sooner a man, or an age,
reasonably passes from the proving to the evolving, from the
arguing to the appropriating, the earlier will the real height of
the argument be attained.
Many a man allows the best part of life to be crippled by
doubt, and the halting so hinders his soul's progress, that old
age comes like an untimely winter. He is not a tree from
which God gathers fruit, but a barren and leafless trunk in a
landscape of desolation. " How many among us, at this very hour,
Do forge a life-long trouble for themselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true ! "
Tennyson, Geraint and Enid.
Let past years of doubt suffice for us individually, past ages
of unbelief suffice for us nationally. It is time that we repro
duce the many glorious examples of Scriptural piety, those
ancient spectacles of truth, faith, holiness ; time to prove that
Christianity, which confessedly gives purest morality to in
dividuals, is able to sanctify whole nations ; time to show that
in Christianity we have not only the emotion which, with
loving power, holds ten thousand hearts, but the wisdom which
delights and satisfies profoundest minds.
Is this capable of verification ? It is capable ; and though
no serious man considers a popular assembly the proper court
for trial of deep truths ; yet, as the verdict of public opinion

24 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety?
checks the tendency of closet speculation to become visionary,
we appeal to the general conscience whether religious faith, in
its devout dynamic nature, does not, by ruling the inner and
outer man, raise the whole life to a higher stage ? We are
sure of affirmation. It is, indeed, because religion has ever
furnished high sanction to morality, and touched us with the
conviction of more life and fuller, that creed and conduct are
always associated in our minds. There is not only an excel
lency, a mystic gleam of inward evidence, proving every part
of Christian faith separately considered ; but a relation and
vigour in the several parts, taken as a whole, which win our
love and reverence. We long for the realisation — that supreme
epoch in which every man shall love the Lord with all his
heart and his neighbour even as himself; when "the beast
shall have been worked out," and the ape and the tiger be dead
within us. Nor is that all ; Scripture, in making men holy,
renders them more intellectual ; giving stability and elevation
of thought, with enlarged appreciation of the Divine. Ob
servers of character are surprised at the remarkable betterment
which is wrought in those who are called " regenerate." So
soon as a man sets himself to do the will of God, he seems to
be taught of God as to the doctrine. "A vision and faculty
Divine," or at least a moral and religious interest, possesses
him. He obtains the one great qualification for understand
ing Scripture, moral sympathy with God, which overcomes
prejudices as well as passions, and makes the light of the
Word to be the dawn of a happy day (John vii. 17). His
nature becomes cleansed and renewed. His mind, now like a
photographic plate, readily receives an impression from the
light of truth ; or —
" Like an ^Eolian harp, that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes." The Two Voices.
His faith, based on the Word of God, grows into the realisa
tion of Christ's work ; and this produces a likeness to Christ's
character. A man living in and by this faith brings forth
good works : " non ex personis probamus fidem, sed ex fide
personas ; " as Luther said—" Gute fromme Werke machen

The Higher Verification. 25
nimmermehr einen gutten frommen Mann, sondern ein guter
frommer Mann macht gute Werke "—good works make not
the man, the good man makes the works. He has not only
a triumphant elevation of spirit in magnanimity and honour,
but a placid feeling of serenity and blissful contentment in
gentleness and humility. He enjoys a noble satisfaction in
victories obtained by self-command over the propensities of
animal nature, and independence of soul in the consciousness
of having nothing to hide — nothing to be ashamed of. His
religion possesses that reasonable verification which satisfies
mind and conscience ; a holy, useful life before God and man.
A yet higher verification must not be forgotten. There are
Bacons, Newtons, Shakespeares, in science and literature ;
there are Isaiahs, Johns, Pauls, exceeding in enlightenment
and privilege of revelation. Rome disciplined human will
and Greece the mind to the subjection of law, Asia gave
vividness to the spiritual imagination, but the Hebrews had
the nobler task of enlightening our conscience. These
Hebrews were of extraordinary toughness, and justify their
being matched against evil — that deadly power which has
so long baffled and hurt the human spirit. The secular philo
sopher can give reasons for the excellency of Romans, Greeks,
Easterns, in their vocations ; the Divine philosopher is able to
explain the ground of faith in the Jewish mind. It was a
vivid, abiding conviction of the existence and presence of God,
elevated by the possession of Divine Inspiration in permanent
power. " God was to Israel neither an assumption nor a
metaphysical idea. He was a Power that can be verified,
as much as the fire to burn or bread to nourish. . . . The
greatness of Israel in religion, the reason why he is said to
have had religion revealed to him, to have been entrusted
with the oracles of God, is because he had in such extraordi
nary force and vividness the perception of this power." 1
Men, nowadays, may be mighty as the former sages ; and
holy ones, in our own time, equal the ancient saints. Possess
ing like faith and character, they may attain to the enlighten
ments, possibly, to the revelations which adorned the old
prophets. Men of due mental, emotional, spiritual calibre can
1 "Literature and Dogma : " Matthew Arnold.

26 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety?
rise to the high knowledge, awful experience, abiding convic
tion, possessed by the holy Apostles. If so, then we, to whom
God is not only a Power but a Person, not far off, but in
human flesh by Jesus, and in human spirit by the Holy Ghost,
may attain heights the ascent to which our holiest men have
scarcely yet begun ; for, indeed, the Holy Ghost is to those
who receive Him an intellectual light affording illumination
to every rational faculty. The present bubbles and ripples of
true knowledge are but the surface-marks of a great spiritual
stream. This stream, flowing forth from the throne of God,
is as a river of paradise for the healing of nations, the reno
vation of souls, the beautifying of all lands.
There is, consequently, no ground for saying " Intelligence
is divorced from Piety." The best minds cleave to religion.
All history proves the need of an ethical ideal ; and experi
ence shows that, without the aid of supernatural authority,
moral and spiritual restraints lack power to enforce obedience.
Supernaturalism was affirmed and taught by Jesus, the highest
mind in the world. It is the power which gives victory to
the Bible, makes the Church mighty, the priests' orders valid,
the sacraments efficacious, prayer to prevail. To doubt is not
a mark of power, but a holding in contempt the common
sense and morality of the best and greatest men the world
has ever produced. To say, as some do, "that a religion
divested of the supernatural, and based simply on human
reason, could be more firmly established," is downright non
sense. Our faith, Divine in origin, is indeed capable of verifi
cation on every line of argument ; but persuade men generally
that it is not of Divine authority, a human invention, and the
conviction will weaken, not strengthen public and private
morality — that power which is alone capable of holding
society together during perilous times. The message ought
to be accredited, the ambassador requires authority. One
from the invisible and intangible must give other and different
proof of his office than one from the visible world. Divinity
is that proof, and the only one. The assertion— " morality
would be purer without Divine sanction, hope of resurrec
tion, and expectation of future life ; for freedom from con
sciousness of responsibility, and awe of future judgment,

Cause of Failure as to Art and Science. 27
would lead to more disinterested conduct " — sets at nought
all experience, takes away encouragement from the good and
restraint from the bad.
We have not exhausted the argument : we possess historical
proof that virtue, or pure morality, has not been able to main
tain itself in the earth, or to thrive by the light of Nature
alone. Our duty may be seen by that light, and be proved
by reason, but additional sanctions are required for the en
forcement. The men of to-day are not the only ones who
have talked of regenerating the world by means of the arts
and intellectual lights ; but from first to last, when apart from
religious purity, the vaunted culture has ended in degenera
tion. History shows that men drag down Christianity ; how,
then, can the origin and continuance of it be accounted for
without extra-mundane means ? Genesis iv. 19-22 affords a
striking illustration of the relative nothingness of Arts. In
Lamech's family are represented three great grades of civilisa
tion — agricultural, mercantile, sensual ; and Lamech, a mur
derer, is the first recorded polygamist. Did that ancient
civilisation emancipate the world, or enslave it ? Did the
strife maintained by those mechanical, sensual Cainites against
the Sethites lead to a moral and spiritual victory? What
was the result ? The Cainites found themselves under the
water with their organs, their implements, and their beauty ;
but the Ark, which they had ridiculed as an ungainly and
retrograde structure, rode in peace over their heads.
There were centuries in which the Sophists ran their
career ; when Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, taught at Athens ;
when the school of Alexandria was founded and Euclid wrote
his " Elements ; " when Archimedes propounded theories and
principles in mechanics and hydrostatics ; when Pythagoras
experimented on harmonic intervals, Hipparchus and Ptolemy
studied the stars ; and anatomy began to be investigated as
the basis of scientific medicine : did they win the world from
misery, regenerate one heart, or save one soul ? When the
science of ancient Greece had cleared the world of fantastic
images of false divinities, the scientific method was well-nigh
completed by the union of induction and experiment, was
this science the salt of the earth ? Did the scientific intellect

28 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety?
go on and possess the universal mind ? The impact of atoms
being accounted the all-sufficient cause of things, were men
satisfied with the operation? The whole world answers —
" No." From the minds of philosophers was dissipated
" every thought of a deflection of the universe by the gods,"
but neither sage nor simple was content. Literature, arts,
refinement, luxury, gave much outward fineness, softness,
finish, to manners ; the old poets, orators, sculptors, painters,
philosophers, were a wonder ; but Juvenal and Persius among
the Latins, Lucian amongst the Greeks, and St. Paul of the
Hebrews, testify that society was a sink of sensuality. Why?
Because art and science were divorced from ethical and re
ligious purity. Philosophi sine Deo non sunt periti, sed
perituri. The ethics of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Cicero, are in some
respects admirable ; but they had no authority from Divinity,
and failed. The ablest people of whom history bears record
is unquestionably the ancient Greek. " The average ability
of the Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, very
nearly two grades higher than our own — that is, about as
much as our race is above the African negro." x This race
did not go on to possess the world. Though highest in
products of the understanding, fairest of all men in form,
cleverest in art, they speedily became servile and sensual,
intolerant and fierce. Like the Romans, they fell into moral
putrefaction which slew them. When godless Science has
done the utmost, and irreligious Art has put her finest finish
on work, only Frankenstein's monster is produced which slays
them both. Art and Science are good, as the handmaids
and adorners of morality, as lighteners of labour, as smoothers
of Nature's asperity ; but, when put instead of Religion and
of God, they and their worshippers perish like children of
Cain. The gutter-child, by intellectual drill, may be converted
i into " the subtlest of all the beasts of the field ; " but we know
the original of that description. History, human experience,
Scripture, alike testify— " Where there is no vision, the people
perish " (Prov. xxix. 18). " It is impossible to show by what
1 Galton's " Hereditary Genius. ''

General Incapacity of Doubters. 29
practical measures religious feeling, which is the essential
basis of conduct, can be kept up without use of the Bible ; "
while experience proves that the purest morality and noblest
life are formed by its precepts and examples. " The inability
of laws to attain even the imperfect end at which they aim, is
proved by the fact that in all ages and in every condition of
society, an authority superior to their own has been called in
to sanction and maintain them. Religion is that authority." x
Social and moral direction is a far more important object
than scientific inquiry ; being that, indeed, which elevates and
gives best use to inquiry. The most violent opponents allow
that a life guided by the rule of Christ's morality, and
governed by Christ's authority, is the noblest of which we
are capable. Even the lowest ranks of society find that by
Christ's rule they are enabled to perform the highest actions
of virtue.
There are, nevertheless, among the opponents of Scripture,
some high-minded, honest men. The laureate lauds them too
much — ¦ " There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds. "
We only believe him so far as John Newton was wont to
say — " Some men's doubts are better than other men's cer
tainties." The character of other doubters whose heart, not head,
is at fault, has been quaintly sketched by an old writer —
" Sinners perched on the dunghill of their vices, clapping their
wings in self-applause, and fancying themselves much grander
creatures than the Christian ; who all the while is soaring on
high, like the lark, and mounting on his way to heaven."
There are dishonest sceptics, professing to be wise, whom
Tennyson well describes —
" ' Law is God,' say some : ' No God at all,' says the fool ;
' For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool. ' "
To all such, these are our only words —
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small ;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all. "
Longfellow.
1 "The Great Problem: can it be Solved?" Rev. G. R. Gleig, Edinburgh
Magazine, January, l875-

30 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety ?
Amongst the higher and more honest infidels, some of
scientific power have little imagination and small spirituality,
fail in reverent heed of Scripture, and consequently are not
whole or comprehensive men. They amass, sometimes sys
tematise facts, and unsparingly devote the best years of their
life to one minute section of physical science. As a matter of
course, their mechanical process fails when applied to ideas ;
and their partial apprehension of general truth, and the
attempt to formulate Nature as wholly material and external,
narrow their minds. Good in technicalities, but incapable of
wide range, they are specially unfit for the elevated themes of
theology, which are in the widest sense universal. From the
habit of contemplating phenomena in which uniformity of
antecedents and consequents obtains, they cannot refrain from
the assumption that nothing was, is, or can be, at variance
with their constant but limited experience. They explain
the external structure of the world indeed, but according to
the technic of man, taking no account of the spiritual and
internal. The mechanism is all, the Maker is nothing in their
theory ; nevertheless, their own doctrine of continuity proves
that the visible is the actualisation of the invisible, and the
natural a passing of the supernatural into history. Schelling
too pantheistically expresses it — " Nature is visible mind, and
mind is invisible nature." Put it more correctly and scien
tifically — " the phenomenal universe is the manifestation of a
Divine Power that cannot be identified with the vitality of
phenomena.''' Professor Tyndall infers that Aristotle, praised as a phy
sicist, was wholly unphysical ; and says of Goethe — " He could
not formulate distinct mechanical conceptions ; he could not
see the force of mechanical reasoning ; and in regions where
such reasoning reigns supreme, he became a mere ignis fatuus
to those who followed him." 1 It may be said with equal fair
ness, that scientific men, in pursuit of the merely mechanical,
neglect their best and greatest work, the establishment of
intelligent enduring alliance between Religion and Science ;
the showing that they wage battle for one and the same cause
-the cause of truth, of goodness, of beauty, of God. Like
'Address before the British Association at Belfast, 1874."

1 <i

Errors of Materialists. 31
Lucretius of old, they affirm — " Nature is seen to do all things
spontaneously of herself," when nothing of the kind is seen,
for the energy that works cannot be identified with the
phenomena. They pretend to find in the chance clash of
atoms the secret of the world's plan from origination to com
pletion ; or, with greater absurdity, own God to be the cause
of all things, but assert that He is the explanation of nothing :
" Dieu est la cause de tout, mais il n'est l'explication de rien."1
They profess that inorganic matter, unaided by God, contains
the promise and potency of all life ; yet of this life, concerning
which is such positive affirmation, they know little or nothing
— " it is the continuous equilibration of the organism with its
environment," that is, the art or power of living ! They so
express the law of conservation of energy as to bind the world
in chains of fate, leave no place for God, no liberty for man,
no soul for eternity ; and, strangely enough, count this con
servation of energy in the things that are a sort of means by
which those that are not begin to exist. They claim regard
as clear-witted men, who live in " the high and dry light of
intellect," y&t wholly forget, for any pious purpose, that every
meal we eat and every cup we drink, illustrate the mysterious
control of mind over matter, and of higher law subordinating
lower. They know that, even as to geometrical truths, more
is required than axioms and definitions — there must be intui
tion of the figures, and knowledge besides that of experience ;
yet, not being able to see the Unknown by introspection of
what they know, they would deprive others of all that know
ledge which grows out of spiritual experience.
In the Secular School, human morality is identified with
brute selfishness, and conscience is declared to be " a hoarded
fund of traditionary pressure of utility." Shall we waste our
time with these men, and try every possible way of going
wrong ? Life is too short. Religion satisfies a moral and
spiritual yearning, which cannot be otherwise appeased.
Intellect and Piety unite in worship of the Great Supreme,
whom to know is eternal life. Brothers come with us, and
escape the horrors of Richter's dream. He passed through
unknown shadows, darkling around an empty altar. On the
1 M. Scherer.

32 Is Intellect Divorced from Piety ?
church dome was a dial-plate barren of figures, but a dark
spectre pointed at it, and dead men sought to see and read.
Be not like those men, vainly searching the figureless dial-
plate of unrecovered centuries. Be not those blind, trying to
read where nothing can be read ; nor those deaf, listening
where no voice can be heard.
Gathering the threads of argument into some pattern of
certainty, we find that those who pretend to divorce intellect
from piety are in grievous error. The Tree of Knowledge,
apart from Religion, is not a Tree of Life. Those who feed
on it only, neglecting the higher faculties of imagination and
sacred emotion, often fall into that mental insanity which
asserts — " Behold, we know not anything ! " Far from having
added anything to our real knowledge of God and of human
nature, their light has gone out in darkness : whereas Moses
and Job, Plato and Aristotle, live as princes among men.
The religious temperament enables the intellect to see clearer
and further. Only in the least thoughtful of men is it mani
fested in simple faith and unhesitating zeal that acts rather
than reflects, ventures instead of calculating. The thoughtful it
moulds into the character expressing intellect and morality —
wide, deep, far-seeing ; and is in union with sound, sober, well-
balanced cerebral development. The highest class of minds,
the eminently spiritual and thoroughly intellectual, familiarise
themselves with those awfully grand subjects which are far
beyond the ordinary strength of nerve and brain. This
highest class is of the Christly type. In them partly, in Him
fully, we find not merely spiritual, but philosophical pre
eminence beautifully arrayed in simplicity, purity, love.
In conclusion, we confidently assert — The best thinkers in
every science give up the despairing creed, and decide for
religion. The great facts and doctrines of Revealed Truth
are more and more approved by accurate thought. The light
of Revelation illumines the invisible world ; we not only look
into various apartments of the material universe, but behold
within them many forms of spiritual grace and grandeur.
While we look, our constitution and faculties enlarge in
conscious existence, and we become almost other beings in
impassioned emotion and intellectuality. The promise and

Piety the Crown of Intellect. 33
prophecy of higher and imperishable corporeity increase every
present enjoyment. New melodies and harmonies continually
break in upon the soul with delicious refreshments and
assurances of heavenly help. The strength of our intellect
delights in the words of inspired narrative and in glorious
acts. Intelligence unites with Piety in proclaiming that God
is the source of all and the disposer of all ; that the birth of a
human being is not a less manifestation of Divine Power than
is the exit of a human being in chariot of fire. The ordinary
and extraordinary acts of Divine Government are known to
be relatively, not essentially, different.
Having this knowledge of the Supreme, we rightly regard
marvels and miracles as special messages and impressive
signs. Without repugnance, we admit the Divine element in
religion ; only weaklings refuse it. We hold that, beyond
controversy, Divinity is the very life and soul of Nature.
Those apologetic commentaries, or excusing expositions,
formerly accepted, do not satisfy our nicer feelings ; nor will
our surer confidence try to evade intelligent inquiry. We
have a firm, rational hold of historic evidence, due knowledge
of physics and philosophy, attesting the origin and continu
ance of Revelation. We disregard the petulant outcries of
irreligious persons, who denounce all who know and believe
more than themselves and dare to say they know. After due
inquiry, it is not so much that we consent to retain our faith
in Holy Scripture, as that Scripture retains us. The inquiry,
renewed again and again in different ages of the world and
periods of life, affords a consecutive accordance of innumer
able affirmations. Book after book, chapter after chapter,
verse after verse, word after word, have their own history,
their own criticism, with pleadings for and against. There
remains no softening to save our pride ; it is not we who hold
the Bible, the Bible holds us, consecrates our affections,
crowns our intellect. "The purer the light in the human
heart, the more it will have an expression of itself in the mind
of Christ. The greater the knowledge of the development of
man, the truer insight as to the increasing purpose of Revela
tion." Intellect is not divorced from Piety, Piety is the crown
of Intelligence. D

STUDY II.
THE SUPERNATURAL.
" A Presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deenly interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion, and a Spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.
We are apt to forget, in listening to denials of the Super
natural, that they enter a region of thought where absolute
demonstration, in a scientific sense, is impossible. When told
by Renan that, not from one process of reasoning, but from
the mass of all modern sciences, we have proof that there is
no Supernatural,1 the violence of the assertion carries us away,
for a moment, from the fact that there neither is nor can be
scientific proof of that which is so confidently affirmed.
All history and all experience prove that love and belief of
the Divine flourish in heathen, Christian, and scientific minds ;
that, indeed, the conviction of the existence and omnipresent
operation of " the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only
wise," is the universal thought of humanity — adapting itself,
by inward evidence as of something felt, to the history, the
poetry, the speculation, the science of every age. We may
advance to the proof step by step.
The First Cause.
If a man who had searched the universe in every part
were to say — " There is no God," his statement would- not

1 <! |

' Ce n'est pas d'un raisonnement, mais de_ tout l'ensemble des sciences
modemes que soit cet immense resultat— il n' y a pas de surnaturel."  Renan,
" Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse," p. 206.

Denial of the Supreme. 35
be worthy of credit ; from such a search God might hide
Himself. Atheism is, therefore, as to proof, impossible.
The Absolute, indeed, cannot in any manner or degree
be known or denied, in the strict sense of knowing. That
is to say, the essence of God is inaccessible and incom
prehensible. None but God can understand what God is in
Himself, or the nature of the bond which binds the Divine
attributes in mysterious unity ; consequently, no rational being
can properly deny the existence of that concerning which,
essentially, he knows nothing. Denial of the Supreme, as
founded on the fact of " not knowing," is irrational and
unworthy of credit.
With like folly the assertions — "Matter alone is eternal
and divine ; " " There is no agency in the world other
than physical agency ; " " Nothing exists that is super-
material, or supernatural," are sought to be justified by
the unknowableness of the things denied. Strange to say,
ignorance, which has nothing, gives nothing, concerning those
things, presumes to deny their existence. We cannot accept
the denial. Knowledge reveals that every phenomenon, as it
is investigated, leads from the known to that which is utterly
unknown ; all natural facts are unaccountable in their essence,
and unknowable in their ultimate genesis. The great master
fact is the unknown. Absolute existence is the Reality which
persists independently of matter, cannot be identified with
matter, is the Supernatural.
Reverse the argument. The existence of matter or of
energy from eternity is incomprehensible, even as is the
existence of God from eternity. Knowledge of either is
impossible ; nevertheless, despite the impossibility, we cannot
enter any inquiry concerning causation without eventually
postulating some First Cause. We are forced to do this from
sheer inability to follow out ah infinite series of causes. This
First Cause is infinite, for if not, we must think of a region
beyond its limits and uncaused, which would be, virtually, to
abandon causation. The First Cause must likewise be inde
pendent, have no necessary relation to any other being ; for
if the presence of anything else is necessary for completeness
" quod Deo minus est, Deus non est," it is dependent and not

36 The Supernatural.
the First Cause ; therefore the First Cause is infinite, is inde
pendent, is supernatural.
The position is unassailable and opponents beat a retreat.
" The consciousness of an inscrutable Power manifested to us
through all phenomena has been growing ever clearer, and
must eventually be freed from its imperfections. The certainty
that, on the one hand, such a Power exists, while, on the other
hand, its nature transcends intuition, and is beyond imagina
tion, is the certainty towards which intelligence has from the
first been progressing. To this conclusion science inevitably
arrives as it reaches its confines ; while, to this conclusion,
Religion is irresistibly driven by criticism. And, satisfying
as it does the demands of the most rigorous logic at the same
time that it gives the religious sentiment the widest possible
sphere of action, is the conclusion we are bound to accept,
without reserve or qualification."1 If we apply to this, the
Inscrutable Something, Anselm's definition of God — "That
than which nothing greater can be thought " 2— we have, in
the latest result of science, an acknowledgment — not of that
to which " Religion is irresistibly driven," but of the first great
truth of Scripture, that God is the mighty inscrutable Power
who transcends all our understanding.
This Power, of which every phenomenon is a manifestation,
acts through all bodies, animate and inanimate. If a stone is
thrown into the air, or falls on the ground, it is according to
definite laws ; if a crystal is formed in a solution of salt, if
plants grow and flower, if animals are propagated, if there are
perception and formation of thought in man, all these, though
Omnipresence is "unthinkable," are the sensible manifesta
tions of a Divine Power immanent in the Cosmos — proof of
the omnipresence of mystery.
This inscrutable Power, the ultimate Cause of all things,
can only be thought of as possessing specific attributes. The
forms of our consciousness are such that the Absolute cannot
in any manner or degree be brought within them. We are
unable to form any idea of eternity, infinity, omnipotence,
omnipresence ; we must get notions by means of duration,
1 " First Principles," p. 108 : Herbert Spencer.
2 " Proslogium," cap. 2, 3, 4.

A Personal God. 37
expansion, acts of power, and of pervading presence like that
of gravity. It is a matter of necessity to think of these things
in this manner ; so, for definiteness, we conceive of God as
personal, infinite, all-wise, mighty, everywhere present ; and
unutterable is the consolation when by sacred influence, as of
inward evidence, we know God as our Friend who makes our
spirit pure and clear —
" Whose blessing, like a line of light,
Is on the waters day and night,
By heavenly path to lead us home."
Tennyson, In Memoriam, xvii. (slightly altered) .
Against the doctrine of a personal God, it is asserted — the
existence of evil proves that such personal God is not
infinitely good ; or, if infinitely good, He is lamentably de
ficient in power, or in intelligence ; otherwise, evil would not
be allowed. The assertion loses all weight from the fact that
" God foresees all things, but forces nothing ; " and that we
cannot conceive of free beings existing without a possibility
of evil ; their freedom forbids the exercise of omnipotence to
avert it, but not the drawing out of a greater good by its
occurrence. We are also told — " that which we know of in
telligence implies a circumscribed and limited kind of being;
adapting its internal processes to other processes which are
external." Really, to talk in this way is to play fast and loose
with things, for we can just as well think of Infinite Intelli
gence as we can of Infinite Power. We are assured — "A
personal God is a limited Deity ; personality and infinity are
terms expressive of ideas naturally incompatible." This
again is mere play upon words. Can these men, who so talk
about God, explain what they mean by infinite extension, as
applied to the Supreme ? Is infinite extension more correct,
or more easily comprehended, than is infinite intelligence ?
We must take phenomenal conceptions such as can be framed ;
we know that they are inadequate to represent the Ineffable
Reality ; but, seeing that He is a reality, we consider that
mental conceptions are of a higher order than physical. To
call Personality,- Goodness, Intelligence, anthropomorphic in
their nature is, indeed, to give them their right title ; but, to
forsake these and adopt energy or motion, mechanical in

38 The Supernatural.
place of intellectual terms, is not less anthropomorphic, and
forsakes the higher for the lower : Personality as much trans
cending impersonal mechanical conceptions as Humanity
transcends the crystal or the seaweed.
It is possible that there may be a mode of being as greatly
transcending Intelligence and Will as these exceed mechanical
motion, but our minds are utterly incompetent to form even
an approach to conception of such a Being, and we are not
responsible to any Being, whoever and whatever he may be,
of whom we cannot know anything. We are to think of God
as transcending all thought, yet dwelling in our thought ; as
without parts and passions, yet as manifested in our every
limb, and abiding in all our affections. We are to worship
this God, not only with the silent, secret, mysterious homage
of the inner man ; but also with those external, decorous,
reverential observances, which, giving outward and visible
form to the acts of the spirit, constitute true worship. To
plead as an excuse for failing in this due homage, by body
and soul, that the Wonderful Being whom we all acknowledge,
whom our knowledge lights us to, and our emotions lead us
to, must not be thought of as a Person, but rather be reduced
to a vacuity — a sort of aureity without the gold, thought with
out mind, principle without person, so that by means of this
incomprehensible nothing we attain to something higher than
Personality and Intelligence — may, indeed, assert a trans
cendental difference, but eliminates everything essential from
worship, and takes even the possibility of reasonableness
from piety.
Those who insist that God is eternally and infinitely so far
above us that all intellectual and emotional exercise on the
high theme is but an insult to Godhead, are in danger of
losing that soundness of mind by which alone right judgment
is formed ; for it is impossible continually to seek that from
which they are ever thrown back with a deepened conviction
of the impossibility of either knowing or finding ; and, ceas
ing to exercise themselves in these high efforts, they become
incapable of making them. Nor is that all : a transcendental
Being, infinitely above intelligence and emotion, is a pure
negation, and all argument concerning Him is based on the

Unknown yet Known. 39
delusion that nothing can be more rationally realized than
something ; but to regard the Unseen Reality as the absence
of everything we can imagine as real, whether bad or good,
is unnatural, irrational, unbecoming. Unnatural, because
human instinct universally yearns after a future life and
knowledge of God. Irrational, for we are able to understand
well enough many things about God ; and that the Divine
Being is eternal, unchangeable, immaterial, omnipresent,
omniscient, almighty, is a far more reasonable belief than the
gratuitous assumption that He is unlike everything that all
the manifestations of Him would lead us to expect. Unbe
coming, for it divests Deity of all that appeals either to
intellect or emotion ; and degrades Him to an eternal energy,
an inscrutable power, neither to be loved nor feared. To say
— " The Ultimate Cause cannot in any respect be conceived
by us, because He is in every respect greater than can be
conceived ; " and then to tell us — " Matter, motion, force, are
better symbols of the Unknown Reality than are our highest
conceptions of supreme will, goodness, wisdom," is not to
forsake personality for something higher, but to give a dreary
beetle-view of God. Deity is something more than the
universe. He cannot be identified with Nature, and yet He
is no absentee God, sitting idle and outside His world, but
dwells in it as His star-domed city ; without Him not a
sparrow falls to the ground, while through every star and
grass-blade, but mostly through man's soul, beams the glory
of His presence.
Of course, it can be objected that, however sublime our
idea of a Personal God and Creator, we can do no more than
assign to Him exalted human attributes. If the objector
means that by Person we understand an infinitely intelligent,
thinking Being ; and that by Creator we mean that this
Person is everywhere present, pervading the material universe
indeed, but distinct from it and superior to it ; if he says that
we look into nature for physical signals of an everliving will,
and read the universe as an autobiography of an Infinite
Spirit, repeating Himself in miniature within our spirit ; this
represents our views with sufficient clearness. Personality is
not used in any sense of limitation, but as the mysterious

40 The Supernatural.
aspect of the Dynamis, the omnipresent Energy, to whose
eternal decrees we submit, and on whose constancy we im
plicitly rely. We decline to call Him Power, or Matter, or
Motion. The Name of the great " I Am " has ever been in
essence incomprehensible ; but we say — " God is Spirit," and
we are kept from assigning human or material attributes to
Him by the unsolvable mystery being formulated as a Trinity
in unity. When we think of matter, space, energy, time ;
that matter is solid, or fluid, or gaseous ; that space is of three
dimensions ; that energy displays itself as force in attraction,
in repulsion, in motion, and in another trinity as life, as intelli
gence, as emotion ; that time is past, present, future ; these
shapings of thought, formulated in the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity, which are for ever striving after higher and purer
ideality, sufficiently guard us against imputing the feebleness
of man to God.
Revelation of the Godhead.
i. If we say that the universe is the autobiography of
an infinite Spirit, then Nature is a revelation of that Super
natural, whom we adore as the eternal, life-giving Principle
(Ps. xix. I ; Rom. i. 20) : " a power to which no limit in time
or space is conceivable, of which all phenomena, as presented
in consciousness, are manifestations, but which we can only
know through these manifestations." x Here is a formula
legitimately obtained by the employment of scientific methods,
the last result of a subjective analysis on the one hand, and
of an objective analysis on the other hand.
We will put it to use — Unity of science being the reflection
of the unity of the Reason and Intelligence pervading Nature,
our own reason and intelligence, being part of Nature, are also
a reflection. Mind is the thinker and investigator, a seer
concerning the presence of the living God in the world, a
twofold presence : external, in the phenomena of Nature ;
internal, by the consciousness which takes knowledge of
phenomena. 2. These phenomena divide themselves into good and evil.
There is a soul of goodness in things evil, and a heart of truth
in things false ; a taint of evil within the good, and a grain of
1 " Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 415 : James Fiske.

Consciousness of Good and Evil. 41
falsity in our apprehension of apparent truth. Our conscious
ness and actual experience show that this good and this evil
germinate out of something apart from ourselves. No man's
luck, so to speak, is pulled by only one string ; nor do events
happen simply because they are bad or good, " else all eggs
would be addled or none at all."
3. The fact, thus arrived at, as to good and evil, is the
result not of one, but of all concrete experience ; is an induc
tion from universal consciousness, and ranks in certainty with
the postulates of exact science ; is the common foundation of
those religious ideas concerning God, Good, Evil, Creation,
which are almost, if not quite, universal : Ideas different, yet
allied ; neither accidental nor factitious ; not superficial but
deep-seated ; not evolved, nor slowly accumulated and
organised, but, however degraded or distorted or magnified,
striking deep roots into our nature. They affect men's inter
pretations of the simplest mechanical accidents, the most
complicated events in the histories of nations, the diverse
habits of thought, the different orders of minds, the good or
ill tone of feeling, and the daily conduct of life. To suppose
that they are groundless, so shakes the foundations of human
intelligence that nothing can be relied on. That doctrines of
good and evil are priestly inventions ; that in every society,
past and present, savage and refined, certain members of the
community combined to delude the rest in one and the same
way ; is not tenable : nor does any artificial origin account
for the natural facts. These facts are the ground of intelli
gent consciousness as to good and evil, the foundation of the
moral sentiment which responds to them — not the creations
of that sentiment, and that sentiment is as normal as is any
other faculty.
4. View this more accurately : —
Religion, everywhere present, together with science organis
ing facts into the mass of human experience, are the weft and
the warp of history. Both have their near and visible side,
the Natural ; the remote and eternal, the Supernatural. Each
holds a truth, the needful complement of the other ; and when
our mind is capable of realising due conceptions of both,
discoveries will be on a grander scale. " As the history of

42 The Supernatural.
every age witnesses, there is an undeniable religious need that
clings to human Nature, a need of recognising a something
above Nature, and of fellowship with the same, which only
asserts itself the more forcibly the longer it is repressed. The
predominance of that worldly bent of mind which will acknow
ledge nothing above Nature, does but call forth in the end a
stronger reaction of the longing after the supernatural ; the
prevalence of an all-denying unbelief invariably excites a
more intense desire to be able to believe." x If this were
discoverable only in an individual, or belonged only to one
age or one race of men, it might be ascribed to imagination,
or be the result of a peculiar mental tendency, but it is found
in all. There is something in man that is not wholly satisfied
with the objects ofthe senses ; but recognises, or believes that
it recognises, another world of spiritual beings with whom,
for good or evil, he is related. This consciousness has been
a source of wealth to all language and literature. " It cannot
be explained by the hypothesis of a received tradition handed
down from earlier races or imaginary superior beings, but is to
be attributed to God's Spirit working in man." 2 When the
vividness and intensity of the intellectual emotions, whether
for good or evil, surpassed the ordinary and extraordinary
limits, men believed that they pierced to the spiritual realities
on which the original consciousness is itself based. Hence,
our consciousness of the supernatural seems a fundamental
verity; and the origin must be sought higher in the stream of
time than the goings forth of the rivulets of mythology, sought
in man's essential nature, in the original impulse to godlike
and in the perversion to devil-like productions.
5. Now enter that branch of operation called miraculous.
It is not essentially more marvellous than the growth of tree
from seed, for "an inscrutable Power is manifested to us
through all phenomena ; " 3 therefore, everything natural is
supernatural in origin ; but we do well to consider an objection.
" Miracles, or the intervention of the Deity in human affairs,
are, to the scientific thinker, a priori so improbable, that no
1 "Neander's Church History," vol. i. p. 15.
2 " God in History," vol. iii. p. 306 : Bunsen.
3 "First Principles," p. 108 : Herbert Spencer.

All Moaes of Divine Action Miraculous. 43
amount of testimony suffices to make him entertain the
hypothesis for an instant." The assertion must be met with
thorough denial : most scientific thinkers, and of the highest
mental power, accept both the possibility and the actuality
of miracles. Consider the meaning of such over-confident
assertion. It is that a miracle seems an event without a
natural cause ; we say — the cause is Divine, or may even be
a hidden natural cause. " A miracle is essentially incompre
hensible, and so far as we can understand, an impossibility."
We reply — It is the height of presumption to restrict Divine
action to our own understood line of things, and then call
our restriction " natural law." Indeed, it is utterly absurd to
contend that the so-called natural is the only and universal
order of things, that there is nothing beyond, nothing preter
natural, which is able to enter the order of things with which
we are acquainted. " Naturae conditor nihil in miraculis
contra natura??ecit, sed tantum contra illam consuetudinem
quae nobis innotuit."
The multiform revelations of an Omnipresent Power are
not all identifiable with physical nature, nor limited to it ;
for scientific inquiry, working independently of theology, has
led to the conclusion that the dynamic phenomena of Nature
are a manifestation of an Omnipresent Power transcending
Nature ; therefore, every real advance in knowledge is certain
to make us acquainted with new modes of Divine action. In
fact, we know, so far as such things can be known, that the
present order of things arose out of one wholly different, when
energies such as now exist were not in operation.
Can a man think out the creation of matter, or the eternity
of matter, or the annihilation of matter, or explain the modus
operandi of spirit on matter, or of matter on spirit, or of the
persistence of energy — that is, of energy without beginning or
end ? Even if he can, he is unable to subject the action of
Absolute Being to his own analysis, limit it within his own
line of things, or deny Divine interference.
If we know anything at all, it is that the vast synthesis of
energies without us and within us are only known as they
affect our consciousness. Who dreams that these are the
only powers ? The series of conceptions are the register of

44 The Supernatural.
our experience, and generate beliefs in the more startling
experiences of other men, from which the component assenting
consciousness of men generally cannot be torn apart ; con
sequently, belief in miracles is fundamental. The belief is
proof of an attempted internal correspondence of our circum
scribed being with the Infinite ; and this power of thinking,
or conception, is the ground of all deep faith and solemn
adoration. Our process of study — i, The Divine autobiography, or
image of Intelligence ; 2, The existence of good and evil a
real existence ; 3, The world-wide consciousness of these as
the ground of our moral sense ; 4, Religion as the universal
conviction and witness ; 5, Miracles as possible and actual —
leads through various passages to inner chambers of investi
gation : — i. Is the universe self-existent, without beginning,
eternal ? ii. Is it self-made ? iii. Was it created ?
The first is atheistic, and offers no solution of the mystery.
It is wholly incapable of conception. To assert self-existence
is the denial of causation, and when we deny causation we
also deny commencement. We must add to the absolute
impossibility of conceiving this the fact that we have to
endow matter with all the powers of mind, and give to that
which is dead all the properties of life ; making matter, to all
intents and purposes, God. Doing this we fall into the old
heathen homage of Nature, and worship Power — the pheno
menal God. " To worship Power only," Dr. Arnold said, " is
devil worship." Another has said — "What can be more
arrogant and unbecoming than for a man to think that he has
a mind and understanding in him, but yet in the universe
besides is no such thing ; or that those things which, with the
utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend, should
be moved and managed without any reason at all." x
The second is pantheistic, and cannot by any symbolism
pass into real conception. The nearest approach is to con
ceive potential existence passing into actual existence, or
existence long remaining in one form, then suddenly, and of
its own accord, passing into another form ; but that involves
1 "Cicero De Leg. "lib. ii.

Hypotheses as to Origin of Things. 45
the idea of a change without a cause, which is impossible.
Moreover, whence the potential existence ? This requires
accounting for, just as the actual existence, so the same diffi
culties meet us ; and there is no escape except this — Nothing
developed into something, or the world of phenomena is
practically the Deity, who is finite, which is absurd.
The third hypothesis, theism, which involves creation by
Divine agency, is adopted by the most, the best, the greatest
of mankind. " There is, I believe, no system of philosophy
whatever in which that notion of a higher power than our own,
which we mean by God, is wholly absent. The name may
not be there, and even the formal idea of a God may be
specially denied, and yet the thing itself may remain, so in
extricably is it bound up with all human experience." 1 The
creative process is not to be represented as a product of
manufacture, though the proceedings of a human artificer
vaguely symbolise a method by which the universe might be
shaped, but as the ever-changing multiform revelation of an
Omnipresent Power, who is in no wise to be identified with the
manifestations. The production of matter out of nothing is
the real mystery ; but as we are not only obliged to assume
some cause, but also a first cause, or we cannot speak of
causation, we say — " all things are of God " — " nihil in hoc
mundo fieri potest, nisi vel faciente vel permittente Deo " — and
in that cause the conclusion is reached — the Godhead.
In strict reasoning every one of the three suppositions,
though verbally intelligible, is, through our limited capacity,
incapable of actual cognition, and science cannot give any
explanation. We search for one in Scripture and find it.
Having found it, science educates heart and intellect to love,
reverence, and partly understand it. John Locke says —
" My right hand writes while my left is still ; what causes
rest in one and motion in the other ? Nothing but my will,
a thought of my mind ; my thoughts only changing, the right
hand rests and the left hand moves. This is matter of fact
which cannot be denied ; explain this and make it intelligible,
and then the next step will be to understand creation." 2
1 "The Bible and its Critics," sect. v. p. 193 : Rev. Edward Garbett.
2 "Our Knowledge ofthe Existence of God."

46 The Supernatural.
Professor Huxley, " Critiques and Addresses," states — " If
any one is able to make good the assertion that his theology
rests upon valid evidence and sound reasoning, then it ap
pears to me that such theology will take its place as a part
of science." Verified theology is scientific : our theology is
verifiable, therefore scientific. Proceed to further verification.
No theory of phenomena, internal or external, can be framed
without postulating an absolute existence. We speak of this
absolute existence in the singular number, because the order
of manifestation throughout all mental phenomena is the
same as throughout all material phenomena — there is unity.
If the order of these manifestations, say, for example, the
complex and organised correspondence of the mind with its
environment in arranging and combining various experiences
received from without, and in adjusting new inner relations
to new outer relations, is found to correlate with the moral
facts of redemption and sanctification, and to produce the
highest and purest morality, the verifying experimental
process is scientific.
If the other, or material order of manifestations, is given in
an ancient book, written by a primitive race at a time when
men had little or no conception of .that scientific generalisa
tion which now arranges in correlated groups widely separated
phenomena, and possessed little or no understanding of that
natural adaptation of means to ends, of which the world is
now known to be full ; if, nevertheless, this book, claiming to
have been dictated by the Spirit of the Almighty, gives such
a formula of the origin and growth of things that science,
however it steps in advance, does but more clearly explain
the ancient conception and revelation ; the process of verifi
cation is both theologic and scientific. The integration of all
natural forces into a single agency, one grand entity, God,
is the grandest conception of humanity, the profoundest of
scientific truths. "One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."
In Memoriam.
Without revelation, taking science only for our guide we

Wording of the Divine Narrative. 47
run out the whole sounding line of human knowledge into
the depths of Nature and find no bottom ; we soar and soar in
heavenly heights, but only to discover that there is something
beyond, which, nevertheless, comes to us, is in us, and in
everything around us. Then, because physical knowledge
fails to explain the mystery, we go and sit with the dim-eyed
old man, the genius of unbelief, described by Coleridge, who,
in his cold and dreary cave, " talked much and vehemently
concerning an infinite series of causes and effects, which he
explained to be a string of blind men, the last of whom
caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next,
and so on, till they were all out of sight ; and that they
walked infallibly straight, without making one false step,
though all were equally blind."
Glad to escape from such dreary unbelief, we endeavour
now to obtain some conception of revelation and the account
of creation by studying — 1, The manner or wording of the
Divine narrative ; 2, The truthfulness of the record.
1. The Manner or Wording of the Divine Narrative.
"The Bible has well-nigh for ever seemed against the
science of the day ; " there are reasons for this disagreement.
Had the account of creation accorded with the science pro
pounded in heathen times, or as asserted in Greece and
Rome, or even with that of our fathers during the last
century, it would now be contemptuously rejected as utterly
false. "A revelation of only so much astronomy as was
known to Copernicus, would have seemed imperfect after the
discoveries of Newton ; and a revelation of the science of
Newton would have appeared defective to Laplace ; a reve
lation of all the chemical knowledge of the eighteenth century
would have been deficient in comparison with the information
of the present day, as what is now known in this science will
probably appear before the termination of another age." x If
to this we add that, always and everywhere, despite the
obvious disagreement, the ablest and most scientific of our
race saw something in the narrative which convinced them
of a real though hidden agreement with the truth — when
the truth should be known ; of a true science that would
1 "Geology and Mineralogy," vol. i. p. 14 : Francis T. Buckland.

48 The Supernatural.
ultimately be made plain ; and if now — when we take a pride
in our scientific advance — we are prepared scientifically to
show, in the book presented to the reader, that the old narra
tive, so long an enigma, is full of new science ; the verification
of all this furnishes a real and unmistakable proof that the
narrative is Divine.
The language remains, as at the first, unchanged amidst
changing interpretations. Only the meaning of the words,
when they struck on the ears or flashed into the minds of the
first auditors, has to be recovered ; so that we may stand
with Moses, with Isaiah, with the Apostles, to hear the words
of God, and to fix our eyes on the Son of man — " God
manifest in the flesh." We have to remember that God's
words and thoughts are a light not for one age, but for all
ages ; and that which seemed written for the old generation
only, is for our admonition also ; not in the words and forms
used by physical science — for all past time and nearly all
men are unscientific ; and not in philosophical order — but in a
form, like seed, that may lie in any crevice of the heart, with
power of growth to fill the whole understanding.
Notwithstanding that the Hebrew contains no scientific
terms, the creative symbol is so comprehensive that every
hypothesis in every age has been forced into it ; and, as if
to guard this comprehensiveness against the charge of vague
ness, there are such accurate order and definiteness, that the
men, most qualified to judge, find depths within depths, and
laws within laws. Hence, we maintain that the Book is
Divinely inspired ; contains, within the outer body, a soul or
inner life, which, while agreeing with the imperfection of our
nature, raises us above it ; and, in answer to the inarticulate
cries of conscience, pours the wisdom of God into our heart
and mind.
He who is susceptible of that wisdom, catches the spirit of
it, finds lessons for childhood, strength for manhood, and the
capabilities of heroes and prophets. Thousands know by
actual experience that the Book grows with their growth;
and, as knowledge of it increases, deeper depths of wisdom
are revealed. St. Paul utters their experience  " O the
depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of

Unscientific Form of Scripture. 49
God!" (Rom. xi. 33). At present, none but religious men
accept, as fact, the continual revelatory character of the Book
to their souls ; but every candid inquirer will ultimately
acknowledge it.
The language and unscientific form of the account are
greatly found fault with ; and thus spoken of by the un-
devout, " that superlative nonsense, known as the doctrine of
special creation." x Again, " Obviously a theory which was
framed in a barbarous age, when men were alike unfamiliar
with the conceptions of physical causation and uniformity of
law, and ignorant of the requirements of a valid scientific
hypothesis, and which has survived until the present day,
not because it has been universally verified by observation
or deduction, but because it has been artificially protected
from critical scrutiny by incorporation with a system of theo
logical dogmas assumed . to be infallible ; obviously such a
theory is at the outset discredited by its pedigree." 2
The assertion, as to the account having been " protected
from critical scrutiny," is not true ; no other book or account
has been assailed so ably, so critically, maliciously, con
stantly, as this ; and it survives, not because of protection,
but because opponents have been beaten along the whole line
of argument. The Book verily did arise amongst men " alike
unfamiliar with the conceptions of physical causation and
uniformity of law, and ignorant of the requirements of a valid
scientific hypothesis," but that is part of the marvel ; and
though, as Sir Thomas Brown saith — "Time sadly over-
cometh all things," this Book has conquered time ; and, in
proof of utter folly in those who revile it as containing
" the superlative nonsense, known as the doctrine of special
creation," is received as the Book of God by all nations
eminent in arts and arms, in wealth, civilisation, refinement.
Revilers insist that the figurative expressions are to be
taken literally : there is no symbol, no figure, no allegory.
They tell us the Bible asserts — "untold millions of organic
molecules, of which an adult mammal is composed, rushed
together at some appointed instant from divers quarters of
1 "Cosmic Philosophy," voL ii. p. 321 : John Fiske.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 438.

50 The Supernatural.
the compass, and spontaneously grouped themselves into
vegetable, fish, bird, beast, man." These asserters are of such
scientific culture that they say — •" He who can believe that
St. Goar of Treves transformed a sunbeam into a hat-peg
may believe such an account." These clever men thrust a
meaning into Scripture which only the simplest and most
unscientific ages accredited, and throw in the face of a world
of Christian thinkers, versed in every science, their dictum
that this meaning, their own superlative nonsense, must be
received as a true exposition of our faith. They are not in
the least conscious that to malign the most wonderful Book
in the world, to charge our greatest scholars in theology
and science with gross stupidity and credulity, proves their
own folly.
The Book says, in pictorial words, that vegetable, fish, bird,
beast, man, all came forth from the ground by a Divinely
given power. Is it a fact or not ? It is a fact : modern
science proves that the grass on which the sheep feeds, and
the sheep itself; the fish in water, and bird in air; with man
the king of all ; are traced back to microscopic germ-cells of
nitrogenous and hydro-carbon compounds pre-existing in the
atmosphere and soil. The Scripture account states that
plants, fish, birds, animals, man, came in definable order ; the
lower forms preceding the higher, in a series of God Al
mighty's days : not the horse, nor ass, nor zebra, nor quagga,
by millions of organic molecules rushing together at some
appointed instant ; but that the earth was their common
father, by means of God-given power.
A modern scientific man might count it very much better
to describe the creative process from a dynamical point of
view. An organism became an organism by a complex
aggregate of matter in which permanent, structural, and
functional differentiation and integration were rendered pos
sible by the fact that it continually received about as much
motion as it expended. The life of such an organism is a
perpetual balancing of external forces by internal forces.
The career or advance of an organism, or of a group of
organisms, consists of two kinds of equilibration, which we
designate as external and internal. The adjustment of or-

Creation according to Law. 51
ganisms to changing external circumstances is partly by
adaptation and by partial destruction ; so that natural selec
tion is indirect equilibration. The whole process, internal
and external, may be summarised —

Equilibration -

( External /Direct • Adaptation
.external jIndirect _ Natural Selection
(Direct ' /Heredity
Internal l^"^1 . \Correlation of Growth

Indirect . Use and Disuse.1

The above is not a jest, it is scientific in the eyes of some
who mistake hypothesis for true theory. Can the processes
be proved ? Certainly not. For this fancy we are to give
up the first chapter of our Bible, and our faith in God !
2. From the Manner of the Record pass to the Truthful
ness of the Record.
The Scriptural account differs as widely from other cos
mogonies as truth from fiction. Those trace the origin of
life from some primeval matter, or look upon the world
as pantheistical, or derive gods and men from a world-
egg, and are full of absurdities. The Bible reveals a
Personal God who is near to every one of us ; and creation
as the act of that God, not of unwilled fortuitous processes
of Nature — not by unguided interaction of atoms and atomic
energies, but by a process of production according to law —
Law, not of self-origination, the Divine rule of procedure.
Creation in this manner, "according to law," could not
have been scientifically known by any man of the era in
which the record was written, not even by the inspired writer.
If this latter statement appear too bold, let it be remembered
that the plan of Scripture is so vast and wonderful, that even
angels do not fully understand, but delight to investigate it ;
that the prophets, who prophesied, received not prophecy for
themselves — but for us ; and that inspired men saw not to the
end of the things in which they ministered (1 Pet. i. 10-12).
If the account, the facts, the order, are true, real, actual, such
knowledge could come from God only. This conviction of
divinity led that distinguished naturalist, Linnaeus, to claim
1 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii. pp. 64, 65 : John Fiske.

52 The Supernatural.
admission in natural science for the Mosaic account. Cuvier
and Agassiz, the great majority of scientific men, and the
most intelligent of the civilised world, have accepted it ; and,
if now the precision of latest investigation, as we shall en
deavour to show, approves it ; there will be presented exactly
the evidence needed to convince accurate thinkers of our own
time, that the narrative of creation is simple, comprehensive,
wonderful ! How could a Jew, whom some ignorantly call
" semi-barbarous," and his cosmogony, " an incubus ; " a Jew,
without a shred of modern science (whatever shrewd guesses
he may have acquired from " the wisdom of the Egyptians "),
as to astronomy, or geometry, or geology, or physiology, or
chemistry ; a Jew, who, speaking out of his own thoughts,
might say the earth was fiat, centre of the system, sun and
stars moving round ; write a correct, or even an approximately
correct, account of creation ? How, indeed, unless God taught
him ?
The advocates of materialism reject the Divinity, and dis
pute the accuracy of Scripture ; but materialists investigate
a small portion of the world. Concerned only with matter,
unbelieving as to spirit, they are modern Sadducees. Re
cognising physics, not metaphysics ; knowing but the natural,
nothing of the supernatural, not even acknowledging it ;
materialists are like the Greek sculptor. Moved by the
high aspirations of his nature and nation, in one of his best
moods, he pictured to himself ideal strength, beauty, grace.
He embodied the thought in spotless marble, and gave the
statue to his countrymen. Alas ! he and they worshipped
it as god. Do not materialists sculpture and arrange matter,
find that it is subject to certain laws and assumes beautiful
forms, then fall down before this matter ? Their minds sub
due it, explain its operations and government, make a show
of it in experiments, metamorphose even its nature, yet they
set it up, with Energy and Space, as god ! as if it had the
promise and potency of all life terrestrial and heavenly. Not
the great minds, not the profound thinkers of our day, do
this. Not those who are noblest in conception thus empty
God of divinity, of emotion, of intellect, to put in place there
of physical properties ; nor will we. No Fetish-worshipper

Knowledge of God. 53
was ever brutish enough to imagine that a stone fell or a star
shone, or fruit was sweet, because the god inside made it fall,
shine, or be sweet ; nor will we, at the bidding of materialists,
worship the levers, the pulleys, the cranks, the cords of Nature,
and forget the Holy One. We cannot detach Him from the
world, no, not if we would ; nor cut the wires of the great
Operator, nor demagnetise His needle ; matter may be as the
iron, but mind is the magnetic energy coming into it ; matter
is set in motion, mind is the energy which sets it in motion —
the mind of God. The more thoughtful a man is, the more
firmly will he be established in the ancient faith — " he may
even find in the evidence of the intimate relation between
mental activity and physical changes in the brain the most
satisfactory grounds which science can afford, for the belief
that the phenomena of the material universe are the expres
sions of an Infinite Mind and Will, of which man's is the
finite representative." x
There are two reasons, apart from a special creation, why
materialists ought to accept the doctrine of a Personal God :
— 1, God, though essentially incomprehensible, can be, and
is, known of ; 2, We know of God, even as we know of ma
thematical truths.
1. Allowing that God, as to essence, is unsearchable ; that
we can only know the relative and finite, because the Infinite,
the Eternal, the Almighty, can alone look into the Divine
Nature, or understand how and why God is ; nevertheless, we
may know of God.
The finite, indeed, has no proportion in comparison with
the Infinite, nor the imperfect with the Perfect ; but those
who, on account of this ignorance, would deprive God of
Personality, and represent Him as Power, do not render Him
more intelligible ; they degrade Him, define Him to be Power
without motive, Wisdom without purpose, Love without ob
ject. We cannot accept the definition. Looking at Nature
we behold government by law, the lower existences serve with
blind obedience ; ascending, we find in plants an obscure
vibration of life ; amongst animals, consciousness ; within
man, a high principle of intelligence. This intelligence leads
1 " Mental Physiology : " Dr. W. B. Carpenter.

54 The Supernatural.
to the conviction that wisdom is at the heart of things, and
that the world is a manifestation of wisdom. Without intel
ligence man sinks into the brute, without consciousness the
brute is as a plant, without vibration of life the plant becomes
inorganic matter. Holding fast by intelligence as our guide,
we find that in the measure an organism is enriched, so are
moral and intellectual faculties, delicate sensations, memory,
imagination, reason, will, possessed. This is a great reality.
Further — knowing, by physical and mental analogy and pro
cess, that the lesser cannot contain the greater, nor the irra
tional be parent of reason, nor any finite thing exist of itself,
we obtain conviction that there is a supreme Wisdom ; and
we rightly endue that Wisdom with the highest mode of
being — Personality.
2. The things thus known of God form part of our know
ledge in much the same way that mathematical truth is
wrought in our mind. Our consciousness says — " We think ;
that which thinks exists." To this axiom or primitive truth,
ego, is added the consciousness of other existence, non ego.
Then we advance in thought—" We imperfect beings cannot
be self-existent, but exist by will of the Perfect." If so, space,
duration, the universe in its vast display of existence, are
manifestations of the great Existence. By the duration of
hour, day, year, we obtain a notion of time, if not of eternity ;
by the extent of an edifice, by motions in space, acquire an
idea of space, if not of infinitude ; by triangles, globes,
squares, attain to knowledge of mathematics ; still pursuing,
we advance, rising from concrete to pure abstract truths,
until we rest in Him who is the grand Entity — " I am
that I am," in whom, by whom, and for whom, all things
exist. We add— all religions agree, in whatever else they differ,
in affirming that their Faith came by more or less direct
Revelation from on High. Far from saying—" In this they
all lie," we acknowledge the universal testimony that apart
from Revelation can be no reliable, no constraining verity
concerning the Eternal. It is not the one false element
common to them all, not falsification by lying prophet, not

Priests of the Physical Universe. 55
fallacious imprimatur of indispensable priest ; but the outcome
of all that highest human intelligence could discover, divine,
or receive. In their highest moments the best and truest of
our race have actually communed with the Sublime, and from
Him consciously obtained the noble, the beneficent, the com
manding fascinations, the pure wisdom, the glorious truths,
which constitute the Faith that is on the earth. Other men
marred this which came from God ; but we thankfully ac
knowledge, as Divine, whatever of purity and truth became
the parent of noble character.
We sum our process of reasoning into a very brief state
ment. Denial of the Supernatural is incapable of scientific
proof. Love of and belief in the Divine take their place in
all history and experience. We proved that in all reasoning
a First Cause is admitted, of whom all beings and existences
are the manifestation. We found that the highest conception
of God is Personality. As to Revelation of the Godhead, we
perceived it in the world's phenomena. We saw that the
universe is not eternal, not self-made, but created, and that
our theology is scientific. Afterward, with due consideration
for and against the Bible, we accepted its record of Creation
as more intelligible than the atheistic account, and as more
correct. We concluded the argument with two reasons for
accepting the Personality of God as a truth.
Honour is due to those devout men whose science fits them
to be priests of the physical universe, to unfold its mysteries
and explain its powers. Tracing natural things to natural
source and cause, they show that the provisions of Nature are
not from the sun-god, but from the Lord God. Their under
standing enables them to rejoice in the light, behold the
enlargement, reverence the dignity of the Divine Word — the
letter stationary, the meaning progressive. Entering within
the curtains of the literal word, these men proceed in spirit to
the most holy place of the sanctuary. Drawing near with the
incense of devotion, kindled by the light of science in the
well-prepared vessel of an experienced intellect, they worship
before the mercy-seat of Jehovah. Then coming forth to
exercise their office, they consecrate every school of thought,

56 The Supernatural.
every lecture room, as temples in which are expounded the
will, the design, the work of Him in whom they live and
move, and have their being. "Bless'd are they
Who in this fleshy world, the elect of Heaven,
Their strong eye darting thro' the deeds of men,
Adore with steadfast unpresuming gaze
Him, Nature's Essence, Mind, and Energy !
And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend,
Treading beneath their feet all visible things
As steps that upward to their Father's throne
Lead gradual." S. 7. Coleridge, Religious Musings.

STUDY III.
THE THRESHOLD OF CREATION.
" Thou from primeval nothingness didst call
First chaos, then existence ; — Lord, on Thee
Eternity had its foundations — all
Spring forth from Thee ; of light, joy, harmony,
Sole origin ; — all life, all beauty Thine." Sir J. Bowring.
SOME of us limit, and lightly toy with the Creator's attributes ;
profess to scale the awful heights of infinity, and to build a
godless world by means of mechanism devised by human
intellect. It is in vain — we cannot so build, nor thus ascend ;
the genesis of an atom is not less mysterious than the birth
of a planet. No doubt a particle of matter is less complex
than the universe, but that particle, all in all, is infinite. This
particle and that universe are not known as they exist in
themselves, but as our senses represent them; consequently,
it is impossible to know what matter is, or whether it really
has any action of its own, or prove that " it is the origin of all
that exists." It is simply preposterous to imagine that we
shall ever scientifically trace the continuity of molecular pro
cesses into the phenomena of consciousness, and materially'
explain how our consciousness, by means of imagination,
makes itself at home in other and far-distant worlds.
Other men, thinking thereby to honour the Almighty,
speak of the universe as created by the breath, fashioned by
the touch, and launched from the hand of God : likening Him
to a mechanic, and His work to a machine. Whereas, the
phenomena of the world, and the vast synthesis of energies
within us in manifold contact with vaster energies without
us, can never be known in objective existence, or as to the
essential nature of their cause, but simply as affecting our
consciousness ; therefore, to say that Divine energy produced

58 The Threshold of Creation.
the world by methods analogous to human methods, that the
laws and manifold harmonies of the universe arose from quasi-
human volitions, is to err with materialists who pretend to
measure and explain the whole of Nature's operation by their
own physical conception.
It is quite true, Scripture so describes that portion of the
Divine dominions with which we are connected, that for a
long time most men thought that the world was brought
suddenly into existence, and has remained substantially un
altered. This is not owing to any error in fact, but to the
form of the narrative. Past, present, future, are continually-
spoken of as the now — the present. Things yet to come are
often regarded as already existing. The slow operation of
ages is not unfrequently represented as of immediate and
quick performance. In prophecy, in poetry, in mystical pas
sages, in parables, the same style prevails. It represents, we
conceive, the aspect in which things appear to the Eternal ;
but we are informed that the Father worketh till now, of
creative processes proceeding in many other planets, suns,
and systems, and we lay aside our former childlike concep
tions, acknowledge that the works of the Almighty are
continuous, progressive, infinite.
Think of time hasting away, preceded and followed ever
more and evermore by other time ; which, however retraced
as to the past, attains no beginning — or, extended into the
future, finds no end. Represent space enveloping smaller
space, itself enclosed by greater and ever greater ; yet, wher
ever the boundary is set, infinity lies beyond, containing all,
itself by none contained. Contemplate existences manifold
in number, form, degree, vast movements of worlds innumer
able. Adding billions of cycles to the past, we are still far off
from that beginning when worlds had birth (John i. 1-3).
Chastened by these conceptions, enter the Threshold of
Creation. If the world had a beginning and, nevertheless, is infinite ;
we must suppose that from any instant, say the present, an in
finite series of creations has gone forth. This is absurd ; not
withstanding the common algebraic form that 1+2+4 + 8,
etc., ad inf. = 00 ; for it is the property of a really infinite

Elements of Space. 59
series that neither first nor last can be found. An in
finite world — that is, a world consisting of infinite parts,
requires infinitude for their display, and eternity for their
enumeration. Suppose that the world is not infinite in extent,
nor eternal in duration, then we have a pre-existent eternal
void in which could be no creation ; for why at any one
moment more than another ? and beyond the world would be
an infinite space, to which the world must have some necessary
relation, which is also absurd ; for what relation can the world
have with nothing ?
It may be said, and justly, this language is somewhat
paradoxical and inexact, for eternity is not time ; neither
coming nor departing, it is and for ever. Time is measured
by the world's changes, and all duration is comprised in two
series — the past and the future. Add these together, and
they form time — not eternity. As to space, we conceive of
it as involving (we know not why) the essential element of
three dimensions ; but mathematicians are undecided as to
whether it has precisely the same properties throughout the
universe. An inhabitant in space of two dimensions only
would be incapable of appreciating the third dimension, but
would certainly feel a difference in passing from his space
to other portions which were more curved. " So it is possible
that in the rapid march of the solar system through space,
we may be gradually passing to regions in which space has not
precisely the same properties as we find here — where it may
have something in three dimensions analogous to curvature
in two dimensions — something, in fact, which will necessarily
imply a fourth-dimension change of form in portions of matter,
in order that they may adapt themselves to their new
locality." x Now, with God, the universe is not dual nor
fragmentary, but an infinite whole. As to space and time,
they correspond relatively with the Infinity and Eternity of
God :' therefore, no idea of ours can approach the vastness
of creation ; and in vain we inflate, our conceptions as to the
extent of time. The children of imagination are nothing in
comparison with the reality. "It is an infinite sphere of
which the centre is everywhere, and the circumference no-
1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 5 : P. G. Tait, M.A.

60 The Threshold of Creation.
where." a Hence, we conclude that God is for ever, and
infinitely all that He is. Creator, He creates eternally. The
world is not by caprice, by chance, by hazard, but of reason
and purpose Divine.
All this is miraculous, but we are told — " Science has no
room for miracles, for by miracles we understand an interfer
ence of supernatural forces in the natural course of develop
ment of matter." 2 Again — "As far as the eye of science has
hitherto ranged through Nature, no intrusion of purely creative
power into any series of phenomena has ever been observed." 8
Examining the facts on which such statements are founded, the
whole philosophy stands self-convicted of inadequacy. It has
no explanation of the origin of things. It does not and can
not formulate the whole series of changes passed through by
matter in its passage from the imperceptible to the perceptible,
nor from the perceptible to the imperceptible. It begins ex
planations with existences which already have concrete forms,
and leaves off while they still retain those forms. Manifestly
such existences had preceding, and will have succeeding
histories. The assertion — " There is no interference of super
natural forces in the course of Nature" — is based on igno
rance of the origin, the continuance, the end of things. It
assumes that everything is known, when, in reality, not one
thing in the world is fully known, but escapes from our every
research into the unknown. It forgets that "information,
however extensive it may become, can never satisfy inquiry ;
positive knowledge does not, and never can, fill the whole
region of possible thought." 4 The protestors against miracles
protest too much : indeed Nature, as a whole, is one splendid
miracle ; and presents, in all its parts, innumerable marvels.
The whole and the parts, whether wrought by coup de main
or process of gradual evolution, are essentially mysterious and
marvellous. The blending of mind and matter, influence and emotion,
in the bodily structure of sentient and rational creatures is a
1 Pascal: "Pensees,"
2 "The History of Creation," vol. i, p. 60 : Prof. Haeckel.
3 " Apology for the Belfast Address," p. 548.
' "First Principles : " Herbert Spencer.

Union of Mind with Matter. 61
mystery. Will any one state whether Body is the necessary
means of bringing Mind into relationship with space and
extension, or of giving it connection with place and time?
whether Matter is essentially necessary for Emotion ? Will
not the explanation require an explanation ? What is the
link joining the stupendous machinery which traverses the
fields of space wherein worlds are massed into spheres,
revolving with double, treble, or manifold measurement of
time in diurnal and annual rotation ? Have we sufficient
knowledge of the cycles of seasons, of the changing eccen
tricity of orbits, either to take them out of, or fit them in, the
purposes of universal government ? Can we say whether or
not the vast horology of Nature is a register to spiritual
creatures ? Can the knowledge of Materialists occupy and
monopolise all this sphere ? Nay, yet the mind will continue
to dwell upon these things, and project itself beyond them.
At the very threshold of creation are occurrences which set at
nought material philosophy.
In what relation do our emotions, often of the most violent
kind, neither merely animal nor organic, not purely intel
lectual nor moral, mingle with other elements of our nature ;
so that we have sense of fitness, harmony, beauty, sublimity,
terror, or their opposites ? How do we explain that there is
now, and must be throughout all future time, an unascertained
Something — an Unknown on whom all phenomena and their
relations rest ? that at the uttermost reach of discovery there
arises, and must ever arise, the question — " What lies
beyond ? " This, so far as we are concerned, is less explain
able than would be a voice from the sky. To call it natural
is to declare that Nature is a grand inexplicable entity.
Take the purely mechanical view : Physical science asserts —
"Nature does not allow us for a moment to doubt that we
have to do with a rigid chain of cause and effect, admitting
of no exceptions." Enlarge this statement : The theory of
gravitation demonstrates that the hosts of Heaven are parts
of a vast mechanism, and that the phenomena of Nature are
expressible in terms of matter and motion, resolvable into the
attractions and repulsions of material particles. On these
principles of materialism, our mind, if sufficiently expanded,

62 The Threshold of Creation.
would be able to follow natural processes from beginning to
end. It could see the molecules taking their position, by
mutual specific attractions and repulsions, the whole process
being the play and result of molecular force. Given a grain
of wheat, an acorn, an infant, and their environment, expanded
human intellect could trace out, a priori, every step of the
process of growth ; and, matter being given, we could, by
the application of purely mechanical principles, fashion and
furnish a world. Well, suppose we admit it all, which we do
not, what then ? Even on these principles, " we are obliged
to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some
Power by which we are acted upon ; though Omnipresence
is unthinkable, yet as experience discloses no bounds to the
diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to
the presence of this Power." x Hence, the nature of things,
their mechanical adjustment, leads to the conception of an
Omnipresent Energy.
If it be said — Everything that comes into Nature, or is
in Nature, or goes out of Nature, is part of Nature, or Natural ;
Force and Matter are phenomenal manifestations of objective
Reality — that, meaning the within and the without, includes the
supernatural ; and concedes the argument by confessing that
something not in Nature may come in, remain in, or go out.
That Nature arises out of, is sustained by, is interpenetrated
in every part, by an unknown energy, is capable of proof.
Every organism, whether animal or plant, possesses, besides
the obviously useful arrangements of its organisation, other
arrangements the purposes of which it is utterly impossible
to find out. Morphologists look upon the forms of animals
and plants as something which cannot be mechanically ex
plained. Attempted explanations, by means of descent and
modification, rest, for all their power and meaning, on a deep
and far-reaching law, at present unknown. Go yet lower : the
origin of every simple salt crystal, obtained by evaporating its
mother liquid, is no less mysterious as to its first cause, and
no less incomprehensible in itself, than the most complex
animal. When gold and silver crystallise in a cubical, bismuth
and antimony in a hexagonal, iodine and sulphur in a rhombic
' First Principles : " Herbert Spencer.

1 <¦]

The All-pervading Unknown Energy. 63
form of crystal, the ultimate cause in every case is hidden
from us. Resolve all the appearances, properties, move
ments of things, into manifestations of energy within space
and time ; energy, space, time, pass all understanding.
Materially and mechanically, our own beginning is unex-
plainable and full of mystery. The germ, in and with which
we began to exist, was like every other germ ; but, in the
process of development, it acquired the differential character
istics of the sub-kingdoms ; then successively the characteristics
of its class, order, family, genus, species, race. Come to identity
or personality, that of which every one is conscious, the most
certain of all facts, even this cannot truly be known — know
ledge of it is forbidden by the very nature of thought. It is
unwise, therefore, for atheistic physicists to erect so elaborate
an argument and such universal denial on absolute nescience,
They cease to be guides when they forsake their own line of
things. Knowing that matter and 'thought, even in their
simplest elements, are incomprehensible — both ends being
beyond mental grasp — they speak as if things were in their
grasp and fully known : they are deceivers.
In one sense, physical science knows, or is destined to know
everything ; but, in another sense, it knows nothing. Ask
the materialist, Whence came matter and energy ? Who or
what formed molecules ? Who or what made them run into
organic forms ? He has no answer. " His mind may be
' compared to a musical instrument with • a certain range of
notes, beyond which, in both directions, we have an infinitude
of silence."1 The same fact is put in other words — "After
all, what do we know of this terrible ' matter,' except as a name
for the unknown and hypothetical states of our own conscious
ness ? " a We neither know nor can know anything of matter,
save through the medium of our senses, and these senses rest
upon our intellect, so that we only know matter by mind — the
visible by the invisible. " The sciences have in this respect
one common aim, to establish the supremacy of intelligence
over the world ; " s not the supremacy of the world over in-
1 " Matter and Force : " Prof. Tyndall.
2 " The Physical Basis of Life : " Prof. Huxley.
3 ".On the Relation of Natural Science to General Science : " Prof. Helmholtz.

64 The Threshold of Creation.
telligence. Hence, so far from matter being the only thing
we can know amongst the many unknown, and the only
certainty amongst those which must for ever remain uncertain,
it is, if not inferior in certainty, surely subordinate to that
greater truth — the existence of mind. Whoever knows that
matter and its forms are shown to be the more marvellous
the more they are investigated, and, in their ultimate natures,
absolutely incomprehensible ; knows also that the attempted
interpretation of all phenomena in terms of matter, motion,
energy, is an erroneous reduction of our complex symbols
of thought to physical symbols, an absurd endeavour to
explain mental phenomena by material phenomena, as if a
disquisition on a flower would explain the hand that grasps,
the eye that sees, the intelligence that discerns. It is an
ignorant attempt to bridge over that chasm between con
sciousness and physics which must ever remain intellectually
impassable. It must strike even the most careless who realise the
supremacy of mind that God being the Creator of all things —
all things must include matter. (Col. i. 16.) The Bible does
not tie us down to the fact that God did absolutely create
matter ; but we, believing that He did, that He brought it
out of the invisible, seek to justify and verify our faith, for
" every advance in our knowledge of the natural world will, if
directed by the spirit of true humility, and with a prayer for
God's blessing, advance us in our knowledge of God, and pre
pare us to receive the revelation of His will with profounder
reverence." x With reverence, therefore, we ask, nor can we
help asking — "Whence, and to what end is this matter?" The
scientific devout man hesitates not to say — " It is an earthen
vessel, framed to display the excellency of the power of God
(2 Cor. iv. 7) ; it is the outer form of natural bodies, from
which are evolved the spiritual (i Cor. xv. 44) ; it is the
fabric, or house of fashioning and use, for many vessels — some
honourable, some dishonourable (2 Tim. ii. 20 ; 1 Cor. xv. 49)."
In the first page of Scripture, matter and spirit are placed in
essential opposition. The space between the two is spanned
by creative will when the visible comes forth from the invisible.
1 Sir Robert Inglis, British Association, 1847.

Creation of Matter. 65
Matter is substance in various forms which every act of the
Divine Spirit brings nearer to the final glorification (Rev. xxi.
3-5). We are told, however, that " the creation of matter is un
thinkable, even as the annihilation of matter is unthinkable ; "
" there is neither more nor less matter in the universe now
than there was in the beginning ; " in fact, •' as to matter, there
cannot have been any beginning, as there cannot be any
ending." These assertions are nothing more than hypotheses.
In the first place, that which is unthinkable cannot be so
thought out as to become an unquestionable proposition of
the highest certainty. In the second place, the capacity or
incapacity of the human mind cannot, in any sense, measure
or set boundaries to Divine action. In the third place, the
eternal existence of matter is as inconceivable as its non-exist
ence; we only know of matter by energy, and of energy by
consciousness, and of consciousness as a sign ofthe Unknown
acting behind it. This Unknown makes our consciousness
aware that it is abstractedly possible for energy to compress
matter to such an extent as to be without limit ; and thus, as
the space occupied is indefinitely decreased, and the space
unoccupied indefinitely increased, even though we may not be
able to conceive matter reduced to nothing, we can and do
get an approximate conception ; and we get no more than an
approximate conception even of those things which we pretend
to know fully. To say that creation of matter out of nothing
is unthinkable is merely this — that we don't know how to do
it, nor how any one else can do it.
Matter is in the world, and the pious mind conceives it
came there because the Supreme Mind so willed. Socrates
said that he was in prison of his own will, awaiting death, but
his muscles and bones of their own will would have gone off
to Megara or to Bceotia — " By the dog of Egypt they would,
if they had been guided by their own ideas, and if I had not
chosen, as the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant
and running away, to undergo any punishment which the
State inflicts." x The mind of Socrates willed his body into
the prison-house. Divine energy brought matter into exist-
1 " Plato : " Jowett's Translation. F

66 The Threshold of Creation.
ence to be, in its manifold shapes, the visible outer-works of
an invisible universe.
Natural phenomena are consequently physical signals of an
ever-present energy, and afford analogies whereby we rise to
the conception, at least in some degree, of existences, abso
lutely immaterial and spiritual. It may be asserted — "We
cannot argue from one state to the other ; " nevertheless, the
connection between mind and matter is intimate, and our
consciousness of identity linking the invisible with the visible,
the past with the present, forms a sound basis for argument.
We are unable to attain the principle containing in itself all
the various complicated conditions which evolve the seen from
the unseen ; but may represent them, not by that simplicity
of motion once considered to be possessed by the planets in
their repeated circular motion, but by those now known
curves of complicity wherein all the various motions are
contained, consequent on the unsymmetrical distribution of
forces around the planetary bodies. As a matter of fact, we
are acquainted with the transfer in the visible world of one
grade of being to another, can conceive of a translation from
some other state to this, and from this to some state connected
with it. We can imagine the change of visible or invisible
energy into heat, some potential, some kinetic, then build up
the natural conception by a notion of gas or vapour indefinitely
diffused, condensing either by contraction or by diminution
of heat, until a liquid is formed, then regard the process as
visible by which a liquid passes into a solid. In this way a
scientifically exercised imagination obtains a view of 'the
passage of things from the unseen to the seen, and how the
operation of energy in and upon the matter of the universe
produces infinite varieties of existence.
The same fact as to spirit and matter may be otherwise
thought of. Different orders of being pervade the grosser
and more material. All kinds of attractions and affinities
exist where none could be expected. Mind, incorporate with
matter, acts upon it and is reacted upon. The partitions
between the visible and invisible are pierced, so that human
intelligence permeates from one to the other. It is an un
worthy imagination that infinite space contains nothing but

Experiments. 6 7
matter which is infinitesimal in comparison. The conception
is child of experience in union with science, that not only
human but other finite intelligences pass and repass. Such
passage from the unseen to the seen, from the immaterial to
the material, is in perfect agreement with the existing arrange
ment of worlds. The actions and passings of electricity,
magnetism, light, out of invisible state and place into
perceptible condition, may be taken as material analogue of
spiritual migration and mutation.
We may have a sort of embodiment as to this by ex
periment. Take a glass tube, three feet long by three inches
wide, perfectly cleanse it, and follow the example of Professor
'Tyndall in his experiments on light. Roll a small bit of
bibulous paper into a pellet not a fourth of the size of a
small pea, moisten it with a liquid of higher boiling point than
water. Hold the pellet in your fingers till it is almost dry,
then place it in a small pipe serving for the introduction of
gas into the main tube, and allow dry air to pass over it into
this tube. The air charged with the modicum of vapour thus
taken up will, when subjected to the action of light, begin
immediately to form a blue actinic cloud, and in five minutes
the blue colour will extend quite through the tube. At the
end of fifteen minutes the blue becomes a dense white cloud
filling the tube.
Take away the pellet, empty the tube, sweep it by passing
a current of dry air through, and fill it again with the vapour
of hydrochloric acid. Now, though the amount of " light
generating matter " is almost infinitesimal, when the electric
lamp pours light through the tube, in one minute a faint cloud
shows itself, grows in beauty, and in fifteen minutes the body
of light is astounding.
When we think of the small amount of vapour carried in
by the air at the first experiment, the appearance of a cloud
so massive and luminous seems like the creation of a world
out of nothing, and is, at least we may think so, a beautiful
example of the material texture out of which was framed the
visible world by Invisible Mind. As to the second experi
ment, our own intelligence directing the light that reveals
existence of which we were before unconscious, not only yields

68 The Threshold of Creation.
an example of passage from the unseen to the seen, but affords
a symbol of the passing and repassing of those mysterious
influences which are so active in the existing arrangement of
worlds — " Thro' all our life the charm does talk
About our path, it hovers near
With words of promise in our walk,
And whispers voices in our ear. "
It is agreeable to every faculty of our mental and physical
powers, that we thus seek to view the mysterious passage
from one state of things to another, the connection of former
states with our present existence, and ascertain whether our
faculties are at the end of the series. It is evident that they
are not at the end ; every physical experiment, every mental
inquiry, proves that we are only beginning to know. Our
sense of Divinity has feeling rather than knowledge for its
basis. We are on the threshold of creation, in the childhood
of intellectual life ; nevertheless, even now, " the soul," says
Francis Newman, " is that side of our nature which is in
relation with the Infinite ; therefore, we are the amalgam of
two substances ; " or, as Isaac Taylor states, " a mean,
essentially unlike what could have resulted from any possible
construction of one by itself." By this compounding of mind
with matter we control both, and acquire the power to
conquer and possess new worlds, to pass from sonship as to
man unto sonship as to God.
" The wind, before ft woos the harp,
Is but the wild and tuneless air r
Yet, as it passes through the chords,
Changes to music rare."
There are those who think that science can neither contra
dict nor affirm what is taught by Scripture as to the beginning
of things, and of creation ; and as " it is unworthy timidity in
the lover of Scripture to fear contradiction, so it is ungrounded
presumption to look for a confirmation in such cases ; " J but
as science is undoubtedly able, with some accuracy, to retrace
the past, when the earth was not, no religious man should
stand outside while she reverently uncovers the inner works
1 " Philosophy ofthe Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p. 688 : Wm. Whewell, D.D.

Science throws Light on Scripture. 69
and mysteries of the world. Such revelation is worthy of all
acceptation. " So far as we can judge, no one will demon
strate what was the primitive state from which the progressive
course of the earth took its origin. . . . We cannot, in any of
the palaeohtological sciences, ascend to a beginning which is
of the same nature as the existing course of events, and which
depends upon causes that are still in operation. Philosophers
never have demonstrated, and probably never will be able to
demonstrate, what was the original condition of the solar
system, of the earth, of the vegetable and animal worlds, of
languages, of arts." x Despite all this, it is possible to obtain
knowledge of past creations ; for we detect processes of aggre
gation which are even now building up new worlds : processes
" leading, according to the position and perhaps the character
of the masses acted upon, to the formation of suns of greater
or less splendour and magnitude, of streams and clusters of
small stars, and of systems in which suns and stellar streams
and clusters seem to be intermingled." 2 There are waning
worlds and waxing worlds at the present moment, dried up
as the moon, fertile as the earth, semi-fluid as Saturn, or cloud-
form as nebulae. They lie between the ruins of worlds that
have been, and the chaotic materials of worlds which shall be.
In spite of wear and tear, worlds are extending their sway,
cosmos is conquering chaos. Science gives definiteness to
our conceptions of creation, confirms or annuls those concep
tions. We no longer look at the earth as a savage regards
a steamship — a something wholly beyond comprehension.
The process is one of energy, but not of energy only. The
external world, so far as we see the phenomena and their
characteristics, is unquestionably the result of intelligent
action ; while the inner world, as seen in the instinct of
animals, in the morals, religion, intellect of man, has a volun
tary capability of turning natural processes into other uses, of
arraying energy against energy, of reducing Nature to such
obedience, that the wind blows for us, fire burns for us, water
becomes a mighty servant, and the electric fluid is our swift
messenger. '
1 " Philosophy ofthe Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p. 688.
2 Richard A. Proctor.

70 The Threshold of Creation.
Test, by means of one word, "Beginning," whether our
knowledge of God's Work does not enlarge and confirm our
view of truth in Scripture. What does Beginning mean ?
It means the origination of things — " In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth." Until of late many of us
had taken "beginning" to imply a comparatively modern
time ; but, in truth, time has no connection with it, except in
meaning that before time was, when the Word was with God
and was God, in that eternity, when the Son was, then were
the worlds created. In that beginning, the Word, God, created
all things. Now, God is eternally all that He is ; there is nothing
new, nothing by chance nor of caprice. If He is Creator, He
is eternally Creator ; for the power, the wisdom, the love, are
eternal ; and the act of Creation, proceeding from them, must
of necessity be eternal, though not eternally creating, or we
impose on the Creator the conditions of time, and subject
Him to the vicissitudes of the future.
We are not responsible for the difficulty growing out of
this, i.e. that God has eternally created, but the Creation
had origin, and that origin gave birth to time — " Tempus a
creatura ccepit, utrumque a Deo. Nihil in tempore novum
est Deo, Qui condidit tempora, et ab eternitate existens omnia
suis quaeque temporibus distribuit." The difficulty really lies
in the inadequacy of language to express, and the imperfection
of our understanding to know, Divine things. It is certain
that no number of creatures, vast as that number may be, no
extension of space or ages, however grand that extension, can
express the eternity and infinity of the Creator. We must,
willing or unwilling, admit that, to our consciousness, all dura
tion is comprised within two series, a series of past infinite
moments, and a series of future infinite moments ; we add
these together, and> they form relatively, eternity ; but
absolutely, time ; one series is behind, another is before. As
for God, to whom nothing is past or future, the two series
exist under the same title, the one and the other are con
tained in the Now or Absolute Eternity of the Eternal. It
may seem as if the idea of a created world, without commence
ment in time, and without limit in space, is one of those
infinities which cannot be explained ; in that case it is the

Eternity and Infinity. 71
best possible example of the Infinity and Eternity of the
Creator (Gen. i. 1 ; John i. 1-3).
Creation, to express the eternity, the infinity, the majesty,
the wisdom, the perfections of God, ought to extend to an
eternity of ages, to an infinity of spaces, to an innumerable
variety of existences in every degree, all finite in themselves ;
but, in space beyond space, and world beyond world, a symbol
of Infinity ; the absolute Infinity being figured by an infinity
that is relative ; the relative being duration and extent with
out bounds, only contained by eternity and infinite space. Is
not this Pantheism ? No. The Creator alone is absolutely
eternal and infinite ; but the creation, occupying all space and
all time, subject to division and limit, does, in those innumer
able divisions and exhaustless limits, represent to the utmost
conceivable extent the operations of God. To obtain even a
faint conception, we must deepen our notions of eternity and
time. Time is the law of everything that changes, Eternity
is the incommunicable and unchangeable attribute of God.
Plato says — "Time is a movable image of immovable
eternity." We cannot say there was a time when no time
was ; yet, as time was created, and the world was fashioned,
we ought to say — " There was no time without creation, the
successive movements of which form time ; therefore, time
and creation have always been ; nevertheless, they were
created, and are not co-eternal with God ; " for, as St.
Augustine said — " He was before them, although He may
never have been without them ; because He did not precede
them by an interval of time, but by immovable eternity." In
this sense, God, as eternal Creator, is eternal Saviour.
Reasonings of this kind, illustrative of our feebleness, and
of the vast meaning contained in so many texts of Scripture
(2 Chron. vi. 18; Job xi. 7, 8 ; Isai. lxvi. 1 ; Col. i. 15-17)
formerly seemed visionary ; but are highly useful as proof
that the utmost exercise of all our powers enables us to
take only a few steps within the threshold of creation. The
telescope has manifested the world to be infinitely vast, and
the microscope has revealed worlds within worlds, infinitely
small. Divine attributes are not like the faculties or impulses
of human nature, separate and distinct qualities or powers ;

72 The Threshold of Creation.
God is One. He is in every place, but the presence is in
comprehensible. He is not here or there as a property or
extension. His relation to place, time, extension, is peculiar
to infinitude. Divine power is never put forth unaccompanied
by Divine wisdom, nor apart from goodness and justice. No
attribute is dormant, there is no parting nor divisibility in the
Divine essence. His plan of the world, everlastingly present
with Him, had temporal realisation in that effectual interfer
ence by which the material universe became a pavilion of the
infinity in which it was developed. There was first a direct
personal self-operation, a putting forth of Divine energy ; after
wards, the use, of all natural means, as they were called into
existence. The action continues in that spontaneousness of
Nature by which she seems to do all things as of herself. The
worldly structure rises story above story, nor are the chambers
of uniform dimensions, embellishment, furniture. We behold
from a distance, a thousand halls, grand and beautiful ; we
look through some of the courts, and take them as a gauge
of some vast, wonderful, mysterious life, and the visible
universe as a tent of sojourning for wayfarers to the eternal
future. A bird's-eye view of the whole argument :
Standing on the threshold of the universe, we behold infini
tude, and are conscious of other and wider worlds than that in
which we dwell. The Divine account of creation gives the
work of ages as in a moment. The world, or creation, gave a
beginning to time — there was no time without a creation, and
creation is the work of Omnipresent Energy. Nature is not
complete in itself, but rests on something infinitely beyond ;
cannot be limited to material things, which are but a low form
of substance in process of glorification. Transitions from the
visible material to the invisible, transformations from world to
world, gradation from state to state, show a connection of all
things, specially of our souls, with the Infinite. Our present
stage lies between the ruins of worlds that have been and the
chaotic materials of worlds to come. Language is not ade
quate to express the eternity, wisdom, might of God, or of
His works. Plans of the worlds, everlastingly present with
Him, have local and temporal realisation ; might being ever

The Vestibule of Heaven. 72>
accompanied by wisdom and goodness in operations tending
to yet more wonderful and glorious manifestations.
Pass from argument to figure — God called a man from
dreams into the vestibule of heaven, " Come thou hither, and
see the glory of My house;" and to the angels round His
throne, He said — "Take him, strip off his robes of flesh,
cleanse his vision, put a new breath into his nostrils, but touch
not with any change his human heart — the heart that weeps,
and trembles." It was done ; and, with a mighty angel as
guide, the man stood ready for an infinite voyage. They
launched without sound or farewell from the terraces of
heaven, and wheeled away into endless space. Sometimes
with the solemn flight of angel-wings, they passed through
Saharas of darkness, through wildernesses of death, sepa
rating worlds of life. Sometimes they swept over frontiers
quickening under prophetic motions from God. Then from a
distance, measured only in heaven, light dawned through
shapeless film, and in unspeakable space swept to them, and
they with unspeakable quickness to the light. In a moment
the rushing of planets was upon them — in a moment the
blazing of suns around them. Then came eternities of
twilight, that revealed, but were not revealed. On the right
hand and on the left, mighty constellations built up triumphal
gates, whose architraves, whose archways, seemed ghostly
from infinitude. Without measure were the architraves,
past number were the archways, beyond memory the gates.
Within were stairs that scaled eternities around, above was
below and below was above to the man stripped of gravitating
body. Depth was transcended by height insurmountable,
height was swallowed up in depth unfathomable. Suddenly
as thus they rode from infinite to infinite ; suddenly as thus
they tilted over abysmal worlds ; a mighty cry arose that
systems more mysterious, worlds more billowy, other heights
and other depths were coming, were nearing, were at hand.
Then the man sighed and stopped, shuddered and wept. His
over-laden heart poured itself forth in tears, and he said —
" Angel, I will go no further, for the spirit of man acheth
with this infinity. Insufferable is the glory of God. Let
me lie down in the grave, and hide me from oppression of

74 The Threshold of Creation.
the Infinite, for end I see there is none." Then from all the
listening stars that shone around issued a choral voice — " The
man speaks truly — end there is none." The angel solemnly
demanded — "End there is none? Is there indeed no end?
Is this the sorrow that kills you ? " But no voice answered,
that he himself might answer. Then the angel threw up his
glorious hands towards the Heaven of heavens, and said — " To
the universe of God there is no end, lo ! also, there is no
beginning." x
1 Altered from De Quincey's translation from the German of Jean Paul Richter.

STUDY IV.
RUDIMENTS OF THE WORLD.
" The world is not God, as the Pantheists affirm. It did not exist from eternity
as the Peripatetics taught. It was not made by Fate and Necessity, as the Stoics
said. It did not arise from a fortuitous concourse of atoms, as the Epicureans
asserted ; nor from the antagonism of two rival powers, as the Persians and Mani-
cheans affirmed ; nor was it made by angels, or by emanations of aeons, as some of
the ancient Gnostics held ; nor out of matter co-etemal with God, as Hermogenes
said ; nor by the spontaneous energy and evolution of self-developing powers, as
some have affirmed in later days ; but it was created by One, Almighty, Eternal,
Wise, and Good Being — God." — Newton's Principia.
What is, or was, the Primeval Matter ?
Possibly something out of which all the varieties of matter
have been formed. Something simpler than that which is
now called elementary matter. The mathematical idea of the
nature of " mass " is opposed to the notion of substances being
composed of a vast variety of separate elements. The elements,
now numbered sixty-four (probably to be increased by recent
American discoveries), owe their distinctive properties to the
grouping of certain ultimate atoms, possibly not of one kind,
but of several kinds ; for there are elements which appear to
be so related as to have community of origin. If they were
simple homogeneous masses, it is thought that their incan
descent vapour would show in the spectrum one single bright
line. The flame of hydrogen, the lowest in the scale, has four
spectral lines, made up, it is supposed, of four different sorts
of matter, but no conclusion regarding the complexity of
hydrogen can be come to by means of the lines. The thick
ness of the spectral lines depends on their relation to the
spectrum, whether toward the violet or the red ends. Some
lines depend probably on the normal vibrations of matter, and
the other on the harmonic vibration.
No force, known to us, can separate the constitutional atoms
of the elements ; or effect any change in them ; but if what is

76 Rudiments of the World.
thought of Sirius and Aldebaran be true, that they are younger
and hotter suns than our own, there the various kinds of
matter may possibly exist in simpler form. Sirius contains
hydrogen, but the proportion of metallic vapours is small in
its chromosphere, and the hydrogen lines are enormously
distended. The discovery of silicon in a new form, in the
meteorites, renders possible the compound nature of that so-
called element ; and there is evidence of the compound nature
of calcium in the Sun.
We are told — " by the different grouping of units, and by
the combination of the unlike groups, each with its own kind,
and each with other kinds, it is supposed that there have been
produced the kinds of matter we call elementary." J If we
accept this statement, it must be against all logic and ex
perience. Units possessing precisely the same properties, or
rather no properties ; and, by energy acting in a straight line,
striking against one another ; then going off in another
direction ; till, again striking, they go off in a third direction,
and so on ; will for ever remain the same units and the same
energy — neither creating new matter nor new energy. If,
moreover, we bear in mind the all-important principle, that
" nothing can be learned as to the physical world save by
observation and experiment, or by mathematical deductions
from data so obtained," we shall guard against those empirics
who, reducing all existence to one element — destitute of all
properties, and to one energy — acting only in a straight line,
do then, to suit their theory, take in all that they have thrust
out, and endue this one supposed form of matter with mysterious
faculties and occult powers.
Consider now the nature and constitution of matter.
Lockyer states, as the result of very prolonged and careful
investigation, that unless certain so-called elements are com
pound bodies, the elements of the sun and of the earth are
not identical. This dilemma, if of positive value in argu
ment, will necessitate the choice of believing in the existence
of simpler bodies ; or of crediting that the uniformity of
chemical composition of the solar system, a most philosophi
cal conception, is not true. As meteorites falling on the earth
1 "Principles of Psychology," vol. i. p. 155 : Herbert Spencer.

Structure of Matter. 77
yield no new or strange elements, the probabilities are in
favour of the compound nature of many " elements " of the
chemist. If with Newton we speak of dense invisible units, those are
only symbolic, yet still they seem verified in chemical ex
periments which manifest particles of specific weight, size,
elasticity, affinity, differences of quality, with chronometric
vibrations — not force, but conditions of force. Get rid of the
atom, as Boscovich does, substitute mere geometrical points,
points without dimensions, as centres of force, force loci, which
attract and repel each other in such wise as to be kept apart
and at specific distances ; behaving, so far as external bodies
are concerned, just as an atom would. Pass on with Sir
William Thomson and Helmholtz, to the vortex-atom theory,
that matter consists of rotating portions of a something which
fills the whole of space, that is, vortex-motion of an everywhere
present fluid. Add to this, every so-called atom of any one
substance, wheresoever we find it, on the earth, in the sun, or
coming to us from cosmical spaces, possesses precisely the
same physical properties, measurable dimensions, with shape,
motion, laws of action, which we subject to scientific investiga
tion. Then take a drop of water, and by means of a galvanic
battery decompose it into the constituent gases ; this shows
that the parts may be separated until they are so small, that
if again divided, the halves or parts are no longer similar to
one another ; but one is oxygen, the other hydrogen. Thus
we have arrived at the grained structure of the whole. We
are not wholly without hope that we may some day know the
real weight of every atom — not merely the relative weight of
several atoms ; but the number in the given volume of any
material ; that the form and motion of the parts of every
atom, and the distances by which they are separated, may be
calculated ; that the motions by which heat, electricity, light,
are produced, may be shown by exact mathematical dia
grams ; that the fundamental properties of the intermediate
and possibly constituent medium may be discovered. We
shall then, for a while, turn from the motion of planets and
music of spheres, to take our fill of wonder as to the mystic
maze in which those tiny atoms run.

78 Rudiments of the World.
How finely grained water is, may be seen from the fact
that were it possible to draw out a film 100,000,000th of
an inch in thickness, it would probably still contain a few
particles of water in its thickness.1 As to the ultimate
particles of the elements, by a rough process, Cauchy obtained
the 400,000,000th part of an inch as their diameter. By a
calculation upon what is called the electricity of contact of
different metals, it is thought to have been ascertained that
the grained structure must exceed the 700,000,000th part of
an inch. By the molecular motion of gases, a result has been
obtained which indicates that the 500,000,000th part of an
inch may be the size of the particles. These points or atoms
manifest powers of attraction and repulsion ; march under three
banners as gases, fluids, solids ; but it is probable that every
one is capable of existing in all three forms. The mysterious
complexity of their nature may be inferred from gases. The
result arrived at by several inquirers as to the molecular
motion of gases is, that the average distance between the
several particles of a gas at the ordinary temperature and
pressure of the air, must be something between the' 6,000,000th
part of an inch and the 10,000,000th part of an inch." a The
number of particles in a cubic inch of air is, approximately,
about the number 3 with twenty cyphers after it ; and as a
plum is to the whole earth, so is a particle of water to the
whole drop ; there being in that drop about io28, that is,
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The particles of a gas
are known to be free, detached from one another, and con
stantly flying about in all directions. The velocity of particles
of hydrogen, according to Foulis' experiments, must be about
605 5 feet per second at o° C. This is a higher velocity than
has ever been attained by a cannon ball. Joule's estimate for
hydrogen was 6225 feet the second at temperature 60° F,
and 6055 the second at freezing point. Clerk Maxwell and
Boltzman have ascertained that in a mass of hydrogen, at
ordinary temperature and pressure, every particle, on an
average, has 17,700,000,000 collisions per second with other
particles ; that is to say, in every second its course is changed
' "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 311 : P. G. Tait, M.A.
2 Ibid. p. 315.

Movements of the Particles. 79
17,700,000,000 times ; and, yet, the particles are moving at the
rate of 70 miles the minute. When rude voices say — " The
Lord never passeth by ; not in the wind, not in the earth
quake, not in the still, small voice ; " we cannot but marvel
that some cunning creatures are so savage as not to perceive
God unless He thunders on them.
The idea of the gaseous state in which a given space con
tains millions and millions of molecules in rapid movement in
all directions, each having millions of encounters in a second,
is not of universal application. It relates to the peculiar
physical conditions of our planet, and doubtlessly to the
neighbourhood of the bodies of the solar system ; but what
is the condition of the molecules in those regions of space
remote from the influence of gravitation, where rarefaction is
at its utmost, the minutest particles of matter are scarce and
rarely meet a fellow with which to collide ? Crookes shows, in
the highly rarefied vessels under his superb manipulation, that
the free path of the molecules is made so long as their
collisions are rare ; and they cease as a whole to have gaseous
properties, and become invested with hitherto masked pro
perties. In this outside world, to use the words of the dis
tinguished physicist, " a world where matter exists in a fourth
state," these molecules move and obtain available kinetic
energy, there the corpuscular theory of light holds good, there
light does not always move in a straight line, there the impacts
of imponderable molecules produce intense heat.1
If we look at Nature in her working dress, we find that
the elements are not apparently of the same relative use and
importance. It is a startling fact that the variety of exist
ences which Nature contains, far from exhausting all the forms
and combinations of which the elements are capable, only
uses a few. The solid globe, whithersoever our search extends,
is composed of say — silicon, aluminium, iron, magnesium,
sodium, potassium, and oxygen. The broad ocean composes
its vast masses of fluid principally from two elements — oxygen
and hydrogen, — and the salt consists mainly of chlorine and
sodium. The air is formed of nitrogen and oxygen. The
1 W. Crookes, F.R. S., " On the Illumination of Lines of Molecular Pressure,
and the Trajectory of Molecules." Proceedings, Royal Society, vol. xxviii. no. 191.

80 Rudiments of the World.
animal and vegetable worlds, innumerable in forms and
functions of life, are chiefly built of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen,
oxygen. It is, indeed, astonishing that the great variety
exhibited in the whole world is unfolded out of few materials.
The Creator has taken but a handful of elements wherewith
to form, in the main, the gorgeous structure of our dwelling.
Do we ask why ? The answer comes — as yet the world, to
us at least, is rudimentary. Eternity and space contain endless
surprises and possibilities ; we know not what we shall be.
There are latent forces of development which, when called
forth, will exhibit new and exquisite powers. The elements,
now little used, may hereafter display magnificent variety and
surpassing beauty. The great Master has wrought charming
music with few notes ; what soul-stirring melodies will awake
gladness when all the chords are touched !
Listen to the life-throb of our universe. By scientific use
of imagination, we may conceive all the mechanical, chemical,
vital operations of the world, as resulting from an infinite
congeries of invisible atoms or mathematical points of attrac
tion and repulsion. These countless centres are so many
starting points of motion, causing atoms to cluster into mole
cules, and molecules into masses. In other words : " Atoms
and molecules are little magnets with mutually attractive and
mutually repellent poles. The attracting poles unite, the
repelling poles retreat ; vegetable, as well as mineral forms,
are the final expression of this complicated molecular action."1
This life-throb of the whole visible and palpable world is a
pulsation going forth every instant from the Eternal Energy,
bringing out from the invisible and intangible that which is
visible and tangible.
To develop the visible from the invisible, there must be a
passage from the one to the other, or an ethereal medium, a
stage in which the energy had passed from one and had not
arrived at the other : that passage or medium none of us can
explain. Further, if we assume that all energies are reducible
to One Energy, and that all forms of matter are derived from
one primeval substance, is not this an attempt to explain
the creation of matter ? for it is demonstrably impossible for
1 " Matter and Force ; " Prof. Tyndall.

The Vastness of Continual Change. 81
variety to have unfolded itself from this supposed primitive
physical unity. The change must have come from without,
and even allowing that the change can be mechanically
formulated, we recognise in it the Unknown Energy. The
variety called Nature did not evolve itself from unity, neither
does Nature of itself, apart from the primal Energy, guide
or maintain the variety of continual change. Organic force
does not seem to be interchangeable with mechanical. No
physical force, that we know of, can be converted into that
which is called vital, or counted as the correlative of mental
change. Again and again there have been intrusions of new
things, interpenetrations and modifications of energy. If
chemical action differs from mechanical; if life is not
chemistry, and certainly it is unknown in our laboratories ;
and if mind is not matter ; certainly many and great are the
changes that have been wrought in the nature and essence of
things. View the whole from another standpoint, from the brow
of a hill when all is still, the breeze having died away. The
air is clear, and we listen in vain to catch a sound other
than the low murmur of waves breaking on the shore. The
shepherd's flock slumbers beneath the elm-tree shadows, and
cattle stand in cool hollows by the river-side. The green
meadows, fresh and luxuriant, seem also asleep, Nature is in
repose. Is it indeed so ? Come again, after a little time,
and a change has been wrought. Even the flowers which
bedeck the soil, the very substance of those hills standing
firm, the deep sea so placid, the quiet, still air, are all in
motion. From year to year the limestone of the rock changes
its hard lineaments. The elastic sod, pressed by our feet, is
not the same, its materials are being altered, carried away,
renewed. Changeable the wind, so the sea. All things are
working, and for ever in vast complications, every one child
and parent of other. The contemplative mind beholds every
day the passage of things invisible into sight, the transfer of
the seen into the unseen. The passing away of the world
might be called a pause, and the annihilation of solid spheres
a rest, rather than the crash of destruction. We reverently
lay all our science at the feet of the Eternal. G

82 Rudiments of the World.
" Oh purify my eyes,
More and yet more, by love and holy thought,
Thy presence, Holiest One, to recognise ! "
The theory which reduces the universe to mere atoms,
energy, empty space, and thence deduces the whole series of
phenomena, encounters an obstacle at the outset : atoms seem
absolutely unchangeable. The monistic doctrine of homo
geneous atoms will not work ; and if we accept many atoms
of many kinds they explain no property of body which
has not been previously attributed to the atoms themselves.
Pulverising the world into particles, next to nothing, in order
to hit upon something just beyond, is a hopeless task ; and to
imagine that out of the superlatively little may be drawn the
secret of the world's power and constructive skill, is a strange
delusion. Starve the atom as you will, and then make a
miniature of it in your thought ; but, having dropped the
attributes, how can you pick them up again ? Make its
essence to be extension or palpableness, merge it into dynamic
points, unextended centres of attraction and repulsion, you
cannot get to the beginning of things. The final simplicity
of the atom must include internal movements ; when these
are sufficiently excited, rays are emitted of a length which is
in measure of the time of vibration of the molecule. This
change of form, these internal movements, are impossible
without shifting parts and altered relations ; but then your
atom is a wonderful whole, made up of many parts. The
atomic theory is no explanation of the creative mystery.
Reverse the process : — The eye of modern science seeks,
but findeth not, some original, undivided material as the con
tinuous substratum of all forms and distinctions. We cannot
get beyond an infinitude of discrete atoms of different internal
vibrations, agitated by movements carrying them in all direc
tions, forming the myriad types with which is printed the
Book of Nature. By means of these elements we produce,
without any change in kind or proportion, substances with
marked differences of physical and chemical property. Several
distinct compounds are formed out of the same relative weights
of carbon and hydrogen. Simple carbon appears as charcoal
and the diamond. Apparently trivial changes in atomic

Type of Natures Book. 83
arrangements effect changes of the most unexpected and
startling order. Phosphorus is, in the yellow, semi-transparent
form, highly inflammable. White phosphorus, formed by
exposure under water to light, is less combustible. Black
phosphorus is obtained by sudden cooling of melted phos
phorus. Red phosphorus can be prepared in various ways,
and is combustible only at a high temperature. If we attribute
these differences to various grouping of the atoms, and say —
" Whatever their form, it is easy, within certain limits, to
vary in imagination the adjustment of their homogeneous
sides, so as to build molecules of several types, and ultimately
aggregates of contrasted qualities ; " then, in the ultimate
stuff of the universe, there are not only myriad types, but
myriad types of the same letter. Nor is this all ; every one
of these letters has its own select list of companions and
peculiar terms of fellowship. The hydrogen atom vainly tries
in levity, with low figure and light weight, to be intimate
with the oxygen element. The reply is, " None of you, or
two of you ; " and so, throughout, there are certain mathe
matical proportions. One gas unites with one, two, three, or
more volumes of another. There appear even to be special
conditions for the likeness " of daisy to daisy, of bee to bee."
Then, lest we imagine everything is known, we find that
while the same substance is always made up of the same
elements, in the same proportion ; the same elements in the
same proportion, do not always form the same substance ; a
paradox, yet strictly true, forcibly illustrating the omnipresence
of mystery.
Now view theprinting of the Book.
The ultimate particles of matter cluster into molecules, then
into masses, not trying or experimenting to obtain different
grouping, or to combine unlike groups, but every one taking
its own invariable form. For example, water, wherever and
however formed, is always the same substance, and made up
of the same component gases in the same relative proportions.
" No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the
similarity of the molecules throughout the whole region of the
stellar universe, for evolution continuously implies continuous
change, and the molecule is incapable of change or decay,

84 Rudiments of the World.
of generation or destruction. . . . Though, in the course of
ages, catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the
heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new
systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which
these systems are built — the foundation stones of the material
universe — remain unbroken and unworn." x They are en
dowed with attractive and repellent poles, whose play pro
duces definite forms of crystalline architecture of constant
similarity, yet endless diversities, through various and strong
interactions. Atoms and molecules forming, so to speak, letters and
words, these are arranged in sentences. Every solid body
when slowly deposited from an aeriform or a liquid condition,
takes a definite symmetrical shape, which we call crystal —
the process we call crystallization. " All crystals, without
exception, are solids bounded by plane faces symmetrically
disposed about certain straight lines called axes. No mathe
matician could determine these axes with more accuracy
than they are found to exist. Numerical relations of the
most remarkable kind exist in the proportions in which alone
natural substances will combine, and these numerical relations
exist also in plants. . . . Nothing is more striking in botany
than the mode in which certain numbers, such as three and
five and their multiples, prevail. . . . Can we believe them to
be exhibited in Nature by a mere concourse of atoms, or by
self-existing and self-created proportions of matter without
the intervention of Intelligence and Mind ? " 2 Little import
ance, therefore, attaches to that unphilosophical theory which
assumes that chance, having an eternity wherein to try and
fit and combine, did, at length, by a hap-hazard arrangement,
form the worlds ; and, by chance, continued them. Cicero
had a word on this — " The man who believes this (that the
world with all its beauty, with all its fittedness , for man, as
well as for animal and vegetable life, was made by the chance
meeting of atoms) will believe that if a countless number of
the letters of the alphabet— their material being either gold
or anything else— were thrown in a mass in some place, from
1 Prof. J. Clerk Maxwell.
2 " On the Limits of Science : " Wm. Forsyth, Eraser's Magazine, February, 1875.

Molecular Energy. 85
these letters, shaken out on the ground, there can be formed
the annals of Ennius, arranged in such order as to be read
continuously." x Seeing that all art, all science, are built on
the discoverable intelligible purpose and use, present and
prospective arrangement, it may be regarded as absolutely
certain that the placing of every letter, word, sentence, para
graph, in the grand historic chapter of existing worlds, has
been ordered by Supreme Intelligence.
In every molecule (we now arrange our thought in figure of
another fashion), formed by combination of separate atoms,
we have, as it were, a solar system. The atoms are not
supposed to be indefinitely near one another, but at distances
great in proportion as are the planets from the sun, and
revolve round each other. The distance of a fixed star
from us is very great compared with that of the sun, but a
portion of matter which, in our most powerful microscope
seems almost indescribably small, may be as wonderfully
complex in structure as is the star itself. The molecules,
by means of constructive energy, build themselves up into
definite shapes, but create neither new matter nor new energy ;
neither the vegetable body nor the animal body, as regards
matter and energy, can create anything. All the mystical
play of mechanical, chemical, molecular processes, leaves the
magnitude of matter and the energies unenlarged ; but life
and intelligence so enlarge, modify, and direct the play, that
the process becomes infinitely more mysterious than the mere
shaking together of material particles. Matter, therefore, is
not the equivalent of all phenomena ; cannot create matter
nor originate energy ; it is a something in relation to that
which went before ; a something in relation to that which
will follow : nor is gravity or energy an essential of matter,
but that by which it is pressed or pushed about. Hence,
matter, in itself, whether ponderous as gold, or dense as
steel, " subtile " and ethereal as gas or magnetic fluid, is
not self-motive ; we only know matter by its manifestation
of energy, and " we are irresistibly compelled by the relativity
of our thought to vaguely conceive some unknown force as
the correlative of the known force." 2
1 "De Natura Deorum," ii. 37.
3 " First Principles," p. 170 : Herbert Spencer.

86 Rudiments of the World.
The operations of this energy, even in the lowest forms, are
beautiful and delicate. From a solution of common salt, let
the water slowly evaporate, and the minute particles of salt,
so minute as to defy all microscopic power, deposit them
selves ; and, through the clustering of innumerable molecules,
a fine crystalline mass of miniature pyramids is raised by
structural energy. The ice of our winters is of equally skilled
handiwork in definite shapes ; precious to the eye of science
as the diamond, and purely formed as they are delicately
built. The cells of the sheath of a straw, when examined by
polarised light, are found to have the architecture of a ciystal :
the molecules are set in definite positions. The exquisite
texture of light is a miracle of beauty in its gorgeous colours ;
a marvel in the invisible rays, which exceed in heat ; a wonder
of chemic power to the world in the ultra-violet rays ; and a
mystery, in making all other things to be seen, itself unseen.
The atmosphere is not only charged with subtile power, but
contains carbonic acid — food for the vegetable world ; and
oxygen diluted with nitrogen— the support of animal life.
All these, whether waves of aether, or of atmosphere, atoms
coalescing in sky-matter, or matter in invisible masses, move
to the music of law.
Pass from the rudiments to the mechanism of worlds.
Diffused matter is contracted into collections of attenuated
flocculi, and solidified into masses. If we could mentally see
the generation of the movement, the first operation of energy
would be, Guthrie thinks, " approach by vibrations," that is to
say, from what we know of things, a slight shiver as of leaves
in faintest wind, a throb extending through the sphere of
motion, the whole showing a complication vaster than the
mightiest ocean swell. We may conceive of this motion
having a rhythm which could be traced in light, heat, elec
tricity, in the spiral arrangements so general among the more
diffused nebulae, and in every particle of matter — rhythm
prepared for by some primordial condition, and continued
by persistence of energy. By contraction and impact, the
potential energy would be gradually transmuted into heat
and the visible motion of the mass.
Energy, carrying the moved body in the same straight line

Mechanism of Worlds. 87
for ever, would cause an infinite space, void of everything
except the moving body ; or if centres of equivalent energy
were placed at equal distances, they would remain in equili
brium for ever. How, then, are the vast curves of the plane
tary bodies obtained ? To represent it mentally, fill an
apparent vacuity with an ethereal medium — a species of
matter — countless lines radiate from the centre to every side,
and along every line this medium presents resistance, so that
the exact line on which matter sets out, drawn by attraction
to the centre, cannot be continued, but becomes a curve ;
and a curve the more complex in proportion as the energies
are more numerous and varied. Apply this to nebular con
densation, and to precipitation of diffused matter into flocculi
of denser matter. As the matter moves by gravitational
energy, the direction would be, first of all, in a straight line ;
but the direction being continually influenced by surrounding
bodies, themselves in relative movement, rotation and revolu
tion would then be set up, and conditions analogous to those
of the sun and solar system be established. The sun, our
earth, the other planets, had their own concentrations, say of
nebulous ring, gaseous spheroid, liquid spheroid, and spheroid
externally solidified. If we regard this energy as merely
mechanical, it possesses nothing directive ; no more produces
a planet than a poem ; neither explains the energy of gravity
which brings all bodies together, nor that of repulsion which
tears them asunder. The pressing and pushing about of
matter are not the equivalents of all phenomena ; but, as
magnetism, heat, light, are held to be different modes of some
one universal energy, we regard the attraction and repulsion
of matter as manifestations of a mysterious Power, — a Power
which, Herbert Spencer says, "transcends intuition and is
beyond imagination."
Continue the mechanical investigation: —
1. The Earth. — The form of the earth is a spheroid or
ellipsoid. It is thus accounted for. A detached fluid mass,
if at rest in space, would assume, by gravitation of its par
ticles, the form of a sphere. When it began to rotate on its
axis it would become flattened at the poles, and bulge at the
equator. This bulge is now about 1 in 300, or something like

88 Rudiments of the World.
thirteen miles of extra matter all round. When separated
and aggregated from the nebula, out of which was produced
the solar system, our earth probably exceeded 400,000 miles
in diameter, and the mass took about 29^ days to rotate.
The earth's oblateness is proof that it was modelled when in
a yielding or plastic condition, before the crust had been
formed, when an incandescent globe rolling through space,
with all the water and other vapourisable matter in a gaseous
state. Sir Isaac Newton calculated that " a comet formed of
iron would absorb so much heat in its near approach to the
sun as to require 5000 years to cool." The time required for
the cooling of the earth from its molten condition to a habit
able state would, according to Bischof's experiments on basalt,
be 350,000,000 years. The computations vary from about
100,000,000 to about 1,000,000,000 years. The waters having
attained a state fit for the support of life, the vital period
began, and it is calculated from the rise of temperature (taken
over the whole earth's surface), at an average of one degree
for 100 feet of descent, that about 10,000,000 years ago the
surface of the earth had just consolidated, or was about to
consolidate, and that, in some thousands of years after that,
the heat "would not interfere very greatly with the growth
of plants ; so from this point of view we are led to a limit of
something like 10,000,000 years as the utmost we can give
to geologists for their speculations as to the history even of
their lowest order of fossils." x Some able men assert — " The
physical data of this argument are unreliable. It is quite
possible that no sensible temperature from within has been
felt in the sea and in the soils since the commencement of the
laying down of the lowest fossiliferous rocks."
2. The Planetary System. — Not only are the planets shaped
like the earth, they move in the same direction round the
sun, and in nearly the same plane, with rotation in the same
direction as their orbital motion. The orbits, both of planets
and satellites, nearly coincide, and differ but little from circles.
These peculiarities are considered to be remaining indications
of a previous state, in which the whole planetary system
formed one connected mass, with uniform rotatory motion,
1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 167 : P. G. Tait, M.A.

The Connected Mass. 89
and support the hypothesis that the star system was formed
out of a nebulous mass by the mutual attractions of its parts :
every one, star and sun, in his own order, receiving definite
form, size, function, to become a dwelling-place for life ; or, in
some other way equally good, to show forth the glory of God.
Our own system, according to Sir William Herschel, might
" be said to be one that has fewer marks of profound anti
quity on it than the rest." He stated in the same paper,
1785 — "Our system, after numbers of ages, may very possibly
become divided, so as to give rise to a stratum of two or three
hundred nebulae, for it would not be difficult to point to so
many beginnings or gathering clusters in it."
3. The Connected Mass. — The nebulous mass, out of which
our system was formed, not only filled all the space now
occupied by the system, but extended vastly further than the
limits of the most distant planet. Comets, crowds of shooting
stars, and the zodiacal light exhibit traces' of dispersed matter
such as existed in that old condition ; matter, scattered as
powder, but moving, and ignited like those nebulous patches
which now shine in the far-off regions of the firmament.
Now observe two facts, — 1, A large amount of light and heat
sent out into space returns not again ; so that the sun and stars
are cooling. 2, The motion of large bodies in space is being
gradually stopped by ethereal friction. A great part of the
original mechanical force has already been converted into heat
and dissipated, and, as to the stoppage of visible motion, every
tide on the earth and every day's march through space bring
us nearer to the end, not of our system only, but of all systems.
The sun is hastening to his destiny, to that gathering of
matter into one universal centre, that equilibrium in which,
motion ceasing, there will be no light, no warmth, no life.
The life of man, the existence of our sun and planets, are but
as a ripple on the bosom of the eternal deep.
Work this out more definitely. The chief part of the prim
ordial energy now belonging to our system is in the form of
solar heat. This energy will not remain ours for ever ; portions
are continually radiating from it into infinite space.1 " The sun
is so much colder that we may have our fires ; he is also so much
1 "Aim and Progress of Physical Science :" Prof. Helmholtz.

90 Rudiments of the World.
colder that we may have our horse-racing and our Alpine climb
ing. It is, for example, certain that the sun has been chilled to
an extent capable of being accurately expressed in numbers,
in order to furnish the power which lifted this year a certain
number of tourists from the Vale of Chamouni to the summit
of Mont Blanc." x We calculate that only the 454th part of
the original mechanical force which worked the condensation
of our system remains, the other has been converted into
heat ; every tide, though with incalculable slowness, diminishes
the mechanical force of the earth ; and our store of heat,
though sufficient for an immeasurable time, is lessened by
daily scattering into space. These are not lost as to the
universe, but whither they go and into what they are formed
no man knoweth. Despite this scattering, the earth's tempera
ture during the historic 4000 years has not sensibly diminished,
and a sufficient quantity of heat for the total emission of
2100 years would be generated by the combustion of only
i-io,oooth part ofthe sun's diameter. So small a change our
closest astronomical observations would hardly detect. The
store of energy we possess is indeed immensely great, and
the incessant emission of light and heat during the period of
human history has not sensibly decreased it; still, the in
exorable laws of mechanics indicate that it must finally be
exhausted. If the universe is delivered up, as physicists say,
to the undisturbed action of physical processes, all energy will
pass into the form of heat, and all heat passing, by radiation
and conduction, from the warmer bodies into bodies less
warm an equilibrium of temperature will be established.
From that time evermore the sun will have neither light nor
heat, the universe will rest, the earth be dead. Our race may
have a long, not an endless existence. Ere the end, thus
delineated by science, Scripture declares that there will be a
crisis — a judgment — the time of which is mercifully hidden.
The common method of measuring geological time is, by
some, considered to be unreliable, because the thickness of
stratified rocks belonging to any period is no indication as to
length of time. Ten thousand feet may, under certain circum
stances, be formed in as many years ; but, in other conditions,
1 " Vitality : " Prof. Tyndall.

Measurements of Time. 91
require as many centuries. Palaeontology may be accounted
still worse as a guide, for species may not change at anything
like a uniform rate. If, however, the great variations of
climate are the result of changes in the eccentricity of the
earth's orbit, and by changes in the direction of the polar axis
from precession of the equinoxes, we have a means, but still
open to doubt, of calculating when those variations occurred.
According to the formula of M. Leverrier, there are three
chief periods of high eccentricity, with a few subordinate
maxima between them. About 2,650,000 years back the
eccentricity was inferior. It then began to increase, and
50,000 years after, namely 2,600,000 years ago, it attained
•066 ; 50,000 years after that it diminished to "0167, about
its present value. It then began to increase, and in another
50,000 years, or 2,500,000 years ago, it approached almost the
superior limit of -0721. Then diminishing, at 2,450,000 years
ago, it was '025. These two maxima separated by a mini
mum, and a period of 200,000 years, form the first great period
of eccentricity. Passing on more than a million and a half
years, there is the second great period of three maxima,
separated by two minima : the first maximum 950,000 years
ago, the second at 850,000 years ago, the third at 750,000
years ago — the whole occupying nearly 300,000 years. Pass
ing on another million and a half years, that is, to a time
about 800,000 years in the future, we come to the third great
period of three maxima, at periods of 800,000, 900,000, and
1,000,000 years to come, which are separated also by two
minima. These three great periods, two past and one future,
are separated from one another by about 1,700,000 years;
and seven times in the whole period the earth's orbit is more
circular, four in the past and three in the future.
Unless the physical principles on which these eccentricities
were calculated are erroneous, climate must have been greatly
affected. For example, 850,000 years ago the heat of the sun
at midwinter was 837 instead of 1000 as at present. Whether
this value be a little too high or too low the effect on tempera
ture must have been considerable. The glacial epoch, which so
greatly troubles geologists, is not that extending from about
980,000 to about 720,000 years ago ; but the one beginning

92 Rudiments of the World.
about 240,000 years ago, and extending to about 80,000
years ago. The whole question is argued in Mr. Croll's book,
" Climate and Time," pp. 311-328 ; and he considers the facts
of geology to be consistent with the glacial epoch not dating
back beyond 80,000 years. Reasoning after his manner,
it may be inferred that the mean thickness of stratified rocks
has been greatly over-stated. Their maximum thickness of
72,000 feet in Great Britain must not be taken for their mean
thickness. " Had the materials been spread over the entire
ocean bed, the formation would have had a mean thickness
of little more than 200 feet ; and spread over the entire sur
face of the globe would form a stratum of scarcely 150 feet in
thickness." x
A change in the obliquity of the ecliptic would alter the
level of the sea. As to the last elevation, it seems almost
certain that 11,700 years ago the general sea-level on the
northern hemisphere was higher than at present, that was
the period of the 2 5 -foot beach ; and 60,000 years, the age of
the 40-foot beach.2
The alternate warm and cold periods, in north and south,
during the glacial epoch, explain the distribution of many
plants and animals. As the cold became intense, they would
invade the equatorial lowlands ; and the inhabitants of these
would migrate to the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the
south, the southern hemisphere being at this period warmer.
On the decline of the glacial epoch, as both hemispheres
regained their former temperature, animals and plants again
changed places — those not able to do so would die. Warm
zones, whether of land or sea, being almost equivalent to life,
it is evident that the growth and distribution of plant and
animal life are not wholly due to evolution, but rather to
climatic agents. Every planet, for a certain long period,
presents more of its northern than of the southern hemisphere
to the sun at the time of nearest approach ; and then, during
a like period, presents more of its southern than of the
northern hemisphere. Summers and winters are more or less
contrasted as the eccentricity of orbit increases and decreases,
1 " Climate and Time," p. 366 : James CrolL
2 Ibid, pp. 407-409.

Climate. 93
having the least and greatest eccentricity one or two millions
of years apart. To all this there is a response in the changed
functions of living creatures, and in the perpetual ebbings and
Sowings of species. By slow, inevitable change, by elevation
and subsidence of land, every climate is altered ; every habitat
of life is, in turn, destroyed and made new again. Parts, at
one time thickly peopled, at another are deserted. The
result is, every extensive region has its own meteorologic
conditions, and every locality in these regions differs more
or less in its structure, in its contour, in its soil. Southern
animals lived in our own land during the warm periods of the
glacial epoch, and northern animals during the cold ; the
alternate successions of warm and cold periods bringing about
the successive deposits, and leaving in those sediments relics
of varying organisms. A surface would remain without seed
or germ for many ages, afterward life abounded ; and when
the ice-sheet was again spread, everything animate and inani
mate was ground to powder.
Notwithstanding these statements by physicists, it is doubt
ful whether there were any other than mountain glaciers
previous to the great glacial epoch ; many geological facts
evidence a former warm climate extending over the whole
globe. Naturalists and palaeontologists and geologists of
reputation, and who have searched Nature, decide against the
former glacialisation of the tropics, sub-tropics, and even of
much of the temperate zones. It is perfectly well known
that before the glacial periods of the north and south high
latitudes, a tropical and sub-tropical flora and fauna existed
where they do now, and that these, having a vast ancestry,
still remain. Again, as to the vast collections of strata which
underlie those of the glacial period in Europe, there is no
trace of a general similar condition. There are remarkable
deposits in South Africa and in Hindustan, which some
geologists attribute to ice-carrying, and to which other geolo
gists just as strongly deny any such origin. In whichever
way the question may be settled, the history of our earth
shows the work of a " consummate strategist ; who, from his
mount of observation, directs the movements of a great army,
nowhere setting at nought the laws of energy, but exhibiting

94 Rudiments of the World.
and enforcing those laws in delicate, beautiful, marvellous,
victorious operations."
The manifold facts, thus studied in rudiments of the world,
are a manifestation of energy underlying all the phenomena,
and extending to an infinity of worlds in variety of operation
and mystery of life. Everything is rooted in the transcen
dental. There is a continual passing from movement to
repose, which is not final rest ; a ceaseless oscillation from life
to death, from death to life ; the order of physical phenomena,
like the order of mental phenomena, is inscrutable, flowing
from a past eternity into a future eternity. Is this vastness
or incomprehensibleness of Nature, a reason for relinquishing
the study ? Certainly not. " What can be a stronger stimulus
to the zealous exercise of our best powers, than the convic
tion that though we may never be able to attain to ' absolute '
truth, yet we can be for ever approaching to it, ever striving
upwards so as either ourselves to reach, or to help our suc
cessors to reach, a still loftier elevation whence a yet more
comprehensive view may be obtained. ' Tendre a la perfection
sans jamais y pretendre ' will ever be the animating spirit of
the genuine philosopher, as the ' forgetting of things behind,
and reaching forth unto the things before,' of the greatest of
Christian Apostles, will continue to the end of time to nerve
the efforts of every true aspirant after moral excellence." x
The continual effort of the creature to know the, at present,
unknowable reality, is a conscious seeking after fulness of life.
As if to encourage that seeking, an All-sustaining Power
is everywhere manifested in the existence and phenomenal
activity of the universe, who is alike the cause of all and
essence of all, without whom the world would not be even the
shadow of a vision, for thought itself would vanish. Beyond
His infinitude can nothing extend, before or after His eternity
can nothing be conceived. The knowledge of His essential
existence is that to which the nature of things and the course
of time conduct us. How we, the imperfect, are united to the
Perfect, and things temporal to the Eternal, human eye cannot
see. It is a mystery hidden within the depths of Divine
essence, as is the union of mind and matter ; but we know
1 "Mental Physiology," p. 412 : Dr. W. B. Carpenter.

Astronomic Realities. 95
that dependent beings cannot be the authors of their own
existence. Their origin is to be found in the will and power
of the Independent and Perfect. The universe cannot be
regarded as an enclosure, nor infinitude as an extension,
nor time as a limitation, of the Eternal. The repetition of
organisms in time and space, the course of ages and series
of expanse, the number of metamorphoses and progress of
evolution, are practically infinite and eternal, to reflect the
perfection of their Author. The infinite series of advancing
conditions is expressed by Leibnitz in a mathematical symbol,
the hypothesis of the hyperbole. We conceive for every given
state of the universe a preceding less perfect state. Nothing
hinders the supposition, and we give it endless extension ;
yet, all will be contained within the infinity and eternity of
God : such a world is the fittest representation of Divine
Majesty. With the telescope, we contemplate the magnitude
and numberlessness of worlds ; with the microscope, we
discover life extending beyond life, surpassing all imagina
tion ; science declares infinitude in the multitude and delicacy
of principles, in the grandeur and number of existences.
Time will never fail to conquerors in knowledge, and the
regret of Alexander that there were no more worlds to win,
will not be ours who always march to new discoveries of intel
ligence and power.
In conclusion of the study, picture Astronomic Realities.
The sun rules a wonderful variety of planets, and a yet
more wonderful variety of life. As fuel for his fires, he gathers
from out of space, cosmical bodies and all the forces repre
sented by their velocity. These chips in the great workshop
of Nature, this dust from the mighty grindstone of the uni
verse, which the artificers, Attraction and Repulsion, have
cast aside, are passed through fire that they may quicken and
sustain worlds of life. Close round the sun, Mercury flies
in dazzling splendour with unmatched velocity ; nearer than
Mercury, another planet, Venus, in her beauty, alone ; Earth,
with her one satellite ; ruddy Mars, with two attendants ; then
hundreds of tiny orbs careering, many coming almost within
hail of their fellows. Then that wonderful outer family of
planets, the least of which exceeds in size the volume of all

9 6 Rudiments of the World.
the minor planets and asteroids combined. Yet further, the
vast globe of Jupiter and symmetrical family of satellites ;
more distant, giant Saturn, of ring-system as a shield, and
eight primary attendants, the outermost at range of four
and a half millions of miles. Then Uranus and Neptune,
brother orbs, but wide apart, and so distant from Saturn that
the full span of Jupiter's orbit scarcely brings them together.
Uranus, and possibly Neptune, rotating from east to west —
unlike all other planets — their moons revolving in the same
retrograde direction.
Thence, pass through a desert of vast, inconceivable space
to those binary, triple, multiple systems, where sun moves
round sun with trains of planets and satellites, glorious
creations, making God's mansion sparkle with splendour.
Separated, star from star, by enormous intervals of black or
stippled ground, the intervals themselves open, with revelation
of depth and height rich indeed to the imagination. Seen
by unaided eye, the glory of many worlds is but a sparklet,
or the scintillation of a needle-point. Different orders of
vapours, or fluid nebulae, perhaps first germs of worlds in
infinite series of suns and stars ; suns that seem to be members.
of a new system of higher order, stars which have no domi
nating centre ; prove the sky to be more various and com
plicate than the wisest thought. Cloudlets — gaseous, stellar,
irregular, planetary, ring-formed, elliptic ; those light forms of
the Milky Way, with shapes fixed or variable ; governed by
unseen mysterious influence — gravity. There, a green star
with deep blood-red companion ; there, one of orange hue,
accompanied by blue or purple satellite ; white orbs mingled
with red, light or dark, purple, ruby, vermillion ; " a casket
of variously coloured precious stones."
Our spirit stops at the centre of centres, the centre of
creation, the capital of the universe, whence are the laws which
govern and uphold all worlds. Who shall describe the throne
of might ! the palace of splendour ! the inner abode of Deity !
What line shall measure, what space contain, what time can
reckon, the roll, the circle, the vast procession of million
clustered suns ? No painter can picture, no poet describe, no
heart conceive, the grandeur of that source whence flow in
finite and eternal streams of goodness !

Memories carried into the Future. 97
Is it a dream, these worlds crowding the sky with more,
and exceeding gorgeous dwellings, than any earthly city of
myriad abodes ? Will they pass away from thought, leave
no trace, as the baseless fabric of a vision ? No : all have
their use in the vast design, and carry to the invisible universe
memories and memorials of great transactions, every star is
a footprint of God. We look upon them from our dwelling,
as links of light burning in the sky to join past, present, and
future, into that vast consciousness by which intelligent
creatures discern the course of time. We remember what
of love and fear, of joy and sorrow, dwell in one heart ; how
many hearts throb in the little star of Earth ; how number
less are the greater stars ; until, translated in spirit by the
wonderful, the soaring view, our souls, full of grateful memories
approach the eternal. Oh ! "to have
Attentive and believing faculties.
To go abroad rejoicing in the joy
Of beautiful and well created things ;
To love the voice of waters, and the sheen
Of silver fountains leaping to the sea ;
To thrill with the rich melody of birds
Living their life of music ; to be glad
In the gay sunshine, reverent in the storm ;
To see a beauty in the stirring leaf,
And find calm thoughts beneath the whispering tree,
To see, and hear, and breathe the evidence
Of God's deep wisdom in the natural world ! "N. P. Willis.

STUDY V.
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE AND THEORY OF RULE.
" We will trust God ; the blank interstices
Men take for ruins, He will build into,
With pillar'd marble rare, or knit across
With generous arches, till the fane's complete,
The world has no perdition, if some loss." E. B. Browning.
Thales (B.C. 636) considered that water was the source and.
continuer of life. Diogenes, of Apollonia (B.C. 400), said the
air was apyv, a beginning, a soul, such as philosophers sought,
evolving itself in all life. Democritus (B.C. 460-357) taught
that nothing existed but atoms and empty space — all else is
mere opinion. Epicurus (B.C. 341-270) asserted that the
mechanical shock of atoms is the all-sufficient cause of things.
It was early maintained by Empedocles (B.C. 450) that the
fittest survive, and unfit combinations rapidly disappear.
Thence, till our own time, a few scientific men have held
that — " Nature does all things, does them of herself without
God." "The mechanical shock and interaction of atoms,
trying of motions and unions from all eternity, without any
determination by intelligent design, account sufficiently for
the constitution and phenomena of the universe." They
would have us believe that atoms, individually dead, without
sensation and intelligence, get up of themselves, run together,
form all actual and imaginable combinations, as if under a
drill-master, without a drill-master. Every one, by itself, is
dead ; yet, together, they live. When apart, they are without
sensation, possess no intelligence ; but, collectively, they
possess sensation, are full of wisdom, and form the universal
mind — if there is any mind. We are told — " The physical
philosopher can know nothing but matter, force, space, and
necessity." Were we not sure that there is indeed Intelligence

Credulity of Materialists. 99
at the heart of things, these men, with their theories, which
place our feet on the rungs of a ladder the reverse of
Jacob's, and leading to the antipodes of heaven, would make
us say — ' ' We are sick, and heart-sore,
And weary ; let us sleep —
But deep, deep ;
Never to waken more."
Men, who believe anything that is not in Scripture, assert
that all things exist by " a continual becoming" and that this
intelligible hypothesis explains everything — " matter being
eternal." Then we are told — "Matter itself, as generally
conceived, does not necessarily exist, may be only a phe
nomenal centre of energy ; " indeed, " matter is but the
hypothetical mode of our own consciousness." This is
delightfully clear, — naught is everything and everything is
naught. Some discern in matter " the promise and potency of all
terrestrial life ; " nevertheless, the " chasm " between our
consciousness and this matter " must ever remain intellec
tually impassable." They say — " Everything may be ex
plained on mechanical principles ; " yet, things exist which
are not material. " The so-called ' imponderables,' — things of
old supposed to be matter — such as heat, light, etc., are now
known by the purely experimental, and therefore the only
safe method, to be but varieties of what we call- ' energy.' " x
In maintenance of materialism it is affirmed — " There is one
energy, and that is mechanical ; " chemical energy is mechani
cal, only something different. " A living organism is entirely
mechanical," but with its mechanical and chemical relations,
has something else which is not like matter, nor like mechani
cal force. It may be fairly questioned by plain men, whether
science is not hindered by such statements ; chemical energy
is something more than mechanical power, if, at the same
time, it is something different ; and a living organism is not
wholly mechanical if it contains something not explainable by
mechanics. A professor supposes, " that by the different grouping of
1 " Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 17 : P. G. Tait, M.A.

ioo The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
the same units, and then by combination of the unlike groups,
each with its own, or each with other kinds, you get every
thing else ; " another professor talks about " Nature's great
progression from the formless to the formed, from the in
organic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect
and will," and the thing is done. The former -professor
gravely assuring us, " the system is now complete, no further
advance in the same direction is probable or required." The
latter stating, those who do not accept it have not kept pace ,
with recent advances in natural history, are behind in science,
generally unworthy of consideration. So there is causality,
but no cause ; power, but no person ; rule, but no ruler ; and
we are to graduate under Professor Mephistopheles ; —
" More brains have I than all the tribe
Of doctor, magister, master, and scribe ;
From doubts and fears my soul is free,
Nor hell, nor devil has terrors for me. " Faust.
The physical action which accompanies vital and mental
changes seems to be an undulatory displacement of mole
cules, resulting in myriads of little waves or pulses of move
ment ; so that states of consciousness are attended by the
transmission of a number of little waves from one nerve-cell
to another. Because life and consciousness and thought thus
act on our bodies, we are told that the unit of motion is
identical with the unit of feeling ; that between the two there
is such an unfailing parallelism that the one group of phe
nomena can be correctly described by formulae invented to
describe the other group. It is equal to the absurdity of
saying that the oscillations of a needle are identical with
magnetism, and that the two are to be recognised as one.
These little waves or pulses of movement are modes in which
our life reveals itself. They are not the occult reality, but an
appearance ; not the cause, but the effect.
We are told — " Life essentially consists in the continuous
adjustment of relations within the organism to relations in
the environment." It is nothing of the kind ; the adjustment
is caused by life, is the exhibition of life, not life itself.
Some, seeking great accuracy, state — " In the vegetal world,

Life Theories. 101
and in the lower regions of the animal world, the life is
purely, or almost purely, physicorchemical ; it becomes more
and more predominately psychical as we ascend in the animal
world, until at the summit it is mainly psychical." Now,
physicists do not know matter, only know states of conscious
ness which they call perceptions of resistance, extension,
colour, sound, odour ; do not know motion, only know the
sequent states of consciousness produced in the muscles of
the eyes, or of the tactual, or of other organs, in the act of
attending to the moving object ; it is rather strange that, by
things which they know not, they are able, without any
occulta vis, to explain more unknowable things.
No one pretends that he can " cognise this occulta vis " in
life ; and it is sought, strange to say, among the dead. Taking
protoplasm, that simplest substance in which life manifests
itself, materialists kill it, find three dead compounds, carbonic
acid, water, ammonia, the result of decomposition, ordinary
matter ; and then try to find life — the occulta vis, amongst
these dead. Not finding it, they assert — " This protoplasm
is composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in
the manner in which its atoms are aggregated, and is again
resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done." Then,
to excuse the blunder of seeking the living among the dead,
it is stated — " The compounds or constituents of protoplasm,
like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are
lifeless ; but when brought together, under certain conditions,
they exhibit the phenomena of life." We know that very well,
but the " certain conditions " are vital. When we ask them
to make the dead live, and carbonic acid, water, ammonia,
are brought together, there is no protoplasm, nor any sign
of life, nor is any process known in their laboratories by which
life can be brought into existence. Why the substance, pro
toplasm, should manifest properties which are not manifested
by any of its constituents they do not know, and very likely
never will know. Mysterious as the fact is, it is common ;
for every chemical synthesis is the manifestation of a new set
of properties equally insoluble. We say equally insoluble,
yet must add, that though by chemical synthesis we do pro
duce new sets of properties, we cannot, by any synthesis,

102 The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
construct organisable matter. The affinities of life and living
matter belong to a, chemistry which we do not understand,
nor can we imitate. We cannot even make the dead matter,
not a bit of that material which has the chemical relations of
protoplasm ; nor, if we had this dead matter could we give it
the breath of life, or restore life to the tissue whence it had
departed. This twofold fact is proof that a peculiar operation must
have accompanied the advent of life. By some grouping of
particles into peculiarity of structure, by some undulatory
displacement of molecules resulting in myriads of little waves
or pulses of movement, by some new force put in operation
by the universal underlying energy, there was a new work.
This new force became henceforth one of the natural powers :
by which plants, beasts, men, have life in themselves.
This may be illustrated by growth. " The faculty of com
bining heterogeneous compounds into matter like itself —
growth, in fact — is the very thing possessed by no other
substance in the world." x It is the product of an occult
power, and protoplasm is on an equality with complicated
organised beings. Let it be imagined that over the table
and on the floor are spread in confused mass all the letters
of the alphabet, capital and small, thousands intermingling ;
these are seen to be slowly adjusting themselves, until every
scattered type has come into due place, and arranged itself
for the printer to take the impression of a book. Of course
some invisible power is at work. Work more wonderful than
this is wrought by protoplasm, and any attempt to minimise
the distinction and difference between living matter and dead
albumen and protein is to confuse counsel. Take some
complicate chance formation from the bottom, or from the
shore of the sea, at the beginning of the world, " And when
you have got this substance, you are as far on your way to
albumen as a man ascending a hill would be on his way to
the moon. And when you have got albumen, you are still as
far from living matter as in the moon you would be from the
fixed stars." 2 No process has been discovered which can
1 " The Protoplastic Theory of Life," pp. 184, 185 : J. Drysdale, M.D.
2 Ibid. p. 260.

The How and Why of Life. 103
explain the origin of living matter ; and if such process were
discovered, it would enlarge our admiration of the wonderful
act, by which Nature mysteriously bridged the gulf which
separates the dead from the living.
Physical science, reverently waiting on the threshold of
existence, seeks to know the forms of the outer world by
means of optical and tactual process, and to bring the how or
manner of creation into representation for the perception of
our inner man. The process is from without inward, and has
a limit which cannot be passed — the Ultimate Cause being
utterly unknown, though immanent in all phenomena. We
know merely the rougher constituents of living things, that all
animals and plants consist, in great measure, of fluid water ;
that the material basis of life is albumenoidal substance.
Scripture draws another picture, not of the How, but of the
Why there is life. Through creation, redemption, regenera
tion, we have in time, in Nature, in history, a revelation of
those great acts by which the Eternal graduates us for ever
lasting existence. As in matter, the visible garment of the
Almighty, there are infinite metamorphoses ; as in life, we
behold illimitable progression ; as in the historic development
of thought, we find that the mental habits of bygone genera
tions enter the very spirit of present modes of thinking ; so in
Revelation, we are taught to adore a Father who leads us to
complete fulness of life. Every temptation we resist, every
generous impulse wisely yielded to, every noble thought that
is encouraged, every sacred aspiration realised, adds its own
energy to the impetus of the great movement which is bearing
all true-hearted men towards a higher character and richer
existence (John xiv. 23). Revelation shows that there is a
Spirit of infinite perfection in whom we live and move and
have our being : that all Nature is a Word of God coming
from everlasting realms, bringing tidings of the past and
carrying intelligence to the future.
Have the living particles which are arranged into the shape
of an organism an innate tendency to arrange themselves into
the shape of that very organism to which they belong ? This
is a hard thing to say, though the tendency to assume the
specific form must be inherent in all parts of the organism.

104 The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
What is the energy which gives this tendency ? If we say
polarity of the organic units, that is a name ascribed to atoms
for something of which we are ignorant ; nor does it explain
what we want to know — how living particles, or units, possess
the property of arranging themselves into the special structures
which they construct ? The power cannot be in the atoms of
albumen, or fibrine, or gelatine, or the hypothetical protein
substance ; for, in that case, how are we to account for the
unlikenesses of different organisms ? Laying aside these
particles, the chemical units, can we find a sort of mor
phological unit, a microscopic cell, by multiplication of which
all developmental changes are effected ? No ; for the cell is
itself a manifestation of this strange power, and though cells
are the ultimate visible components of many organisms, they
are not universal. We are driven to the conclusion that, com
plex as are chemical units, physiological or life units are more
complex ; that difference of composition in these units them
selves, leading to differences in the mutual play of energies,
causes the endless variety of existing forms.
Oken said — "Every living thing arose out of slime, and
is nothing but slime in various forms. This primitive slime
originated in the sea, and from inorganic matter in the course
of planetary evolution." Oken might have stated it more
correctly and Scripturally : in the water, and out of the earth,
the Lord God made things to grow. Haeckel tells us — " Life
is nothing but a connected chain of very complicated material
phenomena of motion. These motions must be considered
as changes in the position and combination of the molecules."
Now, when a man says life is something that he knows of,
and is nothing more, he would have us think that a wonderful
amount of knowledge is in his possession : whereas he mistakes
the chain, a result of life, for life itself. To minimise in words
the distinction between living and unliving matter, does not
alter the fact that the two are as far from one another as the
east is from the west. Supposing, but not admitting, that
under certain circumstances we may be able to generate a low
order of life by a peculiar grouping of particles ; we shall do it
by use of natural power, and the mystery will remain unsolved.
It may be possible to use occulta vis for production of or-

The Vital Substance. 105
ganisms, but that reads not the riddle any more than our
use of galvanism explains the reason of galvanic powers.
We know that the formative energy by which crystallising
matter unites together, has its inner power by chemical con
stitution, and its external power by influence of surrounding
matter ; so the semi-fluid state of matter may possibly have
initiated life, passed into amorphous organisms, and thus
changed form, as these organisms do now eveiy moment ; but
the ultimate causes, whether of physical or of vital phenomena,
centre in mystery. " Autogeny," or " spontaneous generation,"
are only dark words which veil ignorance by putting back, not
explaining, the difficulty.
The difficulty becomes greater through another fact : — The
vital substance of the whole universe, identical for one and all
living creatures, is semi-fluid, transparent, colourless, structure
less. This is a pregnant and significant fact, proving that
there exists, beyond all our visual and chemical investigations,
a distinct and special endowment of which we know absolutely
nothing. It proves, in a Divine sense, the doctrine of evolu
tion : from this, which is as nothing, man was formed.
This matter of life, one and the same for all, is neither
indestructible nor unchangeable. It is formed by secret,
peculiar operation of ordinary matter, and to ordinary matter
returns. Fungus and oak, worm and man, die — always are
dying ; nor can they live unless they die. " In the midst of
life we are in death." Does protoplasm, thus living and dying,
generate protoplasm, of itself, from the one primal substance,
to form plants, animals, men ? No : only when it has been
built by life into organism, are vegetables and animals pro
duced. Had we been present when living protoplasm was
first evolved from not-living matter, it is unlikely that the
sight would have enabled us scientifically to bring 'together
the physical, chemical, and other conditions of existence.
We may speculate about all forms of life commencing as
Monera or simple particles of protoplasm, and that these
monera originated from not-living matter; we may theorise
as to the monera acquiring tendencies towards the Protista,
others towards the Protophyta, and others towards the Pro
tozoa; but, though there are structural analogies, no proof

106 The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
exists of passage from one to another. We may think of
dead matter becoming living, and in our own way settle the
dispute as to the physical basis of life, for certainly at the
beginning, ere life was, something began to live that was dead
before ; but a looker-on at the primal origin of earthly life
might not have seen more of a miracle, nor anything more
startling, than there is in the beginning of a new life now ; yet
it was a marvellous crisis in the world's history, the beginning
of a state the results of which no created being can calculate.
" The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, and the plains —
Are not these, O soul, the vision of Him who reigns.
*********
Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with spirit can meet —
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
*********
And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see ;
But if we could see and hear, this vision — were it not He ? "
Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism.
We peer into the particles of living moving matter. They
all possess the same microscopic structure, no physicist can
detect any difference, but within that apparent identity are
those infinite varieties of molecular constitution and arrange
ment whence proceed all living things. The variety establishes
an essential difference where human faculties and instruments
find sameness. The unity explains the apparent similarity in
the structure of the parrot, the cat, the dog, the monkey.
The life-point, in union with the force-point, or material
atom, is the concentration of a world-wide mystery. It does
that which no mere mechanism can explain. "In living
centres, far more central than the centre as seen by the
highest magnifying powers — in centres of living matter where
the eye cannot penetrate, but towards which the understanding
may tend — proceed changes of the nature of which the most
advanced physicists and chemists fail to afford us the faintest
conception." x
Living matter takes up non-living matter and converts it
into living matter; transforms matter and transmutes force
by means of constructive power ; as were it a master director,
or designer, to produce infinite variety of form for specialities
1 " The Mystery of Life : " Dr. Lionel S. Beale, F. R. S.

Absurd Denial of Beginning. 107
and diversities of use. Life and motion are constantly trans
mitted from atom to atom by " a power which cannot, under
any circumstances, be developed from matter that has not
been made to live by the influence of that which is already
living." x
Consider a remarkable assertion: "The absolute commence
ment of organic life on the globe I distinctly deny. The
affirmation of universal evolution is itself the negation of an
absolute commencement of anything. Construed in terms
of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product of
modifications, wrought by insensible gradations on a pre
existing kind of being."2 By this theory, life began with
portions of protoplasm — not protoplasm ; more minute, in
definite, and changeable than those mere fragments of matter
called " protogenes." Then by a process of action and re
action between incipient types and their environments, and
the survival of those fittest to live, after an enormous period
of time, the comparatively well-specialised forms of ordinary
Infusoria were reached.
We have stated the case clearly, for there must be no
mistake. The conception of a first organism, in anything like
the common or natural meaning, is wholly at variance with
a right view of evolution thus propounded : life sprang from
no life — from nothing ! There can be no greater condemna
tion of the system as an attempted explanation of the origin
of things. We are virtually told — there is continual com
mencement, but no primal start ; all things came out of
nothing, yet never began to come out ; push back the be
ginning far enough, do it little by little, and there will be no
beginning. You may gradually organise an organism by such
imperceptible and inappreciable differentiation, that life never
begins as life, and the organism has no absolute commence
ment. We are to suppose that there is a vacuum, or some
thing else ; this nothing or something is to be turned about,
somewhere or nowhere, a very long time, no one can tell by
whom, till the churning makes it very hot. Then, cooling
down, the particles of this nothing which has become "some-
1 "Life-Theories and Religious Thought:" Dr. Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S.
s " Principles of Biology," vol. i. p. 482 : Herbert Spencer.

108 The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
thing, differentiate, assort, adapt, combine themselves. After
further myriads of ages, arise those beginnings of life which
are not beginnings. At length come the protophyta, real
beginnings, which insensibly advance into fragrant flowers,
cereal plants, fruit and forest trees. With the protophyta, or
soon after, grow the protozoa into all the animals.
This doctrine is commended as natural and reasonable by
men — " Too comic for the solemn things they are,
Too solemn for the comic touches in them,"
who tell us that the special creation hypothesis must now be
consigned to that limbo where hover the ghosts of slaughtered
theories. Instead of the declaration — " God said, Let the
earth bring forth the living creature," we are to take the
following natural, simple, reasonable explanation, concerning
life : — " It is an integration of matter and concomitant dissi
pation of motion, during which the matter passes from an
indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite, coherent
heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion under
goes a parallel transformation."1 Compare it with the
words of Moses — " God said, Let the earth bring forth grass,
the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after
his kind, whose seed is in itself. Let the waters bring forth
abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowls that
may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind,
cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his
kind." Ask a truly scientific assembly whether " the earth
bringing forth and the waters bringing forth," do not equally
well explain the very doing of the thing, as the integration
and concomitant dissipation, and the passing from some sort
of indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, into another sort of
definite, coherent heterogeneity? Yet we are told — "Now
that we have arrived at this formula, we find ourselves ex
pressing it in terms that are universal. Instead of a mere
law of biology, we have enunciated the widest generalisation
concerning the concrete universe as a whole. . . . This leap
of inference on Mr. Spencer's part, like the similar leap taken
1 "First Principles," p. 396 : Herbert Spencer.

Development of the Ovum. 109
by Newton from the fall of the apple to the motions of the
moon, is the daring act which completes the formation of the
hypothesis."1 So that when a man, translating the formula,
says "the joining of stuff into a lump, then the equal un
joining and sending out of movement from it, the making
stuff pass from a no sort of unstickingness into some sort of
holding-togetherness, while the movement not sent out under
goes a like change from no sort of keeping-togetherness into
some sort of sticking," he explains the concrete universe as
a whole. Really, we should not have known it unless very
clever people had told us.
There are individual developments actually taking place,
more marvellous than the mysteries of evolutionists. Take
a vertebrate animal. The germinal vesicle of the ovum con
tains one or more germinal spots, and is included within a
vitellus. The first step in the development of the embryo
is the division of the vitelline substance into cleavage masses,
each of which contains a nucleus, and the germinal vesicle
is now no longer seen. In this process, the nucleus is the
first to divide, its substance separating into two poles. A
constriction then appears in the protoplasmic mass, and the
single cell is subdivided ; each of these again divides into two,
until the mulberry stage is reached. This globular lump of
cells gives rise to the fiddle-shaped area, from which may
proceed fish, amphibious animal, reptile, bird, mammal, man.
It is a simple oblong, violin-shaped, thin disc of three con
nected membranes, lying one above another. Out of the
lower layer arises the inner delicate skin (epithelium) for the
intestinal tube from the mouth to the anus, lung, liver, salivary
glands, etc. Out of the middle layer arise all the other organs,
muscles, bones, blood-vessels. Out of the upper or outer layer
arise the skin (epidermis) and the central parts of the nervous
system (spinal marrow and brain). A central line or streak
divides the whole into two equal lateral halves. On both sides
of this furrow arises a longitudinal fold, which, growing over
and joining, forms a cylindrical tube, the medullary canal,
the foundation of the central nervous system, the spinal
marrow. Mr. W. Kitchen Parker says — " The spinal axis is
1 " Cosmic Philosophy," vol. i. p. 351 : John Fiske.

no The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
not originally pointed anteriorly in anything but amphioxus,
in all other vertebrates it is dilated from the first. This dila
tation is soon seen to be divided into three vesicles, the primi
tive fore, mid, and hind brain. The fore-brain gives rise to
the olfactory lobes, the cerebral hemispheres, and the vesicle
of the third ventricle, from which latter arise the optic
vesicles, which give rise to the optic nerve, retina, and choroid.
The mid-brain gives rise to the corpora quadrigemina (in birds
and reptiles corpora bigemina — the so-called optic lobes), and
the crura cerebri. The hind-brain is differentiated into the
cerebellum, the pons Varolii, and the medula oblongata." All
these, originally arranged in the same way, develop into such
different groups that it is very difficult to recognise their
corresponding parts in fully organised brains. As yet, in „
this gradual commencement and apparently original equality,
you cannot distinguish mammal, bird, reptile, from one
another. The heart, the liver, the limbs, all parts of the body,
are originally the same in all vertebrates ; but from this stage
proceed the ever- increasing separation and differentiation of
the higher animals, every one after his own order. It is a
multiplication of mysteries.
Materialists inquire — " Why this process of natural genesis ?
Why should not Omnipotence be proved by the supernatural
production of plants and animals everywhere throughout the
world from hour to hour ? " As if God were to begin at the
end ; or as if He did not, hour by hour, produce from germ of
plant and fish, of bird and beast, all the living creatures after
their kind. What, process is there that, long continued, would
not be accounted natural ? But who knows that anything is
natural, or of itself? To call a thing "natural" is to pro
nounce it Divine, or to make the word a cloak for ignorance.
Scajes, feathers, hair, fin, wing, limb, claw, paw, hand, are
formed in successive processes of foetal life, and by series of
modifications, so small, that only the microscope can reveal
the secret transformation. Changes into hoof or hand, into
gill or lung, specialities of structure variously adapted, and
passage of lowest forms into highest and furthest differentia
tion within a few months, not by confusion of parts but by
variety of design, are that natural process whose initiation
and continuance no one can explain.

Union of Mind with Matter. 1 1 1
Pass from the phenomena of life to those of mind, a region
still more profoundly mysterious.
By union with matter, mind takes possession of a new
world, doubling its powers of action and extending its sphere
of existence. Corporeal existence may indeed be the basis
of intellectual activity, of moral agency, of sociality among
all created intelligent beings. When we consider the exquisite
sensations of organised existence, the alliance with various
properties of solidity and extension, the mechanical and
animal indices of motion, the new consciousness of duration
by collation of mental history with the equable motion and
symphony of time in that vast register of duration, the
material universe, we may conceive that body is to mind a
means of existence serving such important ends, and carrying
such consequences, as make it the general, if not universal,
law of finite existence in all worlds : first, the natural, then
the spiritual body (i Cor. xv. 44, 45). We are conscious that
energy and activity are infused into the most exalted of our
moral sentiments by their alliance with animal sensations.
If we were only animals, we should neither need nor possess
an imaginative faculty. If intellectual only, or moral only,
we should disregard as degrading or illusory whatever pre
sented less than absolute truth, reason, rectitude. Imagina
tion and its sensibilities do now, however, abate or stimulate
every function of life ; mingle with and yet further ennoble
the highest and purest of our intellectual and moral feelings ;
so that we possess the germ and instinctive expectation of
another and a higher mode of existence. This future and
unseen world, brought thus into definite alliance with us, is
as simply natural and true as the present nature. Our
consciousness, our religious conceptions, our instinctive
yearnings, take away the dim remoteness from the world to
come, and connect our own homely land of trees and water
with the momentous transactions of the future. The Bible,
telling us of our three stages of life — in the body, out of the
body, clothed with spiritual body — brings the visible and
invisible worlds into that conjunction which the wisest and
best of men accept as obvious and natural.
Concerning our own intelligence, it is certain that coming

1 1 2 The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
into contact with a corporeal state is not a degradation ; and
doubtless reveals a new sphere and mysterious power of in
fluence, various sentiments and modes of action, that would
otherwise be wholly foreign to incorporeal existence. This
means of quickening peculiar knowledge and varied action,
bringing imaginative sentiments into alliance with animal sen
sations, their intermixture with ideas of beauty and order, not
only form part of our own training and transformation, but may
have formed part of that discipline under which some angels
fell, and by means of which some were exalted. We are not
to apply this to those superior intelligences as if they, by any
incorporation with gross matter, could attain a higher nature ;
but, without discussing the nature of their " spiritual body,"
or contemplating the possibility of spirits having come from
a pre-existent state into the new order of things on earth ;
it is not inconceivable that even archangels round the throne
of God may be connected with the energy, motion, heat, and
light of the universe, providential arrangements and occur
rences (Ps. civ. 4 ; Heb. i. 7). The material universe may be
the clock by which spirits become conscious of the lapse of
duration ; while .the creative, sustentative, renewing processes,
make known other depths of the manifold wisdom of God
(Eph. iii. 9-1 1).
Great minds, discoverers of universal laws — Copernicus,
who marked out the true path of our sun and earth amongst
celestial worlds ; Kepler, who defined the curve described by
the planets around their central luminary ; Newton, who was
able to fix the condition, unique and supreme, whence results
the equilibrium of worlds — did not study the universe as sub
ject in all its movements to blind necessity, as were there no
law, nor wisdom, nor beauty, nor harmony. Their investiga
tion was a search for simplicity with comprehensiveness ; and
when the discovery of admirable symmetry and universal
harmony established the all-pervading sway of power and
wisdom, they bowed before the eternal throne, and worshipped
Him who sat thereon.
Their knowledge is now our own, and illumines the way to
Him by whom our imperfections are to have remedy, our
spiritual hopes to be satisfied, our yearnings after immortality

Beneficent Guidance. 113
realised. What saith one of our students of science ? " I
protest that, if some great power would agree to make me
always think what is true and do what is right, on condition
of being turned into a sort of clock, and wound up every
morning before I got out of bed, I would instantly close
with the offer."1 This he says, unaware that the thing is
done for the willing, not by degradation but by re-creation
(1 Cor. i. 30).
If exact science and advanced modern philosophy cause
a man to wish he were "a sort of clock," and made, even
against his will, to " think what is true and do what is right,"
what a proof this is of Scripture — that we have all gone
astray ! " Quid prodest omnes rerum cognoscere causas, si
fugienda fugis, vel fugienda facis ? " How small, as to real
value, are secular science and philosophy in comparison with
the truth and moral power possessed by the real Christian
who knows that his sins are forgiven, that he receives grace
to resist temptation, that he is being disciplined by the Spirit
of God ! . . . " These are truths that wake
To perish never ;
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor man, nor boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy. " William Wordsworth.
That we are under the guidance of a Wise and Beneficent
Power may be clearly shown. There is an orderly operation
in the universe which produces definite sequences and results.
The law of the origin and progress of many and enormously
extended series of natural phenomena has been attained with
such accuracy and thoroughness, that we can prophecy their
course with the greatest certainty. By that one simple law
of gravitation, regulating the movements of the heavenly
bodies, we determine and predict to a fraction of a minute,
for past and future years, the motions of bodies distant and
complex as the double, triple, multiple stars. Knowledge
extends our view to regions whence light, the quickest of all
messengers, needs many years to reach the eye. We subject
1 " On Descartes' Discourse : " Prof. Huxley. I

1 14 The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
to our will the powers of a world greatly unfamiliar, partly
hostile, and have their use for our reward. That which we
grasp, or see, or hear, every thought or emotion of mind or
heart, makes us conscious of things and processes of operation
which our intellect, if sufficiently expanded, would be able to
follow from beginning to end. The array of the external
world, our own natural powers, all thought and emotion,
or whatever goes to produce consciousness, those sacred
longings for pure and endless life, the mysterious force of
conscience, proclaim the great fact — that the ponderous and
wonderful mechanism of the world is the product of some
great Governing Mind.
A leader in science, deservedly a leader in physics, has
given his own revelation of world-government.1 The figure
xis startling and daring — "The chess-board is the world, the
pieces the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game
are what we call the laws of Nature. The Player on the other
side is hidden from us. We know that His play is always fair
and just and patient. But we know to our cost that He never
overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for
ignorance. To the man that plays well the highest stakes are
paid with that overflowing generosity with which the strong
shows delight in strength, and one who plays ill is checkmated
without haste, but without remorse." Shrinking from his own
words, the professor says — They are like a picture of Satan
playing chess for the soul of a man, and " would substitute for
that mocking fiend a calm, strong angel who is playing for
love, as we say, and would rather lose than win." Afterwards,
forsaking the angel, he says of our life's training — "It is a
rough kind of education, one in which ignorance is treated
like disobedience, incapacity is punished as a crime ; it is not
a word and a blow, but the blow first without the word. It is
left to you to find out why your ears are boxed."
In a sense, all is true. If we break Nature's laws we must
pay Nature's penalties. We have heard such wisdom from
men ere this. Wisdom must be far purer and more spiritual
if it is to strengthen and comfort us. Why not say — " Nature
is by the will of God ; he who breaks Nature's laws breaks
1 " Liberal Education : " Prof. Huxley.

Physical Evil. 1 1 5
God's law for the uses and wants of our earthly being?"
Clever words, well said, have salt in their wit — are pleasant
and preservative, we like to hear them ; but jesting speeches
do not take away from upright minds that distressing un
easiness which is their present greatest trial concerning the
moral system of the universe.
All reasonable beings would gladly believe that there is
a God, all-wise, almighty, all-perfect ; but the existence of
evil causes doubt and perplexity. In vain we try to stifle
the doubt : evil, misery, ruin in this world and the next ; the
trials of saints and the anguish of martyrs ; great men, good
men, gifted men in sorrow ; render the world a waste, and
our path through it, not a way of peace, but a dark road
amidst mountains of despair. Are beings called into exist
ence, and irrevocably destined to endless unmitigated torture ?
Are we to charge God with such acts of injustice and cruelty
as render all the atrocity of men and excesses of the devil
but exhibitions of comparative purity? The doctrines of
Creation and Divine Rule render the fact more distressing,
for they teach that every organism forms part of a grand
universal teleology.
Having honestly exposed the diffiqulty, we candidly admit
that, like many other mysteries of the universe, it is inex
plicable by humble intelligence ; but it is possible to give
reasons for the existence of evil which, if they cannot remove
the whole difficulty, enable us to believe that what is un
explained will hereafter afford wonderful views of the power
and love of God. In the Study on the Pre-Adamite World
the moral aspect is viewed ; now take chiefly the physical.
Evil, as a fact, does not belong simply to theology.
Atheism, in trying to get rid of it by a shift to chance or to
fate, ascribing both good and evil to unintelligent causes,
neither accounts for the vast preponderance of good nor
alleviates the evil. That a mixed state of things is temporally
necessitated by the physical constitution of the universe is
certain. The earth has ever been a scene of warfare. Fossil
structures, in common with the structures of existing animals,
present elaborate weapons of destruction. Throughout all
time, there has been a perpetual preying of the superior on

n6 The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
the inferior — a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong ;
and animals were so framed as to render bloodshed necessary.
In innumerable cases the suffering inflicted seems to bring no
compensating benefit ; the low and repulsive destroy the attrac
tive and noble ; and there are elaborate appliances for securing
the welfare of organisms, incapable even of feeling, at the
price of misery to organisms susceptible of high happiness.
Of the animal kingdom, half are parasites. Every known
animal has its own species, and generally more than one.
The Bothriocephalus latus and the Tcenia solium, two kinds of
tapeworm which flourish in the human intestines, cause much
distress, sometimes ending in insanity. From the germs of
the Tcenia, carried into other parts ofthe body, arise partially
developed forms known as Cysticerci, Echinocci, and Ccenuri,
which cause pain and disease in the brain, the lungs, the liver,
the heart, the eye, and other parts, often producing death.
Five other parasites of a different class are found in the human
viscera. Another class of Entozoa, of the subdivision Trema-
toda, exists of five kinds, attacking the liver, the gall-ducts,
the portal vein, the intestine, the bladder, the eye. The
Trichina spiralis in one phase of existence is embedded in
the muscles, and thence passes into the intestines. As to the
external parasites, or Epizoa, there are creatures that bury
themselves in the skin, and there lay eggs ; others infest the
surface of the body. Man, animal, plant, are infested ; and
the two former endure suffering even unto death. Pain and
sorrow are not partial nor accidental, but wide-spreading as
life, and wrought into the very nature of things.
Is it possible to extract good out of this evil ? Try. In
the lowest grades of existence are creatures wholly inert ;
their life is diffused, without central being, and may be called
external ; yet, even in these, is a conflict of forces. Amongst
them are living things with life and motion clearly manifest.
Higher in the scale are organisms with members of great
variety and complexity, every one fitted to function ; but life
and activity are not at their best until some obstacle has to
be surmounted, some difficulty to be overcome. Then action
and reaction, the taking this, refusing that, the operation of
will, come in. We conclude from the whole, that obstacles,

Evil is Temporary. 117
difficulties, evil, are not something arbitrary, altogether hurt
ful, but the natural accompaniments of a limited condition —
spurs exciting to defence and enlargement of the sphere of
activity. Existence, notwithstanding this conflict, is better
than non-existence ; a plant excels a stone, an animal is
superior to a plant, and of all animals man is supreme.
Physical evils are undoubtedly among the elements of pro
gress urging toward relative perfection of life ; the struggle to
escape from the evil giving more energy and leading to
amelioration, to the casting off those peculiarities, or infirmi
ties, or uncleannesses, which tend to nourish evil parasitic life.
The moral lesson is not less evident — If a course of action
is pursued which tends to throw anything out of balance,
detract from physical or moral completeness of life, such
departure from completeness, goodness, truth, is evil, and
brings more or less of misery. Whether or not spiritual evil
can poison the root of things, and cause degeneration and
misery in lower forms of life, physical science cannot tell ; but
we may regard the moral sense of man as an analogue to the
sense of pain shared, in some degree, by all conscious beings ;
even as our capability of spiritual improvement and physical
betterment is to be regarded as token of a perfection yet to
be attained.
Thus viewed, evil is a temporary incident attendant on a
state of discipline for the growth, supremacy, and multiplica
tion of the best. The beneficence of pain is seen as an in
centive to action, to consciousness, use and development of
powers, enforcing obedience to law as the requirement and
condition of a happy life.
When men assert the existence of evil to be inconsistent
with the personality or with the goodness of God, they really
demand a universe absolutely perfect from the beginning.
Would such a universe certainly mirror forth Divine power,
wisdom, goodness ? Free responsible beings are the highest
created existences : amongst these, if they are to be thoroughly
tested, evil, some time or other, is sure to arise ; and extend,
by their agency, to physical things. Would God's universe
be better, happier, grander, without freedom? Are free
spirits never to spring into life, lest evil drag them away ?

1 1 8 The Origin of Life and Theory of Rule.
Must life be denied to infinite numbers of happy, progressive
beings, delighting themselves in Divine Goodness, because
the mysterious gift of freedom may be abused ? Would not
this elevate evil into a power restraining even Godhead, and
render the world a vast expanse of stagnation without life,
growth, progress ? Are not onward movements essential to
the happiness of finite beings ? and can we form any idea of
life, growth, progress, without conflict, without evil ? The
march of the universe through evil to perfection — a perfection
to be attained, is a higher conception of Divine working than
the idea of a machine complete in all its parts, but incapable
of development and progress. Those who think most pro
foundly, believe in a vast design of wisdom and mercy, the
full understanding of which must necessarily be deferred to a
future further advance towards perfection. Scientific men
admit that millions of years are as nothing in the life of the
universe ; and if, in the brief period of human history, we can
trace a gradual though slow abatement of moral and physical
evils, analogy leads us to extend that fact to the universe ;
and confirms the Revelation that all things are in the hand
of a mighty, wise, loving Ruler — are moving through evil and
by evil to more perfect good.
..." Life is not as idle ore ;
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
' And dipped in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom,
TO SHAPE AND USE." Tennyson.

STUDY VI.
THE CREATIVE WORDS. Gen. i., ii. 3.
"Speaking is the revelation of thought ; Creation is the realisation of Divine
thought." — K.EIL AND DELITZSCH, Pentateuch.
" According to Fichte, there is a ' Divine Idea ' pervading the visible Universe ;
which visible Universe is indeed but its symbol and sensible manifestation, having
in itself no meaning, or even true existence independent of it. To the mass of
men this Divine Idea of the world lies hidden : yet to' discern it, to seize it, and
live wholly in it, is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom ; and
the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age." — Thomas Carlyle, State
of German Literature.
We pass now from purely scientific arguments to the Record
of Creation in Holy Scripture. This portion of our subject
demands expository treatment, and will lead to some of those
transcendental, yet most practical truths which the Gospel
Revelation proclaims. Our main object is, in all fairness, to
harmonise the Scriptural Record with the true conclusions of
science. Science confesses that the world is inexplicable without
" the omnipresent existence (ignored by positivism), whereof
the phenomenal world is the multiform manifestation." x Our
previous studies show that there have been breaks of continuity
in the visible universe which must have been bridged from an
external source — "all portions of our science, and especially
that beautiful one, the Dissipation of Energy, point unani
mously to a beginning, to a state of things incapable of being
derived by present laws (of tangible matter and its energy)
from any conceivable previous arrangement."2 This fact
science, whose province is the discoverable, has revealed ;
what saith Scripture ?
1 " Cosmic Philosophy," pref., p. x. : John Fiske.
2 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 26: P. G. Tait, M.A.

120 The Creative Words.
" In the beginning," W&ra «0f 0id ; " \v &pxv, LXX. ; am
Anfang, Luther ; is to be taken as the head of all time,
preceding every kind of existence — that commencement of
Divine history when the ideal, fundamental, eternal plan of
God began to be realised in creation. All worlds are gathered
into one view, one act : for with God past, present, future, are
an eternal now. The Bible in its first Hebrew word states a
fact which it is now the glory of physical science to affirm.
The earth and all things therein, the heavens and all their
host, " are phenomena the very nature of which demonstrates
that they must have had a beginning, and that they must
have an end." x There is no parallax by which to calculate
the precise time, there is no older event, for in the generation
of the Son of God (John i. 1-3) the same word is used to
show that Christ is co-eternal with the Father. In the
beginning, being God and with God, He acted as the Creative
Power. As Creation was in the beginning, and originated
time, there never was a time without Creation.
In carrying up the mind to a conception of the age of our
own earth and planetary system, it must be remembered that
physical statements, like those in the Study on " Rudiments
of the World," pp. 87-92, are made, and rightly, on the ground
of our belief as to the progressive order and continuance of
things. It is not necessary as theologians, physicists, geolo
gists, so far as faith in God and Holy Scripture is concerned,
to accept those calculations which assign great antiquity to
our own world. Reckoned backwards — on scientific principles
of progression from the past, and forwards — according to the
doctrine of continuance, they are affirmed by science not as
absolute but highly probable facts. It was possible for God
to have acted in any other way and by quicker process ; and
He may, as to the future, change all things in a moment ;
knowing this, chastened in mind by Scripture, we apply
science as a light to the meaning of sacred physical state
ments that intellect and pious emotion may be alike content.
" God knows, can, and wills all together ; wills at once the end
and the means — the end by an antecedent, the means by a
consequent volition." 2
1 ' ' Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge :" Prof. Huxley.
2 "Final Causes," p. 438 : Paul Janet.

To Create is to Produce Divinely. 121
K}?' create, is the proper word to denote Divine produc
tion. Our faith pierces the phenomenal externality of the
world to its supernatural and essential source, and has power to
understand that the worlds were framed (Heb. xi. 3). Fuerst
states, in his Concordance, that " create " has not essentially
the meaning of making things out of nothing : " K"J?> non habet
producendi ex nihilo vim!' The LXX. version is " tTrotno-ev 6
Osog tov ovpavbv Kal rr\v yfjv." KT?» create, n^V' make, ^VJ, form,
interchange in use ; for example, "create" and " make" (Gen.
i. 1, ii. 2) are "make" and "create" (Gen. i. 26, 27); "form" seems
equivalent (in ch. ii. 7) to " make " and " create " (in ch. i. 26,
27) ; nevertheless, in Scripture the highest possible meaning
is always the dominant, and passes by gradations into lower
forms. Again, Kp? is work which none but God can do ; ^V
means making, indefinitely, as a table ; 1VJ is to form, fashion,
make in shape, say a round or a square table. We may safely
say — " The Hebrew word is limited, in its primary meaning,
to the working of God, and is never used in Scripture (where
it is used in Kal thirty-five times) to describe the works of
man, and presents an instance of the exactitude and precision
with which the Holy Spirit writes." x
We are told by unbelievers — The Bible account of Creation
" is discredited by its barbarous origin, and by the absurd or
impossible assumptions which it would require us to make :"2
" we may with equal propriety speak of the creation of cholera,
of a conflagration, of a railway accident, as of the creation of
man."8 We are asked to believe that God did not create
anything, or, at most, only little things ; say — nothing larger
than an infusorial point ; and are assured that a few clever
men can trace their pedigree from cosmic dust to sea-slime,
from sea-slime to protoplasm, and from protoplasm, by suc
cessive evolutions, to the philosopher who weaves the hypo
thesis with scientific imagination and mends all breaks in the
web with threads of fancy. For our own part, we prefer the
grand old Faith ; we cannot believe that the world, an uncon
scious thing, unconsciously developed itself— bringing things
1 Wordsworth's "Commentary."
2 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. i. p. 464 : John Fiske.
3 "Natural History of Creation," vol. i. p. 66 : Dr. Haxkel.

122 The Creative Words.
that are out of things which were not : we hold that " Nature's
great progression from the formless to the formed, from the
inorganic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect
and will," must be accounted as God's way of doing things.
It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable that carbon,
hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen atoms, should be otherwise than
indifferent as to their position and motion — past, present, or
future. Are we, "the cunningest of Nature's clocks," to
believe that there is no Intelligence at the heart of things ?
Are we to set our time as if it were more philosophical to
regard unconscious, unintelligent energies as wise creators
and intelligent guides than to have faith in God ? We will
not thus sell ourselves for nought.
The very wonderfulness of creation is perverted into a plea
for unbelief; we are assured — " It is impossible to think of
creation ; and to prove it is the impossible task of establishing
an equation between something and nothing." We reply — It
is as easy to think of creation as of matter or space, of time
or eternity ; and the world is full of equations impossible to
man and incomprehensible by human reason. The concep
tion of matter acting upon matter is essentially incapable of
being construed in our consciousness. Whether we regard the
atom as divisible or indivisible, we cannot get rid of mastering
difficulties, and the hypothesis of attractive and repulsive
energies lands us in bewildering contradiction. The aether,
the interstellar medium, in which the phenomena of light are
displayed, surrounds and enters every solid, liquid, and gaseous
substance ; is imponderable, impalpable, cannot be isolated,
nor compressed, nor attenuated, nor excluded from any space
or substance ; " its properties are those of a solid rather than
gas, it resembles jelly rather than air."1 It seems hardly
credible that men knowing of these mysteries should refuse
the Divine Mystery. They are aware that their own mind,
correlated with a complex nervous system possessing minute
particulars of organisation, modifies surrounding agencies ;
yet, they tell us that Supreme Wisdom does nothing of the
kind — " there is no intrusion of creative power in any series
of phenomena ; " " it is beneath a philosopher to examine the
1 " Fragments of Science," p. 4 : Prof. Tyndall.

The Holy Trinity. 123
evidence for miracles." We are to accept the government of
La Madre Natura, let her again have altars and groves ; we
must live simply for the moment's sake — immortality being a
dream ; free-will, virtue, responsibility — fond delusions. Why,
Martin Luther would be very rude and say — " I would rather
be in hell with Jesus Christ than in heaven with men like
you." " God created," D*n^ *J3. The Hebrew noun is plural :
nomen majestatis. The mind of the Church discerns in this
a threefold Divine self-consciousness in inseparable and co-
eternal unity. Jehovah the personal God, covenanting with
men ; the Son of God, incarnate, is Christ, very God of very
God, neither made nor created, but begotten ; the Holy Ghost,
proceeding, is the Spirit moving upon the waters. Trinity in
unity is a transcendental doctrine. It began to be revealed
when God created ; it was further unfolded when the Spirit
moved on the face of the deep ; it was proclaimed in the
counsel-words, " Let us make man ; " it was formulated in
the triplicate mention, " God created man in His own image,
in the image of God created He him, male and'female created
He them." Trinity of name and person— Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost : the trinity of work — Creation, Redemption,
Regeneration. The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity rescues us from what
Spinoza says — " To define God is to deny Him," Determinatio
negatio est; rescues us from the error that thought and
volition, as known to us, are the very nature and essence of
the Infinite ; enables us to see that the personality is not a
limitation, but an ineffable reality raising us from the error of
regarding the Eternal as mere infinitude ; and gives know
ledge of Him as the all-pervading and all-sustaining Power.
It meets, as far as possible, the difficulties of men like Goethe
— " Since the great Being, whom we name the Deity, manifests
Himself not only in man, but in a rich and powerful Nature,
and in mighty world events ; a representation of Him, framed
from human qualities, cannot be adequate ; and the thoughtful
observer will soon come to imperfections and contradictions,
which will drive him to doubt — nay, even to despair ; unless
he be little enough to let himself be soothed by an artful

124 The Creative Words.
evasion, or be great enough to rise to a higher point of view." x
Thus, the Great Cause, who, in all causes, is that which had no
beginning, the " I am that I am," who is the transcendental in
all existence, may well be called " Three in One ; " seeing that
solid, fluid, gas, form the one matter of all material being, and
three elements in space, constitute the one infinitude. Though
we cannot by searching find out God, we may feel after Him in
the world, and in our mind know all that concerns us as in
telligent and responsible beings. We have revelation of Him,
in a symbolic way, as the Source of all things, as the Power
disclosed in every throb of the mighty rhythmic life of the
universe, as the One from whom proceeds that moral law,
obedience to which is our only guarantee of incorruptible
happiness. The going forth of creative energy is revealed under the
symbol of a Word. The Word of God must have the highest
power and meaning attributed to it of which our thoughts are
capable, as representing an effluence of Divine will and energy
to fashion the universe out of chaos. Science represents this
operation as an evolution " in accordance with discernible
physical laws," but Scripture reveals that these laws exist
and act by a " Divine power immanent in the cosmos." The
Word, or that which it represents, entered chaos, gave it capa
city to assume beauty of form and energy of life. That the
Word was not a sound, nor a voice of articulate words, is
evident from the fact of our Lord being called this Word
(John i. 1-3). Word is the expression of thought, that by
which our ideas become known to others : hence, doubtless,
" Word " and " said " are used for the creative acts which
gave outward expression in matter to the types in the Infinite
Mind. God's Words are the potential seeds from which
spring into actuality that which Divine wisdom had eternally
prefigured, even as our own thoughts and wills are the ground-
plan of our conduct, and the essence of our character.
Further — Word, NiQ'O, means or represents the mediative
element or outward expression of Divine action, as wisdom
is the mediative element of Divine presence, vivifying and
uniting all things. The Word, as understood in Palestine,
' " Eckermann, '' vol. ii. p. 357.

Heavens Created before the Earth. 125
was the complement to wisdom — the Divine thought. The
Greek Ao'yoc (sermo, ratio) mingled the two ideas. " Accord
ing to the later distinction of Philo, wisdom corresponds to
the immanent word, Xoyoc evSioGetoc ; while the Word, strictly
speaking, was defined as enunciative, Ao-yoe irpoQopiKOQ. The
one prepared man for the revelation of the Son of God ; the
other for the revelation of the Holy Spirit." x The correct
ness of this distinction may be called in question — \6yog
evBiaOeroQ, NT?1*?, is the immanent reason, in the Holy Trinity,
viewed ontologically ; but viewed deontologically (as here,
Gen. i.) the \6yog wpofyopiKOQ is the mediative principle (person)
by which God expresses Himself in creation.
r^n m) DV2$r\, " The heavens and the earth."
The heavens were created before the earth. How long
before no man knows. The heavens mean, doubtless, space,
heavenly bodies, and the angels. Much stress cannot be laid
on the words spoken to Job (xxxviii. 7), as to angels presiding
at the creation of the earth ; the former half is obviously
figurative, the latter may be. There is an analogue of relation
in creation to the Creator ; creation is the Divine mirror —
and the life of God, complete and hidden in Himself, is that
internal source whence all things have sprung. We may
count the external glory of the heavenlies, manifested in time,
as a symbol of the inner and eternal glory.
The creation of heaven and earth recorded in the first verse
of the inspired account, is possibly separated by an interval
too vast for human measurement from the wasteness and
emptiness described in the second verse; nevertheless, to
regard the first verse as stating a fact — God created the
heavens and the earth, and then to take the remainder as a
narrative of the order in which the earth was framed, seems
simpler and agrees with the Fourth Commandment. We
obtain, moreover, a natural and consistent meaning by taking
•Vihl -inn nivn fiNni thus, " Now, as for the earth, it was waste
ness and emptiness ; " the initial state, or condition precedent
to the moving of the Spirit; a vast vaporous ball spun out
from the general mass forming the nebula once representing
the solar system. 1 Smith's "Dictionary ofthe Bible ''—Wisdom.

126 The Creative Words.
Whether space was furnished at once by the fiat of Omni
potence with burning orbs and glorious spirits, " the man of
science, if he confine himself within his own limits, will have
no answer." x Nevertheless, we may regard the time-world
as the historical realisation of God's eternal design. This
realisation was everlastingly decreed, but did not begin until
the moment of living effectual interference: indeed, there was
no time until creation, when the finite began to be ; but after
that were stages, intervals, processes, of Divine effectuation.
Angels preceded the earth, and rejoiced at its foundation.
Wasteness and emptiness were moved upon by the Spirit,
light shone, the firmamental tenuity was stretched out, there
was a progression from the formless to the formed, from the
inorganic to the organic, -from animal instinct to human
intellect and will. " There is nothing incompatible with the
belief that all exercises of God's power, whether ordinary or
extraordinary, are effected through the instrumentality of
means — that is to say, by the instrumentality of natural laws
brought out, as it were, and used for a Divine purpose." 2
The seer beheld the earth, -trial -inn, " in wasteness and empti
ness," shut up in gloom. Matter was there ; but as the Germans
say, " oden-wiist und wusten-od" shapeless, formless, uncon
ditioned. Over the earth-materials, mingled with waters of
the deep, which as yet were not waters, moved or brooded the
Spirit of God. Whether we take the orthodox view, that the
Holy Ghost was the agent, or a depraved interpretation,
" the air or wind flutters while all is involved in darkness," 8
we are assured that means were used, and the means were
that energy which effectuated the Divine will.
The work upon dead matter, ascribed to the Holy Ghost,
illustrates the enlightening, vivifying, ordering, elevating
influence of the Spirit of God in our own nature. It is not
a mere coincidence that the long and varied operations of
Creation, Providence, Redemption, Regeneration, are full of
peculiar and striking resemblances. The culminating point
in Christianity, the loftiest and most mysterious height of
1 " The Constitution of Nature : " Prof. Tyndall.
2 " The Reign of Law : " Duke of Argyle.
3 " Essays and Reviews : " Mosaic Cosmogony.

Convertibility of Forces. 127
revealed truth, had its due place assigned at the very beginning.
This is just what we ought to expect. The Divine and
Spiritual are not unnatural, but the very soul of Nature.
We have wheels within wheels, and rhythm within rhythm ;
of the inner quality working the wheels and producing the
rhythm, enabling matter to attract matter, we know nothing :
it may exist in the form of motion, that is dynamic energy ;
or in the form of energy with distance to act through, that is
potential energy. The convertibility of these energies con
sists solely, so far as science is aware, of transformations of
dynamic into potential and of potential into dynamic energy ;
" The law which moulds a tear rounds a planet." In the
application of law to Nature there is no such thing as small
or great. The soft wind gliding over an Italian mountain is
as firmly ruled as the earth in its orbitual revolution round the
sun. The gathering or dispersion of the slightest mist is by
that energy underlying all things of which we know that it is
not matter. Notwithstanding, it is unscientifically asserted —
" Matter is the origin of all existence, in it all natural and
mental forces are inherent ; " x a statement at once disproved
by the fact that energy is not matter, nor an essential part
nor property.
One of the hypotheses of science — it is but hypothesis —
regards the primal matter as diffused stuff without structure,
properties, parts, or indeed anything whatever ; in which was
no spirit, no life, no matter — such as we are acquainted with ;
and that out of this stuff matter was formed, or gathered, or
contracted, by energy acting in a straight line, " push ; " the
" push " not being mechanical power, nor chemical, nor vital,
but conveying them all, and furnishing infinite space with
blazing suns and worlds of life. We can have no objection
to this as a reverent attempt to explain God's way of doing
things ; but if stuff, push, space, are regarded as cause,
continuance, and limit of all things — three idols ; we must
maintain that pure science knows no such idolatry, the self-
generation of natural laws, because of the persistence of matter
and energy, is physically and logically impossible. Other
things must come in, or matter and energy ever remain as
1 " Kraft und Stoff," p. 32, Dr. Biichner.

128 The Creative Words.
matter and energy. We endeavour to understand and explain,
so far as human powers allow, these other things ; so as to
know in what manner God created the heavens and the earth,
and what physical effects were consequent on that interference
of Divine Energy recorded in the symbol — " The Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters."
liN-»ny liN *n», " Let light be, and light was."
An example of brevity with comprehensiveness : a volume
in a sentence. Not the creation of light, nor the first call into
existence, is recorded ; but the coming of light in place of
that darkness which was upon the face of the deep. The
fluid globe surrounded by a vast pall of condensing clouds,
the vapours gathering in dark masses, dense and gross, on the
deep — put on light as a garment. Light is not a substance, but,
like heat and magnetism, a mode of energy : energy, giving
that peculiar shivering, brilliant motion to the ultimate particles
of matter whereby the world is clothed with beauty : energy,
causing and transmitting the molecular tremors of stars,
countless millions of miles distant, and translating them into
that human consciousness which we call " Light." x Moses,
speaking of light, as existing without the sun, anticipated on
a large scale what Professor Tyndall beautifully performs on a
small scale — -the extraction of light from total darkness.
He who would have Apostolic authority for this statement
as to the coming of light, and see the spiritual use made of
the natural fact, will do well to remember — " God, who com
manded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our
hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ " (2 Cor. iv. 6).
: im ni> "]iji"',n.',i ^.jr'nVL, " Evening was and morning was
day one." The first number being cardinal, the others ordinal,
is a startling example of Scriptural exactness. The inspired
seer saw the light as a Divine product — one work, one period.
He knew not that any other would follow. So soon as others
came, he could say — These are the second, third, fourth, fifth,
sixth. The Days of Creation are fully investigated in Study VII.
The words " light " and " darkness " are no indication that
1 " Radiant Heat and its Relations."

Creative Days. 129
creative days were common days. There is no mention of
light and darkness after the fifth verse, in which " night " means
the darkness which was upon the face of the deep, and " day "
is the light which followed. Day is light put within limits ;
and night is darkness put within limits ; but the days are not
long periods of light alternating with long periods of darkness.
Their measure and definition are not by light and darkness,
the two sides of a common day, but by evening and morning.
The peculiarity of reckoning marks a peculiarity like that in
Daniel (viii. 26), where the vision of the evening and the
morning is for many days. Knowledge of the earth's physical
history gives grandeur to these days, some thought-standard
of eternity — some measure of God's day. "We must not
suppose that the evening and the morning were merely the
sequence of the preceding darkness and of the light that
followed it, notwithstanding that the first evening and morn
ing so fittingly append themselves to such a contrast. Still
less are we to think of the usual evening and morning, since
the earth had not yet been arranged. Evening and morning
denote rather the interval of a creative day, after the Hebrew
mode of reckoning from sunset. The morning that follows
stands for the second half of the day proper." x The fact
of God setting certain divisions of time before the sun was
conditioned, and then making the sun ruler, as He first formed
the animals, and afterwards appointed Adam to be king, is
not a mark of equal cycles, but that time-limits contain all
created things.
ypi, " Firmament," the heaven or sky of the, earth-world.
The Greek word, crrspeupia, and the Latin, firmamentum,
have led some to think " that the Hebrews understood the sky
to be a permanent solid vault"2 The Hebrews may have
thought so ; Moses himself may have thought so ; some
ancient nations may have had the idea of a solid firmament ;
but, nevertheless, " firmament " simply means extension involv
ing great tenuity. The fowls flew in it, the sun and moon
were set in it, the stars lighted it. No candid reader will
think that the inspired writings mean that fowls were flying
1 " Genesis : " Prof. Lange.
' " Essays and Reviews : " Mosaic Cosmogony, p. 220. K

130 The Creative Words.
in a vault, that the sun and moon moved up and down in
it, and that stars were little lights thereof. Dr. Kitto
writes — "A portion of the heavy watery vapour had flown
into the upper regions, and rested there in dense clouds,
which still obscured the sun ; while below, the earth was
covered with water. Thus we see the propriety with which
the firmament is said to have divided the waters from the
waters." The waters were not waters in the modern scientific
sense ; but that fluidity out of which land and water were
formed. The difficulties of this part of the account of creation are
too conspicuous to require enumeration. There is great
difference of opinion as to what is meant by V.i??, literally
" expanse ; " and what are the two kinds of water — one above,
the other beneath. The water beneath the expanse does
not mean common water, or it would have been designated
the water which is upon the earth : it means the sethereal
substance which surrounds the atmosphere and reaches to the
great expanse in which the heavenly bodies are located. The
water above the 5£j£) signifies that super-celestial immensity
which extends into infinity. That the Hebrew word l^p? means
'' expanse " need hardly to be proved (see Ps. cxxxvi. 6 ; Job
xxxvii. 18 ; Ex. xxxix. 3, Wjjn;i, "and they stretched out one"
— the English version copies the LXX. and the Vulgate) ; that
the visible sky in its wide sense is intended, is proved from
ver. 8, "And God called the expanse, DW, heaven." The
design of this narrative is to convey an idea how the expanse
enclosing the heavenly bodies was cleared. The meaning, in
a narrow sense, is limited to the earth ; in a wider meaning,
it extends to all space. We have a plain declaration that the
boundless space surrounding the expanse is called " water."
Ps. cxlviii. 4, " Praise Him, ye heaven of heavens, and the waters
that are above the heavens ; " also Ps. civ. 3, vrji^S D»tS3 iT$t?rt
literally — " that ceileth His upper chambers with water." This
idea was entertained by the ancient Rabbis. In Talmud
translation, rwjn, we find R. Akiba said to the wise men—
"When ye enter the bright clear marble, ye shall not say
' Water, water ; ' " i.e. when ye contemplate the substance of
the super-celestial aether, ye shall not think it common water,
although it is so called.

Germination of Plants. 1 3 1
The earth germinated and brought forth grass, herb
yielding seed, and tree bearing fruit ; which may be thus
arranged — Xfl), Algae, Fungi, Lichens, Mosses.
ajpj?, Herbs, Vegetables, Grasses.
H?, Tree, or fully ^ yy Fruit Trees.
It is remarkable that the comprehensive word Xt??. may in
clude all that class of vegetable life which we call " Flowerless,"
that atpH, herb, YV, tree, designate all flowering plants. It is
not less remarkable that this comprehension of all vegetation
into grass, herb, tree, disposes of every attempt, by means of
evolution, to discredit the Divine account. Indeed, the
general summary accords with the indefiniteness of modern
classification, and finds confirmation so far as evolution is
scientifically accepted.
The existence, nevertheless, of a certain common similitude
amongst organisms, so that all plants are akin, the kinship
extending to and embracing even every form of animal life,
has been cited in argument against the Divine narrative.
The argument falls to the ground so soon as the fact is
realised that He who established the primitive unity endued
it with essential differences ; which grew up — if we speak
scientifically — according to natural law into special structure
and function of " kind after its kind."
Lights in the Firmament.
The lights are not the primal illumination nix, light; but
the collocation of light in such manner that there may be
lights for many worlds, n'mNJ? properly means luminous in
struments, receptacles, places, or bodies whence light proceeds.
The word was afterwards used in a wider sense : in poetry,
as we use it — " Sun of my soul ; " Prov. xv. 30, " Light of
the eyes ; " also in connection with the candlestick or lamp
in the tabernacle, where a special dignity attaches to that
light as emphatically " the light." In accurate meaning it
is always a vessel of light or for light. Prov. xv. 30, " Light
of the eyes," means the exquisiteness of the faculty, the
beautiful vessel and its light. The meaning is analogous to
lis niNp_l?3, " all the vessels of light in heaven."
The sun, moon, stars, are spoken of in their relative im-

132 The Creative Words.
portance as lights seen from the earth, not as they are in
themselves. The word &V11 — constituting them to be lights
and signs, dividers of the day and night, rulers of the seasons
— means to crown or -make a king, and is used of the
firmament. In Ps. civ. 19 it is translated "appointed" — "He
appointed the moon for seasons."
The peculiar power of the letter a, showing that the sun is
light-bearer, the instrument or holder of light, not light itself,
but to regulate it for the future, seems to anticipate the fol
lowing scientific statement :— " In nebulous sphere, just become
luminous, and in the red-hot liquid earth of our modern cos
mogony, light was not yet divided into sun and stars, nor
time into day and night, as it was after the earth was
cooled."1 On the Fifth Day, power was given to the waters, and
they brought forth abundantly. Djsn -l^, " Let the waters
swarm : " — "Ut merito maternum nomen adepta
Terra sit, e terra quoniam sunt cuncta creata.
Multaque nunc etiam exsistant animalia terris
Imbribus et calido solis concreta vapore."
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, v. 793-796.
"With good reason the earth has gotten the name of
mother, since out of the earth all things are produced. Many
living things even now are being formed in rain water, and in
warm vapours raised by the sun."
Moses had a deep scientific spirit. He knew or, not know
ing, uttered that latest of truths — "AH living powers are
cognate, all living forms are fundamentally of one character."
He anticipated the researches of the chemist, that there is " a
striking uniformity of material composition in living matter."
He was not a " barbarous Hebrew " with absurd hypothesis —
that species arose without natural agencies, without modifica
tion of organic or of living matter. He makes no mention of
species, goes below them, declares that their unsearchable
roots are in cosmical life — the waters swarmed. We may say,
in Hugh Miller's words— "What fully developed history is
1 Prof. Helmholtz : " Interaction of Natural Forces."

Difference in Organisms. ' 133
to the prophecy which of old looked forwards, fully developed
science is to the prophecy which of old looked backwards." x
The great truth, declared by Moses, is affirmed by science
that, regarding organisms, the difference as to one another
is of degree, not of kind : " in all living beings the matter
upon which existence depends is the germinal matter (bio
plasm), and in all living structures the germinal matter
possesses the same general characters, although its powers
and the results of its life are so very different."2 We are
not warranted in thinking, though asserted by some, that vital
energy and chemical energy are the same as mechanical
power: nor that all substances are resolvable into one kind
of matter, the primordial, out of which some surmise all the
elements were evolved, "by the different grouping of units,
and by combination of unlike groups, each with its own
kind, and each with other kinds ; " for there are secrets in
every organism which we cannot hope to detect — barely to
conjecture ; things beyond our understanding, things outside
the ordinary chemical and electrical affinities.
On the Sixth Day, God created ?y$n ivn, the flesh-eating
animal, or wild beast : npn?n, cattle, or the herb-eating animal ;
and nmxn b'ftyhp, creeping things, all the lower forms of life
which are on the land ; -inyp^ after their kind. The fierce
and terrible are first mentioned because terrible ; the others
follow according to their apparent importance. It is probable
that the order of life's appearance on earth was, first, with the
lowest grades of vegetable and animal existence ; and then,
by progression, to the higher types ; possibly according to the
classes in which the flora and fauna are scientifically arranged.
Animal life is thus classified — Protozoa, Ccelenterata, Annu-
loida, Annulosa, Mollusca, Vertebrata.
The arrangement in Scripture is probably rhythmical, not
scientific, we have not only the six days apportioned into two
triplets, so that the work of the first is completed on the
fourth, that of the second on the fifth, and that of the third
on the sixth ; but the two triplicates are headed by the
seventh or sabbath day. These triplicates themselves are
1 ' ' Testimony of the Rocks. "
2 "Protoplasm, or Matter and Life : " Dr. Lionel S. Beale, F.R.S.

134 The Creative Words.
triple : in vegetation — grass, herb, tree ; in light — sun, moon,
stars ; in life from the water — fish, bird, creature of length ;
in life from the ground — wild beast, cattle, creeping thing.
Over all this life man is constituted king.
Pausing to look around, we observe — The evidence in favour
of Evolution having shown some truth — though not the
whole truth, it is one of the Bible's great triumphs to over
come all objections, difficulties, doubts, which arise on the
supposition that the Divine narrative asserts the special
creation of species. " The book does not so speak, as all
may see who will." x Plant, fish, bird, mammal, man, were
framed by a continually ascending process from unity to
diversity. The fundamental statements enabling us to see,
as by a succession of dissolving views, that God is the source
I of all things : so that Nature, endued with energy, advances,
grade by grade, until the earth is filled with life. Particulars
of the process are not revealed, nor by what means the great
gulf between the dead and the living was spanned, nor how
the vital spark was first kindled. These were left for science
to discover — if it can : the province of science being the
discoverable, that of revelation the undiscoverable. We now,
and rightly, regard it as perfectly natural that the stately oak
should be developed from the tiny acorn ; is that really less
miraculous, less divine, than the production of the earth's
primal and rudimentary forms ? Is there not, indeed,
between the inanimate ground and the acorn, between the
acorn and the oak, a somewhat similar passage from the
inanimate to the animate — a continual coming of life from
the dead ; which, though it does not seem to require the vital
spark from heaven, as in the first operation, is not less
wonderful than was the primal origination ? If this be
granted, the manifestation of God in Nature is credible and
scientific ; and grades of life are steps on God's great altar-
stairs by which life, onward advancing and upward ascending,
approaches the ever-living One.
«$*? D™ npjg, " Let us make man in our image."
Job (x. 9) said — " Thou hast made me as the clay."
God gave the spirit of life to the frame which he had formed
1 " Cambridge University Sermon," Gen. i. 1 : Rev. T. G. Bonney.

Creation of Man, 135
out of the dust, and so man became a living soul — of the
earth, earthy ; but of the soul and spirit, heavenly. When
nature-life, as distinct from spirit-life, had attained the summit
of opulence and intensity in animal-life, then was created a form
for spirit-life. The vegetative life had been subordinate to
the animal, now animal life is made subordinate to the spirit,
and Adam comes — the up-looking one, the moving principle
of the earth's history.
We must not imagine that God's hands formed a clod of
earth into human form, and, standing near, breathed into
it from without the breath of life. The hand of God is the
power of God, which, even in visible things, works invisibly.
Man came into existence, as did also the other creatures, by
Omnipotence acting invisibly ; but, as to man, a solemn
word of Divine self-determination and mysterious meaning
preceded the creation. The Words of God, as we have said,
represent the energy by which material is formed, fashioned,
vivified — beasts in their impersonality, man in his personality ;
beasts by a distribution of existing materials, man by God's
immediate formation, and, as it were, by God's breathing ; so
that he, in spiritual person, is akin to God, and rules as the
God-man. The Breath of God did not become a living soul,
but made man to be a living soul — a candle illumined by the
Lord. This illumining we are not to apprehend as endowing with
spirit, but rather a creating in the soul of spirit-elements to
become man's true spirit-form. The Breath of God is that
Divine energy which created the God-willed spiritual human
personality. Man in the " image of God " means the ideal, or sort, or
kind. In the " likeness of God " means the relation or order
of spirituality essentially distinguishing him from brutes. Man
is neither, as to his body, the precipitate of the spirit ; nor,
as to his soul, the sublimate of matter. He is a combination
of both in Divine origination as to the body, and by in
breathing as to the soul. The body, thus fashioned, is to
receive at the resurrection a re-fashioning of glory ; and the
soul, now possessing not only the life which God wrought
in matter when He made the brute, but that life in union

136 The Creative Words.
of soul and spirit which was effected by Divine inspiration,
receives yet higher blessing and energy through the incarna
tion of Christ ; for the Son, the form of God in heaven,
assumed the fashion of man on earth that He might fill the
earthen vessel with heavenly treasure. Thus, also, the Word
of God is a living voice of good tidings bringing immortality
to light. First the natural body, then the spiritual body.
If we are called to explain the creation of man, so as to
help an evolutionist in his endeavour to accept the Bible
account, we suggest — 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 com
plicate outer relations, man may have come forth as from
sleep — a prodigy. There are existing illustrations. The crawl
ing creature leaps forth a beautiful vision of sportfulness in
the light. The leaps and surprises in animal life to higher
forms are numerous. The intellectual power of a great man —
the man of a million, as it contains a promise and potency of
greatness for all ; may be taken as a recurring symbol of that
exaltation by which, after the dust had become flesh, the flesh
attained capacity for spirit. In other words — " God formed
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life ; and man became a living soul."
Materialists assert — " That which we call spirit disappears
with the dissolution of the individual material combination." x
There is no proof of such positive statement, nor is proof
possible. Matter is only known by mind ; and while main
taining that the smallest particle of a grain of sand is utterly
and for ever indestructible, we cannot think that our inner
personal individuality, all that by which we understand the
mechanism of worlds, is extinguished at death as by the
extinction of a light. We do not know, probably never sjiall
know, how matter is able to assume consciousness ; how, then,
are we to believe that materialists know there is nothing
more in the universe than matter ? If we accept the words
of Locke as to all our ideas depending upon the senses —
" nihil est in intellects quod non prius in sensu " — we add
the correction of Leibnitz — " nisi intellectus ipse."
1 "Kraft und Staff," p. 13 : Dr. Buchner.

Power of the Book. 137
As to Providence, God, Creation, we are told — " What this
or that man may understand by a governing Reason, a
universal soul, a personal God, etc., is his own affair. The
theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to them
selves." x So we are to give up every hope as to the future,
cast to the winds all reverence for God, and believe — not
that God created all things out of nothing, but that all
things created or evolved themselves out of something very
little better than nothing. A man may as well say — " There
is nothing behind the door " — simply because he cannot see
through the door; as deny the Divine act of causation,
because he cannot detect the occulta vis — the Hidden
Energy. Accurate investigation of the Creative Words enables strong
men to check naughty little ones, who count it a stroke of
wit and genius to scoff at those things which greater minds
worship. Progressive elucidation and research by scholarly
process may be compared to that operation in nature which,
little by little, rolls away the morning mist from a splendid
landscape ; as every successive word and statement is rescued
from ignorance and misrepresentation, fuller meaning, richer
beauty, ever-growing power of sacred verity, go forth as
matter for deeper investigation and for solution of mysteries,
which will exercise the intellect of future ages. The dogma
tism descending to puppyism which places something infinitely
less than a tadpole at one end of the series, and man at the
other, and professes to know all about it, must be rebuked
with calm and simple statement. One line of thought is
sufficient. The Book, abused by Secularists as of barbaric
origin, mightily rules the intellect, emotion, conscience, of the
civilised world ; and wherever intellect is enlightened by it,
or morals are purified by it, or conscience is instructed by
it, men live rightly for mutual welfare and the glory of God.
Materialists, abusing the doctrine of Evolution, assert that
an infinitesimal something, by imperceptible accretion and
infinite variation, during immeasurable time, became worlds
of life and beauty, apart from God, and without any ordering
of Providence. Writers of the Bible, especially Moses,
1 "Kraft und Staff," p. 43 : Dr. Biichner.

138 The Creative Words.
connect the natural with the supernatural, man with God,
state that the universe was originated and is maintained by
the Deity, and that by Divine inspiration they give an account
of the creative process. The whole matter is capable of dis
proof, or it can be verified. An unscientific age could not
possess the knowledge of our own scientific time, nor men
styled " semi-barbarous " be adorned with the accuracy and
genius of modern professors. The words written by one of
these men have been studied in part, and will be further in
vestigated. As yet, nothing has been found contrary to
science ; where science can effect research, there has been
verification, and the recesses of nature contain counterparts
of many spiritual truths. These truths are scattered over the
surface of Scripture, or lie within the depths, much as the
plants and gems of nature are arranged on and in the earth.
No formal order, no system, can be found anywhere ; but as
grasses of many forms, flowers of every hue, trees of graceful
foliage, contain wonderful unity in richest, wildest variety — so
Bible truths and facts, whether scattered, or knit together
in every part, plant deep roots in mysteries of love and
wisdom. In further applying accurate modern tests to the Inspired
Record, which most of us love and regard as true without and
beyond confirmation, bear in mind that authoritative state
ments about facts or phenomena can only be found perfectly
to agree with science in its final results, and this agreement
must in no wise be hastened. We say authoritative, because
due exception has to be made for accounts which are popular,
or figurative, or poetical, and not meant to assert physical
law. Nor is this any weakness : the waters of the sea in one
place look blue, in another green, the difference being due to
depth or shallowness ; so there are recesses in Holy Scripture
which none but saints can enter, and there is power moving
on the very surface able to mould the minds of Dante and
Milton, Michael Angelo and Raphael, that they may enrich
and adorn our race. Not only so, there is another beauty;
the Word was spoken — not to anticipate discovery, not to
render experimental and inductive processes of the human
mind unnecessary to the attainment of knowledge, but to set

Scripture the Word of God. 139
up an authoritative teaching where experiment and induction
are inadequate to explain and establish the relations between
God and man, and between man and his neighbour ; to erect
true foundations of the body politic on an immutable, because
Divine, morality ; to train the individual for his probation in
time and for his future life in eternity.
If, after most careful analysis, the record of physical facts
be found sometimes scientifically inaccurate, not the less will
Holy Scripture contain the Word of God. A diamond is not
the less a diamond because of the rudeness of its setting, and
the truths of Holy Scripture are not less Divine, because the
framework partakes of human imperfection. If every effort
fail, even then, human fallibility cannot affirm, as infallible
dogma, essential contrariety : the angle of parallax, by which
to measure the lights of God, may have its base in an exist
ence which is wider than human life.

STUDY VII.
interpretation of the days.
" Cogitavi dies antiquos, et annos setemos in mente habui." — Ps. lxxvii. 5.
" Les jours de la creation ' marquent la hierarchie des etres et des epoques suc-
cessives de leur apparition sur la face du monde ; mais Taction de Dieu ne se
decompose pas en epoques. Elle est une puisque elle est parfaite." — Emile
Saisset.
We have considered the days of creation, well knowing that
simple truths are often deep.
What mean these days ? Are they an enumeration and a
separation of actual days and nights before the earth and sun
were so conditioned, each to each, that day was possible ? Or
do they mean that there were births, growths, seeming pauses,
in the progress of Divine work ? The latter opinion prevails
with many thoughtful men. They take the outward appear
ance as a garment for the spiritual reality. The letter is the
body, the spirit is the soul. The letter and the spirit are held
together by the real meaning. Endeavour to attain that'
meaning, as to days, by considering — •
The facts on which most men are agreed.
1. On scientific and Scriptural warrant they believe that
the origin of the world is very ancient ; so ancient that the
beginning, in which heaven and earth were created, is taken
by St. John (i. 1) to prove the co-eternity of Christ with the
Father. Placing, however, the beginning of things thus early
(Gen. xlix. 26 ; Deut. xxxiii. 1 5 ; Job xv. 7, xxxviii. 4 ; Ps.
xc. 2 ; Prov. viii. 22-31 ; John i. 1-3, xvii. 24) neither lessens
the marvel nor destroys the fact of creation.
2. There is no more matter now than was originally
created, nature not possessing the power, in itself, of originat
ing matter; but cosmic processes throughout the universe,
and the " fact that God is daily and hourly creating those

Accepted Facts. 141
myriads of human souls which He infuses into the bodies
prepared by His providence," x convince many that creation
was not an instantaneous, but a continuous and progressive
series of marvellous operations. It is true that of a creatio
continua, in 'the special sense of creation, Scripture knows
nothing ; nevertheless, of creation as a continuous agency of
God, and specially of the Divine maintenance of the world as
a creatio continua, Scripture does know (Isai. xl. 28, xiii. 5) ;
and if we regard the human spiritual nature as so planned
that, associated with matter, it is able to propagate itself out
of itself, this procreative process can only be explained by
the co-operation of God's creative power,2 and the continuous
process is not less divine than the growth of a world in an
hour. 3. Man has existed on the earth more than six thousand
years. His remains and implements are found in places, and
side by side with such relics of plants and animals, as leave
little or no doubt of a high antiquity. The cave gravel and
peat deposits, shell mounds and lake-dwellings, though not as
yet giving any reliable data for estimating the precise age, may
be fairly taken as proof that man contended with the mam
moth. The genealogies of Christ, commonly and erroneously
taken to show the age of man, indicate the line and families
of Messianic descent ; not always by actual procreation, but
occasionally by adoption, or other succession. Hilary says —
" There are four genealogies of Christ in the four Gospels :
ist, in St. Matthew, from Abraham ; 2nd, in St. Mark, from
God the Holy Ghost ; 3rd, in St. Luke, from Adam ; 4th, in
St. John, from Eternity." These show, not the age of the
world, but that Jesus is the seed of the woman, the second
Adam, the father of a new and spiritual race.
4. The world has been and is continually though slowly
changing ; new animals and plants arising with varied modi
fications, or becoming extinct, by the slow successive deter
minate action of local causes, of which the chief is the gradual
lowering or raising of temperature. Our own country has
sunk many times beneath the sea, and again been raised.
1 " Daniel the Prophet," Intr., p. xxii. : Dr. Pusey.
2 "Biblical Psychology," pp. 133-142 : Prof. Delitzsch.

142 Interpretation of the Days.
Iceland, a thousand years ago, according to Icelandic histories,
was covered with forests of birch and fir ; and at that time
Greenland was fertile in the south.
Men generally agreeing as to the four classes of facts which
we have enumerated ; ist, the antiquity of the earth ; 2nd, its
progressive formation ; 3rd, earlier occupation by mankind
than is given by the common date ; 4th, the orderly continuous
and progressive operation of nature ; are met by assertions of
this kind — " It is not likely that God should have inspired
Moses to write a history of creation to be believed by all
people, in language the meaning of which it were hard to find,
and yet harder to believe."1 Timid souls, rendered more
timid by the reckless unbelief of godless men, cling almost
superstitiously to the old ways of explanation, and say — •.
" There is indeed a measure of difficulty, and a kind of un-
naturalness, in giving a different sense to the words than that
which has been generally accepted ; and which, unless required
by science, no one would think of giving." Students of science,
provoked by this obstructiveness of ignorance and of fear,
reply with some scorn — ¦" We know, even as a matter of
common sense, that God did not make the world in six days,
and no man of science believes that He did. Cannot you
divines, while contenting our emotions, satisfy also our intel
ligence ? "
They have been answered by an explanation of the manner
in which it is conceived the world was created in six days —
That heaven and earth were created in the beginning, and
that the six days' work was the restoration rather than the
creation of the earth. In that beginning, angels were made,
and in some way or other connected with the earth ; animals
and plants, in great variety and beauty, lived, passed away, and
were succeeded by others. It was a golden age : no sin, no
sorrow, everything good and very beautiful. In process of
time, some of the angels sinned, and their evil courses cast the
earth into chaotic confusion. Then, Divine power reformed
the world, as we now see it, with man as chief ; who, after due
probation, is to occupy those places in heaven from which the
evil angels fell. In commemoration of the work, and as a
1 Suarez : " Tractatus De Opere Sex Dierum," lib. I. cap. xi. 42.

Remonstrance of the Thoughtful. 143
measure of the days, Holy Sabbath was instituted. In that
primitive period are to be found all those crises and periods
required by geologists, and to those ancient ages must be
attributed the fossils and animals of astonishing form, pre
served in the rocky pages of the earth as a revelation of the
mysteries of former existence.
This statement about angels, happy eras, chaotic relapse,
does not content thoughtful men who require a substratum
of fact on which intelligence may faithfully erect a house of
piety. They reply—" There is no great break of continuity,
or universal chasm, separating the former good time from the
later evil time ; go back far as we may, dig deep as we can,
death reigned in the world even as now ; the stony leaves of
ancient history bear no record of angelic life, the legend is
alway of the destroyer and of the destroyed. On these leaves
are impressed and printed likenesses and relics of vegetable,
fish, reptile, bird, mammal, and human organisms. Life
following life, with hundreds and thousands of feet of slowly
deposited rock intervening ; but no record of peace, no foot
prints of angel anywhere. There are different ages of life,
various stages of growth, some are young, others old. Their
history states that they devoured their fellows and propagated
their kind. Worn teeth and aged structure prove a long
duration of individual existence, and many relics are token
of continuance as to species. Would you have us believe that
within six days the firmament was spread out, land raised
from the sea, and dried ; that trees grew up bearing on their
bark, and in the rings of their structure, record of centuries ;
that river channels were worn and excavated through thou
sands of feet of solid rock, leaving in the different stages of
depth countless generations of creatures which grew, per
formed all the natural functions, and at length died of full
age ? Are all these marks of progress and tokens of age
mere freaks of construction ? did vegetables grow up in
stantaneously for full-grown animals to feed on ; and fruit,
already ripe on the trees, delight the sight and taste of man ;
and, in the latter end of the sixth day, was Eden planted,
were beasts named, did Adam sleep, was Eve formed ? Are
we as geologists, naturalists, farmers, men of general observa-

144 Interpretation of the Days.
tion, to credit all this ? That old world, moreover, was not
an existence wholly good : it is hard to conceive that the
monster forms were suitable companions for holy, happy
angels, or that the bone-breaking and fierce devouring by
these creatures belonged to a pure and peaceful existence.
Nor was it separated from the present world by utterly de
structive catastrophes : it contained all those plants, animals,
men, whose remains, strangely revealed to us, are brought
from one common grave. Extinct species are so mingled
with those now in existence that the two worlds overlap each
other, indeed are not two worlds, but one ; there is no trace
of any chasm, deep and wide, .engulfing that first or former
creation in utter destruction ; no universal break found in
which the old world passed away and the new began."
These statements, of honest and wise opponents, are very
strong proofs that the Day theory is inadequate, unscriptural,
unscientific. Some further consideration may lead such as
hold the theoiy gladly to abandon it for one that contents
piety and satisfies intelligence : one that unites the view of
the prophets with the requirements of modern science :
"That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before." In Memoriam.
In an apparent vision, or narrative, or dream, or by what
ever means we possess the memorial of creation — whether as
picture for the seer to look on, or as history for the prophet
to write — it is certain that the whole representation, if Divine,
would in its very nature transcend physical science. It must
be borne in mind that the Hebrew language has no scientific
terms ; so that, whether dealing with science or prophecy,
symbols must be used. It also seems natural that the word
" Day " should be used : a word which includes the work of
man for containing and describing the work of God, and for a
symbolical measure of time. Fitness and simplicity, moreover,
would take evenings and mornings for divisions and changes ;
darkness and light for pauses and operations in the sublime
scene. Nor is that all — as past, present, future, are distinc
tions for man's use only, and can have no real meaning in
reference to Deity, they are often ignored in Holy Scripture.

Prophets not know their Prophecies. 145
The prophet not unfrequently speaks of the future as actually
present, apparently, perhaps really, unconscious that centuries
have passed away, or will pass away before the prediction
can be fulfilled (Isai. ix. 13 ; Jer. xlix. 28-30; Isai. xxxiv. 5,
x. 34, xi. 1).
The prophets did not always understand their own writings
(Dan. xii. 4; Ephes. iii. 5; 2 Pet. i. 19-21). In many holy
reflections, Divine realities are clad in garments of imagery
(Ps. xix. 1-6). The Tabernacle was a figure of good things
to come (Heb. ix. 8, 9). The sacrifice of Isaac had a deeper
meaning than Abraham knew (Heb. xi. 17-19). The child
promised to Ahaz (Isai. vii. 14) ; the man of sorrow, in whose
hand the pleasure of the Lord was to prosper ; and who,
though dying, was to prolong his days (Isai. liii. 10) ; are
examples and proofs that the Word of God is high and
deep, full of mystery to feed the curiosity, exercise the
powers, encourage the hope, augment the wisdom of men and
angels. They may help us to understand the true meaning
of the language in which the Mosaic account of the creation
was revealed.
Further — there is a correspondence traceable between the
first three and second three of the days in which God created
the heaven and the earth. The first, second, and third days
answer, severally, to the fourth, fifth, and sixth days. On the
first — there is light, on the fourth — light-bearers ; on the
second — the waters are separated and the firmament is con
stituted, on the fifth — the waters and firmament are occupied
by fishes and birds ; on the third — dry land appears, on the
sixth — it is replenished. The work and the days are a
parable. A comparison of one part of Scripture with another also
suggests that the idea of completeness and perfection is
presented by use of the number seven in the Mosaic record.
The seventh day, or Sabbath, is the key-note in every Hebrew
observance ; the factor in all sacred times and things ; ruling
days, months, years, jubilees. It is part of the civil and of
the eccjesiastic law. It concerns master and servant, the
horiie-born and stranger, the harvest and the beast of the
field.' There are seven spirits, seven stars, seven angels, seven
L

146 Interpretation of the Days.
churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven vials. It is the
representative symbolic number, the subject for precept,
the rule and measure of observances, possessing internal pro
perties and external associations. Internal — as the symbol
of Divine and human labour and rest. External — as to
periods and numbers, impressing times and seasons with a
seal of sanctity. The seventh month ushered in the Feast
of Trumpets. Seven weeks were the interval between Pass
over and Pentecost. The seventh year was sabbatical. Seven
days were the measure of feasts, of the time occupied by
priestly consecration, and removal of legal uncleanness. The
sprinkling of purification was seven — whether with water or
blood. The arms of the golden candlestick were seven;
the chief vessels of the Tabernacle were seven ; and there
are sacred sevens for forgiveness, for perfection, for interpre
tation of prophecy. Through God's creation, sevens express
the arrangements of nature, the laws of labour, the sanctifi-
cation and division of time, and form part of God's command
ments (Gen. ii. 3 ; Ex. xx. 9-1 1, xxxi. 12-17). It mav then
be inferred that the Scriptural account of creation was in
tended to be regarded as pictorial, symbolical, mystical. The
wise son of Sirach said — " All things are double, one against
another." Consider the various uses of the word " day."
Fuerst observes, in his Lexicon, that Day only exists in
derivative senses, and is used to signify a period. Eating
the forbidden fruit, and the consequent liability to death, are
called one day — the day of death (Gen. ii. 17). Day of the
Lord is a period of mercy, or a time for the acting of God-
power. Day of vengeance is time of punishment. Day of
judgment is the crisis of doom. Day of rest is a figure of
repose after the creative act, and a symbol of the great
duration of our own rest in heaven (Heb. iv. 9). Origen
says " a whole age is a day." x Day is time of life, one who
has a hard time, heavy time, tirn&jh (Job xxx. 25). Day
is time of light, £fr i\ab, in the sense of light being day
(Gen. i. 5). Day is present time (Ps. ii. 7) ; " This day," now,
" have I begotten thee," T^ D'l»o- Day is before now,
0V-y.E& (Isai. xlviii. 7). 1 "De Oratione," p. 249.

Uses of the Word "Day" 147
No man is able to determine the duration of the first three
days, the sun not being conditioned, light and darkness de
pending upon circumstances with which we are unacquainted ;
and what about day in the Arctic regions, where there is a six
months' night ? That the now ordinary time was not meant,
seems clearly indicated by all the days being called one —
"the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens "
(Gen. ii. 4). To insist upon twenty-four hours as the limit,
now that we have exacter knowledge, both of Scripture and
Science, is to make knowledge useless. The light was day,
the darkness was night. In contrast with this, evening and
morning are used to designate the creative period ; and on
the seventh day, as if to show that the Sabbath day is not
yet ended, neither evening nor morning is mentioned. Even
ing and morning, speaking exactly, do not include a day, are
only parts of it ; do not mean darkness and light, but the
creative period — the period of strong and beautiful world-
building process : " it was evening and it was morning, day
one." The extent of duration must be fixed according to the
nature of the realities signified. Take a few examples —
" Thou art to pass over Jordan this day," the day meant a
time not ending till after the death of the speaker (Deut ix. 1).
The " day of temptation " (Ps. xcv. 8) was a period of forty
years. In Josh. iv. 6, " the time to come " is literally " to
morrow." In Ps. xc. the words, " A thousand years in Thy
sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in
the night," seem to show that if Moses wished to indicate
long age-periods, he would use the word " day." We conclude
that " the days are representative terms, on the same scale as
work and rest. . . . All alike denote Divine realities answering
to human ones in precisely the same manner. Truly as God's
work is similar to our work, His rest to our rest, so are His
days to our days." x When, in the cosmogony, we read of six
days, we have no more right to suppose that in six periods,
every one of twenty-four hours' duration, God made all
things ; than we have to suppose that He literally gave
Hebrew names to things, and rested ; we are to understand
1 " The Week of Creation : " Geo. Warrington.

148 Interpretation of the Days.
that He created all things in such periods of time as might
to man's finite mind be most fitly represented by six days.
Two difficulties now meet us —
1. If the days mean vast periods, a great space should be
occupied by plants only, then by plants and fish, after that
by plants, fish, other animals, in layers answering to the time
of their creation ; but no such separateness exists — the
organisms overlap both in place and time.
2. If day means age, the ages would, according to the
figure used, be separated by long intervals of darkness de
structive to life.
Solution 1.— The creative process of plants and animals
was by orderly advance to the higher organisms; and is
rightly represented, as it would appear to man, in succession.
There was a time when no life existed, then came the rudi
mentary plants, then moving creatures of the water, after that
land animals. The preparation for and initiation of all life
was, doubtless, by somewhat similar and, to a certain extent,
simultaneous operation. Life, in the sea, did not wait until
vegetation had done a perfect work ; nor had the sea become
full before the land began to be inhabited. There were no
grand tenantless forests on the shores of 'vast dead seas ;
wherever nutritious plants grew, there animals existed. This
fact explains and justifies the Scriptural use of the word
" day ; " in one sense, the almost simultaneous origination of
initial creative processes is represented ; and, in another
sense, the vast ages of orderly progressive evolution are com
prehended. Solution 2. — Light and darkness seem purposely excluded,
as if to guard us against thinking that a literal day was
meant. Evening and morning appear to be chosen because
they do not mean day and night. After the fifth verse neither
light nor darkness is mentioned. Light is called " day," not as
meaning twenty-four hours, but that brightness which was
produced by operation of the Holy Ghost ; and the darkness
is called " night," to denote that chaos out of which light was
brought. Any one of sufficient attention may observe that,
in the fifth and in the eighteenth verses of the first chapter of
1 " The Week of Creation : " Geo. Warrington.

The Fourth Commandment. 149
Genesis, " day " and " night " are spoken of separately, and in
contrast with the "evening" and " morning" in verses 5, 8, 13,
19, 23, 31. In fact, as in Dan. viii. 26, "the vision of the
evening and the morning which was told is true ; for it shall
be for many days."
The real difficulty arises out of the Fourth Commandment —
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days
shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day
is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do
any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man
servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger
that is within thy gates : for in six days the Lord made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested
the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath
day, and hallowed it" (Ex. xx. 8-1 1). "In reading through
the eleventh verse it is extremely difficult to believe that the
seventh day is a long period, and the Sabbath day an ordi
nary day ; that is, that the same word ' day ' should be
used in such totally different senses in the same short sen
tence, and without explanation." x
This difficulty, fairly met, establishes the verity of the
symbolism. The word " day " is not used in two different
senses. As the day of toil to man, so is the day of rest ; and
as the day of work to God, so is the day of repose. The true
difficulty is — creation is continuous, no break exists anywhere,
processes now in operation perpetuate the primeval operation.
" Deus operatur semper, et quietus est." God's life is all
Sabbath and no Sabbath. The Mosaic account implies a
cessation and change in world-development, there not having
been any such change ; consequently, Gen. ii. 2, 3, is only
avOpuirivbg Xo-yo?, adapted to early unphilosophical conceptions.
Human labour in producing, is a symbol of the Divine act in
creating ; man's repose is a figure of Godly rest. How long
did it take God to create the world ? Not so long in the
Divine lifetime as a week is in man's lifetime. Grand as is
the universe, vast as are its operations, many and various the
inhabitants, the whole must be regarded by man as not so
great a task to God as a week's work to himself. The days
1 "Essays and Reviews," Mosaic Cosmogony: C. W. Goodwin, M.A.

1 50 Interpretation of the Days.
are all the same, and are all symbolical. Suppose that Moses
meant — For six successive Divine days, in which moments
are years, God's hand worked ; on the seventh Divine day,
not yet concluded (Heb. iv. 3-9), He began to rest. Let all
holy men, as made in God's image, observe God's rule.
Would not such a meaning add greatly to the force of the
Divine command ? In it is a moral measure for all time, and
the key-note of providential arrangements. In it is a peculiar
majesty, specially suited to the grandeur of creation revealed
by the growth of science ; and the withholding of a true inter
pretation until now, affords proof of original inspiration. The
sanctity and safety of the Sabbath are not shaken, but assured;
built on truthful, not erroneous interpretation. We may not
presumptuously take any day we please as a seventh of our
time ; the day was fixed, first, by Divine command ; and,
now, is settled by Scriptural example and Christian use. Our
days, our weeks, our Sabbaths, our work, our rest, are ap
pointed, made holy, linked to God. We liken them to a
ladder, set upon the earth, by which we climb to heaven.
They are as a pathway across the territory of time ; one end
vanishes in the past to possess the antiquities of God, the
other is lost in the great world-times of the future. The
sacred week has not yet been measured by science — as to its
duration, nor comprehended — as to its work ; on the use we
make of our own day in it depends our weal or woe in future
life. We men shall rise on stepping-stones of our dead selves
to higher things ; " Or reach a hand through time to catch
The far-off interest of sins. "
Our conclusion, as to the days' vast extent, receives support
from two works lately published on chronology.1 The writer
shows that the Babylonians were acquainted with a solar
period of 1460 years, and with a lunar period of 1805 years.
The latter having been discovered by observation, not by cal
culation, some idea may be formed of the immense antiquity
of Babylonian astronomy — already, even in the second
1 " Die Daten der Genesis : " Jules Oppert.— (From the " Nachrichten von der
k. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen," No 10, 1877.) " Salomon et
ses Successeurs : " Jules Oppert. Paris, Maissonneuve & Cie. 1877.

Chaldean Chronology. 151
millennium before the Christian era, familiar with those
periods. The author states that the chronology, as found in
the first eleven chapters of Genesis, is " original and un-
falsified ; '' and agrees with the chronology of the correspond
ing periods of Chaldean tradition. As to the time occupied
by creation, where the Bible reckons one hour, the Chaldeans
computed 10,000 years. The seven days, or 168 hours of the
Bible, are the 168 myriads of years ofthe Chaldean historian,
Berosus. In the antediluvian period, a Bible-week answers
to five years, or a " Doss " of months in the Chaldean chro
nology : the proportion being as 23 to 6000, and 23 years
including 1200 weeks. As the divisor 23 occurs three times
in the chronology of the antediluvian patriarchs, so the divisor
6000 occurs three times in that of the Chaldean antediluvian
kings. Whether or not further investigation will confirm the
antiquity asserted by Jules Oppert remains to be seen. Our
own argument has been worked out independently.
We are asked — " Why the larger interpretation, supposing
it to be correct, was not earlier and forcibly given ? " We
reply — The true interpretation may have been lost, as the
Chaldean History was lost ; or, we may say — It would have
been useless, men could not have understood it. Men, study
ing Nature all these thousands of years, have not attained to
a full knowledge of it ; no wonder that they are imperfect in
interpretation of Scripture. Philosophy has been many ages
in progress, yet how little is that progress ! We may be sure
that a faultless interpretation of Scripture will not be incon
sistent with a perfect knowledge of Nature. The sacred
language is not only for the mass of mankind — incapable of
reasoning, but for those who are able to give a reason for the
hope that is in them, men like Newton and Pascal, Butler
and Paley, competent in the domain of scholarship. God's
Word abides in the same letter, while reason and science
change their language, but it expands within its own limits
for verification of the Divine origin, for contentment of our
emotional and intellectual requirements. No addition can be
made by human ingenuity to the amount of revealed infor
mation ; spiritual and material substance are alike of God, and
cannot be added to ; but — as we obtain deeper, wider, more

i 5 2 Interpretation of the Days.
accurate knowledge, the Word of God and the Work of God
are found to grow with our growth and to be in perfect
accord. The Bible will never be left amongst the childish
things which men put away ; the vitality, elasticity, compre
hensiveness of meaning, answer all the requirements of life
and knowledge ; fresh truths are discovered, hidden depths
are continually revealed (Ephes. i. 9, 10 ; Heb. xii. 27, 28 ;
1 Pet. i. 25).
Changes, rightly made, vindicate, rather than impugn, the
fact of Divine inspiration ; and out of the nettle, danger-
wrong interpretation, pluck the flower, safety — true meaning.
To abide by the letter, yet find a larger meaning in it ; to
hold a natural fact, and see a spiritual reality ; to discover
that man's day is a microscopic miniature of God's day ; is
gain not loss. " Scripture cannot be broken." Men may
obtain imperfect views ; from various stand-points take
opposite aspects ; and truth, being progressive, the know
ledge of past and present generations is necessarily incom
plete ; but this establishes our position : the Book is a
mystery, the origin is Divine, the diction is by Inspiration,
the substance is of God. Men have been fearful, not fully
knowing its depths. A half-civilised world explains it, the
interpretation is erroneous, and the Mephistopheles of science
rejoice. The unbeliever does not discern in it a mighty
spiritual meaning. What of that ? The circle of knowledge
is extended, physical nature is proved to be God Almighty's
material garment, and the unbeliever becomes faithful. Then,
though the words remain the same, the fashion of their coun
tenance is altered ; and that which was suitable for the world's
childhood, becomes a fit companion and consolation for our
manhood. Milton — strong like a seraph ; beside him — Shake
speare, careworn Dante — his song rising and descending with
interchange of gift, large-browed Verulam; these — amongst
the greatest of those who know and do, these — now silent
faces of the great and wise, bent in lowly reverential homage
to the precepts of the ancient Sacred Book.
Theology, shouldered and jostled by the sturdy growths
of modern thought, is becoming sturdier; conquering rude
malicious opponents, fascinating the intellectual. Theologians

Genealogies of Christ. 153
have been too patristic, too sectarian, and have not yet done
with their schools ; doubtless, the freer Theology of the future,
if we are faithful, will move as by the Spirit of God on the
face of the waters. Meanwhile, Theology bids us follow Nature
with unfaltering steps, and to study God's great works and
processes for which no measurement nor computation can be
found. There were days without sun, a formless abyss, light
coming forth from darkness, sky clearing, firmament expand
ing, hills emerging, waters gathering, life quickening.
" Oh ! I know the hand that is guiding me,
Through the shadow to the light ;
And I know that all betiding me
Is meted out aright.
I know that the thomy path I tread
Is ruled with a golden line ;
And I know that the darker life's tangled thread,
The brighter the rich design." Anon.
Not unconscious of the argument against our earth's
antiquity, drawn from the genealogies of Christ, a few reasons
are appended to show that they do not historically fix the
age of the world.
These genealogies prove that the computation of time was
attended to in early periods ; but the variations show that
chronology was always subordinate to the greater work of
marking the line or family in which our Lord's birth was to
be realised. Not even on this account were all the names
preserved : it was the practice of the Hebrews to omit names
from their genealogies for moral and judicial reasons ; x and
in the times from the patriarchs down to Moses, or even to
David, one name sometimes stands for a whole century in the
genealogical series. The sojourn in Egypt of four hundred
and thirty years has only the names of Levi, Kohath, Amram,
Aaron, Eleazar, to correspond to it ; and five of the tribe of
Judah — Pharez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon. It
was also the custom to repeat ancestral names generation
after generation : the Pharaohs, Benhadads, Abimelechs of
Gerar, show this. Definite round numbers were likewise
1 "The New Testament," Luke iii. 31-38 : Bishop Wordsworth.

154 Interpretation of the Days.
chosen ; for example, from the patriarchs to David are ten
generations (Ruth iv. 18-22) ; but we learn from other sources
(1 Chron. vi. 1) that twenty- two generations existed between
Levi and David. Ten generations fill up the interval from
Noah's sons to Abram's father ; and further back, from Adam
to Noah (Gen. xi. 10-26, and v.). Sometimes — the Hebrew
having no terms for " grandfather " and " grandson " — grand
sons and great-grandsons are counted sons (Matt. i. 8). Ozias
(Uzziah) was three generations from Joram ; Salathiel, son
of Jechonias (Matt. i. 12), was really son of Neri (Luke iii. 27) ;
Zerubbabel is called son of Salathiel (Matt. i. vz) ; but we are
told (1 Chron. iii. 17) of a different son : Salathiel being
Jeconiah's grandson. A founder's paternity extends, in fact,
over all who derive their origin from him (Gen. xxxi. 28-43 >
1 Chron. ii. 50, 51).
Both the genealogies, by St. Matthew and St. Luke, are
probably not only of Joseph, but also of Mary ; x and if the
Matthan of St. Matthew is the same as the Matthat of St.
Luke, Jacob and Heli were own brothers. St. Matthew
reduces the seventeen generations, from David to the carrying
away into Babylon, to fourteen : leaving out Ahaziah, Joash,
and Amaziah, between Joram and Ozias ; and in order to
make up the fourteen, from the Captivity till Christ, Jeconiah
has to be twice counted. In the genealogy of St. Luke, from
Adam to Abraham, Cainan is inserted between Sala and
Arphaxad, in accordance with the LXX. version. The Hebrew
makes Arphaxad to be aged thirty-five years at the birth of
Salah ; but the LXX. states that Arphaxad was one hundred
and thirty-five when he begat Cainan, and Cainan was one
hundred and thirty when he begat Salah, and adds one hundred
years to the ages of every one of these — Salah, Eber, Peleg,
Reu, Serug, and one hundred and fifty to Nahor. Indeed,
the LXX. adds one thousand four hundred and sixty-six
years to the pre-Abrahamic period. Shem is put first of the
sons of Noah, but was probably the youngest, and Japheth
the eldest (Gen. x. 21 ; 1 Chron. xxvi. 10). St. Paul says
there were four hundred and fifty years of lifetime for the
judges, but only four generations are named — Salmon, Boaz,
1 " Genealogies of our Lord," pp. 57-66 : Lord Arthur Hervey.

Humanity linked with Divinity. 155
Obed, Jesse ; yet for a similar period, from David to the man
hood of Jehoichin, were nineteen or twenty-one generations
(2 Kings xxiv. 8-16). " No interpreter of Scripture, from the
earliest times down to the present day, has ever been able to
identify the ancestors of Christ, mentioned by St. Matthew
or St. Luke, with any of the descendants of Zeiubbabel, or
other members of the house of David, whose names are
recorded in the Old Testament." x
From B.C. 536 to B.C. 457, is only seventy-nine years ; yet
six generations are named (1 Chron. iii. 17-24). In our copies
of St. Luke,_ there are seventy-six generations from Adam to
Christ ; but Irenaeus speaks of seventy-two, Augustine made
seventy-seven — a mystical number from which he extracted
wonders. It is also significant that in the whole time from
the entrance to Canaan till the birth of Samuel, a space of
four hundred years, only three high priests are named :
Eleazar, Phinehas, Eli.
These examples, which can be multiplied, suffice to show
that names are used to bring us into contact with regions and
epochs : not as accurate measures of time, but as links to
unite the old and ever-young humanity with God by means
of Jesus Christ. Names, placed in symmetrical series ; and
numbers three, seven, ten, forty, reduced, or increased, or
multiplied ; are chosen with symbolical meaning. Indeed, at
first there was no permanent chronological era even in com
mon life. Facts were handed down, by memory and tradition,
from father to son. As for Scripture, the words of every
account extend to some great man — to the patriarchs, to
Noah, to Adam, thence to God. There are no ways of his
torically filling these gaps. Names actually and literally true,
as applied to individuals, are also applied symbolically and
collectively to the families, tribes, nations, by whom the earth
was replenished. We arrive at the conclusion that chronology,
in an exact and scientific sense, lies altogether outside of
Revelation ; only exists in Holy Scripture for genealogical,
not scientific purposes : charges of errors as to chronology
are not to be regarded, are beside the scope of Scripture, do
not affect those divine and spiritual truths which it is the
object of Revelation to teach.
1 "Genealogies of Our Lord," p. 94 : Lord Arthur Hervey.

STUDY VIII.
DAY I. — LIGHT.
"Truth is the Body of God, and Light is His Shadow." —Plato.
" Sicut lux si ipsum et tenebras manifestat, sic Veritas norma sui et falsa est." —
Spinoza. Stellar Worlds existed before the earth. The poetry of
Job (xxxviii. 7) is beautiful and true : when the foundations
of the earth were laid, " the morning stars sang together, and
all the sons of God shouted for joy." We adopt the words of
St. Jerome — " What eternities, what times, what originals of
ages, must we not think there were before ; in which angels,
thrones, dominions, and the other powers served God ; and
existed apart from the changes and measures of times ? "
Light is a wave-like movement, a peculiar shivering motion
of the ultimate particles of bodies. The all-pervading aether
takes up these molecular tremors, and conveys them with
inconceivable swiftness to our organs of vision. This trans
ported shiver of bodies, millions of miles distant, which
awakes the splendour of day, and shines in the firmament at
night, is, when translated into human consciousness, light.
When we detect by a thermometer, or by the sensation, that
from which, as Locke says, we denominate the object " hot,"
that is heat ; and when we become aware of it by the eye, it
is called " light."
There is no body in nature absolutely cold, and every
body not absolutely cold emits rays of heat. To render
radiant heat visible, it must be raised to a certain temperature,
when it emits a feeble red light ; as heat grows, light augments
in brilliancy, until, finally, it is dazzling white. " The differ
ence between radiant heat and light is simply the difference
between a low note and a high one." x If we conceive the
1 " Recent Advances in Physical Science : " Prof. P. G. Tait.

Our Conception of Light. 157
universe as consisting of non-luminous, formless matter, and
then, in scientific use of imagination, endeavour to realise
the growing warmth of all things, as the vibrations of matter
are quickened and intensified into the amplitude of luminous
oscillations in the various series of worlds, we shall have some
faint conception of God's wonderful work when He said —
" Let there be light ; " " And forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep.
***** Yet the sun
Was not ; she in cloudy tabernacle
Sojourned the while." Paradise Lost.
" Ignea convexi vis et sine pondere cceli
Emicuit, summaque locum sibi legit in arce."
Ovid, Met. lib. i.
Or, more scientifically, " As in nebulous sphere, just become
luminous, and in the new red-hot liquid earth of our modern
cosmogony, light was not yet divided into suns and stars, nor
time into day and night." x
Let a current of electricity, of gradually increasing strength,
be sent through a platinum wire ; the particles of metal
instantly vibrate with accelerating speed, and the wire be
comes warm to the touch ; but there is no light. At length,
when the heat has grown, there is a faint red illumination.
The glow augments with increasing heat, the red becomes
more brilliant, orange rays are added ; besides these appear
yellow, then the green comes, and in succession, blue, indigo,
violet rays. When the simultaneous action of all the colours
produces the effect or impression of whiteness on the optic
nerve, they are blended into one, and the light is perfect.
We now, in some measure, have a conception of light going
forth out of darkness. At whatever period, or in whatever
manner, during the integration of our solar nebula into a
planetary system, light began to shine, the heat would be
the equivalent of the work of integration ; and as the heat
quickened in vibration, from the low to the high note, the
* " Interaction of Natural Forces : " Prof. Helmholtz.

158 Light.
brightness would increase — the energy of heat would be trans
formed more or less into that of light. If the whole mass of
the earth was agglomerated almost at once, and if the different
parts impinged together with properly arranged velocities,
we can note the state of things before and after that moment.
Before — were scattered masses of matter. Then — at the
instant of impact, the integrated mass became of high tem
perature, and light shone. Before that moment was darkness,
after it was light. We cannot imagine that Moses, though
learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians, knew this ; or knew
that the elementary atoms have their own shapes and powers,
whereby they arrange themselves into molecules of exceeding
complication and varying vibration ; or could be aware
that 458,000,000,000,000 vibrations in a second are neces
sary, in order to give us the consciousness of the lowest or red
light ; and we wonder that, in relating the primal illumination
of the earth, he tells us first of the light, and after that of the
luminous body — the sun.
That which caused the integration of the earth, and of the
sun, and the production of light and heat, was energy. Energy
may be defined as the power of doing work. There is always
a tendency, in every transformation of energy, to pass from a
higher to a lower form ; indeed, all the energy in the universe
is passing on to the lowest and final form of equally diffused
heat. This, the dissipation of energy, is by no means well
understood. There can be little question that the principle
concerns the whole theory of thermo-electricity, of chemical
combination, of allotropy, of fluorescence, etc., and perhaps
matters of a higher order than common physics and chemistry.
In astronomy, it shows us the material of potential suns, suns
in the process of formation, in vigorous youth, in the phase of
habitation for life, and in every stage of lingering decay. It
reveals to us every planet and satellite as formerly a tiny sun.
It carries forward our thought to that time when the materials
of present systems shall be component parts of future larger suns
and planets. Finally, it conducts us to that necessary future,
if physical laws remain unchanged, when the present warm
glittering show of life will be dark and (fold and deadr' It also
reminds us of a beginning, a state beyond which we are totally

Vibrations of Light. 159
unable to penetrate, a state produced by other than now
visibly acting causes, by that transfer of energy from the
Unknown, of which the universe and all material phenomena
are memorials.
The elementary atoms, possessing their own shapes and
powers, arrange themselves into molecules of manifold com
bination, and exceeding variety of vibrations. When raised
to incandescence, or white heat, and their lights are tested by
spectrum analysis, the glowing vapours indicate, by lines, the
different elements which are present : thus we learn of what
materials the sun and stars are composed.
Heat and light are the product of a transfer of energy.
Transfer of energy, through a solid body, is effected simply
by vibration of the solid body ; through air, by setting it in
motion at its own period of vibration ; through what we call
a vacuum, by the magnetic medium — that which Clerk Max
well gives reason to believe is the medium which conveys
light and radiant heat. Vibrations in the atmosphere, occur
ring less frequently than sixteen times in a second, produce
in us consciousness of a succession of noises. Vibrations
occurring oftener than 16, but less than 30,000 times in a
second, produce in us the consciousness of musical notes,
varying in pitch with the vibrations. Vibrations in the aether,
occurring oftener than 30,000, but less than 458,000,000,000,000
times in a second, do not affect us through the ears ; but the
more rapid ones, acting through the nerves of the skin, pro
duce in us the consciousness of heat. Vibrations at the rate
of 458,000,000,000,000 in a second, affect us through the eyes,
and produce our consciousness of red light. As the vibrations
increase, corresponding shades of colour appear, until, at the
rate of 727,000,000,000,000 in a second, we have the con
sciousness of violet light. Higher rates produce the invisible
actinic rays, which excite no definite state of consciousness
in us. Thus, by one and the same external agency — vibra
tions among particles of matter — are sensations caused —
different, as sound, heat, light, actinism.
In sound-waves, the particles of air vibrate back and for
ward in the direction travelled by the sound. If, by another

160 Light.
sound, we raise such undulations as fill the depressions in the
waves of the former sound, this adding of sound to sound
will cause silence. Light and heat travel through aether at
the rate of about 186,000 miles a second, the direction of the
vibrations being across the path in which they move. Two
sets of rays may be made so to interfere with one another, as
to be mutually destructive : the two rays of light produce
darkness, and the two rays of heat cause heat to disappear.1
Passing a slice of solar or of electric light through a prism,
we unroll it into the beautiful colours of the spectrum. At
one end is the red, at the other the violet, the remaining
prismatic colours lying -between. Red is hottest of the
colours, and beyond it are the invisible rays called heat rays.
Violet is the coldest, and beyond it are the invisible actinic or
chemical rays. In the three — heat, light, actinism, resides
the miraculous generative energy which fills the earth with
warmth, life, splendour. Concerning their nature, whether
we call it vibration, or heat, or light, or actinism, we affirm
nothing, and know nothing. Aristotle, one of the most
thoughtful men, would say — the energy streamed from God,
the Infinite and Eternal Mind, as light issues from the sun —
whereby the blood heats, and the blossom blows, and the sea
rolls, and all the world is warmed.
To a certain extent, we can give a mechanical explanation
of heat and light as the products presented to our conscious
ness of a perpetual trembling, or swaying to and fro, of the
invisible atoms which visible bodies consist of; but, when
the explanation is connected with the linked purpose of the
whole, we are conscious of wisdom and might exceeding all
our thought. Light, wonderful and mysterious, is but a single
point in the vast scheme of Nature. When we contemplate
the heavens some clear autumnal evening, and marvel at the
beauty of Sirius, that starry splendour is brought to us by
medium of atomic shivers maintained, during the past twenty-
two years, at the average rate of six hundred millions of
millions of vibrations the second ; and reveals a scheme of
worlds and possible sphere of life, vaster than our own. Nor
is that all : several optical phenomena indicate that a dis-
1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 205 : Prof. P. G. Tait.

The Medium of Light. 161
tarbance partaking, if such be possible, of the nature of
compression would be transmitted with a velocity almost
infinitely great in comparison with the existing velocity. We
may ascend by this thought to the possible nature of the
means by which intelligence is conveyed to other beings of
the things that are done in our world.
The medium actually used, aether, is specially fitted for the
transmission of the waves which constitute light. These
waves are so small, that from forty to fifty thousand are
required to occupy the breadth of an inch, and trillions enter
the eye during a few seconds. The red wave has a length
the io-,T$ft!oTOth part of an inch. In one second 458 millions of
millions of vibrations occur. At the line H, in the violet, the
length of the wave is the rcoWroo-th part of an inch ; and the
number of vibrations is 727 millions of millions the second.1
The optic nerve is not conscious of the heat in the hot rays,
nor of waves larger than the red, nor of those smaller than
the violet. The eye is only able to see different proportions
of the three primaries — red, green, violet ; therefore, our sight
may be fairly considered as rudimentary. " Take the number
of fibres in the optic nerves as two hundred and fifty thou
sand. Every one of these is capable of innumerable different
degrees of sensation of one, two, or three primary colours." 2
What a manifold undeveloped system of signs and images we
have within us ! We cannot but think that their wonderful
potentialities are prophecy of a coming richness and fulness.
In all creatures the eye is a wonderful instrument; but,
probably, the eyes of insects excite highest admiration. On
the heads of beetles, bees, flies, butterflies, and other insects,
are two protuberances; these, examined by the microscope,
are found to contain a prodigious number of small transparent
hemispheres, placed with the utmost regularity in lines cross
ing one another as lattice-work. These hemispheres are eyes
which, like so many mirrors, reflect the images of surrounding
objects. Some insects possess thousands : so abundant is the
supply of light and gladness even to smallest creatures. A
1 " Spectrum Analysis," p. II : Henry E. Roscoe.
2 "The Perception of Sight: " Prof. Helmholtz. M

1 62 Light.
manifold infinite adaptation of means is unfolded for our
contemplation. We know what a language of twenty-six letters does in
collecting, preserving, enabling us to verify the experiences of
millions of men in thousands of generations. All this seems
nothing in comparison with light, which brings revelations
from star-depths, and which even our present optic nerves
when all developed into use, may translate into human con
sciousness, forming distinct physical images of operations
wrought by ministers of flame, or by guardian spirits, or by
cherubim and seraphim. We may be able to see waves of
radiance, at the rate of six hundred millions of millions the
second, impart their motor energy to the atoms which vibrate
in unison in the molecules of growing grass and flower ; and
behold how these are arranged by tremendous chemical
energy into their substance and tissues ; so that grass and
flower, adorning the earth ; bird, beast, man, filling the world
with life ; are metamorphosed beams of light. Who is he
that will not worship the invisible God, and say ? —
" Well hast Thou taught the way that might direct
Our knowledge, and the scale of nature set
From centre to circumference ; whereon,
In contemplation of created things,
By steps we may ascend to Thee. " Paradise Lost.
Every kind of light is not equally suited for vegetation.
Lamp-light, gas, petroleum-light, are poor in chemical rays.
The white Bengal light of arsenic, the flames of the blue
Bengal light, and of burning sulphur, produce a more powerful
chemical effect ; but, in photographic power, are surpassed by
lime, magnesium, electric lights ; the most important light, in
every respect, is sunlight.
The pure earths, when violently heated, yield from their
surfaces lights of extraordinary splendour. " We have pretty
good reason to believe, that probably all the planets emit, light
in some degree ; for the illumination which remains in the
moon in a total eclipse cannot be ascribed entirely to the light
which may reach it by the refraction of the earth's atmosphere."1
1 " The Sun : " R. A. Proctor, quoted from Sir Wm. Herschell.

Our Sensation of Light. 163
Humboldt, in his " Cosmos," writes — " The earth becomes self-
luminous ; besides the light which, as a planet, it receives
from the central body, it shows a capacity of sustaining a
luminous process proper to itself." The words of Schubert
are very beautiful — " What if every proper polar light, which
we call the Aurora of the North, were the last glimmer of
a twilight of a world-day that has set, when the whole earth
was surrounded by an expanse of air, from which the electro
magnetic forces radiated light in a much greater degree than
that of the polar light, and at the same time with animating
heat, in a manner almost similar to what still occurs in the
luminous atmosphere of the sun." :
It is not light only which produces the sensation of bright
ness. The weakest electrical currents passed through the eye
produce consciousness in the mind of flashes of light. A
blow or pressure on the side of the eyeball with a finger,
gives an impression of light. Fevers, contamination by nar
cotic or intoxicating drugs, by causing increased pressure of
blood, excite sensations of light. Even when the eye has
been destroyed, irritation of the stumps of the optic nerve
produces like feelings.
The peculiarities which separate the sensation of light from
all others do not depend upon any peculiar qualities of light
itself; the working power of Nature is something in and yet
beyond us. While moving silently in the chambers of our
consciousness, it heats the atmosphere, produces the winds,
and thereby shakes the ocean ; it gives life to forest and field,
to cattle on a thousand hills, and reveals to man the wonderful
works of God. In human affairs, " ars est celare artem ; " and
Moses, when he made known the fact that light preceded the
luminary, and began that marvellous work which the sun had
appointment to rule and perfect, was guided by a higher
wisdom than is common to man. An experiment may illus
trate this. Converge the rays of an electric light by means
of a concave mirror. Place between the luminous focus and
the source of rays a solution of iodine in bisulphide of carbon.
Now the light is cut away, but the dark hot rays are still
there ; try — your hand cannot endure even for a moment the
1 Quoted in " Kurtz's History ofthe Old Covenant."

164 Light.
intense heat. At this focus you may burn all that is burnable,
and that which cannot be burned raise to white heat and
light. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the invisible cold
ultra-violet rays may have their refrangibility lowered and
become visible. Thus beautiful colours shine visibly forth,
and light is extracted from darkness to discourse in har
monious tongues of musical flame. " Day unto day uttereth
speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."
We now understand somewhat ofthe creative, architectural,
beautifying, vivifying process, which began in our earth with
that wonderful going-forth of energy by whose operation light
sparkled into existence. This statement is not too scientific
for Scripture, though Scripture is no teacher of science. We
are not would-be discoverers in Bible language of latent physical
systems, but endeavour to " bring forth things new and old."
" If any one were to suggest that the nebular hypothesis
countenances the Scripture statement as to light, by showing
how the luminous matter of the sun might exist previous
to the sun itself, we should act wisely in rejecting such an
attempt to weave together two heterogeneous threads ; the one
a part of a providential scheme, the other a fragment of a
spiritual speculation." x Despite this, if Scripture is assailed
by perversion of science, we are warranted in the use of
scientific weapons for defence. If, with the growth of science,
our ideas and knowledge of Nature are enlarged ; so is it the
crown and glory of Scripture to reveal deeper depths of
physical, intellectual, and moral meaning in the recesses of
sacred language, as we search with clearer, purer light. " I
think it to be the character of Holy Scripture (as it is in
a measure of all deep sayings, even though human) that
it contains much more than at first sight appears ; that it
requires to be searched into, i.e. below the surface ; that it
yields mines of treasure when so searched, which those who
are content to remain on the surface do not see."2 We
rightly refuse explanations, fashioned by ignorance ; scorn
concessions, prompted by cowardice ; and rebuke those whose
defences are rather surrenders than vindications of sacred
mysteries. The Bible speaks with words that live for ever,
1 " Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences : " Wm. Whewell, D.D.
2 "Daniel the Prophet," intr. p. lxxv. : Dr. Pusey.

Light a Revelation. 165
and utters truths which only ages of advanced intelligence
can fully understand ; artless for the childhood of our race,
and in highest style of wisdom for those who are great in
truth. In stating the scientific aspects and explanations of light,
we not only aim at vindicating the accuracy of the Mosaic
account, but convey other lessons concerning the presence of
Mind in the world. In those simple but grand words —
" Let light be, and light was," we have in briefest form the
most comprehensive expression of Almighty Power working
in accordance with Infinite Wisdom. Light stands at the
summit of things, so subtile, so delicate, almost supersensuous,
as were it a link between spirit and matter. A creature, shall
we say, of infinite extent, of unsurpassed beauty, entering all
worlds and passing beyond all worlds, itself unseen yet
revealing all things ; a revelation of the works as Holy
Scripture is a revelation of the thoughts of God ? Light,
alone among all the Divine workings and products of Nature,
is found worthy to symbolise the Divine Being Himself. In
it we have deep and real analogies of the seen and the
unseen ; and in it, as an unspotted mirror, we behold the
image of God's goodness ; light is revelation. Sometimes a
hidden revelation ! What is it that enables mighty engines
unweariedly to traverse iron roads, and" ocean steamers to
visit far-off lands ? It is light — concealed and buried in the
earth for thousands of years, light — absorbed by plants as
they built up themselves in strength, and then were changed,
fields of vegetation becoming fields of coal. So the latent
light of Scripture — that not visible even to prophets and
apostles — is shining in these latter days. Men of science
digging deep to the very centre of things are gladdened. The
earth is revealed as a palace of marvels, the Bible manifests a
long-hidden splendour.
It is time for all who would live the higher life, to learn
that contemptuous negation of Scripture — the Revelation of
God in man's realm of thought, and in the literature of the
world — is not wise nor safe. Men of faith are supplementing
faith by knowledge. Men of science must add faith to know-

1 66 Light.
ledge. Before fighting as to the colour of a shield, both
should regard the other side. The two hemispheres of faith
and knowledge unite in the full orb of a perfect life. The
faith that listens and obeys, ennobles the science that greatly
achieves. The physicist, as physicist, can know nothing con
cerning the true doctrine of Holy Trinity; nor can the
chemist, as chemist, solve the salutary doctrine of redemption;
these sacred verities are the other side, the spiritual view of
things, which the natural man cannot discern so long as he
will only see the near and physical. The perfect man
possesses that scientific mind and that religious mind which,
as two eyes of the soul, view both aspects of the universe.
As an accurate thinker of widest range, his piety chastened
by actual knowledge of Nature, his science elevated by more
and more discernment of the spiritual in the secular, he is
prepared to dwell in everlasting mansions with Him whose
visible garment is the beautiful life and glowing splendour of
many worlds.
Shall we, whom religion and science unite to teach that
creation is extending dominion over chaos, use light only to
photograph Egyptian sepulchres ? Shall we, while carrying
it into subterranean depths, forget that spiritual phenomena
are also a definite part of the organic manifestation ? Are all
high things explained by the lower? or, rather, shall the
lower find true meaning in the higher? Space exists for
matter, matter for life, life for spirit ; is there no existence,
no life, apart from matter ? May there not be intelligences
existing neither in space, nor out of space, but with eternity
as home ? Are not space and time two sides of the ladder,
whose rungs are those grades of marvellous organisms, those
ascents of life, those elevations of human soul, by which in
telligence travels up to heaven, and above heaven to God ?
Holy Scripture speaks of angels, of archangels, of bright
abodes for the spirits of just men made perfect. Why not
believe it all ? Some maligners of Scripture seem to have
lost all receptiveness of that Divine magnetism by which the
good and true are drawn heavenward ? Are we, who possess
it, to deny the blessed influence ? If the internal structure
of an atheist's mind, by continual denial of the Divine Spirit,

Ascents of Life. 167
becomes unspiritual and sensual ; shall we account the churl
liberal, the unbeliever devout, and declare that we also are
nothing but atomic arrangements containing certain mixed
gases ? Some critics call Shakespeare a wild genius without
arrangement. Truer critics find that he is an artist of first
order and accuracy ; ever rising to that height which, as he
cannot be followed by the feeble, nor the ascent be seen by
the dim, is by them counted mystic and unreal. These are
the men who find the Bible a common book, and complain of
every part. What matter ? despite wit and malice, perver
sion of learning and wickedness of unbelief, those sacred
pages guide the intellect and cheer the heart of the greatest
and purest of our race. They are the light of truth sent out
by the Almighty to lead us to His holy hill.
" Fainting, soul, arise and sing;
Mount, but be sober on the wing ;
Mount up, for Heaven is won by prayer ;
Be sober, for thou art not there.
Thy God hath said, ' 'Tis good for thee
To walk by faith and not by sight ; '
Take it on trust a little while.
Soon shalt thou read the mystery right
In the full sunshine of His smile." Keble.

STUDY IX.
DAY II. — "GOD MADE THE FIRMAMENT."
" Was war' ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse,
Im kreis das all am Finger laufen liesse I
Ihm ziemts', die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in sich, sich in Natur, zu hegen.
So dass was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist
Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vennisst."
Goethe.
"Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is
Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and
humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the
contrite ones." — Isaiah.
The second day's work was not praised for being good. We
know not why, unless the work, being imperfect as to the
earth until the third day, and not complete as to heaven till
the fourth day, the blessing waited for the delicately formed
plant and the cheerful sun, when it would be well seen that
God filled the earth with the fruit of His works, and covered
Himself with light as with a garment.
The sacred narrative of the earth's early state would natu
rally have that meaning applied to it by early and unscientific
men, which the appearance of things suggested. Being told
of a firmament dividing the waters above from the waters
below, they possibly thought of a transparent floor in the
skies, on which the upper waters rested, and may have
pictured " the earth standing in the centre of a hollow crystal
sphere, in which the stars were fixed like golden nails ;" but
observation and reason soon showed that rain could not
descend through such a floor, and that the waters above the
firmament were, as St. Augustine thought, in a state of

Ancient Poetic Phrases. 169
vapour. Even a rustic would not think that the sky was a
solid vault, nor call the stars bright nails fixed in to hold it
up. The Hebrew people saw birds soar aloft, and the moon
cross the sky ; the intelligent knew of the connection between
cloud and rain ; none but the dullest would imagine that the
sky was solid.
The phrases "windows of heaven " (Gen. vii. 11), " founda
tions" (2 Sam. xxii. 8), " pillars " (Job xxvi. 11), "doors"
(Ps. lxxviii. 23), have led unpoetic persons to imagine that
Moses and the Hebrews really did think of the firmament as
a solid vault in which fowls fly and winds blow. The ancient
sages were not so simple. These poetic expressions, and
others like that of Job (xxxvii. 18), " The sky, which is strong
and as a molten looking-glass," are sometimes a contrast,
sometimes a comparison. Job meant that the sky, though
rare, fine, and spread out, is established and strong as metal.
Ancient worthies had a better understanding of things than
our modern conceit gives them credit for. They knew that
the earth was hung upon nothing (Job xxvi. 7), and when
they spoke of it as firm and not to be moved, it was in the
sense of being sustained by the Almighty. They knew of the
sea as a fountain to water the whole earth (Amos ix. 6) ; of
the rivers returning to it again (Eccl. i. 7) ; of the firmament
as an expanse ; of light existing apart from the sun ; and of
stars innumerable, or, as an astronomer would say — " Like
grains of sand on the sea-shore." They accounted the present
as but a momentary space in the interval between two eter
nities, earning blessings or cursings for ever according to
man's efforts to do good and hate evil. They thought of the
future as a home of rest from evil, a place of everlasting
beauty, in which the whole creation should praise God. They
saw living things and men in a vast procession, not urged by
blind force, but guided by Divine Intelligence to higher
activities and more glorious spheres.
The knowledge of ancient sages was indeed wonderful.
We are beginning to be conscious of it. For some time
before the age of Sir Isaac Newton, the physical system
commonly accepted was the Ptolemaic ; but Newton proved
that it was erroneous, and demonstrated the truth of the

170 "God made the Firmament."
Copernican, which had been propounded by Pythagoras, two
thousand years before. According to that system, the sun is
the centre around which the planets and satellites revolve.
This one example, chosen from many that might be given, is
proof that those who lived in the early days of mankind
possessed wisdom that often pierced the outward form and
natural aspect of things to discern inner meaning and power.
Inspired men regarded God as the One who bound up the
thick clouds with strength, that the waters might not rend
them (Job xxvi. 8) ; who apportioned the atmosphere, made
a balance for the winds, a decree for the rain, and a path for
the lightning (Job xxviii. 24-27). Solomon, or whosoever it
was that wrote in his name, had understanding of the wind.
going toward the south, the turning about unto the north, and,
why the fulness of the sea was not over-fulness (Eccl. i. 6, 7).
Science, since those old-world days, has weighed the wind,
traced its path whirling in continual currents. We know that
an atmospheric pressure of fifteen tons is on every man, and
that, if it were not so, our lungs could not well use the air.
It is a physical fact, that the air of the firmament, by a secret
process, raises and suspends water, eight hundred times heavier
than itself ; and in quantity so vast that if it descended at
once upon the earth, the world would be deluged ; and by
ascent so graduated that the earth is not unduly parched, nor
animal nor vegetable destroyed. Those ancients were not
fools, and, great as is the advance of modern science, no man
has exceeded Solomon in wisdom, or Job in philosophy, or
convinced Moses of folly for saying, " God made the firma
ment, and divided the waters which were under the firmament
from the waters which were above the firmament."
The genius of ancient worthies was not less marvellous
than their knowledge. There were gleams of spirit and
touches of genius which remind us of the best and purest
portions of the classic page, which indeed they surpass. As a
literary production, there is nothing in any ancient or modern
book equal in simplicity, or beauty, or grandeur, to the
account by Moses of creation, which seems purposely written
for our own time. The Book of Job cannot be styled less
than perfect, the Psalms are matchless, Isaiah sublime. The

Genius of Ancient Worthies. 171
whole Bible remains ever fresh by the life that is in it ;
creates new interest in men of every age, not only by the
letter, but specially by the spirit. It is adapted to the various
stages of history, and illustrates the great principles of moral
government. It possesses a wider influence than when
originally spoken, and delights us with the charm of novelty
as were it newly found. It is rendered more romantic than
the romance thrown into it by Divinity of origin, through the
sacred subduing sadness which pervades it, and by the high
art of embalming the spirit, the thought, the laws, the life of
a whole nation. The words of graceful imagery with which
patriarchs and prophets describe God and His works, the ruin
of beauty and glory by sin, are in the power of true world-
poets. Sometimes the form of language is child-like, and
the figures express our commonest notions ; but that child
like body is of excellent form, takes hold of our life, wins
homage and love from the purest and wisest of mankind.
The representation of perfection and beauty in Divinity is
entrancing, and our delight deepens into awe. Sacred anger
is aroused as, before our very eyes, a malignant hand, by a
few wickedly skilful dark strokes, turns favour into disfavour ;
that the purpose of God and the image of man may be dis
torted and defaced. The two hemispheres of representation —
Divine holiness and Satanic iniquity — are then separated by
a firmament of mercy. Beneath that firmament are forgive
ness and sanctification ; above that firmament, ascending to
the height, are promises of regeneration to the earth, of glori
fication to men, the likeness of a throne, and upon the throne
the appearance of a man (Ezek. i. 26).
" Aye, gloriously thou standest there,
Beautiful, boundless firmament !
That swelling wide o'er earth and air,
And round the horizon bent,
With thy bright vault and sapphire wall,
Dost overhang and circle all. "
William Cullen Bryant.
Beware of regarding the primeval waters as existing in their
present state. They were full of mineral and earthy ingre
dients, surcharged with gaseous elements ; rather a molten

172 " God made the Firmament."
mass of fluid and gaseous condition than water, as seen now,
cooled down and formed by the chemical affinity of oxygen
and hydrogen. Thick steam, arising from this heated water
and the other matters held in solution, rendered the circum
ference of the earth moist and cloudy. By some inscrutable
operation, vapours and gaseous elements were more and more
separated and differentiated from mineral parts — made to rise
out of the water, and expanded to become constituents of the
present life-sustaining atmosphere. Whatever it was, there
seems to have been a power which decomposed the fluid matter
or water, and formed the atmosphere which evaporated
the surplus vapour, — a power of attraction and contraction
on one hand, a power of repulsion and expansion on the
other. This power, by a peculiar law, the diffusion principle,
abstracted the elements of the firmament from submission to
the universal law of gravity, enabled the watery vapour to
penetrate it with perfect freedom, and to become a well-
spring of life in the atmospheric streams surrounding our
earth. The words — " Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," express
the relative degrees of expansion. Those under the firma
ment are of less expansive principle ; those above the fir
mament, being of more subtile or higher expansive principle,
incline to ascend. Thus a division, ever varying in extent
and degree, is established by means of the atmosphere.
In speaking of the dew-point temperature, we mean the
temperature of the air at which the invisible vapour of water
existing in it at the time would saturate it if the air were
cooled down. The higher the temperature of the air, the
greater the quantity of invisible vapour of water it will hold.
The amount of vapour which the air will hold increases in
a greater ratio than the temperature. Air at 80° will hold
more than double the amount of vapour it would hold at 400.
If anything cools down the air below dew-point, part of the
vapour is condensed, changed into water, becomes visible as
mist or cloud. When a glass of cold water is brought into
a room, we often see dew deposited upon the surface of the
glass ; this is caused by the water in the glass (and, as a con
sequence, the glass itself) being below the temperature of the

The Dew-Point. 173
dew-point of the air in the room. All contrivances to find
the dew-point really mean to get at the neutral point, or
exact temperature when no dew will be deposited upon the
glass, and no evaporation take place from the surface of the
water. The dew-point temperature, even in this country, is
sometimes 30° to 40° below the temperature of the air.
If the sun was so far conditioned as to shine out beyond
his own vapours, the hypothesis is that earth-clouds excluded
the light from our own planet, and covered the surface of
the deep with gloomy obscurity, like that of evening and early
morn. Our earth, with this robe of vapour, and earlier separ
ated from the original mass than were Venus and Mercury,
would probably, to a distant beholder, seem to have fleecy
shifting, dissolving bands, dense masses of clouds driven of
winds and tossed, such as we now behold by telescopic
examination of the planet Jupiter. This vast planet is en
circled by similar great cloud-belts, such as the sun is incom
petent to raise. Cloud-layer upon cloud-layer cover the
seething surface of that far-off world, which appears to be
passing through those stages which marked the earth's early
course ; and, small as is the visible sun there, the skies seem
in formation by the establishment of a firmament like our
own, to divide the waters which are under the firmament from
the waters which are above the firmament.
This may be expressed in another form. The firmament
is not strictly the air itself, still less a solid vault, falsely con
ceived to exist, but that visible hemisphere of sky which
encloses the earth and sea. We ought never to depart from
the optical view in explaining the sacred narrative, but that
view must be explained and enlarged by an instructed
intellect. Intellect tells us — " Were the matter of the universe
cast in cold detached fragments into space, and there aban
doned to the mutual gravitation of its own parts, the collision
of the fragments would in the end produce the fires of the
stars." x This separating of materials, then the gathering of
meteoric masses into centres of conflagration, give us one star
differing from another star, and the firmamental expanse.
Further, we are told that "the planets exterior to Mars,
1 "The Constitution of Nature : " Prof. Tyndall.

1 74 " God made the Firmament."
Jupiter, Saturn, especially the best known of them, appear
to be spheres of water and of aqueous vapour, combined, it
may be, with atmospheric air. ... It was agreeable to the
general scheme that the excess of water and vapour should
be packed into rotating masses, such as are Jupiter and
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. . . . Thus the vapour which
otherwise would have wandered loose about the atmosphere,
was neatly wound into balls, which again were kept in their
due place by being made to revolve in nearly circular orbits
about the sun." x The scientific theory is, and it can be no
more than theory, that for our earth, with a robe of vapour
around, seems to have been formed a sensible expanse, or
middle region of clearer atmosphere, separating the waters
depositing below from those drawn upward ; and transferring,
yet containing the sea of mist, by passing it into pure in
visible vapour. Scripture states — the Lord bound up the
waters in the thick cloud (Job xxvi. 8), in His discretion
stretched out the heavens (Jer. x. 12), caused the vapours to
ascend from the ends of the earth, made lightnings for the
rain, and brought the wind out of His treasures (Ps. cxxxv. 7).
" Divide the waters from the waters." " The clouds are, in
Scripture metaphor, the bottles of heaven. They are the
instruments by which, when the windows of heaven are
opened, some of the waters above the firmament are trans
ferred from thei'r celestial reservoir, and descend in showers
to rejoin, by the springs and rivers, the gathering of the
waters in seas below the firmament." 2 Mists and clouds were
said to be formed of a multitude of hollow vesicles with
exceedingly thin covering. These vesicles vary from Y 42.22
to 1 '2620 of an inch in diameter. This theory — that water in
the clouds is in the state of small vesicles, or bladders, con
taining air — is not now received. The particles of water are
so small and so light in weight that they float in the atmo
sphere, the air being as an elastic cushion beneath them. The
aerial body of the atmosphere is of distinct and separate
character from the vaporous portion contained within its
1 " Theory of the Solar System : " Dr. Whewell.
2 "The Bible and Modem Thought : " Notes, Rev. T. R. Birks.

Water in the Firmament. 175
interstices. By the formation of clouds, their elevation into
the air, their easy and rapid movement by means of the
atmosphere, the earth is refreshed with dew and moistened
with water ; while, by pressure of the very atmosphere into
which moisture is raised, the too quick evaporation of liquids
and the dispersion of many solids are prevented. It has been
ever the same during historic time', for the air contained in a
jar, buried at the destruction of Pompeii, was like that now
covering the earth ; the breezes of Africa, wind on the lofty
Alps, the atmosphere of England, are of uniform constitution.
Bearing the breath of life to animals, and nourishment to
plants, it is a faithful conservatory of blessings —
" The earth waxed proud withal
For sweet dews that on it fall." Chaucer.
If, in popular conception of the firmament, we take it as the
sensible limit between the visible and invisible ; then all water
visible to the senses, whether in the seas or in the clouds, is
described as under the firmament ; and all that which is in
visible or concealed from the senses is stated to be above the
firmament. Out of this state of invisibility the rain appears
to fertilise the earth. This is opening the windows of heaven,
pouring out of the bottles, the descent of the waters from
above the firmament to mingle with those below. If we stand
and look into the azure of the sky when the clouds seem to
give out their evaporation, or consider the rain descending
through bands of light, we discern a fulness in the words —
" God made the firmament, and divided the waters," to which
modern art cannot add.
The operations which formed the firmament, gathered the
waters, upheaved the dry land, prove that the sun was already
in existence, and exerting those mighty energies by which, in
conjunction with earth-powers, land, sea, air, became beautiful
abodes of life.
We may now ascend from these arrangements, by means
of which sunlight pierced to the earth and became beneficial,
to the phenomena of light as affecting our firmament.
Tracing up light as high as we can to its source, we arrive
at particles of matter vibrating as the particles of a tuning-

1 76 " God made the Firmament."
fork vibrate to produce sound. The waves differ in size, form,
energy. All larger than the red, all smaller than the violet,
are incompetent to excite vision. Of those exciting vision,
the largest may be of ten thousand-fold more energy than
those of the smallest ; and of all the waves, visual and non-
visual, a million-fold. They meet different degrees of hindrance
on passing into refracting substances, indeed are actually
pulled asunder when sent through a refracting prism, and
pure unsifted white light separates into an infinity of colours ;
but our sight is limited to seven, called prismatic — red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
The waves, impinging on ordinary clouds, are divided into
a reflected part and a transmitted part ; when they pass from
light air into dense, or from dense air into light, a portion of
the wave-motion is always reflected, and the reflected light
is the liglit of our firmament. This light is blue, because the
blue is reflected ; the orange and red are transmitted, or
break through, being more forcible ; the others are scattered,
and blue is the chief colour of scattered light. The trans
mitted light, that which comes to us, appears yellowish when
short distances are traversed ; but, as the sun descends
toward the horizon, the atmospheric distance increases, and
violet, indigo, blue, and a portion of the green, are abstracted
in succession ; and the firmament colours from yellow to
orange, and through orange to red. Thus we have, at noon,
deep azure ; and, at sunset, the warm crimson glow hung as
a curtain between our earth and the black height of infinite
space. We can generate artificial skies by means of vapours.
These vapours are aggregates of molecules of matter, and
every molecule is an aggregate of atoms ; a molecule of
aqueous vapour being two atoms of hydrogen and one of
oxygen ; a molecule of sulphurous acid being one atom of
sulphur and two of oxygen ; a molecule of ammonia being
three atoms of hydrogen and one of nitrogen. They have
motions of their own as wholes, and the atoms have motions
of their own as parts, and the atoms approach one another
or recede, as the separating forces are overcome, cease to act,
or acquire force. They cannot altogether part company

Action of the Firmament. 177
because, besides the repulsive, there is an attractive force ;
and the position of equilibrium is that point at which attrac
tion and repulsion are equal to one another. Take a glass
tube filled with sulphurous acid gas, place it in a dark room,
send through it a powerful beam of light ; the vessel seems
empty as a vacuum, but soon a beautiful sky-blue colour is
seen along the track of the beam. Various other colourless
substances, of the most different properties, optical and
chemical, may be experimented upon to produce the blue of
the sky, luminous clouds, and splendid iridescences.
These colours are called forth in the sky by the shining of
light upon matter ; and minute spheres of water, and minute
crystals of ice, give the grain to the blue vault. Space,
traversed by rays from all suns and stars, is itself unseen ;
and the aether which fills that space, and by its motions lights
up the universe, is invisible. " Colour depends solely upon
the rate of the oscillations of the particles of the luminous
body, red light being produced by one rate, blue light by a
much quicker rate, the colours between red and blue by the
intermediate rates." x Take a tube containing air and amyl
vapour. They are both invisible. Converge the rays of an
electric lamp to a focus in the middle of the tube. For an
instant it is dark, but quickly the beam darts through a
luminous white cloud, the molecules of the nitrite of amyl are
shaken asunder, there is a shower of liquid particles, and the
flash is like " a solid luminous spear." This separation, or
breaking up, is effected by exciting differential motions
among the atoms, and the motions are introduced by the
shock of light-waves from the lamp. The waves most
effectual in shaking asunder compound molecules are not the
red and the ultra-red, but those of least mechanical power, the
violet and ultra-violet. They are probably millions of times
less than the ultra-red waves, yet the great are powerless and
the less are potent. Sky-matter, or matter in the skyey con
dition, which we are now acquainted with, the basis of light,
consists of particles so infinitesimal that the bewildering vast-
ness of the distances in stellar space has here to be reversed ;
by no possible exertion of our present faculties can we picture
1 " Chemical Rays and the Structure and Light of the Sky : " Prof. Tyndall.
N

178 " God made the Firmament."
the ultimate atom. Sir John Herschel calculated that the
matter composing the tail of a comet 100,000,000 miles in
length and 50,000 miles in diameter, would do little more
than fill a wheelbarrow; and, as to all the matter in our
firmament, Professor Tyndall says — " I have sometimes thought
that a lady's portmanteau would contain it all. I have thought
that even a gentleman's portmanteau — possibly his snuff-box
-might take it in."
^Ether-waves untie the bond of chemical affinity by striking
against and breaking up gaseous and other molecules ; in
some cases yield up their motion to these molecules, in others
glide round them, or pass through the inter-molecular spaces
without apparent hindrance. Those waves of aether are
copiously absorbed which synchronise with the periods of the
molecules amongst which they pass, and those are most
copiously transmitted which do not synchronise. Trans
parency is due to inability to absorb luminous rays. Snow and
ice are not dissolved by sunshine, but by the warm dark rays
which are not luminous at all. The gases, oxygen, hydrogen,
nitrogen, and the mixture of atmospheric air, are practical
vacua to the waves of heat.
The experiments on gases have been extended to the
vapours of volatile liquids, which also possess different powers
of intercepting calorific rays. Perfumes, diffused in the air,
though their attenuation is almost infinite, produce a similar
effect. Patchouly scent takes up thirty times the quantity of
heat intercepted by the atmospheric air which carries it.
Patchouly acts more feebly on radiant heat than does any
other perfume yet examined. These perfumes of Scripture
absorb most : cassia, 109 times ; spikenard, 355 ; aniseed, 372.
The vapour of water is the most powerful absorber of radiant
heat hitherto discovered. This vapour is almost infinitesimal
in amount, 99 \ out of every 100 parts of the atmosphere con
sisting of oxygen and nitrogen ; yet this vapour exerts from
100 to 200 times the action of the whole body of air as a heat-
absorber, and is of the utmost consequence to the life of the
world. It takes up the heat-waves, becomes warm, then
enwraps the earth as with a garment to maintain warmth, and,
at the same time, to exclude scorching heat. The radiant heat

Waves of Ait her. 1 79
of the earth not being of power equal to that of the sun, is
unable to pierce this vapour and escape into space ; so that, in
consequence of this difference in action, the mean temperature
of our planet is higher than is due to its distance from the sun :
nor is that all. The waves of aether, acting upon the mole
cules of matter in the firmament, break them up by giving
their own motions to the component atoms — that is, these
atoms, or some of them, begin to synchronise with the vibra
tions of the infringing aether, and the rates of motion being
made to vary, the molecules are decomposed. By this opera
tion, carbonic acid gas, contained in the air, is fitted to become
food for the vegetable world. The leaves of plants absorb
the gas, and, when in the internal cells of the leaves, the
incipient loosening of the molecules by the action of light
enables the plant to seize upon and appropriate the carbon
while the oxygen is discharged into the atmosphere.
It is evident that the firmament contains a marvellous and
harmonious co-operation of phenomena, but of so vast a nature
that we cannot unravel the whole mystery. Facts are at hand
to a certain extent, but the possibility of encircling them with
a perfect theory is beyond our power. Because we cannot do
so — and how should we, seeing that creative design must
extend to the whole of Nature ? — our assertion that wherever
we find marks of purpose and contrivance, there must be
corresponding will and design, is met by the humorous reply —
" If there be pepper in the soup, there must be pepper in the
cook who made it, since otherwise the pepper would be with
out a cause." Mr. J. S. Mill was, we think, the author of this
combination of salt, pepper, and soup, to puzzle our intel
lectual co-ordination of experiences. When, by a play upon
words, we are required to assume that God must be partly
of iron and partly of clay, seeing that these materials are
in the universe ; otherwise we have no right to say, " the
Supreme is wise," because there are marks of will and con
trivance in the world ; the ingenuity of our opponents must
be pushed to the furthest limits. Surely motion is a mani
festation of energy ; the causes of visible appearances are not
the appearances themselves ; nor is law an agent or agency
by which substances are coerced, but an abstract expression

180 " God made the Firmament."
of the series of positions which substances assume under
given conditions. We refuse to allow that the Eternal Power,
of whom the web of phenomena is a visible garment, may be
degraded into a necessary order, or fate, or physical property,
or mere strand in the web of phenomena. He is the Infinite
and Inscrutable God ; not a circumscribed intelligence
adapting its own internal processes to other processes going
on externally, but a Spirit to whom we as correctly attribute
the wisdom as we do the energy displayed in the universe.
The arguments generally used to divest the Infinite and
Eternal of wisdom and will, do, when applied in a like manner,
strip volition and intelligence from human conduct. For
example, take the President of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, at Belfast, in the year 1874, as
a reasonable being. Why ? For no other reason, though
some doubt, than that he behaved as if he were reasonable.
(The president of 1874 used the playful illustration in refer
ence to the president of 1870.) Even suppose, taking his
address, we cannot go further than the as if, still, there
is no other known method of accounting for his conduct
than by saying, he had some portion of intelligence.
If a man is insensible to the mystery of the universe ; if the
soul is that of an animal — unvisited by gleams of any brighter
life, dead to the stirring sacred impulses of piety — how can
we make him feel that of which his nature is incapable ?
Happily, no such man exists ; and only men of souls most
shrivelled, with narrow vision of life's realities and the world's
vastness, can entertain the notion that our human organism is
limited to material mechanism. Encompassed by mysteries ;
subjected to influences of awe, tenderness, sympathy, which
no words can express, no theories fully explain ; possessing
moral and aesthetic instincts inclining us to the good, the
pure, the beautiful ; visited with convictions that there is a
larger life than the visible firmament contains ; all these,
physically exhibiting themselves in actions and reactions of
the organism, we are compelled to regard as memorials of
the Supreme, and tokens that we are centres toward which
much of the intelligible universe converges, and from which
it radiates.

Advance of Science. 181
As we advance in science, the world enlarges with our
knowledge; shall we, instead of growing with the world,
allow an atheistic system to separate us from the universal
existence by a quibbling statement — " There is no bridge,"
and thus lose our good portion in that glorious realm which
is deeper and higher than all visible phenomena ? Are we
to stop as men already at the finality of existence, though
always having fresh experiences ? Were it not better to hope
that we shall, ere long, possess the keys which unlock
mysteries, and reveal what is and will be ? If a man say —
" We have no organs for apprehension of the Supernatural ; "
then we answer — We cannot think of an effect without a
cause, or of creation without a creator, is not that a manifesta
tion which makes our heart forbode a mystery ? If we cannot
obtain from matter anything that was not contained in the
original atom, we rightly regard our intellectual and moral
nature, our thoughts of God, as essential parts of human
nature, as true, as revelations of the supernatural, a kind of
bridge for experiences of Divinity. All holy men, by faithful
use of these powers, bring into view, and within the circle of
spiritual knowledge, that which before was unknown.
' ' Hold thou the good, define it well,
For fear Divine philosophy
Should push beyond her mark and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell." In Memoriam.

STUDY X.
DAY III.— THE HABITATION OF LIFE.
" Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer,
Before all temples, the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me— for Thou knowest. Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,
And made it pregnant. What in me is dark,
Illumine ; what is low, raise and support ;
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men." Paradise Lost.
By sacred geology we understand that the formation of the
earth was by the Almighty. He did not labour as an artificer
who shapes every work by handicraft. We do not conceive
that every species of rhinoceros, and every species of hyaena,
or the long succession of forms from earliest to present time,
was separately constructed out of the dust. Nor did God
create by intellectual or physical exercise, such as we are
capable of, but by means of incomprehensible operations,
defined as natural order or law, He furnished space as the
star-domed city of the great King ; and now, through every
star, through every grass-blade, but most through every
living soul, beams the glory of an ever-present God ; — natural
law being the formula of Divine action^ and all dynamic
phenomena the multiform revelation of the Omniscient and
Omnipresent. By various orders of experience we may imagine human-
wise the creative process. The passage of invisibles into
visibles, as gas into light ; the coming of the unseen vapour
of water into the seen ; are one step. We may think of germs
growing into animals ; of plants, great or small, developing
in such minute progression that at no moment can it be said,

The Creative Process. 183
" now the seed ceases, now the tree exists." We then observe
that the origin of plants, animals, men, separated by wide
intervals of time, is analogous to epochs in the formation of
stars and planets. The earth may so change in the course
of hundreds of thousands of years that none of the present
forms of life shall exist. In other starry worlds have been,
are, and will be lifeless ages, living durations, death periods.
Within our intellectual conceptions we may hasten or retard
the operation, show the vast reach of organic phenomena,
render them intelligible, and obtain as clear a view of creation
as we can of evolution ; indeed, evolution, rightly understood,
is creation. We may reverently regard the production now
of every child, and flower, and tree, as a special creation :
for the perpetual origination of countless individuals through
out the world, from hour to hour, is to the devout mind the
more miraculous because so ordinary.
Thought may take another turn : a straight line and a circle
are not much alike — let the straight line be continued as a
figure of infinity, and the circle be conceived vast as the
universe. The one encloses a space ; the other, though
continued for ever, will not enclose a space. The one is
limited, the other may be unlimited ; but if the straight line
be bent so slightly that no eye — =no, not even aided by a rule
— can appreciate it, you may get an immensely elongated
form ; and, if you go on, may acquire the peculiar properties
and special equations of the hyperbola, parabola, ellipse,
circle. The first and last, being quite opposite, are neverthe
less made members of a series which you produce by insen
sible modifications. Such a mode of representation has been
used to figure evolution ; it may well and fairly be used as a
symbol of that line and universe which He stretched and
fashioned who went forth, by His will and power, to make all
things in continuance. In continuance, for no one supposes
that the oak, ready formed within the acorn, lies there in
miniature. The oak is quite as much in the earth and air,
not really in any one, but formed from all. In like manner,
when the eye was created, the means may have been the
action of light on a suitable sensitive surface ; then this
eye being '^brought into due relation with external objects,

184 The Habitation of Life.
there would be visual perception. We may also picture to
ourselves the forms of sense and the forms of thought, being
created and devoloped in us, as the stem, branches, and foliage
of the oak, are evolved from the acorn. It matters little what
name we give to the process ; the great desire of our age is
for a doctrine which shall arrange our knowledge, guide our
researches, shape our lives, so that right conduct shall be the
result of true faith.
Scientific geology treats of what materials the earth is com
posed, and in what manner they are arranged. It reveals
that the earth, some long time ago, was in a viscous or even
perfectly liquid state. Cooling rapidly at the surface, the
crust became denser than the liquid below ; and, when broken
by pressure from within, portions sank down, and solidifica
tion began on the newly exposed liquid surface. From
volcanic phenomena we learn that at no very great depth
under the surface, there may be portions of the originally
liquid mass at temperatures equivalent to red, or even white
heat, but under great pressure. Sir William Thomson has
shown, by means of arguments on the rate of precession, and
on the amount of land-tide, that the whole mass of the earth
is now more rigid than if it were glass throughout, nearly as
rigid as a solid mass of steel. Scientific geology, not limited
to the mineral kingdom, nor to the various rocks and soils,
relates the history of animals and plants ; investigates all the
changes which have taken place in the former state of the
earth's surface and interior.
Science, thus ascertaining the manner and means by which
the works of Nature are wrought, is beneficent priestess of the
physical universe, and we reverently receive her instructions.
She describes and fairly well maps out the nearer portion of
the pathway on which our earth has travelled, her varied
period of existence as a revolving globe, the production of
rocks, the gathering of seas, the depths out of which dry land
was raised, and the emptiness of land and sea until both
became many-chambered habitations of life. It is proved
that man had a beginning, that the animals had a beginning,
that the earth's surface was rearranged again and again.
Mountains were formed, raised, worn down, or sunk ; valleys

Chemical Geology. 185
have been excavated, filled up, and again dug out ; sea
became dry land, land became sea ; yet, throughout all revo
lutions and the accompanying vicissitudes of climate, animal
and vegetable life was sustained— a continual modification
fitting it for the different ages and stages of the world. A
close analogy is shown to exist between extinct and recent
species, and the continuance of the same organic laws is thus
evidenced : ancient lakes in the Upper Miocene had round
their borders belts of poplars and willows and shrubs. Leaves
resembling those of the tamarind, with a ripe seed-vessel, have
been found ; and, on the same slab, a winged ant. We learn
from this that the seed was ripened in summer, at which
season alone ants have their wings fully developed and make
their flight.

'b'

In venturing upon a short sketch of chemical geology, or
of what may be termed the cosmogenetic era in the history
of our globe ; and then explaining some of the phenomena of
the great changes from that early period down to the present
time ; principles, rather than details of chemical action, will be
dealt with.
Exact knowledge shows that mere fire and water are not
the only great agents ; the geologist must take into considera
tion the effects which are wrought by chemical action, heat,
light, electricity, mechanical force. It is known that mecha
nical force may be converted, directly or indirectly, not only
into heat, but into chemical action in the metamorphic altera
tion of rock masses. The Plutonic, Neptunic, Quiescent,
Cataclysmic schools of thought, reveal principles which have
had a share in Nature's operations ; and an independent
observer finds that the same identical phenomena are at times
the result of agencies totally different from those which at
other times produced them. For example : —
Take crystallised silica, or quartz ; it appears —
As an igneous product in recent volcanic lavas ;
As an aqueous product, by crystallisation and deposition
from solution ;
As a gasolytic product, in tubes from deposition of its
compounds with fluorine.

1 86 The Habitation of Life.
Sulphur is seen —
As an igneous product from volcanoes ;
As an aqueous product from hot springs ;
As a product of decomposition of sulphides.
Numerous other examples might be given.
In applying chemical principles in explanation of the changes
wrought in our globe, we shall not touch upon the asserted
early gasiform condition as a nebula in space, nor inquire
whether the elements then were in a state of chemical indif
ference to one another, but deal with the earth in its heated
condition of complete liquidity. There would be bodies of
two different characters — solid and gasiform ; these, by their
situation and rotation, would bring about the formation of a
molten sphere surrounded by an intensely heated gasiform
atmosphere. The affinity of bodies would be different, and
their mutual chemical reactions vary considerably, from what
takes place at ordinary temperatures ; so that our conclusions,
in great part hypothetical, are as follows : —
The molten substances and their atmosphere would obey
the laws of gravity ; and arrange themselves in strata, or zones,
according to their respective density.
The molten mass would arrange into three grand zones,
probably with sub-zones : i. An external crust of highly acid
silicates, and probably much free quartz ; the bases of silicates
being chiefly alumina and potash, with some soda, lime, mag
nesia, etc. ii. A zone of silicates of more basic character and
greater density ; the bases being lime, magnesia, alumina,
oxide of iron, soda, with minor quantities of potash and other
substances, iii. A far denser nucleus, containing most of the
densest metallic elements ; in part, at least, combined with
sulphur, arsenic, etc.1 These zones, formed in the earth, would
be of somewhat stable character ; those in the atmosphere the
reverse ; but, at first, the atmosphere, next the earth, would
be composed of a dense vapour of compounds volatile only
at high temperature — chloride of sodium, probably, one of the
most prominent. Above this, carbonic acid ; then oxygen
and nitrogen ; vapour of water still higher. Afterwards, this
1 See Lecture, in Journal of the Chemical Society, 20th February, 1868, by
David Forbes.

Cooling of the Atmosphere. 187
arrangement would be gradually obliterated by diffusion ; but
it is imagined that, before diffusion, this arrangement had con
siderable influence.
The cooling of such an atmosphere would condense the
vapour of salt, and other chlorides, etc., and cover the solid
crust of the earth with a solid layer sufficient to clothe the
entire sphere with a coating of some ten feet in thickness.
Then the condensed steam would fall in rain, which, dissolving
the greater part of the salt, would form the ocean. The
atmosphere would now contain much less oxygen ; and the
carbon, in form of carbonic acid, would probably not greatly
differ in composition from what it is now. The exact action
and extent of reaction, the amount of any one element enter
ing into any particular state of combination, cannot be defined.
We may say, however, because the earth is so little flattened,
it must have been rotating, when it became solid, at nearly
the same rate as it is now. As the rate of rotation is- un
doubtedly becoming slower, it became solid not many mil
lions of years since ; otherwise, it would certainly have
solidified into a flatter shape ; we cannot allow geologists
a greater possible period than about ten or fifteen millions of
years. There are arguments against these views ; we will not
advance them. Refer for their refutation to the lecture on
chemical geology, by the late David Forbes, delivered before
the Fellows of the Chemical Society, 20th February, 1 868, and
to be found in the Journal of the Society for 1868, p. 213.
The mean specific gravity of the earth is 5*45 ; leaving out
the water, the mean density of the exterior is not higher than
275 or 3.; it follows that the interior is immensely more
dense than the exterior. The crust, at first, might present a
somewhat even contour; but soon would be crossed by cracks
and fissures caused by contraction of the mass, and portions
of the crust would fall in ; then protrusions of molten matter
formed dykes on the surface. The sides of the cracks being
more or less dislocated, lines of faults would interrupt the
previously regular contour, and form the first elevations or
mountains. . From that time till the present all the changes
have been wrought by agencies similar to those now in opera-

1 88 The Habitation of Life.
tion. The crust, split and broken, would be further broken
and pulverised by the mechanical action of water ; assisted
by the disintegrating and decomposing action of carbonic
acid, excessively present in the primeval atmosphere. In
process of time, the actions of rivers and seas arranged the
comminuted particles in sedimentary beds of varying density
and character.
The development of organic life, at first of the lowest type,
originated another character of deposits. Vegetation, assimi
lating the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, introduced beds
of carbonaceous substance ; and animals and plants, by joint
operation, built up the limestones and calcareous strata. The
formation of these strata did not proceed uninterruptedly :
outbursts of igneous matter disturbed and broke the surface,
forming dykes, ramifications, bosses, and sometimes intercala
tions between the beds. Showers of ashes were also sent
forth from time to time. Human intelligence can assign a
relative age for the igneous, aqueous, organic rocks, and state
when the plains and mountains were formed. The various
strata are not necessarily separated by vast intervals of time ;
some were of great horizontal extent, some were formed syn
chronously. For illustration of the history as to rocks, take up a piece
of granite — you discover that it was once molten within the
earth under enormous pressure. Find a sandstone, it teaches
you that small pieces of matter were worn out of pre-existent
rocks, then compressed together and hardened. If we have
a lump of chalk, and gently grate or knead it down in water,
we see that it consists partly of microscopic chambered shells
belonging to animals of simple form and life — Protozoa. This
chalk, with all other rocks containing relics, whether of vege
table or animal existence, belongs to what are called " Organic
Rocks." Coal is so much vegetation pressed together, and
gradually chemically changed into the black substance now
used as fuel. In the deep parts of the Atlantic Ocean
millions and millions of little shells, called foraminifera, are
being deposited, with remains of star-fish and other creatures.
If they continue undisturbed, a vast mass of rock will be
formed out of these dead. The hills and dales of Derbyshire

Lifetime of the Earth. 189
and Yorkshire are chiefly formed of limestone : the crowded
remains of little animals which peopled the waters of the sea.
These fossils, or relics, generally enable us to know the origin
and age of the various and wonderfully arranged strata which
form the crust of the earth.
Geologists define the lifetime of the earth as Eozoic, dawn
of life ; Palaeozoic, old life ; Mesozoic, middle life ; Neozoic,
new or modern life. They are apportioned into ages and eras
of stratific formation.
The Eozoic time is supposed to represent that very period
during which the first land was cooled and solidified from the
fiery mass. Its rocks are the deepest and oldest, crumpled
and folded in a remarkable manner, and the folds appear to
have been formed before the deposit of the rocks next in age.
There is inferential evidence of vegetable life derived from
the limestones, graphite carbon, and iron ore ; as there are
undoubted remains of animal life ; but the mystery of the
origin of living things, and the secret of the changes which
they underwent, remain hidden. The deepest and oldest
known rock or formation, the Laurentian gneiss, is made up
out of the waste of previous existing rocks, but of those
pre-existing rocks we know nothing. The Laurentide Hills,
north of the river St. Laurence, are the largest known ex
posure of this ancient formation. They are more than 30,000
feet in thickness, and occupy an area of about 200,000 square
miles. It was formerly thought that the lowest rocks, called
Azoic, contained no vestiges of life, and that the ocean then
existing was lifeless ; but the Laurentian contains a gigantic
representative of the earliest known life on earth, the Eozobn
Canadense, the grandest of its class ; flashing upon the scene,
like Melchisedec, without father, mother, or descent of days ;
the modern representatives being poor indeed. We may
possibly discover plants yet earlier, or an Eophyte period
preceding the Eozoon.
The Palaeozoic, old life, has its own ages and variety of
strata : Laurentian, pre-Cambrian, Cambrian, Silurian, De
vonian, Carboniferous, Permian. The lower two present few
traces of living beings, but the upper are crowded with fossils,

190 The Habitation of Life.
no longer mere Protozoa, but representative of five orders of
life. The sixth also, the Vertebrate, appears in fishes and
amphibians. New forms of life come in continually : some*
without previous representation, appear at once as kings ;
some, continuing but a little while, find a grave and are no
more seen. These meaner Enochs and Elijahs were not
supernaturally removed, for others supernaturally to come ;
they simply indicate that the natural plan works by continual
change. There are kinds which resemble the young of
modern animals, but distorted and exaggerated as if they had
outgrown themselves. The coal measures present remains of
vegetables, insects, land-snails, fishes, amphibians — small and
large, prophecies of things to come. In course of this vast
time land rose above and subsided beneath the waters several
times. There is something grand and awful in the thought
of a world of vegetable and animal life — living, dying, slowly
carried beneath the waters and gradually raised again,
mineralised. In the vast Palaeozoic duration, if we reckon
thickness, nearly nine-tenths of all the known rocks were
formed in the earth's crust. A definite plan, even in these
early ages, seems to have associated life with physical and
organic change.
The Mesozoic, middle life, was occupied by myriads and
myriads of organisms. On the rocks formed during this and
the Tertiary time, exist the most populous and civilised
assemblages of mankind. The movements of the water and
action of the elements rendered the earth favourable for that
kind of vegetation and animal life which man requires. All
the classes of animal existence were present ; birds swam on
the surface of the deep, waded in the shallows, left their foot
prints on the land, perched on the trees, flew in the air. There
was abundance of a particular group of plants, still represented
in the tropics and Australia ; and the great forests of the later
Mesozoic, gay with flowers, beautiful in foliage, swarmed with
insect life. Gigantic lizards were remarkable, exhibiting a
more generalised type of reptile organisation than any now
existing. Pterodactyles, somewhat like great bats in shape,
wheeled and screamed in the air, pouncing on smaller
creatures of their kind, and perhaps diving into the sea for

Reptiles and Mammals. 191
fish. It was the age of reptiles, of mighty and terrible
creatures in sea and on land. Not continuing till our day,
not waiting for man to war against them, they perished in
the great Cretaceous subsidence. Apportioning this time into
the Trias, Lias, Oolite, Cretaceous formations, it does not
seem to have occupied, so far as we can judge by measure
ment of the deposits, one-third, or one-fourth, some say one-
fifth or sixth, of the time taken up in the Palaeozoic period.
The Neozoic time, the great age of mammals, is subdivided
into Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene periods
— every one of which witnessed the production of a formation
— were so named in consequence of their containing different
percentages of species which still exist. In the Eocene the
percentage is least, in the Pliocene the greatest. Fossils of
the Eocene deposits are numerous. Plants, in the main, are
closely allied to existing tropical and sub-tropical forms.
Nummulites are remarkable, and bony fishes, reptiles, birds,
mammals, represent many of the modern orders. The
Oligocene formation, between the Eocene and Miocene, is
slightly developed in the south of England, and vastly in the
north-east of Italy. There were vast coral-reefs in the period,
and the varied nature of strata is remarkable for intermediate
fauna. The Miocene was, in some respects, a better age than
the present. The Northern hemisphere possessed a mild
and equable climate, a vast surface of land, a rich varied
vegetation, noble forms of animals. The Pliocene abounded
in species of elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and horse,
now extinct. There are abundant traces of oxen, deer,
carnivora. It is considered that from the Eocene to the
Miocene was a time of rapid introduction of new species, but
from the Pliocene to the post-Pliocene and to the modern
there seems to have been a diminution. The Pleistocene is
remarkable for the advent of man. He seems to have had
his first dwelling in the East — a pleasant land, where flesh
food was not strictly necessary for him.
The history of the earth is wonderful. The consecutive
formation of continents, deep oceans, mountain ranges, indi
cates repeated upheavals, subsidences, curvings, caused by

192 The Habitation of Life.
crust-contraction resulting from the dissipation of heat. The
extent and rapidity of these changes, the wear and tear of
Nature, were great in the earlier periods ; and, apparently
irregular in their course — one wave interfering with another.
It is not necessary to believe in many destructions and re
peated new creations ; an economy of internal and external
parts — a continuous connection between the distribution of
living things over the globe, their variation and modification,
the relations of land and sea — were not fortuitous ; but, with
the wonderful art in Nature seen in form, ornament, phy
siology, are the sum of the action'of mysterious Energy on
matter, and part of a great philosophy. Every one being the
complex of so many relations, a conjuncture of so many
events, a synthesis of so many energies, that to know one
event thoroughly is not possible, except by an intuition
embracing the whole universe. Unity everywhere as expres
sion of will, and varieties not unbounded, but in definite lines,
show that law is not fate — things becoming different when the
conditions of their existence change. The origin of life was
by interference of a Power exceeding all that is mechanical in
matter : the formation of a new state from a previous state by
means of a process which we cannot investigate, and of which
we know nothing : nevertheless we can affirm — Life is not a
functional product, but that by which function is possible and
actual. When vegetation appeared, the inorganic was sub
jected ; when animals came, the vegetable was subordinated ;
when man entered, life-energies advanced to mental and
moral manifestations. The complication seems like a vast
ocean-swell. On the surface large billows roll, themselves
bearing smaller waves and wavelets roughened by riplets,
the accumulated momentum disappearing only to reappear.
Every commencement having origin in some pre-existing
source of power, this power being the manifestation of a
principle, active in every form of matter and path of motion,
impressing our thought with the conviction that beyond all,
and containing all, is the Infinite and Eternal.
When men tell us that their mechanics are the highest
phenomenal conception which can be formed to represent the
Ineffable Reality, or rashly assert that humanity is the most

An Invisible World. 193
perfect type of existence in the universe, they are like
minnows mistaking their native rivulet for the outlying ocean.
True men know that these rivulets have their origin in water-
threads drawn from the mountain-side. They ascend the
mountain, guided by the thread, till finally they arrive at the
vast snow-fields of the summit. There, where earth ceases,
they stand perplexed, thrilled, awed — they worship ; worship
the great God who makes the thread of light, the cloud of
spray, the leaping cataract, the flowing river, the sea-wave,
the floating mist, the snow-flake, to be embodied histories.
Of the innumerable combinations of matter in infinite
space, and of the progressions of energy, we know but little.
To assert that " yonder hundred million spheres " contain no
forms of existence transcending manhood — as manhood tran
scends life in the rain-drop, that our intelligent will is not a
sparklet of the Intelligent Will, is not so much a height of
unwarrantable assumption as an abyss of folly. We are sure;
that there is a vast outlying invisible World. No merely
ideal production, though beyond the range of actual presenta
tion. The domain of the senses is almost infinitely small in
comparison with the vast regions which can be traversed by
the intellect. Some of these regions are in strict accordance
with the visible, and may be dealt with in confidence ; or they
may be disengaged from conformity with any rubric of the
known, because — though affording a base-line for some proxi
mate measurement of the parallax of the inaccessible — they
yield only indistinct views of a spirit-world. A spirit-world
not ceasing to be spiritual because it has means of passage to,
and modes of action on, our intellectual and moral nature,
even as refined and immaterial existences freely pervade the
grosser. Our range of possible knowledge is practically
infinite, nor must we allow Materialists to deprive us of those
vast and glorious operations which belong to intelligence, nor
to shut us within the bars of that which we touch, taste, see,
hear, smell.
Further — The constant change by which the pole of our
earth revolves round the pole of the ecliptic, so that the pole-
star of to-day will not be the pole-star 3000 years hence, is a
regulated process extending to all things, even to those which
o

194 The Habitation of Life.
seem lawless. The two hundred and seventy or more vol
canoes constantly or intermittently throwing out steam, hot
ashes, lava ; the story of the submergence of an ancient con
tinent, whether fabulous or true ; the Atlantis of Plato, even
if but a myth ; may be accounted for by law. Law, infinite
in variety of operation, making of the sea a continent, and of
the continent a Polynesia; interspersing catastrophes with
uniform operations, so that no catastrophe is too great or too
sudden to be theoretically inconsistent with the reign of law ;
variations in flora and fauna being wrought by some con
tinuous influence acting for ages; or, it may be, at some
special moment starting out on a new line ; or a compara
tively swift energy stamping old forms with a new type. One
germ is microscopic, but it develops into a highly organised
animal. Another germ is also microscopic, in no wise dis
tinguishable from the other, but it becomes an animal alto
gether different. These changes are all governed by a deep
and wide-reaching law, but we are absolutely ignorant of it.
Must we say, because of that ignorance — " Law is Fate ? "
Certainly not. The world, in some respects, is inscrutable ;
but we know that our will avails something in it ; know
of God, and that His will avails much more. To say that
the Supreme must not be accounted Intelligent because
all our notions of intelligence are limited, is equal to the ab
surdity of declaring that there cannot be one infinite space,
because space, however extended, must lie within another
space. It has been well said — " The undevout astronomer is mad."
Why mad ? Because he knows — no one better — that the worlds
in space are manifestations of a Power to which no limits can
be assigned, either in time or space. This is the scientific,
fundamental truth as to Godhead, and the man of science
knows that " the heavens declare the glory of God."
To tell us we must not worship God because His essence,
His energy, His infinity, His eternity, His omnipresence, are
incomprehensible, draws forth the reply — " When our intelli
gence is baffled, when the Infinite confronts us, we worship : "
were He less, He would not be great enough for our faith and
too little for our heart.

Life in Other Worlds. 195
" Great God, our littleness takes heart to play
Beneath the shadow of Thy state ;
The only comfort of our littleness
Is that Thou art so great. " Faber.
Not ignorantly, not measuring the Creator by the creature,
we adore Him as that highest absolute Being in whom all
possibilities of existence are comprehended. We consecrate
memories of the illustrious dead — those who, under God, have
made us what we are. We rejoice in that communion of
saints, unseen yet real, whose heroic sufferings rise to heaven
as a sacred prayer — whose heroic actions are a psalm of
praise ; and our enthusiasm grows into devotion, reverence,
majestic grandeur, when assembled myriads worship.
We take facts as we find them. Butler said — " Things are
what they are, and the consequences of them will be what
they will be ; why, then, should we desire to be deceived ? "
The facts are evidence of a far-extending purpose ; every part
seems worked with much art, and assigned to appropriate
place. Blind necessity must always and everywhere be the
same unreasoning thing, cannot be more than inert dead equi
librium, cannot produce complex exquisite beauty and order.
" If men of piety were also men of science, and if men of
science were to read the Scriptures, there would be more faith
on the earth and more philosophy." x We should be led in a
more direct and simple way to the feet of our wise and loving
Father. A true foundation would be laid by knowledge, love,
obedience, for happiness in every individual life, and for ren
dering beneficent the growing complications of human society ;
while our study of Nature would be rendered more honourable
by possessing the dignity of an inquiry into the ways of God.
The duration of life on our globe is but a single pulsation
of the mighty life of the universe. Nay, the duration of the
planetary system itself is scarcely more. Life, then, is a very
small matter ; yet, for life the whole scheme, seems planned.
Countless other systems, unless science is utterly at fault
passed through their processes and died out, that our sun and
his family might be formed of their nebulae ; and countless
1 Hamilton, " Royal Preacher. "

196 The Habitation of Life.
others will be built when our habitation of life has fallen to
ruin. The infinite universe is, and must be, so far as we can
understand, without beginning and without end. The centre
is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. Not suns only,
but systems of suns, and galaxies of systems, are passing to
higher and higher orders — connected with time intervals in
finitely great and infinitesimally small. Infinitesimally small
as compared with eternity in which they are lost. Infinitely
great in comparison with the duration of our earth, and the
yet smaller span of its existence as a dwelling for life. Never
theless, it is at- the least " probable that every member of
every order — planet, sun, galaxy, and so onward to higher and
higher orders endlessly — has been, is now, or will hereafter be,
life-supporting ' after its kind.' " x It is, therefore, utter un
wisdom to suppose that our earth is the only inhabited orb
of the universe. Though, when we scan the sky, millions
of lifeless worlds are found for every life-sustaining star ;
and though the life-sustaining condition of stars and suns and
galaxies is a period short indeed as compared with their dura
tion ; yet, that life-period is their flower and fruit time.
It seems, indeed, as if the support of life was Nature's great
purpose. Land, water, air, teem with life. In the bitter cold
of Arctic regions, with strange alternations of long summer day
and long winter night, frozen seas, perennial ice, life has a
hundred forms. The torrid zone, blazing with heat, parched
with drought, fierce raging hurricanes driving away oppressive
calms, contains myriads of living things. Mountain summits,
depths of valleys, mid-ocean, arid desert, warm and salt
springs, are all inhabited. So, likewise, in past ages there
was abundant life. No trace remains of millions and millions
of the primitive living creatures in the earliest eras ; yet, from
the remains of other eras we know that life abounded in the sea
— forming strata after strata ; and that multitudes fed on the
land. This incalculable multiplication of life on earth is greatly
due to solar agency ; and physical laws, like those ruling our
planet, are traced everywhere ; the unbounded diffusion of
sun and star light warrants our faith that there is life in many
1 " Life in Other Worlds : " Richard A. Proctor.

Life a Progress. 197
worlds. The same physical laws operate, so far as our science
extends, wherever matter is ; and we reasonably conclude that
the same moral power exists in every abode of mind. Why
may not the universe be aglow with the lamplight and hearth-
light of many happy homes ? The suns are not mere gilded
shows, nor blazing points. They are sources whence flows
the physical power by which advances are made through low
grades of being to high corporeity. The material universe
is a palace of the King, vast in extent and duration, rich with
varied existences of intelligent creatures. Our own home is
only a hamlet on the side of a great mountain range ; but the
magnificent bodies of light, scattered over infinite fields of
space, worlds and worlds suspended in heights and depths,
are palaces lit up with splendour. We cannot but think that
Intelligence, at the very heart of things, is conducting many
families in the paths of love. Life is not a continual struggle
with brute irresistible force, but a process whose work is the
survival of the best. Our thoughts, when gone, are not dead ;
or if dead and buried in forgetfulness, recollection, the angel
of memory, raises them and they live again. Shall not all
the dead be raised ? Are we not as lasting on the spiritual as
on the physical side of our nature ?
" My heart is renewed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on /
In silence round me — the perpetual work
Of Thy creation, finished, yet renewed
For ever. " William Cullen Bryant.

STUDY XI.
DAY III. — CREATION OF PLANTS.
" Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies ;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower — but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. "

Tennyson.

Study the Divine statement — " Let the earth bring forth
grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit
after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth."
Plants are organised living beings, void of feeling and
voluntary motion. All living organisms are continually re
ceiving additions to their substances, and so long as these
exceed in quantity the parts removed, they grow. Growth
is the power to receive nutritive matter, and add it to the
structure : that is, integrating the surrounding elements with
itself. The growth of a plant depends on the abundance and
size of the masses of nutriment which it is able to appropriate.
Growth has limits, but they are wide apart. At one extreme
may be invisible organisms, for certainly there are monads so
minute as to be but imperfectly visible even with microscopes
of the highest power ; at the other extreme are trees of more
than four hundred feet in stature. High organisation is not
always endowed with great size, nor is the ultimate maximum
determined by the initial bulk, but the possible extent of
growth, other things equal, depends on the organisation.
" Who would believe that, did not he every day see it ; who
can conceive how, although he seeth it, from a little, dry, ill-
favoured, insipid seed thrown into the earth, there would rise
so goodly a plant, endued with so exact figure, so fragrant
smell, so delicate taste, so lively colour ? By what engines it

Foods, Substances, Functions. 199
attracteth, by what discretion it culleth out, by what hands it
mouldeth, its proper aliment ; by what artifice it doth elabo
rate the same so curiously, and incorporate it with itself! "x
This act of growth, not explainable on any known mechanical
principles, is called " vital ; " and the origin is thus stated in
Scripture — " God causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and
herb for the service of man " (Ps. civ. 14).
Food is necessary for this development : carbonic acid taken
in by the leaves pari passu with the decomposition of C02,
C02 + H20 = COH2 + 02. From COH2 the various carbo
hydrates are built up ; while the proteids, which nourish
protoplasm, are probably constructed by the plant from a
carbohydrate and ammonia, much work is done by means
ofthe root. Carbonic acid is dissolved by the rain in passing
through the atmosphere, is also produced by the slow decom
position of mould— the carbon of which unites with the oxygen
of the air held in solution by the water. A little nitric acid
may be formed by the direct oxidation ofthe air during storms.
The ammonia is a product of decay. Carbon is to be specially
distinguished : it combines with other elements in manifold
relations of number and weight, and with oxygen, hydrogen,
specially nitrogen, forms that protein matter which is the staff
of all life.
The organised substances, formed in the plants, are gene
rally ternary compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. Car
bonic acid, ammonia, soluble phosphates, sulphates, supply
most of their materials. The alkaline bases, which play an
important part in vegetation, reside in the rocks— which must
be decomposed and become soil for nourishment.
All living things respire, i.e. give off carbonic acid as the
result of the wear and tear of tissues. The process is masked
in plants by the taking in of a greater quantity of carbonic
acid, and by its decomposition. Fungi are, in some respects,
like animals : they live on organic food, inhale oxygen and
give out carbonic acid. The roots and leaves of the higher
plants are widely different in their functions : the roots absorb
water and mineral substances, the leaves take in and decom
pose carbonic acid. The excretion of plants is chiefly by
1 "A Defence ofthe Blessed Trinity : " Isaac Barrow, D.D.

200 Creation of Plants.
the roots, but also by the leaves, glands, bark. Thus, to per
form the nutritive functions of their life, plants absorb, breathe,
assimilate, perspire, excrete : nor is this all — they sleep by
night, awake by day, and some are of different sexes.
"Let us, in imagination, peer into the ultimate particles
of the living, active, moving matter, and consider what we
should probably discover. Were it possible to see things so
very small, I think we should discover spherules of extreme
minuteness, each being composed of still smaller spherules,
and these spherules infinitely minute. Such spherules would
have upon their surface a small quantity of matter differing
in properties from that in the interior, but so soft and different
that the particles might come into very close proximity.
In each little spherule the matter would be in active move
ment, and new minute spherules would be springing into
being in its central part. Those spherules already formed
would be making their way outwards, so as to give place to
new ones which continually rise in the centre of every one of
those animated particles. . . . The change which occurs in
the living centre is probably sudden and abrupt. The life
flashes, as it were, into the inanimate particles, and they live." x
This is a scientific conception of the manner in which the work
was done when God said — " Let the earth bring forth grass."
It is really a very nice question whether we can trace any
difference between the ultimate plant and the ultimate
animal. Corals, long taken for vegetables, are, after all,
animals. There are certain minute fresh-water animals
which may be cut to pieces and multiplied exactly as plants
are multiplied by cuttings. Cuvier, in the first volume of his
great work, " Le Regne Animal," says, an animal has power of
locomotion, an internal reservoir in which to carry its food, a
digestive cavity, and an alimentary canal. He further states
that an animal must possess muscles, nerves, and all that
apparatus by which locomotion is brought about ; must have
a more complicated structure than a plant — for while a plant
is composed of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, an animal possesses
also nitrogen. He claimed, as an essential feature in animals,
that they take in oxygen, and give out carbonic acid ; while
1 Dr. Beale's " Protoplasm," 3rd ed. p. 277.

Vegetable and Animal Life. 201
plants take in carbonic acid, and give out oxygen. Now,
as matter of fact, very few of these diagnostic marks stood
the test of further inquiry. There are innumerable lower
organisms which feed as animals, but have no permanent
digestive cavity. They are soft masses which take in food
at any point of their circumference, and get rid of it in the
same way. As to an animal being of a more complicated
structure, we find, by means of the high-powered microscope,
that animal and plant start from one common point ; all the
diverse tissues issuing from a transparent, structureless,
colourless, semi-fluid liquid ; the cell of a plant being de
veloped in the same way as a scale of the epidermis in man.
The starting point, both in plant and man, is in living matter,
which increases in size, divides and subdivides into a mass
of similar nucleated cells. As to chemical composition, recent
investigations show that all living matter contains nitrogen.
As to the statement that animals take in oxygen, and give
out carbonic acid ; while plants take in carbonic acid, and
give out oxygen ; it is now shown that, when the sun ceases
to shine, the plant exhales carbonic acid just the same as an
animal ; and that colourless plants and fungi exist like
animals — taking in oxygen, and giving off carbonic acid. The
mobility of some plants is now also well established. Multi
tudes of plants are all their life in active motion, and no
clear line can be drawn between the contractility of plants
and animals. Considering the insectivorous plants, it is
almost impossible to distinguish, by any visible character, a
difference in the reflex action existing in plants and that
existing in animals ; so that no one can say whether plants
have or have not a nervous system, except by not distinguish
ing what we call nerve in the plant. It is true, however, a
plant is able to make its bodily substance out of inorganic
chemical substances ; which an animal cannot do. A bean
will grow in a nitrate of ammonia and saline solution, and
the resulting substance of the bean contains matters of which
there is no trace in the solution. An animal can only break
down and appropriate the protein compounds furnished by
other animals or plants. " He is the aristocrat, and the plant
is the ideal prole'taire of the living world." The Bacteria,

202 Creation of Plants.
generated in vegetable and animal infusions by means of
germs which float in the air, are vegetable ; but that other
busy little body generated in the same infusion, which Pro
fessor Huxley calls " Heteromita lens," may be animal ; there
is a border territory between the two kingdoms, a sort of
neutral land, the inhabitants of which cannot be separated
with any certainty, or brought to their proper allegiance in
either kingdom. We cannot as yet say— " Here the line
between the animal and the plant must be drawn."
Tournefort's system of vegetation contains twenty-two
classes ; that of Linnaeus, twenty-four ; the natural method
by Jussieu, the basis of a complete scientific tabulation, com
prises fifteen classes, one hundred natural orders, and about
one thousand seven hundred and forty genera. The sequence
of orders now generally adopted is that proposed by De
Candole.1 The result of all the various schemes establishes
two primary divisions of all plants : —
a. Phaenogams, or Flowering Plants.
b. Cryptogams, or Flowerless Plants.
a. The Phaenogams subdivide into —
r. Dicotyledons — plants with two seed lobes ;
2. Monocotyledons — plants with one seed lobe.
b. The Cryptogams subdivide into —
3. Acrogens — vascular plants for the most part ;
4. Thallogens — purely cellular plants.
" Beyond this, except in the case of Cryptogams, it is diffi
cult to establish any subdivisions higher than that of Orders ;
and of the Phaenogamous Orders themselves, it is astonishing
how few are absolutely limited." 2
To assert that Moses has given, in his brief account of the
formation of plants, a prophecy of scientific classification
would be unwarrantable ; but it is, to say the least, remark
able that his " Grass," " Herb," " Plant ;; (Gen. ii. 5), " Tree,"
should happen to be that number of which scientific men say
— " It is difficult to establish any subdivisions higher than that
of Orders." " In the popular mind, plants are still classed
under the heads of trees, shrubs, and herbs ; and this serial
1 " Descriptive and Analytical Botany," p. 165 : arranged by Sir Joseph Dalton
Hooker. 2 Ibid. p. 991.

The Sacred Account Comprehensive. 203
classing, according to the simple attribute of magnitude,
swayed the earliest observers." x The utter indefiniteness of
ancient sacred description, wanting even the rudiments of
scientific form, may fairly and safely be taken as a com
mendation : for as to Phaenogams, the first and chiefest of the
Botanical kingdom, " a large proportion either are connected
with one or more others by a series of interminable genera,
or contain genera which present so many of the characters
of other orders, that it is altogether uncertain in which of
them they shall be placed." 2 Nor is it to be forgotten,
that the roots of the Hebrew words themselves yield a more
correct and scientific meaning, if such be required ; but it is
more akin to the spirit of the Divine narrative to take the
Scriptural simple and popular compendium — grass, herb,
plant, tree — which men generally look upon as including all
vegetation. Had Moses endeavoured to give us some idea of
the results of evolution, so far as they are now accurately
known, he could not better have described them than "by
seizing the successive salient points in a continuous history
of myriads of years — projecting them on the mind like a
succession of dissolving views, which gather into distinctness
or fade away into nothingness, like the dawning and the
parting of the day." s
No hard and fast lines can be drawn. We have remarked
already that of the two hundred and seventy-eight of the
Phaenogamous, or flowering orders, described by Dr. Hooker,
" Descriptive and Analytical Botany," excluding those con
taining only one or two genera, it is astonishing how few are
absolutely limited. With flowerless plants, or Cryptogams,
the case is different; but even these can only be strictly
limited, if it be limitation, by making them very compre
hensive. The same fact extends through all natural histoiy.
There are whole classes of organisms to which it is impossible,
even with the widest reservations, to apply the old idea of
species, with its immutability of essential characteristics.4
1 " Principles of Biology," vol. i. p. 295 : Herbert Spencer.
2 ' ' Descriptive and Analytical Botany : " arranged by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker.
* Rev.T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., "University Sermon:" Cambridge, April29, 1877.
• "The Doctrine of Descent : " Prof. Oscar Schmidt.

204 Creation of Plants.
Botanical and other systems are but superficial, they rest
upon forms which are in an extreme grade of mutability, and
it is not a little wonderful that Scripture should give a general
formula which substantially contains the present scientific
classification. It may be said of the creative narrative — Only those vege
table productions are meant which are useful to man ; and
that trees and plants of this character were of later 'appear
ance on the earth, and only just preceded man.
The best reply to such an objection is utter denial. One
must not be tempted into argument that the families of vege
tables and animals were probably introduced according to the
order in which naturalists have of late classed the flora and
fauna. It is better to rely on the general and comprehensive
character of Scripture ; it were needless to seek scientific and
technical accuracy ; for, really, the objection confirms the
ancient narrative. Grass, herb, tree, fruit tree, are simple
comprehensive words, which of old, and even now, popularly
sum up all vegetable life. Vegetation grew from the simpler
to more complex forms. The earliest plants which are known
in the fossil condition to geologists are fucoids, and they were
probably true seaweeds, or algae. In fossil shells of the Silu
rian age, traces of the presence of microscopic fungi, such as
Achlya penetrans (Duncan), have been found. Some of the
higher Cryptogams, closely allied in their construction to those
now existing, have been got out in the fossil condition from
the Devonian and Carboniferous strata, associated with Cala-
mites and Lepidodendron. The earliest plants were marine.
Then came land forms of simple and more complex construc
tion, but still belonging to the lower orders. Conifers, or
Gymnospermous Exogens, were with these and other plants in
the Carboniferous age ; there was structural variety in those
remote days. Flowerless plants, with fronds, were succeeded
by those possessing stems and leaves. The early plants could
contribute little, if at all, to the support of high animal life ;
nevertheless, grass and herb are of ancient origin, their early
existence may certainly be inferred from the presence of
various insects in the Lias and Tertiaries. Dicotyledons,
of Angiospermous kinds, abounded in the Cretaceous strata of

The Succession of Vegetable Life. 205
America and Europe. Probably, preceding all these, a micro
scopic vegetation universally existed. It is a beauty, and not
defect, that the simple formula of words given in the Bible
contains and describes the lowest and highest products, the
earliest and latest vegetable life.
Who will say that the modern scientific classification —
Phsenogams, or Flowering Plants, / l- Hants with one seed lobe.
\ 2. Plants with two seed lobes.
1 3. Vascular plants for the most part.
Cryptogams, or Flowerless Plants, | 4 purely cellular plants.
is simpler, more comprehensive, intelligible, and beautiful, for
ordinary people, than the ancient words, roughly translated,
grass, herb, plant, tree ?
We now summarise, in briefest possible manner, the suc
cession of vegetable life on the earth.
The groups did not come into existence at once ; in the
main, the lower groups appeared first, and the higher last,
substantially in accord with the Scriptural statement.
The earliest known vegetation " consisted principally of the
lowly organised Cryptogamous, or flowerless plants. The
Mesozoic formations, up to the Chalk, are especially charac
terised by the naked-seeded flowering plants — the Conifers
and the Cycads ; while the higher groups of the Angiosper
mous Exogens and Monocotyledons characterise the Upper
Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks." x
The process was slow and gradual, and, for the most part,
without sudden breaks, proceeding to a greater or less extent,
by way of evolution ; so that many existing species are the
modified descendants of fossil forms; even as those were
derived from pre-existent forms. At the same time, there
are facts which prove the existence of some law of a deep and
far-reaching character, by which alone can be explained the
constant introduction, throughout geological time, of new
forms of life ; for example, the wonderful Dicotyledonous
flora of the Upper Cretaceous period burst into view without
any prophetic announcement from the older Jurassic.2 This
is yet more specially the case with animal life. So far as we
* " The Ancient Life History of the Earth," p. 371: H. Alleyne Nicholson.
2 Ibid. 373.

206 Creation of Plants.
know, the Graptolites and Trilobites had no predecessors, and
have no successors. Insects appear suddenly in the Devonian,
and the Arachnides and Myriapods in the Carboniferous
strata, under "well-differentiated and highly specialised
types." x Nor is this all : there are various groups, and some
of them highly organised, which continue almost unchanged,
and certainly unprogressive, throughout geological time.
They indicate that under given conditions, at present un
known, a life-form may subsist for an almost indefinite period
without any modification in its structure.
One cannot but admire, in connection with this continu
ance of work " by some orderly and constantly acting law
of modification and evolution,"2 and in connection with
" the constant introduction throughout geological time of
new forms of life," which "have no known predecessors, and
have no successors," s the Scriptural use of the word " day."
Day, in its minuteness, reduces the initiation of living things
to exceeding brevity of time ; and day, in its expansiveness,
comprehends innumerable ages ; so that whether we think of
the constant introduction of new forms, or of the continuous
operation by which old forms are modified, both are wrought
in the Day of God.
Pursue the inquiry : —
i. Is it possible that plants were produced under a denser,
cloudier, moister, and more disturbed atmosphere than the
present ?
ii. Did plants precede animals ?
iii. Were plants of Divine origination ?
i. As to the origination of plants without sunlight, we admit
that it is simply impossible for the cooled earth to have been
without the sun as luminary, and without alternate day and
night. Tidal marks are found in the lowest rocks (Azoic), and
thus we know, comparatively early, of the moon. It is also
to be taken as a fact that the sun, like the earth, was formerly
hotter than at present. " We can imagine that one effect of
its heat was to throw off from its surface such enormous clouds
1 " The Ancient Life History of the Earth," p. 373 : H. Alleyne Nicholson.
2 Ibid. p. 372. ' Ibid. p. 373.

The Earliest Vegetation. 207
of absorbing vapour, which cooled as they left the surface,
that the effective amount of radiation reaching the earth might
not have been greater than at present. So it is possible to
conceive a uniformitarian state of radiation from the sun,
accounting for it by saying that when the sun was hottest
and was radiating the most, it was simultaneously raising the
greatest amount of obstructions to the propagation of radia
tions from its surface. A similar argument might, of course,
be devised with reference to the greater amount of vapour
which increased solar radiation would raise to be condensed
in the earth's atmosphere." x Hence it is at least not impro
bable that the photosphere might be partially obscured by
non-luminous matter, and that a dense cloudy atmosphere
surrounded the earth. In any case, the earth long ago was
an incandescent mass, itself as a sun ; and only as the earth
cooled and darkened, the clouds became less dense and the
atmosphere clearer, would the sun and moon be revealed as
rulers of day and night.
Plant tissues contain less nitrogen than animal, but mainly
because they contain less protoplasm. Plants are greatly
dependent on solar rays for their vital activities ; but there is,
at least, one marked exception. Of a considerable group, the
Fungi, many members, if not all, can live and grow in the dark.
Moreover, in great depths of the sea unpierced by light, in
dark caves, and in many places of gloomy obscurity, there is
vegetable life. The life, however initiated, is maintained by
'transformation of heat from the sun and from the earth. The
seed of a plant, buried in the damp earth, grows by the inte
gration of adjacent nutritive materials ; the energy effecting
the union is, or is by, the undulations caused by warmth of
the soil. Diminish the warmth, as in winter, and the seed will
not grow. As to the sun's action, the slower undulations,
dark waves not seen, penetrate the soil, set in motion the
atoms of the rootlet, and enable them to perform vital acts.
This helps us to conceive the nature of the earliest vegeta
tion : rudimentary sporules, with neither radicle nor plumule,
possessing some resemblance to imperfect plants that are
counted of recent formation.
1 " Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 174 : P. G. Tait, M.A.

208 Creation of Plants.
So soon as plants with delicate green stalks tipped with
leaflets are to be formed, there must be those rapid waves of
the sunbeam, known as light and actinism. These enable the
leaflets to decompose the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, by
communicating motor energy to the atoms of chlorophyll, so
that the chlorophyll can dislodge adjacent atoms of carbon
from the carbonic acid in which they are suspended : this
plants destitute of chlorophyll cannot do.
Hence, whether viewed popularly or scientifically, we have
a great truth : the Energy preparing those germs, developed in
the earliest manifestations of vegetative force, was in operation
even when the sun and earth abode in cloudy tabernacles. We
can well understand that Moses might have a moral purpose
in view, that to check the idolatry of sun-worshippers he
would wish to state that life was of God in its origination, not
by the sun, but before the sun ; yet that his, so-called, rough
unscientific account should agree with the latest scientific
verity — that life-energy, indeed all energy, is a product and
transformation of pre-existent energy — can by no means be
owing to his wisdom ; it must be attributed to that mysterious
influence which we name " Divine Inspiration."
ii. Did plants precede animals ?
Relics of animals are found in the oldest organic rocks, with
the lowest and earliest known vegetable forms. It is possible,
barely probable, that the primal forms of life have been pre
served in some primitive fossils. From the layers of crystalline
charcoal (graphite) found in the metamorphic rocks, we con
clude that vegetable and animal life existed side by side in
earlier times. Certainly, animal life did not wait till vegeta
tion was perfected ; the lower forms soon appeared, and grew
contemporaneously with plants, both advancing till land and
sea were replenished.
Plants, as a class, exhaling oxygen— as an incident in their
nutrition, and animals respiring carbonic acid, are necessary
to one another ; nor can the highest forms of either exist
without the presence of both in the earth : plants building up
themselves with the carbonic acid given out by animals, and
animals inspiring the oxygen which plants exhale. The
balance of the gases and elements is thus beneficially main-

Plants of Divine Origination. 209
tained by the antagonistic compensating actions of the two
kingdoms, whose continuous adjustment of internal to external
relations necessitates and comprehends all the activities of
vegetable and animal life.
As we find relics of both in the oldest organic rocks, and
know that both are needed for the highest forms of either to
exist ; and that, viewed in their earliest stages, the animal
arises as the plant ; we might conclude their nature to be the
same. Nevertheless, as great groups, they have not the same
birthday, do not live after the same manner, nor upon the same
substance. The following twofold fact proves that, after a
certain point, animals and plants are essentially distinct and
wide apart. Plants can form protoplasm — that is, support
themselves by means of inorganic substances ; animals cannot.
Carbon and oxygen unite to form carbonic acid, hydrogen and
oxygen produce water, nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to
ammonia. These are all lifeless ; on these a plant lives and
thrives, but an animal famishes and dies. The animal's highest
feat of constructive chemistry is to raise dead protoplasm to
a higher form of living protoplasm ; but plants form protoplasm
of that which is not protoplasm, even from carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia. They, and they alone, build up that matter of
life which is the vital substance of the universe. We can
hardly think that Moses was accurately acquainted with the
discoveries of modern chemical science ; nevertheless, he
records the great fact that plants preceded animals.
iii. Were plants of Divine origination ?
The Power by which matter organises itself, grows into
shape, and assumes definite forms in obedience to the definite
actions of energy, is a manifestation of that great Unknown
whom all phenomena reveal ; otherwise, the molecules them
selves are creators, and we have no end of little gods. The
celebrated Robert Boyle regarded the universe as a machine
— but then a machine should be defined as an organism with
life and direction from outside. Thomas Carlyle prefers
regarding it as a tree — a tree may be defined as an organism
with life and direction within. We, in a degree, may adopt
both conceptions, for both imply the interdependence and
harmonious interaction of parts, and the subordination of
p

2io Creation of Plants.

'j

organisms to some universal plan. The elements do not
spontaneously convert themselves now into iron or wood ;
now into the oak, or into a giant tree on the shores of the
Senegal ; now into the delicate petals of an evanescent
flower, or into human brain. If the ruling constructive
power is not Spirit, all things are material, and there is
no guiding Mind ; but all things are not material. We have
the " imponderables " — things of old supposed to be matter
— such as heat, light, etc., now known to be but varieties
of Energy. These are not matter, but have real and objective
existence as any portion of matter. How is it, moreover,
that we, material organisms, feel, think, remember, will,
and discharge the functions proper to mind ? If, in us,
matter has manifestations of mind, why not in the universe
at large ? It is but strife of words to contend whether the
powers be of mind or matter; in either case, organism generates
intelligence, or is by intelligence generated. That organism
does not generate but manifest life and intelligence seems
certain from the fact that life and intelligence are powers, and
rule ; but Nature cannot create power, therefore life and intelli
gence are from a higher source.
We may safely admit the natural agency which science has
discovered — " All the energy which we derive from plants and
animals is drawn from the sun, . . . the energies which we
have been accustomed to call vital ... may have a proxi
mately mechanical origin." x Very well, there is not the least
objection to a mechanical formula for what belongs to me
chanics ; nevertheless, bear in mind — We look at the matter
of the living plant and animal ; we see this transparent,
colourless, structureless, semi-fluid stuff move ; it moves in any
and every direction of its own accord ; but how it moves,
grows, forms, divides, no man knoweth ; if there is structure
or mechanism, it is utterly invisible. When God said — " Let
the earth bring forth," the earth brought forth by its own God-
given power ; and mechanical power, vital power, moral power,
spiritual power, are all emanations of Divine energy. " The
reason why the old fable speaks of the spontaneous life of
men is, that in those days God Himself was their Shepherd,
1 "Vitality:" Prof. Tyndall.

Scientific Hypothesis. 2 1 1
and ruled over them, just as man, who is by comparison a
Divine being, still rules over the animals." 1
When God placed sun, moon, stars, in the firmament, to
lighten this and other worlds, He endued them with seasonable
and prolific influence. It may be audacious and startling, but
not new to say — " We are all children of the sun." " It is of
little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter
in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of
matter," 2 if we allow that matter is not a brutal and malignant
thing, but that good servant of God by whom wonderful
works are done, and with whom beautiful shapes are wrought.
Moses had anticipated scientific theories when he wrote of
" precious fruits brought forth by the sun '' (Deut. xxxiii. 14) ;
and he warns us against both ancient and modern sun-
worshippers by recording the fact that God can and does make
these things according to His own will.
The scientific hypothesis is that life began in simple prim
ordial organisms. The Bible account in no way contradicts
the microscopic statement, but builds up all life from the
ground ; and the hypothetical monads, or bioplasts, or what
ever they may ultimately be called, of grass, herb, plant, tree,
which were caused to have in themselves the power of repro
duction, are as wonderful and complicate in their origination
and development as would be the instantaneous appearance
of trees already loaded with fruit. Worlds within worlds
were contained in those early organisms. They enclosed,
potentially, the beauty, power, and life of grass, herb, tree.
Milton wrote : — " One first matter all,
Endued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and in things that live, of life ;
But more refined, more spirituous and pure,
As nearer to Him placed or nearer tending ;
Each in their several active spheres assigned ;
Till body up to spirit work in bounds
Proportioned in each kind." Paradise Lost.
1 " Plato's Dialogues — Statesmen," p. 271 : Jowett's translation.
2 "-Physical Basis of Life:" Prof. Huxley.

212 Creation of Plants.
Richter conveys a lesson good and true — "I picked up in
the choir a faded rose leaf, that lay under the feet of the boys.
Great God ! what had I in my hand but a small leaf with a
little dust upon it ; and upon the small fugitive thing fancy
built a whole paradise of joy, a whole summer dwelt upon
this leaf. I thought of the beautiful day when the boy held
this flower in his hand ; and when, through the church window,
he saw the heaven, and the clouds wandering over it ; when
every place in the cool vault was full of sunlight, and reminded
him of the shadows on the grass from the overflying clouds.
Great God ! Thou scatterest satisfaction everywhere, and
givest to every one joys to impart again. Not merely dost
Thou invite us to rest and exciting pleasures, Thou givest to
the smallest an exciting perfume."
No psychologist will deny that plant life affords glimpses
of the transcendental. It combines many principles, brings
into concert many powers ; and the delicacy of its parts, the
complexity of its construction, the special and elaborate adap
tation of function to function, denote high art in form and
colour ; and are, in some respects, an epitome of all being.
We have in plants a mirror of the adaptation of the general
properties and affinities of the inorganic world to the purposes
of life. They oppose the outward rush of force from our
system, arrest a part, fix it as potential energy ; and, hindering
the process of dissipation, accumulate subsistence and per
manence that man may have time to acquire dominion over
the visible universe, and be prepared for nobler part in that
which is as yet unseen.
In the several members, organs, functions of plants, we
possess the first lodgment of the spirit of life wrought into
Nature by the creative energy of the Eternal. Plants are
endowed with life, not self-living. The general spirit of life
is in them, but no soul ; not even that brute-soul which is
attributed to beasts. The psychological fact, for symbolical
refraction, is — that in every human soul is first formed a tree
of life, rooted in the heart, attaining summit or crown in the
spirit. " Thus, as by the tree of life, the kingdom of plants
is represented in the soul. There are formed in it also, by

The World a Study for Spirits. 2 1 3
strong spiritual operation, lifeless forms, more strongly or
more weakly stamped as animal, which encamp around our
heart ; and these, even though they have no life of their own,
are stirred at the heaving of the passions." x
The thought, even though it be visionary or poetical, is
worth enlarging, and in another direction. Try to conceive
of a spirit, in its initial period, secluded from contact with
the material universe, acquainted only with mind. Such a
spirit, awaking to consciousness of the properties of matter,
would become, so to speak, new born ; and take possession of
another nature. He would find the various substances which
are furnished by the soil, compounded, by modes transcen
dental, into other specific substances. The mechanical ad
justment of parts, root, stem, leaves ; in absorbing, respiring,
expiring ; in secreting, accreting, excreting ; contain, in a
mystery, the animal system — that harmony of a thousand ele
ments. Taught by this material knowledge, that spirit would
begin to reflect upon its own nature. Thus the genesis of
matter, and the introduction of natural life, possibly enlarged
the knowledge and power of the spirit-world. Consciousness
of the natural world may impart to spirits an experience
somewhat akin, yet diverse, to that which spirit imparts to
the human soul. Passing things more recondite, there would
be the fact of solid extension, the mechanical properties of
hardness, softness, roughness, weight ; the chemical properties
in their varieties of pungencies, flavours, perfumes ; and the
vibrations of sound in melody and harmony ; so refined,
numerous, complicated, as to double all former powers of
enjoyment. The boundary is not yet attained of sensitive
existence : more light would break in, and the universe stand
revealed in all its beauties and glories. The great contriving
Mind would be viewed, ever and ever starting from and to a
higher point ; not only in effecting delicate and complicated
mechanism, but in so adapting the elements of the material
and spiritual systems that eternity calls time to walk in
Nature's wonderful avenue. More mysterious still, spirit
enters flesh ; then, wonder of wonders ! in fulness of time,
the Infinite and Eternal, who incomprehensibly manifests
1 " System of Biblical Psychology : " Prof. F. Delitzsch.

214 Creation of Plants.
Himself in space and time by all phenomena, dwells in that
holy human form, Jesus.
Language fails in utterance of thought. Who can put into
words the deep truths which underlie our consciousness of
Nature, and of those vast substantial spiritual realities on
which are based the glorious things of Revelation ? The
commonest facts which lie ready to our hand, in their essence,
have relations with infinity ; nor can we understand how
moments of time are linked by consciousness into the chain
of our life ; but still, though with darkling rather than glim
mering knowledge as to possible instruction of angels by the
creation of our own world, the symbols used may be fairly
taken as indications that our own knowledge and faculties of
enjoyment will enlarge in the future according to the measure
of Divine things attained in this life ; and that these seeds of
wisdom will not only grow into flowers of thought, but yield
glorious fruit in some paradise of God.

STUDY XII.
DAY IV. — THE SUN.
"There are men who, seeing the great power this sun hath, are secretly enticed
in their heart ; and with their mouth have kissed their hand to him." — Job xxxi.
26, 27, freely rendered.
Two dangers are to be guarded against in handling any
science touching Holy Scripture : (1) an unwise adoption and
adaptation of discoveries which seem to confirm the sacred
statements ; (2) an unworthy fear that any truly scientific
result can be adverse.
These dangers may be turned into deliverances. It is not
long since the sciences were mere aggregations of empirical
knowledge. Astronomy could hardly be called a science in
the days of Hipparchos, seeing that physics did not begin, as
a science, till Galileo discovered the law of falling bodies.
Chemistry began two hundred and seventy years later, when
Lavoisier, discovering the true principles of combustion, over
threw the doctrine of phlogiston. At the end of the eighteenth
century biology began, Bichat pointing out the relations
between the functions of organs and the properties of tissues.
Sociology is not yet a science. Scientific religion will not be
completed until the whole physical and psychical nature of
man, physics and metaphysics, history and revelation, the
natural and preternatural, are regarded from the highest point
attainable by human nature. Meanwhile, assured as we are
by the co-ordination of all our faculties that the religious
sentiment will find as great, or even greater satisfaction in the
future than it has in the past, and because the recognition of
a Power which is beyond humanity, and upon which humanity
rests, will become, by the advance of science, a scientific
verity ; it is well to remind the fearful that religion is not " a
polity de novo" but built on the concrete facts of past ages.

216 The Sun.
It views the individual in his relation to the Supreme, who
is manifested in creation, revelation, providence, history. It
sanctions, sanctifies, and renders possible, the true morality
which ought to govern men in relation to their fellow-creatures.
Religion and morality condemn whatever hinders or mars
physical and spiritual completion of life ; give the aspiration
— the noblest we can entertain — for complete fulness of life ;
and yield philosophic explanation of the marvellous range of
human sympathy, and of our irrepressible yearnings after the
Divine. The divines and sages of the past were neither
knaves, nor the dupes 'of knaves, but genuine philosophers;
they not only made the best use of such implements of
research as they possessed, but embodied in the spiritual
organisation of creeds that which alone, of all the things in
the world, was found capable of holding society together in
troublous times, or of giving consolation to men in their afflic
tion. The divines and sages of our own time are preserved
from hasty and unwise use — even as they have no servile
dread of scientific discovery. They have faith in a guiding
and beneficent God, who inaugurates and maintains a better
state of society here, as preparation for a more glorious future,
by effecting not merely change of opinions, but improvement
of heart.
St. Augustine cried in amazement, " Wondrous depths of
Thy words ! whose surface, behold, is before us inviting to
little ones ; yet are they a wondrous depth." x The amaze
ment of Christians is not less in these days : the Book grows
more venerable in antiquity, becomes more reverend in autho
rity. The consideration of physical truths proves that Moses
— living in what some account barbaric time, as to science —
was certainly wise ; and that the message which he claims to
have received from God is undoubtedly true. Scientific diffi
culties, far from casting doubt on the faith in which we were
nurtured, confirm, in their explanation, its Divinity. If the
science of one age could fathom all depths, the Book, revealing
those depths, might be wholly of man — a production of the
land of Egypt and house of bondage ; but knowledge opening
new domains for wisdom to possess, finds new meaning. The
1 Conf. lib. xii.

The Account of Creation Divine. 217
old words, the old thoughts, remain ineffaceable ; but the
child of the flesh is also a child of the Spirit — God's witness
to the human heart. Moses dwelt in a land of sun-wor
shippers, and could not forget the sun ; amongst men who
laid stress on the letter of Nature's book, and rendered every
symbol of the Divine a myth of some special divinity — a god
of day and light, a god of night and darkness, a god of water
and a god of fire, a god of good and a god of evil, god warred
against god ; nevertheless, Moses restored our knowledge of
One true God. In laying the foundations of this higher
knowledge, he advanced from Nature to Nature's God, from
the seen to the unseen, entered that which the poet can only
look upon from afar —
" All experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move."
Impartial men will allow, that if Moses wrote such an account
of creation as can stand the investigation of accurate modern
science, he was the most wonderful of men.
Christians claim more for the account : assert that the
formula of Creation does not instruct men in science, yet con
tains even all which it revealeth not : is a formula, with
mystery of deep within deep, for the profound ; but to the
simple-hearted as a clear lake wherein the face answering to
their face is the Human Face Divine. A formula, wherein the
problem to be solved is the equation of all things and nothing,
the finite and Infinite, time and Eternity, must be a Divine
product. No other intelligence, not even that of the highest
archangel, knew or saw the primal generation ; and no creature
can understand or describe that genesis by which worlds —
relatively eternal and infinite, both as to the past and the
future — begin, continue, end— the end issuing in the birth of
new worlds evermore.
This formula, being for men, is to be regarded in human
fashion. It reveals a process in which God, everywhere and
in all things, everlastingly calls forth successive existences to
live, move, have being in Him. To high intelligence, the
process stands out in complete result, somewhat as it is in

218 The Sun.
presence of the Eternal, absolutely apart from time. Between
these conceptions of creation — one of infinite extent and
eternal duration, the other a gathering of all into one com
prehensive " Now " — intervenes all that variety of representa
tion ranging from a glance — as by instantaneous flash revealing
a vast panorama, to that display which we possess in Genesis
when, enlarged by scientific conception and knowledge, we
discern — i
" Our destiny, our being's heart and home,
Are with Infinity, and only there. "
Thus searching the Divine Narrative, we find that events are
as the rise and fall of a curtain, day and night cast light and
shadow, voices and commands order the process, the formless
takes shape, a long-hidden beginning is revealed and developed,
the Spirit of God shines on the face of a great deep, and chaos
passes into Creation. There are shinings — light ; openings —
firmamental expanse; gatherings and Sowings — the great
deep ; rising as from watery womb — the new land ; life germi
nating — afterwards to grow in power beneath sunny beams.
We conceive that this whole process might pass before the
spirit of Moses in a series of days — a thousand of years to a
day, or a day as a moment. The element of time is index,
not computation : every day being yesterday's child and to
morrow's parent. The creations of God in plant and fish, in
bird and mammal, appear not so much near or wide apart, as
standing out with distinctness.
We are bound by the same analogy to regard the order or
progress as not necessarily in a straight line ; but, possibly,
that described by those complex curves in which are contained
the progress yet continual return of the heavenly bodies in
their vast career. Expositors of the Divine Procedure do not
bind Scriptural narrative in those cords of exact order and
sequence which science imposes on her own small essays and
experiments. Revelation states why God made the world,
science endeavours to find how God made it. Revelation is
for moral purpose, science for physical investigation. At a
time when men worshipped the sun as Lord of Life — as did
the Egyptians, and as do some Materialists now — that moral
purpose is best served, and men are best instructed, by decla-

The Suns Origin. 219
ration that they live not by sun-power, but by God-power.
On this moral ground we vindicate the insertion of life as
precedent to acknowledgment of the sun as ruler. Should
our scientific argument fail to convince, the Divine Act stands
by its own integrity.
Try the scientific investigation.
Time has surprises and revenges. We have seen how light
shone out of darkness, now we shall find that the sun is not
a naked and terrible wilderness of tempestuous combustion ;
but affords in its consideration a well-spring of intellectual
delight. The Sun's Origin.
Till of late it was tacitly assumed that the sun did during
the past, and will through the future, emit an unfailing amount
of light and heat. All that is now abandoned. In whatever
shape energy manifests itself in the world, it must have existed
previously under another shape. Solar radiations are the
changed form of some other energy : possibly that by which
the matter of the sun, once diffused in space, was drawn to
his centre of gravity from a distance extending far beyond the
outermost planet. A mass of coal, the size of the sun, would
only suffice to give so large an amount of heat for five thousand
years. The hypothesis of the falling together, from widely
scattered distribution in space, of the matter which now forms
the various suns and planets, is generally accepted. As the
mass of our sun aggregated and condensed, heat grew with
the force of impact, and the luminous atmosphere was of
gradual formation.
According to another theory, possibly the rarefied gaseous
condition was caused by excessive temperature, and conden
sation began with the cooling and contraction of the mass.
If we unite both theories, then the solar system was evolved
by the processes of contraction and accretion ; and, according
to the theory of Laplace, the planets were fashioned in the
order of their distances from the sun, the remoter being first
formed. In the drawing ' of cosmical matters to the sun,
the vaster the distances the more violent the impact. " The
rush of matter which we now recognise affords, perhaps, but
the faintest indications of the amazing conflicts in which our

220 The Sun.
system had its birth. Tracing back the history of that system,
we seem to recognise a time when the sun's supremacy was
still incomplete, when the planets struggled with him for the
continually inrushing materials from which his substance as
well as theirs was to be recruited. We see him clearing, by
the mighty energy of his attraction, a wide space around him
of all save such relatively tiny orbs as Venus and the Earth,
Mars, Mercury, and the asteroids. With more distant planets
the struggle was less unequal. The masses which flowed in
towards the centre of the scheme swept with comparatively
slow motion past its outer bounds, so that the subordinate
centres there forming were able to grasp a goodly proportion
of material to increase their own mass or to form subordinate
systems around them. And so the planets, Jupiter and
Saturn, Uranus and distant Neptune, grew to their giant
dimensions, and became records at once of the sun's might
as a ruler — for without his overruling attraction the material
which formed these planets would never have approached the
system — and of the richness of the chaos of matter from
which his bulk and theirs was alike derived. Nor is the con
sideration without a mysterious attraction, that in thus looking
back at the past history of our system, we have passed, after
all, but a step towards that primal state whence the conflict of
matter arose. We are looking into a vast abysm, and, as we
look, fancy we recognise strange movements and signs, as if
the depths were shaping themselves into definite forms. But
in truth those movements show only the vastness of the
abysm ; those depths speak to us of far mightier depths,
within which they are taking shape. ' Lo ! these are but a
portion of His Ways ; they utter but a whisper of His glory.' " x
Truth is stranger than fiction and excels romance. Many
ages back, in the immeasurable swoop of the past, an enor
mous moving mass existed and collided at and around the
place now occupied by the solar system. This mass, obtaining
swift and vehement rotation, assumed a somewhat globular
shape. Huge rings of matter were integrated during succes
sive ages of spinning and revolving — so were the planets'
formed. These again broke into portions — so are satellites
1 " The Sun : " R. A. Proctor.

The Sun's Age. 221
accounted for — while certain whiffs or puffs gave birth to some
of the eccentric comets. Many of the meteorite systems still
visit us, although they belong to the great primary mass.
The array of sun and planets, the pomp of all material worlds,
are a procession and gathering from the unseen to the seen,
out of infinite to finite space. Their duration, compared with
eternity, is as the flight of birds into our horizon — to pass out
again and be no more seen.
The Sun's Age.
" It has never been maintained that the matter of the sun
was created or even organised on the fourth day." x Theo
logians hold that the development of the solar system includes
all terrestrial arrangements. The formation and operation of
the sun and of the earth were co-ordinate and partly contem
poraneous. The sun, the earth, and. other planets, being for
one another, their whole substance formed part of that uni
versal cosmical arrangement which is described Genesis i. 1.
Dr. Buckland, p. 27, " Bridgewater Treatise," observes — " We
are not told that the substance of the sun and moon was first
called into existence on the fourth day. The text may
equally imply that those bodies were then prepared and
appointed to certain offices of high importance to mankind,
to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and
over the night, to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days,
and for years. The fact of their creation had been stated
before in the first verse."
Against this it may be urged — " The text says the sun was
made on the fourth day, not made to appear. Just as God
made the firmament, made the beast of the earth, made man,
so did He make two great lights and the stars. There is an
end of all ingenuousness in interpreting Scripture, if we foist
in one of these examples a meaning not borne in any of the
others." The reply is simple and convincing — The' word
" made " is not to be strained in the least, and when we say
it means, not the making of globular and opaque masses in
the depths of space, but the making of visible lights as they
appear moving in the sky, that meaning is correct and natural.
If, moreover, our science is correct as to the progressive con-
1 " Genesis," p. 151 : Prof. Lange.

222 The Sun.
densation of the sun, the luminous atmosphere would be
cleared gradually during the sun's process of integration as
a revolving light. The development of the earth is an ana
logue of the development of suns and stars. As the earth
condensed, so the sun condenses. One theory supposes the
condensation of the sun and planets from a nebulous mass,
whatever that may mean ; and the condensation of the sun
from the original mass can be calculated. Professor Helm
holtz gives a formula.1 Work of condensation = #-r g
s 6 R m s'
The mass of the sun is M, the mass of the earth is m ;
the sun's radius is R, the earth's radius is r. Taking
M=4230Xio27 lbs., m = n,920 lbs., R=2,328,5oo,ooo feet,
and r= 20,889,272 feet, we have for the total work per
formed by gravitation in foot-pounds —
3. (20,88Q,272-5)2X(4230X IO27)2
Work=f 2,328,500^00 x iii92oxioW = l68>79°* x°s° foot-pounds.
The heat, thus produced, would suffice for 20,237,500 years ;
and the quantity of heat given out, which previously existed
as original temperature, was 49,850,000 years' heat ; making
in all 70,087,500 years' heat. This represents the total
amount of heat given out since the mass began to con
dense. Mr. Croll says — " Let us assume that by the time that
the mass of the sun had condensed to within the space en
circled by the orbit of the planet Mercury (that is, to a space
having, say, a radius of 18,000,000 miles) the earth's crust
began to form ; and let this be the time when the geological
history of our globe dates its commencement. The total
amount of heat generated by the condensation of the sun's
mass from a sphere of this size to its present volume would
equal 19,740,000 years' sun-heat. The amount of original
heat given out during that time would equal 48,625,000 years'
sun-heat, thus giving a total of 68,365,000 years' sun-heat
enjoyed by our globe since that period." 2 If the sun's gravity
is greatly increased at the centre, the quantity will be con
siderably more ; but there is no warrant for anything like the
' " Phil. Mag." sect. 4, vol. xi. p. 76 (1856). Also in "Climate and Time," p.
348 : James Croll.
2 " Climate and Time," p. 352 : James Croll.

Suns Physical Constitution. 223
period demanded by some geologists, and the general conclu
sion arrived at by measurement of the sun's heat is that one
hundred millions of years amply suffice for condensation of
the nebulous mass into the present form.
A process of condensation has not only taken place in the
sun, but in all members of the solar system. There has been
advance, if the generally received hypothesis be true, in every
one from the gaseous to the liquid, from the liquid to the solid
state, to be followed by extinction of their light. There was
a time when the sun did not give light in the manner now
given ; a time when the earth, even if light were given, could
not behold it ; a time when all the visible glory was invisible ;
a time when Nature, as now known, was not ; in a Source
beyond Nature is Nature's origin to be found. Worlds precede
worlds in time, worlds lie beyond worlds in space.
Turn to the account — " God made two great lights ; the
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the
night : He made the stars also. And God set them in
the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth."
The stars seem mentioned lest they should be accounted
uncreated. Sun, moon, stars, are classed according to their
apparent magnitude and importance. The word " made "
is more formative than the word "create." It is used for
" dressing," " arranging," " making ready." The calf was
dressed for Abraham's mysterious visitors, and the cakes
were made of meal (Gen. xviii. 6, 7). The same Hebrew
word, used for "dressing," "making," '¦' crowning," informs
us that the sun was dressed, made, crowned ruler, to give
light on the earth. By the time earth and water were sepa
rated, and dense vaporous clouds rarefied, the earth's mass
attained a measure of consolidation, and began to exhibit vital
power in lowest forms of vegetable organisms ; the sun, clearing
the photosphere, sent rays of light and heat through the vast
pressure of his own vapours, and became lord of the day.
The Sun's Physical Constitution.
The actual density is' about one-fourth that of the earth
or a little greater than the density of water.1 The tremendous'
' The sun is 1,260,000 times larger than the earth, and 882,000 miles in
diameter. More than 1,200,000 earths would be required to form the substance

224 The Sun.
heat, whatever pressure the gases and vapours are subject to,
renders a solid nucleus improbable ; and we must regard the
sun as, in the main, a gaseous body. Around it is no per
manent or solid crust, but an envelope continually pierced by
blasts and jets from within. This great mass, swaying our
system, is compressed towards the centre, but hardly any
definite theories can be adopted concerning any other than
its gaseous condition. The attractive and repulsive forces are
such, and the elements exist in forms and quantities with
which we are so nearly unacquainted, that when one difficulty
is removed from our understanding it gives place to another.
The sun's envelope cannot, in any ordinary sense, be counted
a crust at all ; but as the vaporous globe is in the presence of
the cold of space, there is necessarily a process on the outer
surface corresponding to the formation of clouds in our skies.
The vapours composing them are chiefly metallic elements,
which condensing may descend in sheets of fire, and form a
nearly continuous envelope, through which the central im
prisoned gases are erupted with great violence. Mr. Proctor
states — "The sun is a gigantic bubble whose walls are gradually
thickening, and its diameter diminishing, at a rate determined
by its loss of heat. It differs, however, from ordinary bubbles
in the fact that its skin is continually penetrated by blasts and
jets from within." x
Sir W. Herschel viewed the sun as a solid globe, around
which lies an atmosphere of complex nature. He thought
that the real body of the sun was neither illuminated nor
heated very greatly. " Whatever fanciful poets may say in
making the sun the abode of blessed spirits, or angry moralists
devise in pointing it out as a fit place for the punishment of
of one sun, and the weight or mass is 300,000 times greater than that of the
earth. Our sun is not a large star compared with others, for Sirius is equal in
bulk to more than 4000 suns. The surface of the sun is about 2,284,000,000,000
square miles, there are 3,097,600 square yards in every square mile, and on every
square yard a heat is produced equal to that which would be caused by burning on
it six tons of coal an hour. The impact of matter falling into the sun merely from
the earth's distance, would give 6000 times the amount of energy which would be
produced by mere burning. The sun travels at the rate of 154,185,000 miles the
year. His mean distance from the earth is 91,430,000 miles ; rotation on the axis
occupies about 2538 days.
1 "The Sun a Bubble : " R. A. Proctor.

Suns Surface. 225
the wicked, it does not appear that they had any other foun
dations than mere opinion and vain surmise ; but now I think
myself authorised, upon astronomical principles, to propose
the sun as an inhabitable world." Sir John Herschel, the son,
took a wholly different view as to the coolness of the sun ;
and, incredible though it seem, regarded certain bright objects,
shaped like willow leaves, lying athwart and across each
other, as the immediate sources of the solar light and heat.
He says — "We cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of
some peculiar and amazing kind ; and though it may appear
too daring to speak of such organisations as partaking of the
nature of life, yet we do know that vital action is competent
to develop at once heat and life and electricity."
The sun's surface has not only spots which have a central
part and a fringe less dark ; but also contains certain bright
streaks, by some called faculae, in the neighbourhood of the
spots. " The sun-spots are really hollows or cavities in the
solar atmosphere where the temperature of the glowing gases
has been reduced." x The spots are said to be confined to two
definite zones, extending about 35° on each side of the equator :
a scene of solar tornadoes of white-hot hydrogen, which blow
with such fierceness that, compared with these, our most
destructive storms are summer breezes. The spots are cer
tainly depressions of greater or less depth, and the light
received from the umbra of a spot shines through absorbing
vapours. " A great difficulty lies in the fact that we have no
clear evidence to show whether the sun-spots are formed by
forces acting from without or from within, . . . whether the
seat of that action which leads to the formation of a spot lies
below or above the level of the photosphere. ... As to the
prominences, it seems to be demonstrated that some are mere
clouds in the upper regions of the solar atmosphere, while
others are due to some form of eruption, and only assume the
cloud form after the eruption which gave them birth has
ceased." 2 There are bridges, arcs, stalks, leaves, and veils of
clouds, most intricate in structure. The wildest and most
fantastic variations take place, renewals of fresh forces with
1 " Spectrum Analysis," p. 263 : Henry E. Roscoe.
2 "The Sun," pp. 438, 439 : R. A. Proctor.

226 The Sun.
scenes of tremendous tornadoes, swift rushes of glowing
vapours and cyclonic motions. The least spot, perceived
with the most powerful telescope, has an area of fifty thou
sand miles ; those visible to the unaided eye are enormous.
The largest spot recorded had a greater breadth than 143,500
miles. The spots sometimes burst in pieces, like a piece of
ice dashed on a frozen pool, and disappear in a moment.
The eruptions, which occur at all times, are vast explosions,
seeming to come from some twenty thousand miles below the
edge of the sun's disc, and extend many thousands of miles in
every direction. There are brilliant, silver, copper, and ruby-
coloured coruscations. The velocity has been known to
exceed two hundred and fifty miles a second. They are of
glowing hydrogen, and other vaporous elements, through an
atmosphere of hydrogen.
Coloured prominences consist of glowing gas of various tints
and forms — their origin is still a mystery. The sierra, or
rugged line of projections, is made up of ranges of red and
other coloured flames, now called the chromosphere. The
whole disc of the sun is much marked with roughness like an
orange, and some of the lower parts of the inequalities are
blackish. The faculae are ridges of elevation above the
rough surface, and sometimes, next to a spot, will be a pro
tuberant lump of shining matter.
Many metals exist in the sun, more than thirty have been
found of the fifty-one known on earth. The sun is made
chiefly of metals ; in our earth metals form the minority.
The surface of the sun is exceedingly complex. Analysis
of spots shows three envelopes within the photosphere : the
penumbral fringe, the dark umbra, the so-called black nucleus
about ten thousand miles below the photosphere. The
photosphere is a fourth solar level. The fifth is a shallow
atmosphere discovered by Young, extending three or four
hundred miles above the photosphere. Sixth, the sierra,
about eight or ten thousand miles. Seventh, the prominence
region, extending to a height of thirty or forty thousand
miles, with occasional extension to more than a hundred
thousand miles. Eighth, the inner brighter corona, from two
to three hundred thousand miles, expanding in places to four

Counterpart in the Planet Saturn. 227
or five hundred thousand miles. Ninth, the outer radiated
corona, jagged in outline and extending fully a million of
miles from the visible glowing surface of the sun. All these
envelopes are themselves multiple ; and the outer corona is
but the inner part of a solar envelope, or appendage, with
outermost limits lying altogether out of ken. What a complex
subject of research lies before our astronomers !
The sun has almost a counterpart in the planet Saturn,
whose splendid architecture displays the fashioning power of
the great laws of the universe. The beauty of the system, the
marvellous gigantic rings, the delicate varieties of colours in
the rings and in the planet, the singular problems suggested
by their magnificent size, fascinate the observer. If the vast
belts are not cloud-masses formed by the sun, their real
origin must be in some action of the planet's own mass. The
heat of his surface may cause currents of vapour to rise con
tinually ; on attaining the upper regions of his atmosphere,
they are condensed in the form of a cloud. "A similar
peculiarity exists in the case of the sun. Indeed, a somewhat
surprising resemblance exists between Saturn and the sun, as
regards many important characteristics. The planet, like the
sun, is of low specific gravity — very far lower than the earth's ;
as the sun has eight primary attendants, so Saturn has eight
satellites ; and as the sun has his attendant disc of minute
bodies (seen in the Zodiacal light), so Saturn has his ring
system, in all probability, of multitudes of minute satellites
travelling in independent orbits around him. Is it not possible
that the relation necessary to make the analogy complete may
be actually fulfilled, and that Saturn is a source whence heat
is supplied to the orbs which circle around him ? " x
The analogy may be added to by a further fact— Jupiter,
with his dark bands, seems now to be in the same state as was
our earth. His cloudy shifting streaks ; and the appearance,
at times, as of mountains or openings ; may be inaugurating
new days and nights in that far-off mighty planet.
It is not necessary, for those who believe that all thino-s are
of God, to adopt any scientific theory as final. Mayer and
Thomson maintained that the sun's heat, compared with
1 "Essays on Astronomy," p. 99: R. A. Proctor.

228 The Sun.
which the fiercest fire of a mass of white-hot iron is cold as
ice, is sustained by the continual infall of cosmical bodies.
Helmholtz supposes that gradual contraction of the solar orb
is the mainspring of solar energies. Secchi believed that the
fund of force lies in the union of the sun's own elements in
chemical combinations. Sir John Herschel said, that mayhap
the vital energies of monstrous creatures are the source of the
luminary's might. The facts are so wonderful that even a
sober explanation must appear wild, discovered realities are
more sublime than any fictions that were ever addressed to
the imagination.
The Sun's Rule.
He draws to himself all such cosmical matter and bodies
as come under his exclusive influence, either by leaving the
domain of some other star, or on account of his own motion
through space. These do not all remain with him ; but, after
paying their respects, return to the sidereal depths to be
attendants on other suns and stars, to perform functions in
many worlds. Around him are millions of millions of bodies
of varying velocities in different directions ; clouds of cosmi
cal atoms shifting and changing, aggregating here, segregating
there ; but, as a clustering solar appendage, permanent — an
aureola of tremendous dimensions and startling magnificence.
The meteors encountered by our earth every year are upwards
of 2,700,000 visible to the naked eye ; including shooting
stars, only seen by telescopic aid, the hypothetical sum is
146,000,000,000. The space between the earth's orbit and
the sun cannot be less rich ; in fact, there must be an increas
ing aggregation of meteoric matter as the solar globe is
approached. By the exercise of his mighty attractive influence, he con
trols the force which would drive planets and meteors far out
into space from the influence of his lighting, heating, actinic
influence. So perfect his government, that the processes of
slow change take place within limits, and the continual varia
tions produce permanence in paths ever varying around him.
By slowly exerted influence, he changes the eccentricity of
our earth's orbit, causes the terrestrial equinoxes to circuit
the ecliptic in their grand precession of 25,868 solar years ;

The Sun's Rule. 229
continents become oceans, and seas dry land ; one hemisphere
and then another supplies fruitful fields ; activity follows rest,
and rest activity ; during many ages, the globe has been, and
will continue to be, a fit abode of life and beauty.
In one sense the sun's sphere of influence includes all space,
but for practical purposes we regard it as limited and definite.
His power is 315,000 times greater than the earth's. It might
be supposed that a very vast increase of velocity is needed to
change our periodic revolution ; but if the earth's speed were
raised from its actual rate, i8'2 to 19 miles the second, to
about 257 miles the second, we should be carried thenceforth
further and further away from light and life. Still rotating,
day and night still succeeding, the orderly sequence of the
seasons would be displaced by continual diminution of solar
light and heat ; a cold more intense than that of the bitterest
Arctic winter would bind all things in everlasting frost. So
true is it, the lights in heaven are for signs and seasons, for
seed-time and harvest, for summer and winter.
The sun rules all the vapour of our atmosphere, lifting it
up, then casting it down as rain or snow. The mechanical
power of every river in the world, the energy of the winds, the
growth of trees and vegetables, the support of animal life, are
all from him. The blood in our veins — that oil of the lamp of
life, the work of our muscles, the oxidation which supports
the heart's action — without which it would be utterly con
sumed by its own action in eight days, prove that we are
children of the sun. In tracing out all these powers to their
source, we come to one power — the sun. He is the natural
agent, and it is as easy for men to see the Providence of God
in the natural ordering of the world, as in startling and
miraculous occurrences.
For many aeons the sun and our earth were " a fluid haze of
light ; " then again, for other aeons, our earth, like the sun, was
a globe instinct with fiery heat in which no life could live after
the manner of life now known. The potential germs of life
might have been present in the midst of the fire, but only
after periods infinite to our conception could life, such as we
know it, or in the remotest degree like it, begin to exist. It
is probable, however, from the fact that seeds, in order to

230 The Sun.
germinate, must be placed in darkness — this being the case
even with those plants which cannot flower and fruit until
they receive the solar beams and power — that the living prin
ciple began to germinate ere solar beams shone with great
light on the earth. The sun was hotter formerly than now,
but the Zodiacal light and corona may have had particles not
luminous which hindered the shining forth of great light. It
may be that when the sun was giving forth most heat he was
simultaneously raising the greatest amount of obstruction to
the propagation of radiations from his surface.
This throws light on the Divine Narrative. Grass, herb,
tree, are representative words for all vegetation ; and grass
comprises that low order, called Cryptogams, or flowerless
plants. The earliest may have been like those fungi which
are found in mines, quarries, and gloomy or dark places.
Herb and tree stand for that growth of flowering plants,
including modern cereals, fruit and forest trees, which now
adorn the earth ; but probably did not exist until required
for the nourishment of animal life. We may reasonably con
clude that, lord of earthly life as is the sun, creative energy
waited not for his manifestation on the fourth day ; but that
in the water and on the land, even before the sun's face was
cleared from the battle and smoke of early cosmical struggles,
life became rooted in the ground and floated in the waters ;
and when, with clear face, the monarch surveyed the earth,
many other forms of life sprang up gladdened with his smile.
The Sun's Path through Space.
As knowledge and piety extend the horizon of view, the
world enlarges to our contemplation ; we travel beyond the
sphere of sun, moon, earth, planets, and enter new firmaments
to behold other suns and stars of greater and lesser splendour.
The vast system, of which we are members, is hasting, with
meteors, comets, satellites, asteroids, planets, sun, from the
southern rich region of stars — the neighbourhood of Canis
Major, Columba, and Lepus, to the northern rich region —
where the chiefest splendour is gathered in Cygnus. We
speed along a relatively barren path, from a rich past to a
glorious future, at a rate of one hundred and fifty-four millions
one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles the year. We

Sun's Path through Space. 231
circle a centre in the direction of Alcyone, a star of the
Pleiades, of which Job (xxxviii. 31). said long ago — "Canst
thou bind the sweet influence of Pleiades ? " Round some
central sun, or central void without any preponderate mass,
or in a great vortex-ring, we move as parts in a scheme too
wonderful and complicate to be as yet interpreted, and we
complete the course in about eighteen million two hundred
thousand years.
As the earth and other planets are carried on, their orbits
continually advance ; the earth, beheld from the sun, is but a
dust-mote in his beams ; and the actual path, year by year, is
through fresh space. Viewing the sun, as among other suns,
and the planetary orbits, as seen from the fixed stars, those
orbits are little more than a point, and the sun is invisible.
What lines of gigantic boundary fix the order and place of
every constellation ! What unknown possibilities lie in that
measureless extension of space where worlds are sprinkled as
dust of gold for the display of intellectual and moral life !
Our sun and his fellow-suns are connected with groups of
minor suns, with clusters of star-dust, with masses of star-
mist, with whorls and convolutions of nebulous matter, some
times combined in vast spherical gatherings of worlds. There j
are orbs lying in such close order that we think great brilliancy
is in those heavens ; but, after stricter examination, they are -
found wide apart as the inconceivable distance between our
sun and his nearest fellow. Further off, are stars whose rays
take thousands, perhaps .millions, of years to reach the earth.
The arrangement is of striking order, and the possibility of
it having sprung up by chance is so ridiculously small that
Quetelet calculates it is as nothing. There is a multiplicity of
worlds in infinite space, and a countless succession of worlds
in infinite time, with point or base of gravity regulated by the
weight and motion of all. Great and glorious is the Garden
of God. The suns are planted in flowering beds of many
splendid colours. The planets interweave in sparkling germi
nation, various foliage, blooming fecundity of borders. .Dark
suns, weird places, cavernous chaotic regions, shadow forth
the desolation of eternal wintry fields. There are ridges and
clusters, rows and shelvings, spirals and streams, in celestial

232 The Sun.
depths where are signs of as yet unthought of laws. " I shall
maintain it all my life, whoever says in his heart there is no
God, and makes use of a different language, is either a liar or
a madman." x
Scripture holds closely to mundane affairs, yet the very
ground on which religion and morality are based, is that we
move in a wider circle than the physical ; that spiritual beings,
good and evil, enter our firmament, concern themselves with
the destiny of our race ; and that we, after a rational service
in duty and trial, shall enter a vast congregation of pure
spirits who are further within the circle of Divine Power, and
nearer to the manifestation of Divine Glory. Meanwhile,
God guides us by His hand, and in His heart has sympathy.
Life's trials cast down, but not destroy ; lightning may rend
the firmament, yet awake no fear ; and sickness, touching our
body with premonition of the grave, brings conviction that
we shall live again. Like the suns and stars, kindled into
splendour from previous worlds, our restored spirits, with
frames purified and refashioned, will evermore live on, and
find starry pathway to the Eternal Throne.
Thoughtful men studying the Sun's Path through Space,
Rule, Physical Constitution, Age, Origin, receive a deep im
pression that the Divine account, the simplest in the world
is not vague nor indefinite ; but startling, grand, abrupt. The
appearance corresponds to our limited aspect of Nature, words
and times agree with our ignorance and mortality, but possess
an inner spirit revealing powers of the world to come.
Marvellously strange ! The pomp of heaven is made a
plea for clothing the earth with poor garments, and the
Father's boundless wealth a reason that we should expect
nothing. Forgetting that if a narrative, like that of Scripture,
bristling with apparent contradictions, startling and bold in a
sturdy contempt of confidence in human will and wisdom, is
found to agree with accurate science, the Book must be of
God ; an attempt is made to turn God's greatness against us.
We are asked — " Of what consequence can men, their pleasures
or their pains, be to Him in whose sight all the worlds our
1 Rousseau, " Emilius," vol. ii. p. 230.

Littleness and Greatness. 233
eye can see are less than a speck in infinite space ? " Those
who charge the Bible with narrowness pervert the splendour
of God into a plea that He is too great to love mankind.
The Being whom they profess to hallow is made less wise,
less good, less wonderful, by the assertion that He cannot
and will not visit us. Why should our reason be less firm in
structure, or analogy concerning this be entitled to less con
fidence, than when we consider smaller things ? If the incal
culable multiplication of worlds, and the necessities of a rule
that is infinite, hinder not the fashioning of a moth's wing so
that it possess a very firmament of beauty ; why should not
the All-good and Holy devise a plan for rendering us good
and holy, in a manner far exceeding human thought as the
elaborate many-chambered houses for tiny and invisible life
transcend our comprehension ?
The philosopher delights to show that a grain of sand on
the shore of a sea, and a thought in the mind of a child, are
bound by a law which cannot be broken, with a past that is
infinite and a future that is eternal. The Christian rejoices to
know that God has a plan for every man — that the provision
for a soul's salvation is infinite, connected with worlds and
times, transactions and interests, surpassing knowledge. To
God, in a human sense, is no such thing as absolute size ;
relative greatness and smallness — nothing more. To us things
appear small when scarcely seen by the naked eye ; very
small when a powerful microscope barely suffices to render
them visible ; and the space between us and a fixed star is
enormous as compared with that between the earth and sun ;
but there is absolutely nothing to show that a portion of
matter, which even in our most powerful microscopes is hope
lessly minute for investigation, may not be complex as the
stars that exceed our sun in magnitude.
Continue and enlarge the thought. The whole truth,
whether as to great or small, is transcendental. The universe
in grandeur, in extent, in variety of mighty orbs circling
mightier suns ; those suns themselves glittering attendants of
other centres, stupendously wonderful, whose circuit it may
be that no created intelligence is able to measure ; leads to
the conclusion — confirmed by astronomy — that the spectacle

234 The Sun.
revealed by the telescope, though too vast for human concep
tion, is but a sparklet of the whole that infinity and eternity
contain. A similar exercise of scientific imagination, but intensified,
reveals worlds of life within a rain-drop sphere ; discerns
existences to which the needle-point is a vast plain ; and
these, again, are lords of worlds extending inward for ever
and for ever.
Such intellectual recreations prove, to minds capable of
them, that an invisible point may present infinite internal
capacities for Divine operation ; and that on every such point,
throughout all space, may be arranged worlds and worlds of
mystery and skill not less wonderful than those which demand
infinitude of space for their display ; for, indeed, it is true
that God can make the small to be great, and the great to be
small. Our own littleness contains very wonderful greatness
though we have put away the arrogant notion that human
existence is the central era of time, as we have laid aside the
error that our solar system is central within the universe.
There seems no centre, nor are there limits ; rather, the centre
is everywhere, the circumference nowhere ; and the human
period is scarcely a ripple on the ocean of time. God, never
theless, has so elaborated our thought that we think as if He
thought but of us, and made our destiny His only care. This
is not, on our part, wholly erroneous ; for, to us, we and our
world are indeed a centre whence radiates infinity. By crea
tion, and more wonderfully by the Plan of Salvation, we are
connected with a system that, materially and spiritually,
arrays around it height and depth, length and breadth, the
infinite past and the infinite future. Actual discoveries of
science make possible, if not probable, all that comes within
the compass of analogy. We only look at the dial-plate of
Nature — the forms and semblances of things ; but even our
present faculties enlarged would be able to inspect the wheel-
work and springs ; hence belief is warranted that the seed of
power_ within^us, our intuitions — which already somewhat
penetrate mysteries seeming impenetrable — may be capable
of enjoying vastly more of the Infinite (i Cor. ii. 9—15). If
so, our earth is a centre of wonders, and on the hinge of life

Our Own Greatness. 235
revolves a surpassing destiny. The universe is all aglow with
the lamp-light and hearth-light of our Father's House. Life
seems to many as the bubble of a solitary pool come up to
look at the sun, — bubble clothed about with tender fibre of
mortal hue, to float over the glowing ripple, hither and thither,
who knows ? But the bubble bursts ; it has come in contact
with some weed or spray, and the crystal sparklet flies.
Whither ? We say — " To be re-formed, to be enlarged, to
become a glorious sphere, filled with new life from God
through Jesus Christ our Lord." Believe
" That nothing walks with aimless feet ;
That not one life shall be destroy'd
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.
' ' That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's again. "
Tennyson, In Memoriam, liv.
^rev^i 7] •nvK-n uv% 'q iz6\is.
Via longa et arcta, sed urbs ampla.

STUDY XIII.
DAY V. — FISHES, REPTILES, BIRDS.
"The natural and moral constitution and government of the world are so con
nected as to make up together but one scheme : and it is highly probable, that
the first is formed and carried on merely in subordination to the latter, as the
vegetable world is for the animal, and organised bodies for minds." — Butler's
Analogy. If we stood in space, far off from the solar system, we should
see the worlds as a distant gleam. If then, standing not so
far off, we beheld the light and motion of the planets and
satellites, we might think that all matter was alike, all motion
of one kind, and that both existed according to some simple
mechanical and chemical laws. On nearer approach, seeing
the world's living things, we might conclude, in the absence
of evidence to the contrary, that some law of invariable causa
tion was absolutely universal. Alighting on the earth, among
men, we should discover that Nature spoke to all, and
separately to each ; that what every man heard he set down
in feeling and thought, so that the symbols of his own experi
ence represented the order, arrangement, fulness, reality in
Nature, even as a page of algebraic figures can be read off
into thoughts concerning the variety and splendour of light.
If to this personal equation, to these qualities for physical and
metaphysical research, bringing tidings that the circle of the
known is surrounded by an ocean from whose depths arise
other lands of beauty, were added a greeting of the spirit
encouraging contemplation of the Unknown — the Great Cause
of all : our conclusion would be that infinite space existed for
matter, much less than space ; that matter existed for life,
much less than matter ; that life existed for mind, least of all,
yet greater than all — ruler of all.
Regard this world of matter, of life, of mind, as a mechan
ism driven by blind energy ; such energy, unless continually

Beginning by the Great Unknown. 237
restrained by mind giving it law, would break up the universe.
We can think this out. The transfer of energy into things
necessary for the existence of life, and to effect physical
changes in the universe, " is on the whole a passing from
higher to lower forms ; and, therefore, the possibility of
transformation is becoming smaller and smaller ; so that
* after the lapse of sufficient time, all higher forms of energy
must have passed from the physical universe ; and we can
imagine nothing as remaining, except those lower forms which
are incapable, so far as we yet know, of any further trans
formation. The low form to which all transformations with
which we are at present acquainted seem inevitably to tend,
is that of uniformly diffused heat. . . . Now, when all the
energy of the universe has taken the final form of univer
sally diffused heat, it will obviously be impossible to make
use of this heat for further transformation." x The worlds
will be dark — dead — cold. This process, leading to chaos,
enables us distinctly to say — "That the present order of
things has not been evolved during the infinite past by the
agency of laws now at work, but must have had a distinctive
beginning."2 This beginning must have been by other than
the now visibly acting causes. The only way out of the
difficulty is to regard mind, matter, energy, as alike real
existences. We know of mind by organism, does organism
generate mind ? The reply is — Organism does not even
generate life, life certainly generates organism ; organism
therefore cannot generate mind which is the highest attribute
of life ; consequently, we regard all physical, vital, mental
phenomena, as transformations of energy from the Unknown
— the Eternal Source of energy, of life, of mind.
The vitality of plant, of fish, of reptile, of bird, may seem
no great thing ; but if we consider that every little part of
these organisms has its own store of energy constantly
emptied and replenished ; that the internal and external
sources draw upon, and are drawn upon, by the whole
arrangement of the world for harmonious working; the
mechanism becomes very wonderful. Nor is that all  every
1 " Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 20 : P. G. Tait, M.A.
* Ibid. p. 22.

238 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
portion is microscopically constructed, even the excessively
minute parts are in exquisite harmony with the grand plan
of the universe ; and we cannot but conclude, that if to destroy
one atom of dead matter the intervention of Deity is re
quisite, there must have been at the initiation of life an
actual and a special interference of creative power : for life
is not the servant of matter, but ruler ; subordinating, guiding,
moulding. Plato, one of the most thoughtful of ancient heathen, thus
reasoned — "Was the world, I say, always in existence and
without beginning ? or created and having a beginning ?
Created. I reply, being visible and tangible and having a
body, and therefore sensible ; and all sensible things which
are apprehended by opinion and sense are in process of crea
tion and created. Now that which is created must of neces
sity be created by a cause. . . . He put intelligence in soul,
and soul in body, and framed the universe to be the best
and fairest work in the order of Nature." x Coming to our own
day, Charles Darwin says — " To my mind it accords better
with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the
Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and
present inhabitants of the world should have been due to
secondary causes like those determining the birth and death
of an individual." 2 Very well, then, the natural had its origin
in the supernatural, life and death are traced through second
ary causes to Divine Will. Even the simplest living beings
can be produced only from germs originating in other
previously living organisms ; Life is to science an ultimate
fact, for which it can only conjecturally account. Another
student writes, that he may lead us " to the power of appre
hending the unity which underlies the diversity of animal
structures ; to show in those structures the evidence of a
predetermining will ; producing them in reference to final
purpose ; and to indicate the direction and degrees in which
organisation, in subserving such will, rises from the general to
the particular." 3 Here we have the initial fact — production,
and the design of it : the initial fact rendered law possible,
1 "Timaus :" translated by Rev. B. Jowett. 2 "Origin of Species.'
3 " Anatomy of Vertebrates, " vol. i. p. v. Introd. : Owen.

Specific Nature of Life. 239
the design bound that law as an elastic band round the
universe, making Providence to be general and particular.
As to the specific nature and continuance of life, the best
arguments are facts given by accurate observers : — " It has-
been deemed no mean result of comparative anatomy to have
pointed out the analogy between the shark's skeleton and the
human embryo, in their histological conditions ; and no doubt
it is a very interesting one." x This analogy is not inconsistent
with the observed tendency of offspring to differ from the
parent ; nor with the stranger fact — " This tendency and its
results are independent of internal volition and external
influence." 2 Thus we are led to the great truth — " Every
species is such ab initio, and takes its own course to the full
manifestation of its specific characters agreeable with the
nature originally impressed upon the germ. A perch, a newt,
a dog, a man, do not begin to be such only when the embryol-
ogist discerns the dawnings of respective specific characters.
The embryo derived its nature, and the potency of self-de
velopment according to the specific pattern, from the moment
of impregnation ; and each step of development moves to
that consummation as its end and aim." 3 "An orderly succes
sion according to law, and also progressive or in the ascending
course, is evident from actual knowledge of extinct species ;" 4
but none can say why circulation in the embryo of lizard, of
fowl, of beast, is like a fish in its simplicity, but far from being
identical. " It is proved that no germ, animal or vegetal,
contains the slightest rudiment, trace, or indication, of the
future organism — since the microscope has shown us that the
first process set up in every fertilised germ is a process of
repeated spontaneous fissions, ending in the production of a
mass of cells, not one of which exhibits any special character ;
there seems no alternative but to conclude that the partial
organisation at any moment subsisting in a growing embryo,
is transformed by the agencies acting on it into the succeeding
phase of organisation, and this into the next, until, through
ever-increasing complexities, the ultimate form is reached." 5
1 "Anatomy of Vertebrates," vol. i. p. 245 : Owen. 2 Ibid. Introd. p. xxxv.
3 Ibid. Introd. p. xxi. 4 Ibid. Introd. p. xxxvi.
s "First Principles," pp. 443. 444 = Herbert Spencer.

240 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
The fact is established, the operation of derivative secondary
causes is due to a great master Principle : by whose will and
power the waters teem with swarms of living things, and
birds fly above the earth : —
" Young fresh blood . . .
Keeps ever circulating still
In water, in the earth, in air,
In wet, dry warm, cold, everywhere
Germs without number are unfurl'd." Faust.
Living beings possess at least six leading characteristics.
1. Assimilation — the power of taking in external materials
and converting them into substances for building up fresh
tissue and repairing waste. By this a living body grows.
2. Alteration — certain periodic changes, in definite order, by
which they lose portions of their substance and die : partial
death is the accompaniment of all life.
3. Reproduction — Living bodies have, directly or indirectly,
the power of giving origin to germs which develop into the
parent's likeness.
4. Motion — Every living body is the seat of energy, by
which the inertia of matter is overcome ; is master of physical
forces ; and this power in man, wielded by intelligence, brings
the dead matter of the universe into obedience to his will.
5. The life of all living beings seems to reside in a substance
termed "protoplasm," or "bioplasm," differentiated more or
less, which bears to it about the same relation' that a con
ductor does to the electric current ; but in no way possesses
life as an inherent property.
6. The great majority of all living beings are organised---
that is, possess organs or parts which perform functions. Do
not live because they are organised, but are organised and
have structure because they live. There is something in the
action and nature of vital energies different from anything
observed in physical : it is not organism which gives life, but
life which causes organism.
As there are six leading characteristics of life, so are there
six different types of animal structure. At first sight we sup
pose that every kind of animal has its own peculiar plan ; we

Types of Animal Structure. 241
do not imagine that a lobster and a butterfly are built upon
the same type, yet they really are : all known animals spring
from this unity ; and, in spite of their great and many out
ward differences, are arranged into six kingdoms.
1. Protozoa (irpwroc, first ; Zm, life).
Are generally of a very minute size, composed of a nearly
structureless, jelly-like substance. Infusoria, rhizopods, and
sponges. They are not definitely segmented, have no nervous
system, no digestive apparatus — beyond, occasionally a pas
sage in the midst of their protoplasm. The simplest, called
Monera, are small living corpuscles ; nothing more than
shapeless, mobile, little lumps of protoplasm. Take a rhizo-
pod : from the outside of this creature, which has no limit
ing membrane, numerous thread-like processes protrude.
Originating from any point of the surface, each may contract
again and disappear ; or touching some fragment of nutriment,
draw it, when contracting, into the general mass — -thus serving
as hand and mouth. This structureless body may join and
become confluent with its fellow bodies ; and, in brief, is at
once all stomach, all skin, all mouth, all limb, all lung.
2. COELENTERATA (koTXoc, hollow ; Zvripov, intestine).
Sea-anemones, corals, sea-jellies, sea-pens. They rise con
siderably above the Protozoa in organisation. They have a
body-wall composed of two principal layers, an intestinal
cavity, and a mouth leading into it. They have no organs
of circulation ; but a rudimentary nervous system ; the mouth
is surrounded by tentacles arranged in a star-like manner.
The common hydra is generally taken as a type of the lowest
division. It can live when the duties of skin and stomach
have been interchanged by turning it inside out.
3. Annuloida (annulus, a ring ; stooe, form).
Sea-urchins, star-fishes, sand-stars, some internal parasites
as the tape-worm, with some minute aquatic creatures. The
digestive canal is completely shut off from the cavity of the
body ; there is a distinct nervous system ; a system of
branched water-vessels, usually communicating with the
interior ; the body of the adult, often " radiate," is never
composed of a succession of definite rings.
4. ANNULOSA and Molluscoida.

242 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
Animals with bodies composed of numerous segments, or
rings ; and nervous system, forming a knotted cord, along the
lower surface of the body. Worms, leeches, crabs, lobsters,
spiders, scorpions, centipedes, insects.
5. MOLLUSCA (mollis, soft).
Shell-fish, snails, cuttle-fish, nautilus. Soft bodies, hard
shells ; no distinct segmentation of the body ; and a nervous
system of scattered masses.
6. Vertebrata.
Animals with a vertebral column. The body composed of
definite segments — each composed of two tubes : a dorsal
containing the neural axis, and a ventral containing the
viscera, blood-vessels, etc. — arranged longitudinally one be
hind the other. The main masses of the nervous system are
placed dorsally. The limbs are never more than four in
number. Fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals.
These modern classifications, with man at their head, are
very simply arranged in the Divine account of the genealogi
cal tree. Moving creatures in the water, creeping things on
land, animals of length, birds, beasts, cattle, man. Marine
life, first created, is represented by the earliest fossils ; and in
the order of creation — plant, fish, bird, mammal : one genera
tion hands a lamp of higher life to the next. To mark off the
groups simply as beasts, birds, fishes, creeping things, is to
make their differences of appearance, modes of life, and rela
tive importance conspicuous. Creative energy, we may be
sure, did not act by breach of natural law, but with power put
forth diversely : plant, fish, bird, mammal, were introduced
not collectively or simultaneously, but at different periods in
the day of life. The earliest possessed characters in combina
tion such as we, nowadays, find separately developed in
different groups of animals.
It is pleasant to have the kinship of all things authorita
tively stated : the water brought forth, the earth brought
forth ; the vegetable had seed in itself, the animal possessed
life after his kind. Not only are all living animals reducible
to five or six fundamental plans of structure ; but amongst
the vast and varied series of fossil forms not one has yet been
found with peculiarities entitling it to be placed in a new sub-

The Process of Life. 243
kingdom. The animals belonging to the sub-kingdoms are
framed upon the same fundamental plan of structure, forming
a few leading types, which are further arranged in a series of
subordinate groups. All the shell-fish, for example, are built
upon a common plan — a plan representing the ideal mollusc.
In the kinship is individuality, in the unity diversity ;
kind after its kind being so constituted as to vary greatly in
progress of geological time. Every life possesses its own life,
and is a mystery great as that of the chemical elements. The
primordial germs are essentially different, and tend toward
the vegetable, or toward the animal, by such different lines
that no plant becomes animal, no coral turns star-fish, no
worm grows into leech, no cockle transforms into cuttle-fish.
There are organisms with vital action not more lively than
that of drops of oil fusing themselves together when they
meet, and they attain no higher existence : fuse millions to
gether, yet no other animal is formed.
Trace the Process of Life.
All organisms arise out of structureless albumenoid living
matter, which in the primal state was not living at all. The
essential principles of every change, or the active moving part,
no one knows whence nor how they come, enter, and reside in
the matter itself ; and work, for the most part, from within.
The masses of protoplasm, sarcode, bioplasm — call them
what you will — when they reach a certain size, generally
less than ToWth of an inch in diameter, undergo division.
The definite size being obtained, which varies in different
creatures and textures, but is constant for the same, portions
move away ; and, at length, detach themselves. The earliest
stages of organisms possess the greatest number of similarities.
Somewhat further on, the characters are those belonging to a
smaller number of organisms. At every advance, traits are
acquired which successively distinguish group from group, and
are finally narrowed into the highest species of finished struc
ture. Thus were produced, if the scientific hypothesis is
correct, many varieties or species : creatures being modified
by circumstances for circumstances : heredity and adaptation
being the two great agents in influencing the mystery and
variety of the living world of forms. In the finished structure

244 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
of most advanced life we still find the same original or rudi
mentary matter out of which all organisms were fashioned,
and with which all are now built. Not only so, the screws,
fastening the parts ; the levers, raising them to a higher state ;
the pulleys, drawing them together ; and the joints, knitting
several limbs into one body ; are constructed on common
patterns. This fact, proving unity in the diverse operations
of underlying energy, is a sparkle of the great truth that
rules the universe : for example, the hydrogen atoms in the
sun and planets vibrating in unison with those on our planet,
are like two tuning-forks set at concert pitch ; and, awaking
human response, we say — "The mighty synthesis is proof
that God is One."
The fact is capable of further development. From inorganic
world-elements arise all organisms, and every process of initial
life is the prophecy of an advanced life. A germ of life, even
before it is large enough to be seen, contains in itself a special
endowment — the invisible constructive potentiality of every
organ. The first steps of life are in a path common to all,
but quickly turn aside ; and every living creature, by way of
its own, arrives at a peculiar destination. In plants we have
production and reproduction ; in animals, self-perception, self-
control, motion ; in man, self-consciousness, will, moral power ;
the whole wrought by a deeper and more far-reaching energy
than science can find any satisfactory explanation of : all the
vital actions being, as the oscillations of a magnetic needle,
moved by unseen influences from within and without.
The bringing forth of kind after its kind, that process by
means of which new individuals are produced, and perpetua
tion of the species is ensured, presents many marvels. Some
of the lowest and smallest animals are of both sexes — herma
phrodite. Others are non-sexual, and the young are produced
by gemmation or fission.
Hermaphrodites are double-sexed individuals. Many plants,
garden-snails, leeches, earth-worms, various other worms, are
of this order.
Gemmation (gemma, a bud) is the production of young by
a bud or buds, usually on the outside, but sometimes on the
inside of an animal. Thus new life is formed, which may

Reproduction of Life. 245
either be completely separated from the parent, or remain con
nected with it, to form a stock or colony.
Fission (findo, I cleave) is the production of new beings by
the cleavage or division of a primitive zooid into two or more
parts. This fission, occurring frequently, reproduces by toler
ably rapid multiplication. An internal fission, or swarming,
causes the death of the parent, and produces a vastly multi
plied offspring.
In all high kinds of life, and in the Vertebrata, reproduction
is always sexual, and the sexes are in different individuals.
Most are oviparous, producing eggs from which the young
are developed ; but the highest vertebrates bring forth their
young alive.
Until recent times it was thought that in every species the
successive generations were alike — this is called homogenesis.
It is now proved that in many plants, and in numerous
animals, the successive generations are not alike — this is
called heterogenesis. The progeny, differing from the parents,
produce others, like themselves, or like their parents, or like
neither; but eventually the original form reappears. There
is no scientific explanation : we can only ascertain the varying
order as seen in different creatures.
In all cases of sexual production, or gamogenesis, there is
reason to think that, even among the lowest Protozoa, a fusion
of two individualities is the process from which results the
germ of a new series of individuals. In humblest forms,
which have no differentiation of sexes, the union is not of
sperm-cells and germ-cells of the same individual, but union
between those of different individuals.
The power is mysterious, and the more so that the cells, or
cradles of life, are not greatly specialised in mechanism,
rather seem unspecialised ; yet, if there is no special arrange
ment to secure peculiar conditions of existence for different
modes of multiplication, it is certain that arrangements which
secure these special ends do continually establish themselves.
No visible or mechanical property explains the profound dis
tinction between the male and female reproductive elements ;
but in the union of these begins, at once, or on the arrival of
favourable conditions, a new series of developmental changes ;

246 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
a process of cell-multiplication is set up, and the resulting cells
aggregate into the rudiment of a new organism. The force
by which two adjacent atoms attract or repel each other, their
mode of exercise and law of variation, are incomprehensible.
Every effort to understand the essence and origin of life
leading to the Great Unknown from whom all life has sprung,
according to the patristic interpretation — 3 ysyovev iv avrq
Zgjv h (John i. 3, 4).
We may now briefly summarise some of the principal re
sults to be deduced as to the succession of life on the earth.
The creation of marine animals was first, and the first living
creature that we know of is the Eozoon. It is not unworthy
of consideration whether primal life did not exist when the
waters were very warm. Even now the coral luxuriates in the
equatorial temperature of 86° and more. There are Infusoria
and Crustacea which flourish in warm springs, and the life of
a germ cannot be destroyed by simple boiling. " The waters
swarmed a swarm," not that the causality was in the waters,
but in the creative energy or word — " Let the waters bring
forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life (es sollen
wimmeln die Wasser vom Gewimmel)." This life is and has
been so abundant that some of the earliest limestones of the
globe teem with the evidence of former minute organisms, and
this is the case with limestones down to those now forming in
the abyss of the ocean. Coral animals were introduced, and
since have been found efficient workers ; but the deep seas of
old, and the depths of modern oceans, both assert that the first
workers are pre-eminent. This dawn of life was by a long
slow process ; nevertheless, sponges, corals, crinoids, trilobites,
sea-worms, lingulae, with many other creatures representing
five of the great subdivisions of animals — Protozoa, Ccelen-
terata, Annuloida, Annulosa, Mollusca — are found in the very
old rocks.
These old rocks have rain indentations, ripple-marks,
shrinkage cracks, which prove that the actions of rain, of
tide, of sun, were the same then as now. The causes which
distributed light, heat, moisture, were much the same as those
now in operation. " Were there no land animals to prowl
along the low tidal flats in search of food ? Were there no

Advance in Life. 247
herbs nor trees to drink in the rains and flourish in the sun
shine ? If there were, no bone nor footprint on the shore, no
drifted leaf nor branch, has yet revealed their existence to the
eyes of geologists." x We may, however, be sure that the crea
tive process was not stayed on the land for full development
of life in the sea, but that birds and animals lived much earlier
than the earliest known fossils indicate. " It is even possible
that in a warm and humid condition of the atmosphere . . .
when dense ' mists ascended from the earth and watered the
whole surface of the ground,' vegetation may have attained to
a profusion and grandeur unequalled in the periods whose
flora is known to us." 2
In the Upper Silurian period we find fishes, not of large
size, nor abundant, of two separate types. Ganoids, repre
sented at the present day by the sturgeons, the gar-pikes of
North America, and a few other less familiar forms ; Placoids,
or shark-like fishes. These two groups are both distinct and
highly organised. Ordinary bony fishes were not introduced
until comparatively recent time. In the Devonian era was a
vast increase, and it became pre-eminently the age of fishes.
New lands were upheaved, with extended muddy and sandy
flats around them ; shoals of fishes, some very remarkable,
swarmed in shallow seas and estuaries. Among the most
ancient and curious, appearing .also in the Upper Silurian, are
the Pteraspis, a tribe of mailed fishes, akin to the Cephalaspis,
or buckle-head ; its broad flat head being rounded in front,
and prolonged at the sides into two great spines. Another
group of small fishes, represented by the Pterichthys, had two
strong bony fins at the sides, which served for swimming, for
defence, for creeping on and shovelling up the mud at the
bottom of the sea. There were great fishes with strong
cutting double-rowed teeth ; with wrinkle-scale, bone-scale,
and star-scale ; and the huge Dinicthys, having head more
than three feet long and eighteen inches broad, two long
sabre-shaped tusks, each a foot long, and a body about thirty
feet in length. The Carboniferous fish were numerous — great
Ganoids, with sharp bony scales and sharp-edged or conical
1 " The Story of the Earth and Man," p. 32 : J. W. Dawson, LL.D.
2 Ibid. p. 32.

248 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
teeth, haunted the creeks and ponds of the coral swamps.
Multitudes of sharks, with sharp-edged trenchant teeth ; and
one species allied to the existing Port Jackson sharks, their
mouths paved with flat teeth for crushing shells, sought prey
near shell-banks and coral-reefs. The broad-snouted, plate-
covered, mud-burrowing crustaceans, the trilobites, are lost
in this period. In the Cretaceous period are found the first
examples of the great group of Bony Fishes, or Teleosteans,
comprising the great majority of forms now existing. The
main forms of fishes characterising the Eocene are like those
which predominate in existing seas. Those of the Miocene
were abundant, and some of the species attained gigantic
dimensions. The amphibious part of creation is the link which joins
land animals and fish through the reptiles ; and it is difficult
to classify some aquatic forms either as amphibia or as fish.
There are fish which have the habit of leaving the water for a
forage on land. Let their fins be lengthened and moderately
altered in shape, the tail modified, and we shall have some of
our amphibious animals almost to the life.
In the Carboniferous formation the Amphibia were well'
developed, and Labyrinthodonts, with exquisite teeth, and
the Archegosaura, with large heads, short necks, feeble
limbs, and strong tails for swimming, were common. They
were of higher order than fish, in possessing lungs and feet.
Small vertebrates were in the coal forests named Dendrer-
peton and Hylonomus, veiy reptilian in some points, and
probably amphibia in their true nature. " Imagine a little
animal, six or seven inches long, with small short head, not so
flat as those of most lizards, but with a raised forehead, giving
it an aspect of some intelligence. Its general form is that of
a lizard, but with the hind feet somewhat large, to aid it in
leaping and standing erect, and long flexible toes. Its belly
is covered with long scales, its sides with bright and probably
coloured scale armour of horny consistency, and its neck and
back adorned with horny crests, tubercules, and pendants. It
runs, leaps, and glides through the herbage of the coal forests,
its eye glancing and its bright scales shining in the sun." x
1 "The Story ofthe Earth and Man : '' J. W. Dawson LL.D.

Affinities of Fish to Higher Life. 249
This is a picture of the as yet earliest known lizard, the
Hylonomus, the oldest animal which has a fair claim to be
called reptile. In these rocks are highly organised reptiles,
like lizards, with two spinous processes to their vertebrae, with
socketed teeth, well-developed limbs, long tails, and biconcave
vertebrae. They connect the Carboniferous with the great
reptiles of the Mesozoic age. This age was their special time.
Some were gigantic, others small ; browsers on plants, and
terrible renders of living flesh ; some had a resemblance or
prophecy of birds, and not a few prefigured future mammals.
There were the Iguanodon, or his relative Hadrosaurus, with
small head and teeth for munching leaves and fruit of trees ;
and the terrible Megalosaurus, a vast lizard, with some bird
like foreshadowings. The short deep jaws and heads of some
others made them like the carnivorous mammals of later times.
The Cetiosaurus, huge monster, was not less than ten feet in
height and fifty in length. There were sea- monsters, with
heads eight feet long, and conical teeth a foot in length ; but,
perhaps, no creatures set before us so fully the stretched-out
reptiles of the fifth day creation, as the Mosasaurus and Elas-
mosaurus by their enormous length and terrible powers of
assertion in the world.
Animals of the water are cold, stiff, mute, in contrast with
birds, which are warm, free, and full of melody ; yet they are
spoken of as created on the same day ; and accurate know
ledge finds that they are closely allied. The advance to birds
was through the lizard : " God created every living creature
that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after
their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind." The con
trast is between the water and the air ; fish in the one, birds
flying in the other.
The affinities of fish as to higher creatures may be thus
stated —
1. Fishes crawl upon the ground like Reptiles— the Eel.
2. Fishes climb trees like Reptiles, as the Anabas, or
Climbing Perch.
3. Fishes imitate Birds in using their pectoral fins for
flying, as the Flying-fish.
4. Fishes imitate Amphibia in using the swim-bladder as a
lung — the Lepidosiren, or Mud-fish.

250 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
5. Fishes imitate Reptiles in hatching their eggs internally,
as the ovoviviparous Shark.
6. Fishes imitate Birds in building a nest, as the Stickle
back. 7. Fishes imitate Birds in incubating their eggs. This is
done by the male Arius, by carrying them in the mouth.
8. Fishes imitate Marsupial Mammals by having a pouch
in which are placed the eggs, and into which the young retire
for safety. This is done by the Hippocampus, or Sea-horse,
and by some species of Pipe-fish.
9. Fishes imitate Mammals in producing viviparous young,
as the Ditrema, and the Viviparous- Blenny.
10. Both the Viviparous and Ovoviviparous Fishes imitate
the higher classes of animal's, in that the male has coition with
the female.
11. Fishes endeavour to change their fins into limbs, as the
Lepidosiren, or Mud-fish. The Basking-Shark, and some of
the members of the order Elasmobranchii, convert their
ventral fins into claspers.
The way in which the interval between fish and fowl is
spanned, may not be apparent to the unlearned in such
mysteries ; but to the student, who has studied their inner
structure, no insurmountable difficulty presents itself. Let
any one notice that the form of the fish glides into that of the
amphibian, and that into the lizard ; then let him compare the
lizard with the bird. Even in the higher crocodilia there
are points in the anatomy of the head, of the vertebral column,
and of internal organs, which foreshadow the bird. The
Plesiosaurus is not very unlike a swan, and yet it is in reality
a gigantic reptile. Almost startling is the ease with which,
by modifying or developing certain parts, a lizard may be
turned into a bird. Hence that which puzzled one in child
hood, becomes clear when we inquire into the reason of
things. We behold the transformation in those reptile-bats,
Pterodactyles, of the Mesozoic ages, which were lizards of a
high order. One species had twenty feet of expanse in its
wings, the skulls show a good capacity of brain, the skeletons
were light yet strong, the hollow bones having pores for the
introduction of air. " Imagine such a creature, a flying dragon,

Classification of Birds. 2 5 1
with vast skinny wings, its body perhaps covered with scales,
both wings and feet armed with strong claws, and with long
jaws furnished with sharp teeth. Nothing can be conceived
more strange and frightful. Some of them had the hind legs
long, like wading birds. Some had short legs, adapted
perhaps for perching. They could probably fold up their
wings and walk on all fours." x In this old-world time, lizards
had wings ; and birds had tails and hands like lizards. In the
same Mesozoic ages, birds existed resembling those of our
own day ; and almost at the same time some weak small
mammals, forerunners of those higher types which were to
possess the world. Most probably the earliest birds were
sea-fowls ; some were waders, equal in size to the ostrich,
stalking through the shallows ; birds with teeth probably pre
ceded those with plain beaks.
The following is the latest scientific classification of Birds : —
Three main groups or sub-classes —
1. Saururce — all extinct birds with an elongated tail, on
which are arranged tail-quills featherwise. Fossil in the
Secondary formation.
2. Ratitce — birds with no keel to the breast-bone, such as
the extinct birds of New Zealand — Dinomis, and the exist
ing birds of the Ostrich tribe, viz., Apteryx, Emu, Cassowary,
Ostrich, Rhea. These are nearly all wingless and do not
fly ; consequently the wing-muscles require no great keel on
the breast-bone for their attachment. Amongst them are the
extinct water-birds with teeth, in the Cretaceous age, such as
the Hesperornis. The remainder of the birds are called—
3. Carinatce, having a keel to their breast-bone, and most of
them having the power of flight. Some of these lived in the
Cretaceous age.
The previous investigation, sufficiently minute and ade
quately comprehensive, evidences that the Scriptural account
of animal life beginning in the water with the fish, extending
to the land, and from the reptile, rising into birds, is a sur
prisingly correct statement; and that it agrees with the
ascertained facts -of modern positive science concerning the
succession of life.
1 " The Story ofthe Earth and Man : " J. W. Dawson, LL.D.

252 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
A natural and laudable curiosity now leads to the inquiry —
What did the wisest of the uninspired ancients think con
cerning the world's origin ? A brief summary of the Bible
statement may well be compared with one by a man whose
genius is of universal renown.
The Bible statement — (1) The origin and existence of many
worlds were from the beginning. (2) Light was called into
existence to be, what it is now known to be, the great con
ditioner of all things. (3) There was a separation by which
mingled elements acquired what may be called individuality ;
for, at first, as Plato says — " All things were without
reason and measure, . . . this, I say, being their nature, God
fashioned them by form and number, . , . and out of them
He constructed the universe : " x the elements being grouped
in gases, liquids, solids ; or, as Scripture calls them, air, water,
earth. (4) In the water, on the land, and in the air, manifold
forms of life appeared ; first in the water, thence extending to
the land, afterwards rising into the air, until the world was
replenished. Now, take from Plato, who represents Socrates, the follow
ing statements — " God desired that all things should be good
and nothing bad as far as this could be accomplished. Where
fore also finding the whole sphere not at rest, but moving in
an irregular and disorderly manner, out of disorder He brought
order, considering that this was far better than the other.2 . . .
Now the creation took up each of the four elements ; for the
Creator compounded the world out of all the fire, and all the
water, and all the air, and all the earth, leaving no part of any
of them outside.3 . . . The Creator of the universe spoke as
follows : — Gods and sons of Gods, who are My works, and of
whom I am the Artificer and Father, My creations are indis
soluble, if so I will. . . . Three tribes of mortal beings remain
to be created — without them the universe will be incomplete,
for it will not have in it every kind of animal which a perfect
world ought to have. On the other hand, if they were created
and received life from- Me, they would be on an equality with
the gods. In order then that there may be mortals, and that
1 "Timaeus," translation by Rev. B. Jowett.
2 Ibid. p. 525, sect. 30. 3 Ibid. p. 527, sect. 32.

Narrative by Plato. 253
this universe may be truly universal, do ye, according to your
natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imi
tating the power which I showed in creating you.1 . . . They
imitating Him, received from Him the immortal principle of
the soul ; and around this they fashioned a mortal body, and
made the whole body to be a vehicle of the soul, and con
structed within a soul of another nature which was mortal,
subject to terrible and irresistible affections.2 ... A brief
mention may be made of the generation of other animals, but
there is no need to dwell upon them at length. ... Of the
men who came into the world, those who are cowards or have
led unjust lives, may be fairly supposed to change into the
nature of women in the second generation. . . . Thus were
created women and the female sex in general. But the race
of birds was created out of innocent, light-minded men, who,
although their thoughts were directed towards heaven, ima
gined, in their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of
the things above was to be obtained by sight ; these were
turned into birds, and they grew feathers instead of hair. The
race of wild pedestrian animals again came from those who
had no philosophy in all their thoughts, and never considered
at all about the nature of the heavens. In consequence of
these habits of theirs they had their fore legs and heads trail
ing upon the earth to which they were akin ; and they had
also the crown of their heads oblong, and in all sorts of
curious shapes, in which the courses of the soul were com
pressed by reason of disuse. And this was the reason why
quadrupeds and polypods were created. . . . And the most
foolish of them who trailed their bodies entirely upon the
ground and have no longer any need of feet, He made without
feet to crawl upon the earth. The fourth class were the in
habitants of the water : these were made out of the most
entirely ignorant and senseless of beings, whom the trans
formers did not think any longer worthy of pure respiration,
because they possessed a soul which was made impure by all
sorts of transgression, . . . hence arose the race of fishes and
oysters, and other aquatic animals, which have received the
1 " Timams," pp. 534, 535, sect. 42. * Ibid- P- 563. sect. 70.

254 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
most remote habitations as a punishment of their extreme
ignorance." x
We have not taken that which Mr. Jowett rightly calls
" obscure and repulsive," but the simplest and best. If any
man can find in Plato or Aristotle, amongst Greeks or
Romans, in old Egyptian or Sanscrit literature, any account
of creation worthy to be compared with the Scriptural narra
tive ; brief, yet comprehensive ; accurate, yet general ; simple,
yet growing in meaning and power with the development of
science ; there may be a show of argument that Moses was
wholly taught of other men : but, until that is done, Chris
tians rightly maintain that Moses wrote the Sacred Narrative
of creation by Inspiration of God. In any case, a true science
existed, which could not have been acquired by any of the
modern accurate experimental processes ; the existence of this
science renders possible the knowledge of many other things,
the source of which we cannot trace.
Faith not merely begins where science ends, but must
accompany science every day in the conduct of life. The
death-watch may say of the clock he lives in, " Tick, tick, tick,
it is all tick : that is its final cause and purpose ; " but we are
not content with beetle philosophy ; nor do we count the
screws, levers, pulleys of the world, equivalents of existence.
There is a " line between that which is physical and that
which is utterly beyond physics. . . . Man has been left to
the resources of his intellect for the discovery not merely of
physical laws, but of how far he is capable of comprehending
them. ... A revelation of anything which we can discover
for ourselves, by studying the ordinary course of Nature, would
be an absurdity." 2 Truly so, but a revelation of that which,
otherwise, would remain for ever unknown, is a benefit indeed ;
and when we find that the philosophical systems of Germany,
apart from Scripture, though wonderful efforts of human
reason, have not added one tittle to our positive religious
knowledge ; no, not even by saying — "There is a God ; " we
thank God for the Bible.
Men who purpose henceforth to do without God tell us —
1 "Timasus," pp. 584, 585, sect. 90, 91, 92, Jowett's translation.
2 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 25 : P. G. Tait, M.A.

Kingdom of Man. 255
" Those who can read the signs of the times read in them that
the kingdom of man is at hand." x We have a parable for
these readers — An ancient king, like-minded, said — "I saw
a tree in the midst of the earth . . . the tree grew, and was
strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the
sight thereof to the end of all the earth : the leaves thereof
were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for
all : the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls
of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was
fed of it." The tree was a symbol of the king. He thought,
like some modern men, that a human throne, a kingdom of
man, would be established ; and said to himself — " My great
ness is grown, it reacheth unto heaven, and my dominion to
the end of the earth." What happened ? A holy one came
down from heaven, and cried aloud — " Hew down the tree,
and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his
fruit : let the beasts get away from under it, and the fowls
from his branches." What is the interpretation ? At the end
of twelve months that king lost his reason, went from among
men, and dwelt with the beasts of the field, till his hair grew
like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws (Dan. iv.
10-34). The mystery has further interpretation : when men,
to fill up the chasm between civilised and savage man, cast in
their religion ; and, endeavouring to bridge the abyss separat
ing savage from brute, sink human emotion and intellect to
the appetite and instinct — their language and conduct to the
howling and herding of beasts ; the holy watcher comes
among them with the decree of heaven that high intellectual
power, the greeting of the spirit, depart from them ; and that
they be as the beast of the field, until they know that the
Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men.
A true kingdom of man is coming, long foreseen, long
prepared for : dominion and glory, the union of all nations
under one everlasting sway (Dan. vii. 13, 14). We have
evidence of it in the spirit which knits our mind and body
into personal identity ; in the spirit running, like a thread of
continuity, through all our chequered life ; and in the song of
the herald angels — " Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace to men of good will."
1 Prof. W. K. Clifford, Nineteenth Century, October, 1877.

256 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds.
We are not hindered in our faith by those who say — " Does
the song of the herald angels . . . express the exaltation and
yearning of a human soul, or does it describe an optical and
acoustical fact — a visible host and audible song ? If the
former, the exaltation and the yearning are man's imperish
able possession — a ferment long confined to individuals, but
which may by-and-by become the leaven of the earth. If the
latter, then belief in the entire transaction is wrecked by non-
fulfilment. Look at the East at the present moment as a
comment on the promise of peace on earth and good will
toward men."1 The objector does not understand the real
meaning of the passage, nor see that the binding up and em
balming of all the struggles and searchings of human life,
so that — " Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
And what we have been makes us what we are,"
afford more marvellous and mysterious indications of life
above and beyond that of fishes, reptiles, birds, than do the
angel host and heavenly song : that they give the ground
of possibility, and furnish evidence as to reality of the angels
and their melody. If the exaltation and the yearning are
indeed man's imperishable possession, are actions arising out
of our inner core, and are real as the life-grouping of particles
in creatures of water, earth, sky ; then, why doubt concerning
those revelations which are as the convex to the concave
of human experience, and yield glimpses of that splendid
existence, and that peaceful state, which will be a renewal of
the earth and an establishment of a Divinely Human
dominion ? ' ' There are buds that fold within them,
Closed and covered from our sight,
Many a richly tinted petal,
Never looked on by the light ;
Fain to see their shrouded faces,
Sun and dew are long at strife,
Till at length the sweet buds open —
Such a bud is life.
* * * * *
What it shows and what it teaches
Are not things wherewith to part." Jean Ingelow.
1 Prof. Tyndall, Address as President of the Midland Institute, Birmingham.
Reported in the Times, 2nd October, 1S77.

STUDY XIV.
DAY VI. — CREEPING THING, BEAST, CATTLE.
"A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism ; but depth in philosophy
bringeth men's minds about to religion." — Lord Bacon.
" Revelation is no theory. Its truth or certainty, as a fact, can only be estimated
historically in the same way as other matters of fact." — Introduction to the Science
of Religion: Professor Max Muller.
We are required by opponents of Scripture to reconcile the
erroneous interpretations of friends and the assertions of
enemies with the sacred text, to justify unscientific theories
of instantaneous creation, and to prove that everything was
done without use of means, or of natural laws. We reply —
The Divine account reveals an orderly plan and a continuous
operation. Physical laws are not an invariable necessity,
Supreme Will is behind them. Laws are the expression of
that Will : not a capricious intervention, but a wise multiform
adjustment of all things in due relation. No reasonable
person, unless prepossessed by a theory, after carefully reading
the first chapter of Genesis with the light of modern science,
can think that elemental atoms were brought into existence
by mere command ; and, so soon as commanded, flashed into
living tissues. No well-informed believer imagines that every
plant and animal was separately formed, as by hand-fashion
ing, out of the dust, or out of nothing, as by magical power.
We stand by the statement—" God said, Let the earth bring ^
forth the living creature." ^j-^\ I ."-fe^ //j 12,16,1 1,2. l\ . V |7 L
When Mr. Herbert Spencer1 states — "No one ever saw'
a special creation : no one ever found proof of an indirect
kind that a special creation had taken place " — he ought to
know that creation need not be instantaneous, but may be
1 " Principles of Biology," vol. i. p. 336. S

258 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
effected by natural processes, as are modifications of the
created by influences from within and without. As to seeing
a creation, whoever saw an evolution ? Embryology, and the
passage of invisibles through the visible into the invisible,
are as much symbols and illustrations of creation as they are
of evolution. No one can solve the ultimate mystery of
the universe. If the evolutionist thinks that he has settled
it by declaring — " The egg was before the bird, not the bird
before the egg ; " we answer — Whence the egg ? However
many and separate acts, different in degree and kind, may or
may not precede the flash of life, the old truth remains firm
as ever — " Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow
every plant ; and out of the ground the Lord God formed
every beast of the field." c^.s^v- 2 i S
We would know how matter, if created, was created — unless
by Deity ; and, if not created, how the eternity of its existence
is more comprehensible than the Christian's belief — that
matter, and all other phenomena, are manifestations of the
Great Unknown. If the many thousand impulses of energy
do not proceed from Hidden Energy, science belies its own
teaching. Mr. Herbert Spencer asks1 — "Why should not omnipotence
have been proved by the supernatural production of plants
and animals everywhere throughout the world from hour to
hour ? " We reply — It is proved. The inquirer knows very
well that Nature is a splendid miracle, that plants and animals
are produced everywhere throughout the world from hour to
hour by omnipotence. The inquirer has stated again and
again — " All phenomena are manifestations of the Unknown."
Suppose, however, that the proof came otherwise, or by
quicker process ; that men did see, day by day, light flash
out of darkness, the living rise up out of the dead, and things
wholly unlike grow from like things ; so that every kindled
fire, every dawn of day, every oak from the acorn, every man
from a scarcely visible ovule, appealed to them ; would they
believe? Would they not rather exclaim that man was a
sudden evolution, that the oak grew naturally very quickly,
that fire was the result or act of combustion, and that the
1 "Principles of Biology," vol. i. p. 339.

Creation a Divine Work. 259
sun rose according to mechanical law ? What proof can be
given that wilful men will not misinterpret ? Could we devise
any procedure that might not be explained away ? If full-
grown men fell from the clouds, is it not likely that a theory
— as of aerolites, would explain their fall as a natural event ?
Is the life of every individual now, and the present continuance
of species ; the growth of every harvest, and production from
hour to hour of plants by natural succession ; less wonderful
than was the beginining of these things ? Go back to the
ultimate — Did protoplasm make itself and evolve the energy
of life ? Does the accounting everything self-produced, or,
which is the same, produced by Nature's own power, explain
the difficulty ? Why, denying miracles, it asserts a really
incredible marvel ; puts the Spirit of Divinity into stocks and
stones ; makes men like those Fetish-worshippers who adored
the spirit of steam in the engine, and prayed to the cranks
and joints !
There is an inquiry on the page already referred to—" To
what purpose were the millions of these demonstrations which
took place on the earth when there were no intelligent beings
to contemplate them ? Did the Unknowable thus demonstrate
His power to Himself? " Surely, philosophers do not imagine
that they only are to be cared for ; fondly dream that beings
like themselves are the greatest things in heaven and earth ?
that there is no God beside them ? that Nature and God,
Space and Matter, Time and Energy, are superfluous ; unless
men look on and admire ? If they want that mental range
which touches other beings — other worlds ; if they are so
small, that they judge all Nature from her feet of clay; and
are without the will to lift their eyes and see her godlike head ;
we are sorry for them.
Creation does not, necessarily, imply an abrupt appearance ;
but, simply, a Divine work. Any and every type of life may
have begun with imperfect, and attained highest state after
many ages of existence. We know that organic form,
whether of vegetable or animal, continues the same only
so long as inward conditions and outward circumstances re
main unchanged ; it was so in the past, it will be so in the
future ; anything otherwise, except by Divine Power, would

260 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
be impossible. If it were not, the jest and mad freak of
Mephistopheles might .be true —
" Wine grapes of the vine are born,
Front of he-goat sprouts with horn,
Wine is juice, and wine-stocks wood,
Wooden boards yield wine as good I
There is truth for him that sees
Into Nature's mysteries." Faust.
Opponents of the Supernatural seem to forget that is it not
enough for the auditory and optical nerves to have a sensa
tion, the intellect must .reflect. The material ear and eye
give work for the mental ear and eye. Everything visible
conducts to the invisible. Not only so, it is impossible for any
man to know all sciences, he cannot know one, cannot know
one thing perfectly in any one science ; every science, and
everything in every science, speedily passes beyond know
ledge, and is lost in the unknown. That the universe pos
sesses a due correlative and complement in the unseen is a
conclusion more and more forced upon physicists by the
grand doctrine of the conservation of energy. It is gross
presumption to bring up from the depths of ignorance the
assertion — "All life, motion, intelligence in the world, are
mechanical — as Vaucanson's duck which ate and digested its
food ; or as the flute-player of the same artist." Why, those
mechanisms were the work of mind, and maintained by mind.
Even so, the beautiful arrangements of Nature, in their uni
formity and variety, in that which we understand and in that
whereof we are ignorant, bring us to the acknowledgment
of Mind. The modes of action according to natural law
cannot be arranged in scientific form, have no ultimate ex
planation, until represented to our mind as the work of
Intelligence. We naturally seek for, and are not satisfied
till we find, tokens of Intelligence, like, but infinitely greater
than our own, in the moving power. If our argument is badly
worked— " Though you see a Churchman ill,
In the Church continue still. "
To obtain a conception as to order and will in creation ;
try, by scientific imagination, to get a view of their reality in

Unity of Power. 261
a triple truth concerning Vitality : 1. Unity of Power, 2. of
Form, 3. of Substance.
1. Unity of Power.
All the physical activities of vitality are for maintenance of
the body, for changes in its positions and parts, for continu
ance of the species. If we add activities of consciousness,
intellect, volition, the scheme embraces the highest forms of
life, and covers those of the lowest creatures. The activities
are propagated and maintained by a rhythm of motion.
Light consists of undulations. The rays of heat, the movements
of electricity, the motions of projectiles, are rhythmical. The
rhythm is compound ; there are solar, planetary, terrestrial
rhythms ; but the most numerous are in the phenomena of life.
There are rhythms in muscular action, in blood circulation, in
contraction and expansion of the lungs, in the periodic need
of food and repose, in the increase and decrease of life, in the
successive changes of organic forms. Indeed, the whole life of
plants and animals, in so far as it is physical, exhibits rhyth
mical transformations of energy. The rhythm of poetry and
music are the outcome of rhythm in sensation, intelligence,
emotion. This energy, so far as the earth and our physical life
are concerned, centres in the sun ; and from the sun, mechani
cally and chemically, come that aptitude and power by which
atoms of salt crystallise, and amorphous fragments arrange
and rearrange themselves into special structures ; by which
atoms of albumen, fibrine, gelatine, or the hypothetical protein-
substance take specific shapes.
2. Unity of Form.
If a drop of human blood be taken, kept warm, examined
under high microscopic power, there will be seen structureless
corpuscles in marvellous activity, capable of change as to
form and individual movement — they are minute portions of
undifferentiated protoplasm. Not of the same shape or size
in the human organism, as in beast or fowl, in reptile and
fish, in worm and plant, but there is a general likeness in the
peculiarity : " Traced back to its earliest state or form, the
nettle arises as man does, in a particle of colourless proto
plasm." x So arising, life diverges into the different vital
1 " Physical Basis of Life : " Prof. Huxley.

262 Creeping I^hing, Beast, Cattle.
activities, balancing of functions, changes of condition, growth,
adaptation, individuality, morphological and physiological
development. Not by the development of individuality from
the germ, as if the germ contained the perfect organism in
miniature ; but by that persistence of rhythmical force acting
upon the living particles, and developing the intrinsic aptitude,
or polarity, into the plant or animal by what may be called
special endowment. How strong the action is may be ex
emplified by the Bignonia. A fragment of the leaf, small as
a hundredth-part of the whole, placed in fit soil and kept at
suitable temperature, will become a complete plant. Other
organisms have like power ; a common polype may be cut
into very small pieces, from every piece will grow a perfect
animal. This process in development of form is subject to continual
change, but within definite limits ; for, as no natural process
works any, even the slightest, difference in the properties of
any molecule ; this unchangeableness of the molecule tends to
bring about that balancing of function which causes a return
from variabilities to the original form or stock. " Further,
the progress of Nature being mainly in the direction of differ
entiation of functions once combined, it has a limit backward
in the most general forms and conditions, and forward in the
most specialised. This is the history of the individual, and
probably also of the type, of the world itself and of the
universe ; and for this reason material nature necessarily
lacks the eternity of its Author." x Any living body, having
diverged from the normal course, will, so soon as the acci
dental causes of deviation have expended their force, return
to equilibrium by that power which physicians call " vis
mediatrix naturae." The increase and decrease of species,
their range and degree of perfection in likeness and unlike-
ness, are not by metamorphoses of confusion, but by a world
wide process giving unity of form, improvement, and advance.
The process may be partially explained — " The first centre
of sarcode, or indifferenced organic matter, however originated,
yet with certain definite tendencies to formal character and
course of growth (as in a Foraminifer, e.g.), buds forth a second
1 " The Origin ofthe World," p. 342 : J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S.

Unity of Substance. 263
centre of identical nature ; this a third, and so on . . . such
repetitions of a primal complexly organised whole . . . are
suggestive of operance akin to that of inorganic polar growths,
as in a group of crystals, wherein each exemplifies the charac
ters of the mineral or crystalline species, but is subject, like
vital growths, to occasional malformation. . . . Growth by
repetition of parts rapidly gives place to the higher mode of
development by their differentiation and correlation for definite
acts and complex functions." x Hence, all organic matter has
certain definite tendencies to formal character and develop
ment, which seem to be the impress of eternal fundamental
energy. The endowment is there, whatever it may be ; and,
because of this endowment, proceeds, from primordial germs,
in no respect distinguishable, the whole variety of life.
This startling fact disposes of the crystallisation doctrine of
evolution, by taking the essential and distinctive facts of life
far beyond the region that any theory is able at present to
approach. We conclude, therefore, that the popular statement
of Scripture covers accurate scientific reality : from primary
" indifferenced " organic matter, proceeded undulations or
rhythms, which progressing along straight or in circular or
in other various complex lines, culminated in life. Every
organism being a complex system of forces, and the higher
organisms in almost infinite complication as compared with
our powers of analysis.
3. Unity of Substance.
All the forms of protoplasm which have hitherto been
examined contain, when dead, the four elements : carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and some sulphur. The flower
of the field, and the blood which courses through our veins,
the dense resisting mass of oak, and that transparent jelly
which pulsates in the waters of a calm sea, are bound by one
common tie, and are akin : " In wisdom God made them all "
(Ps. civ. 24). The significance of this cannot be exaggerated ;
the occult subtle influences, making an essential distinction
and difference where man finds none, are wonderful ! When
we think that the microscopic fungus, and the great Finner
whale ; all that wealth of foliage lying between the lowest
1 " Anatomy of Vertebrates, " Pref. p. ix., x. ; Richard Owen, F.R.S.

264 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
plant, and those trees which endure while nations and empires
rise and fall ; that Shakespeare, the genius, and midges,
evoked by the sun; are all knit together by unity of sub
stance ; and have community of faculty through one Divinely
fashioned material ; we stand in awe of that varied interaction
which makes Nature beautiful as the robe of the Almighty.
Life-energy inspires this unity of substance, of form, of
power, with variety in mechanical, chemical, vital operation ;
plying the tongue with exquisite movements to modulate the
voice ; using the nerves and muscles to send forth volitions ;
and, by the intellent, conversing with those invisible things of
which the world is full. It introduces new objects and powers,
overmasters recurring cycles of physical law, blending the
welfare of sentient creatures with a plan going through all
ages. Life, moreover, continually calls our moral sense and
our intellect to new functions ; and, by use of memory, as to
the past, carries hope forward to the future ; rendering by
gone stages of existence platforms for that which is to come ;
so that we trace benign skill, stand in the presence of the
Creator, and rejoice in words spoken long ago — " My sub
stance was not hid from Thee, when I was made in secret,
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine
eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect ; and in Thy
book all my members were written, which in continuance
were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them" (Ps.
cxxxix. 15, 16).
We now advance from "unity of principle to the process of
variety : —
" Let the earth bring forth creeping thing."
Insects were in the Devonian forests. Ancestors of our
modern dragon-flies flitted with broad-veined wings, and their
larvae dwelt in the stagnant waters. One marvellous Ortho-
ptera had netted wings attaining an expanse of seven inches.
A kind of grasshopper, with a cricket-like chirp, raised the
first insect music known. Cockroaches are of an old family,
being found in the Carboniferous age with insects belonging to
three of the orders into which modern insects are arranged.
Shad-flies, weevils, millipedes, scorpions, spiders, are also of

The Process of Variety. 265
the Carboniferous age. The compound facetted eyes of insects
were as perfectly developed then as now. Of the two oldest
land-snails — one is elongated, the other rounded. In this age
or earlier, they emerged from the waters, moved on the land,
and breathed air. The oldest known fossil butterfly- seems
to have relationship with some of the living butterflies of
tropical America. In the Neozoic ages appear nearly all the
orders of insects. They are of later origin, as Scripture
declares, than the moving things of the waters. There is a
scientific hypothesis that their progenitors were Crustacea.
The origin, division, and development of life, appear to
have been in this order of progress — Plants reduced special
elements, existing in gaseous and watery combination, , to a
solid form. Animals, deriving their forces directly or indi
rectly from plants, carried the transformation a step further.
All the structural and functional motions of every organism
being an advance from the motions of simple molecules, to
those of compound molecules, and from these to those of
masses. For example : all sea-snails are united by well-nigh
numberless intermediate forms, and seem to have been the
progenitors of fresh-water and land snails. The celebrated
and various snails of the Stuben Valley, near Steinheim, in
Wurtemburg, whose snow-white shells constitute more than
half the mass of the Tertiary limestone hills, exceed twenty
different species ; but the extreme forms are linked by so
many which are intermediate, lying regularly above and beside
one another, that their pedigree is easily traced.
The historical succession is generally indicated : (1) in the
palaeontological history of organisms, furnished by fossils in
their adaptation to those various changes in the earth, of which
increase or decrease of temperature was the master fact
affecting climate, food, land, and sea level ; (2) in the history
of individual organisms ; (3) in the comparative anatomy of
kindred organisms. These are the three main facts which
prove that a marvellous process of adaptation has been in
operation from the very beginning. For example, the Num-
mulites, whose shells, the size of a lentil, form nearly whole
mountains in the Alpine system of Europe, and deposit
thousands of feet in thickness in Africa and Asia, possess

266 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
a house with many little chambers artistically ordered.
The Polythalamia have shell-chambers wound round one
another in a spiral line and great variety of exquisite
forms. These little palaces of beauty, regular structure,
elegant execution, are the product of a slimy, formless,
living mass ; and various, as their products, are the builders
themselves. The differences, imperceptible in their chemical
composition and physical construction, are brought plainly
into view by the variety of their constructed habitations.
As the chasm between creeping thing of the land and
swarming thing of the sea is bridged by intermediate forms ;
so, between fish and animal of the land, come those amphibia
of which ancient days afforded gigantic examples. Are we
then to conclude that the land was colonised from the water ?
We may smile at those who assert that every foot comes from
a fin, and that fish by gaping developed lungs ; but as twice
a day, in the rise and fall of the tide, some plants and animals
have a twofold kind of life ; those only touched by the highest
tides, and those never uncovered but at lowest ebb, having
intervals varying both in frequency and duration ; it is easy
to think of an advance of life from the sea to possess and
replenish the land. Heredity from the water might be so
acted upon through adaptation by land, that at last animals
could wholly forsake the one for the other. The mud-fish is
an example of transition into amphibia, and the tailed forms
of amphibia are the most ancient. Tritons are amphibious
animals, akin to frogs ; and, like them, in an early stage,
possess gills, by means of which they live and breathe the air
that is dissolved in the water. At a later stage, like frogs,
they leave the water, lose their gills, and are able to breathe
with their lungs ; but if, by being shut up in a tank, they
cannot leave the water, they retain their gills. The gilled
salamander, Axolotl (Siredon pisciformis), generally remains
all its life in the water ; but at the Zoological Garden, in
Paris, not long ago, a small number crept out of the water,
from the many hundreds of their fellows, on the dry land,
lost their gills, and became gill-less salamanders — breathing
only through their lungs. Salt-water Crustacea and fish also
live in the great fresh-water lakes of the world.

Structural Changes. 267
This subjection to circumstances causes structural changes
in the properties of already formed parts ; but, within any
assigned time, these changes fall within narrow limits ; and
so soon as the normal state is re-established, the organ and
organism fall back to their original condition. Structure,
handed down by heredity, is indeed liable to variations of
considerable magnitude ; in part by the individual, and in part
by involved influences producing functional adaptations ; but
only power from without, acting within, can produce what is
not inherent in the organism ; and in no other way can we
find a satisfactory explanation for the continual introduction
throughout all geological time of those new forms of life,
which do not appear to have been preceded by pre-existent
allied types. There exists some other deeper, wider-reaching
law than evolution as commonly taught. As to artificial
acquirements, plants and animals when neglected relapse to
their original wild forms ; and mutilations of the body —
though continued from generation to generation, as nose and
ear piercings, misshapings of the foot— as among the Chinese,
and circumcision — as by the Jews, are not transmitted. How
ever much the lower forms of life mingle ; and the outward
grades of fish and amphibia, marsupial and mammal, approach
one another ; distinct provinces of marine and terrestrial life
are always maintained.
The marsupial form, so akin to the reptile and amphibian,
preceded the other mammalia in time. Of the Mesozoic
species all are marsupial, small, of low grade, and allied to
the monotremata in their lowest structures ; but not lower
than some now existing. Their low position may be asso
ciated with the habit of limiting the exercise of active-life
faculties to the period of night's obscurity. The mother
nurses her young in a tegumentary pouch, where they remain
suspended to the teats, and are safely carried for a period
nearly answering to that of uterine life in the higher mammals.
Where great want of water exists ; and, in dry seasons, rivers
are converted into pools few and far between ; in such a
climate, at such a time, an ordinary non-marsupial animal
like the wild cat or fox, having deposited her young, would
travel far to quench her thirst. " Before she could return her

268 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
blind and helpless litter would have perished. By the mar
supial modification the mother is enabled to carry her offspring
with her in the long migrations necessitated by the scarcity of
water." x Mr. Owen adds — " These correlated modifications of
maternal and fcetal structures, designed with special reference
to the peculiar conditions of both mother and offspring, afford,
as it seems to me, irrefragable evidence of creative foresight."
A difficulty attends this .theory : the pouch is not possessed '
by all marsupials.
The great class of mammals had a small beginning, and
made little or no advance during the vast Mesozoic time. In
the Neozoic time existed that higher group which now has
pre-eminence. Animals related to tapirs, bears, racoons, are
among the oldest. The Miocene was the culminating age of
mammalia : they were then largest and most numerous. The
Deinothere was as much larger than our elephant as the
elephant exceeds an ox ; the skull, including snout, was five
or six feet long ; two large tusks grew out of the end of
the lower jaw and pointed downwards. The most ancient
beasts of prey are the feline, then the canidae, latest the
ursidae. Relics of their predecessors we do not possess. The
beast of the earth and cattle are the freely roving vegetable
and flesh eating wild animals of the land, creatures of the
marsh, the field, the forest, the plain. The Eocene and
Miocene strata of North America are crowded with carnivora,
ruminantia, pachydermata, rodentia, and non-ruminating crea
tures of the horse, rhinoceros, pig, tribes.
Heredity, or inheritance of the parents' nature, seems to
be the natural cause of stability ; and Adaptation one of the
causes of modification or change in organisms. Structure
and function being exposed to countless actions and reactions,
from generation to generation, of ever-varying circumstances,
the wonder is that we have not greater varieties, and that they
are not mingled in utter confusion. There must be some deep
and far-reaching law marvellously adjusting stability and in
stability, multiplication and extinction, that due equilibrium
may be preserved. In every species, animal or vegetable, the
1 "Classification and Geographical Distribution of the Mammalia:" Richard
Owen, F.R.S.

Many Paths of Life. 269
individuals are never quite alike ; and in every species, even
in every individual, there is a greater or less tendency to pro
duce varieties. Some unknown energy sets bounds to these
changes ; and we are amazed that the simple egg-cell of the
maternal organism, and a single paternal sperm-thread, transfer
to the young the minutest bodily and mental peculiarities of
both parents. The germ from which most mammals are
produced is the 120th part of an inch in diameter, the same
size as in man.
Doubtless, we may say of life — vires acquirit eundo. The
original forms of it, whether few or many, were capable of
development, and received it. Every new natural principle
was to the preceding as a miracle, the animal a miracle to
the vegetable, and man a miracle to the beast of the field.
We have a right from science to infer that there is a law
which provides for the origination of species, de novo, from I
unorganised matter, which is called into action by conditions
and in a manner wholly unknown to us and inimitable. Life
did not flow in an organic circle ; some forms, for reasons
unknown, being retarded ; and other forms, ascending in many
lines of development, brought in new existences. Every species
seems to come into being at a certain definite time, and to
disappear at another definite time ; though there are few, if
indeed any instances, in which we can safely fix the time for
entrance or exit. This bringing in or creating of new things y
is our general notion of a miracle ; and foretelling the new
is our general idea of prophecy. All past variety of growth
and development of power were figures of future advance, or
allegory of forms to come ; every low grade reappearing in \
the higher, as initial, subservient and supporting substance.
On natural life is grafted intellectual life ; on intellectual life, j
the spiritual and moral ; on spiritual and moral, future life.
Life, ascending in many various paths, is everywhere subjected
to spirit ; and life subjects and connects matter, as the crystal-
lographer connects imponderable forces and polarity ; the /
coarse or outside substance becoming, so to speak, the pre
cipitate of inner and finer formations. There are worlds
within worlds; infinity contains space, space comprehends
matter, matter embraces life, life enfolds intelligence, intelli
gence is the breath of spirit.

270 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
Life-forms are classed according to the differences in
structure. Heredity tends to conservation ; and power of
Adaptation, by circumstances to circumstances, tends to
variety. Hence, offspring resemble their parents ; but are
never wholly alike either in form or in structure. The likeness
preserves the identity of species, unlikeness tends to variety.
Sometimes the variety arises in full force per saltum ; but in
every case there are determining causes, external, or internal,
or both. Even a variety which approaches the nature of
a monstrosity strives, Caliban-like, to reproduce itself ; much
more those which are better fitted to maintain the struggle for
existence. Natural causes, acting through long ages of time,
brought into existence from pre-existing life-forms all the
varieties of life now on our globe ; there is the constant
introduction, throughout geological time, of new forms of life
which do not appear to have been preceded by pre-existent
allied types ; x the weaker, perishing ; those excelling in
strength, skill, agility, and best fitted to surrounding con
ditions, surviving. As a rule, the animals of lowest and
simplest organisation have the longest range of time ; the
additional possession of minute dimensions is also in favour
of their continuance. Large and highly organised animals,
though long lived as individuals, rarely live long specifically.
The formation, according to law, of varieties and species'
from the common type of animal structure, is called "the
Natural Origin of Species." The dying of unfavourable and
the continuance of favourable specimens are designated
"Natural Selection." So far, every breeder of sheep and
pigeon fancier agrees with the philosopher. The argument
may be carried into the domain of plants and flowers. Leaves
become sepals and petals ; sepals and petals grow into
stamens, nectaries, ovaries, as is known to every practical
florist and seedsman. Of the nature of the forces evoked we
know nothing, nor can we account for the constant intro
duction of new life-forms, age after age, more and more like
those now in existence. There is, however, a limit to varieties :
as to those which are strictly species — " Each of them always
1 For examples, see H. Alleyne Nicholson's " Life History of the Earth,"
P- 373-

Variations from Primitive Type. 271
remains separated from the others by an interval which Nature
cannot overstep." x " It is one of the clearest facts in the
animal as in the vegetable world ; all races gradually repro
duce and perpetuate themselves without mingling or con
founding one with the other." 2 It is put yet more forcibly —
"No race will amalgamate with another: they die out, or
seem slowly to be becoming extinct."8 Professor Huxley
states — " To sum up our knowledge of the ethnological past
of man ; so far as the light is bright, it shows him substan
tially the same as now, and when it grows dim, it permits us
to see no sign that he was other than he is now."4 In the same
address he says — "Admit that Negroes and Australians,
Negritoes and Mongols are distinct species, a distinct genus,
if you will, and you may yet, with perfect consistency, be the
strictest of monogenists, and even believe in Adam and Eve
as the primeval parents of all mankind." So we may say
with Sir Charles Lyell — " There is no valid objection to the
doctrine of the human race springing from a single pair." 6
Goethe was the first, Professor Helmholtz says,6 who laid
down with precision and confidence, that all differences in the
structure of animals must be looked upon as variations of a
single primitive type, induced by the coalescence, the alteration,
the increase, the diminution, or even the complete removal of
single parts of the structure ; the very principle, in fact, which
has become the leading idea of comparative anatomy in its
present stage. Dr. Darwin thinks " there is grandeur in this
view of life, with its several powers, having been originally
breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one."7
Professor Huxley says — " All existing species are the result
of the modification of pre-existing species, and those of their
predecessors ; and it is probable, though not a necessary con
sequence of this hypothesis, that all living creatures have
arisen from a single stock. . . . The vast series of extinct
animals is not divisible, as it was once supposed to be, into
1 Isidore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, "Historie Naturelle Generale," iii. p. 210.
2 Prichard, " Natural History of Man," i. p. 17.
3 Ethnological Journal, p. 98. 4 "Method and Results of Ethnology. "
* "Antiquity of Man," xx. p. 385. 6 Goethe's " Scientific Researches."
7 " Origin of Species," Edit. 4, p. 576.

272 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
distinct groups, separated by sharply marked boundaries.
There are no great gulfs between epochs and formations — no
successive periods marked by the appearance of plants, of
water animals, and of land animals en masse!' x It is con
ceivable, though no case is certainly known of any animal or
plant assuming the characters of a new species ; and species
may have been so constructed that, after a certain number of
generations, they undergo either abrupt or gradual changes
somewhat similar to those in embryological growth.
The theory of Lamarck groups organic matter under simple
forms. Their first outlines, altered by time and circumstances,
successively give birth to radiated creatures, to the inferior
molluscs, to articulate animals, to the lowest fishes, then to
man. " Exercising an organ gains development and exten
sion which insensibly change it, until it becomes wholly
different. On the contrary, the faulty use of an organ im
poverishes it gradually, and ends by destroying it." 2 Birds,
ceasing to fly, lose the power of flight. " This atrophy reaches
its climax in the snakes, ... by the ribs and intercostal
muscles having undertaken the work of the limbs." 3 Mr.
Owen writes — " I am constrained by evidence to affirm that in
the vertebrate, as in the invertebrate series, there is manifested
a principle of development through polar relations, working by
repetition of act, and by multiplication of life-parts, controlled
by an opposite tendency to diversify the construction, and en
rich it with all possible forms, proportions, and modifications
of parts, conducive to the fulfilment of a pre-ordained purpose
and a final aim ; these opposite yet reciprocally complemental
factors co-operating to the ultimate result, with different degrees
of disturbance, yet without destruction of the evidence of the
typical unity." 4 Evidence may be multiplied to any extent.
" Every cell, like every individual plant or animal, is the
product of a previous organism of the same kind." 5 " Unity
of plan everywhere lies hidden under the mask of diversity of
structure." In plainer words — "To study the succession of
1 " Criticism on the Origin of Species." 2 '" Organisation des Corps vivants."
3 " The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism : " Oscar Schmidt.
* "Anatomy of Vertebratest," Introd. p. xxi. ; Richard Owen, M.A, F.R.S.
3 " Comparative Physiology," p. 347 : Dr. Carpenter.

Natural History Provinces. 273
animals in time, and their distribution in space, is to become
acquainted with the ideas of God Himself."1 "There is,"
says Dr. George Combe, " scarcely a single page in my three
physiological works in which God was not present to my
mind. I regard the whole laws of animal economy, and of
the universe, as the direct dictates of the Deity ; and in urging
compliance with them, it is with the earnestness and reverence
due to a Divine command that I do it. I almost lose the
consciousness of self in the anxiety to attain the end, and
when I see clearly a law of God in our own nature I rely
upon its efficacy for good, with a faith and peace which no
storm can shake."
The facts on which we may rely are the following : —Life
was evolved from no life — God evolved it ; organisms from
inorganic matter. Distinct natural history provinces existed
from the very earliest times ; and we are unable to explain
why such vast numbers of highly organised species simul
taneously struggle into existence in one age and disappear
in another. Whatever alterations arose, whether in fauna or
flora, seem to have been due to many concurrent forces, and
determinations of force, to geographical and climatal con
ditions ; not to automatism, but to that energy of which all
phenomena are manifestations. In some organisms there has
been little or no change. The Globigerinae, little builders of the
vast chalk formations, were the same as those now found in
the depths of the Atlantic Ocean ; in some varieties time has
effected no change, many new varieties have, however, sprung
up. Some of the lizards of to-day are no better than some
of those of the Permian period. The Labyrinthodonts were
more majestic than the higher and more specialised types of
the living salamander and triton. The Devonian ganoids are
near akin to Polypterus and to Lepidosiren. We are not war
ranted in asserting that all the earlier types, so far as known,
were more degraded or embryonic in structure than their
modern representatives. A long-winged bird will sometimes
hatch a longer-winged ; a changing climate and variable con
ditions produce adaptations; where there is dry land not
many aquatic creatures will be found ; and those mechanical
1 " Prin. Zool.," c. xiv. : Agassiz. T

274 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
instruments, the hands of the ape, the hoofs of the horse, the
fins of the whale, the trowels of the mole, the wings of the
bat, must obey the behests of animal will in their different
elements ; but that rumination will come to an animal through
long sitting, or that wings, trowels, fins, hoof, hands, are
common property and interchangeable by animal will, is not
credible. Every life conditions its own form ; and the power
of adaptation, from within and from without, has reflex forcible
action : but the so-called persistent types, both of animals and
plants, have sustained very little apparent change from their
first appearance to the present time; In those which are not
persistent, there is a resemblance of arrangement, as also of
order and character, in the succession. The wonder is that
the changes have been so small ; not that they have been so
great. No merely physical theory can embrace the whole
plan. The visible universe is a vast machine for use and dis
sipation of energy which comes from the Unseen. The in
visible universe is where all that exists originated, and whither
its energy is ever returning.
Professor Huxley states that science fails to show positively
" any sort of progressive modification towards a less embryonic,
or less generalised type, in a great many groups of animals of
long-continued geological existence. In these groups there is
abundant evidence of variation — none of what is understood
as progression ; and, if the well-known geological record is to
be regarded as even any considerable fragment of the whole,
it is inconceivable that any theory of a necessarily progressive
development can stand, for the numerous orders and families
cited afford no trace of such a process." x An impartial survey
of ascertained truths negatives those docrines of universal pro
gressive modification which suppose a necessary progress from
more to less embryonic forms, or from more to less generalised
types : there have been periods of rapid production and of
quick decay — " If the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are
coeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents
give us any just conception ofthe nature and the extent of the
earliest fauna and flora, the insignificant amount of modifica
tion which can.be demonstrated to have taken place in any
1 " Persistent Types of Life : " Prof. Huxley.

Embryonic Development. 275
group of animals or plants, is quite incompatible with the
hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a necessary
process of progressive development ; entirely comprised within
the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks. Contrariwise,
any admissible hypothesis of progressive modification must
be compatible with persistence without progression, through
infinite periods." x
With regard to the length of time claimed for development
of the higher organisms : no great length is needed. The
high and complicate human organism arises from a simple
cellular state through many transformations ; from a seed,
like a plant, into structure and condition like some of the
lower fishes, thence into amphibious kind. All is done in a
very short time. Then it passes at once into the mammalian
type, and shows itself to be human when half an inch in
length. The embryonic development is a rapid succession,
in general outlines, of different and advancing forms ; but
there is not such exactness that the embryonic man is a plant
or a fish, he is neither. These leading characteristics are
said to require myriads of ages in the plant, and in the fish ;
but the assertion that myriads of ages are required for the
production of man through many bestial conditions, of beast
through vegetable stages, and of the higher through lower
vegetable organisation, is unwarranted.
Similarity of number, structure, and parts in organisms, and
like phases in the embryonic state, are not proof of the
universal evolution of higher from lower forms. Physical
and organic changes are so correlated and adjusted that,
whether abrupt or gradual, all tend to an elevating special
purpose, culminating in man himself ; who, in his own frame,
contains in a higher and complicate form all the elements
and essence of former life ; the lower organisms are living
figures of his every part and state : but only figures. As for
animal and vegetable characteristics, they so intermingle that
in the lowest forms no separation seems to exist ; neverthe
less, an invisible essential difference does exist. In those
organisms, the Monera, Amoeba, etc., which change their form,
we are as little able to point out a definite fundamental form,
1 "Persistent Types of Life : " Prof. Huxley.

276 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
as we are to find it in shapeless, formless anorgana, such as
non-crystallised stones : nevertheless, though we cannot find
any essential difference in the external forms or the inner
structure of these living, or of those dead : there is this essential
difference — one is living, the other is dead ; and every living
thing has its own path of life, its own labour working to
an end.
The energy imparting life to inorganic matter advances
from various centres, in definite lines and times, through various
grades of organisation to the highest varieties of dicotyledons
and vertebrata. This progress and variety are not wholly of
adaptation, and by the changing incidence of conditions.
Variations appear even when parents are the same, and their
constitutional states the same. Plants grown from the seeds
of one pod are not alike. In a litter of pigs, or of kittens,
there is seldom uniformity of marking. Like organisms are
not universally, nor even generally, found in like habitats ; nor
very unlike organisms in unlike habitats. Horses, cows, sheep,
dogs, afford many examples of variety and improvement ;
and, but for this capability of improvement, the arts of the
breeder and cultivator would be in vain ; nevertheless, one
cannot be improved into the other. The rabbit is born naked
and blind ; the hare is born covered with hair, eyes wide open
ready to run for its life. " The unity underlying the differences
of the hand, the paw, the fin, the hoof, great as it is, no more
makes a man a dog or an ape, than it makes him an elephant
or a seal." x A young chimpanzee and an infant child are
somewhat similar, but the child grows into a man, and the
chimpanzee becomes more bestial. " The higher a monkey
goes, the more he shows his tail." The chimpanzee is limited
to an intertropical climate, and requires an assemblage of
certain trees producing certain fruits ; but man is a deni
zen of all lands, from the torrid to the arctic zones. The
letters and words of man's book of life are cast from the
substances used in God's press for various other publica
tions ; but those other publications are no more a part of
man, than is a scurrilous libel part of Milton's " Paradise
Lost." 1 Cuvier, " Lecons d'Anat. Comparee," vol. i., 1799.

Rudimentary Organs. 277
Rudimentary Organs.
A Doctrine, Dysteology, the uselessness or purposelessness
of organs, is attracting the attention of scientific men. Almost
every animal and plant, besides the obviously useful arrange
ments, has organs or rudimentary parts, for which there is no
purpose. Eyes which do not see are possessed by animals
living in the dark, in caves, or under ground. The eyes are
good, but covered with a membrane so that no ray of light
enters. Rats found in the caves of Styria and Kentucky, may
have become blind through so many generations living in the
dark. We do wrong to think that natural selection preserved
the blind, and destroyed the seeing ; because those having
sight might be liable to " inflammation of the nictitating
membrane ; " for the eyes of these blind rats are subject to the
objectionable inflammation. There is more in all this than
our science has laid hold of. Blind rats (Aspalax typhlus) and
the proteus (Salamander) have a skin-covering of the minute
eye which is not larger than a poppy seed. The equally small
eye of the mole (Talpa Europcea) is provided with a small
circular eyelid, which is hidden under the fur. There are
rudimentary limbs in fish, in serpents, and the slow-worm has a
shoulder apparatus. In plants sometimes the stamen, some
times the pistil, is abortive. Sometimes only one of the lungs
is developed in snakes, and in all birds only the left ovary is
developed to yield eggs. The mammary glands on the breast
of all mammals are active only in the female ; there are front
teeth in the young of many ruminants, as in the calf, which
are not developed. Most of the higher animals possess
muscles that are never employed ; some birds and insects have
wings which are not intended for flight. In the profound
depths of the ocean are crustaceae with eyes, and others with
rudimentary eyes ; the former could see were there light, the
latter are incapable of seeing.
If some of these organs are in a state of atrophy through
disuse, the difficulty is partly explained. If others are pro
gressing in life, is this progress voluntary on the animal's part ?
If so, explain it. If it is the natural process, by what arrange
ment is it natural ? The theory of natural selection does not
unravel the mystery : for rudimentary organs, and some stages

278 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
in the slow process of change, are hindrances to the animal,
losses — not gains. They are not as germs, so that if we
amputate a leg a new one buds out ; nor do they possess
power to form a limb or tail, where was no tail nor limb. A
portion of the alimentary canal in birds is enlarged and indu
rated for trituration of food, and we think to explain it by
saying — " The gizzard is simply an exaggeration of certain
structures and actions which characterise stomachs in general,"
but over-eating will not form a receptacle for the surplus, nor
quick and ravenous devouring lead to the production of an
internal grinding apparatus. Did the liver, pancreas, and
smaller glands, grow up by the desire to eat, and was there
then a co-operation to localise the excretions ? Did the lungs
expand themselves out of a hollow bud, and become an air-
chamber — simple or compound ; and, in fish, form the swim-
bladder ? To call them an integration or summing up of
past adaptive processes, by which modifications were slowly
acquired through many generations, is first to assume those
modifications, and then to explain the lesser difficulty by a
greater. If we say — " The rudimentary limbs were the pro
phecies of quadrupeds, and that serpents with rudimentary
limbs are aborted quadrupeds ; these are evidence of atrophy,
those a potentiality of advance " — why do the same things
so greatly differ ? Probably, they are marks of unity in all
variety ; a link between progress and retrogression ; a
mingling of potentiality and weakness, of natural adaptation
with that ordination of general laws by which there shall be
the utmost possible development of varied forms.
Many human emotions, probably all the sensual feelings,
are found in the beast, and it is asserted, with some humour
and much rashness, that the highest faculties of emotion and
intellect are mere outgrowths from lower animal life. For
example — the mother sense of all senses is touch, and the
parrot is the most sensible of birds because of its tactual
power ; but we may just as well say — " The parrot has great
tactual power because it is one of the most sensible birds, and
by the same intelligence evokes speech from otherwise dis
cordant tones." A hawk, a raven, a canary, may sometimes
equal the parrot in intelligence. The elephant multiplies

Natural and Supernatural One splendid Unity. 279
experience through the tactual range and skill of his trunk ;
but the dog, with less tactual power, is sagacious enough to be
the friend of man. Feline animals are said to be more saga
cious, because of their paws, than hoofed animals ; but the
horse, though hoofed, excels all the feline animals, in the
world. If prehensile lips are the cause of sagacity, the cow
ought to excel, for she has prehensile lips and a cloven hoof.
No warrant, moreover, exists for believing that parrot, ele
phant, horse, dog, or cow, can educate itself to the surpassing
of Nature, and extend brute powers into the domain of human
reason. Men, however, who lose the knowledge of God, can
and do go down into a low animal substratum of being, and
suffer loss. Not distinguishing the nobler organs and func
tions, they use them as if only of animal species ; but God
knows the difference, and holds men responsible for use of
that difference. He expects them to regard one another as
rudimentary angels, rather than progressive beasts : for an
angel may be called man incorporeal, and man an angel cor
poreal. He is animal in so far as he partakes of precedent
forms ; and in so far as an animal is a plant, and a plant is
inorganic ; but, as a reasonable creature clothed with body,
and formed in the image of God, he is but little lower than
the angel.1
The whole of Nature, thus viewed, is in every part inter
penetrated by the Supernatural ; or the Supernatural is
Natural : for all things blend in one splendid unity. God is '
not imprisoned in the laws of Nature, nor are they the grave of
His omnipotent free will. That which we call miraculous may
be the working of a law so fine, yet wide and intermittent,
that only highest wisdom can comprehend and use it. We
trace back animals, plants, and others which preceded them ;
our continents and mountain ranges, the solid rocks of which
they are composed ; aye, the very fabric of the solar system
1 Comenius said the same thing long ago — " Homo dici potest angelus eo sensu,
quo homo ipse animal, animal planta, planta concretum, etc. , dicitur id est. propter
inclusam praecedentis formam, nova solum superaddita perfectione. Homo enim
creatura est rationalis ad imaginens Dei condita, immortalis ; est et angelus, sed
majoris perfectionis ergo a corpore liber. Nihil igitur aliud est angelus quam
homo a corpore nudus, nihil alind homo, quam angelus copore vestitus." — John
Amos Comenius, Physicae ad Lumen Divinum Reformandse Synopsis.

280 Creeping Thing, Beast, Cattle.
itself; to their own several origins at distinct points of time —
/ so can maintain that since our earth began no succeeding year
. saw it precisely as it was the year before, yet all the variety
blended in unity. The discoveries of science are true revela
tions of the Divine presence and work, are an explanation of
I God's usual way of doing things, are a psalmody in praise
I of Wisdom and Might. Our life, rooted in the Divine Life, is
a mystery, a holy thing, part of a moral spiritual system.
Mere animal minds die, human minds are immortal ; this,
I their grandeur, ever growing into wider range, subordinates
\ intellectual to moral perfection. Cosmical life, brought out
¦ like lower animal life, from simple elements by the Almighty,
is springing, through strange interaction with things around,
to complex powers ; we are becoming involved, deeper and
deeper, with great principles of moral government— with a
future wherein holiness will be vindicated.

STUDY XV
COMPARISON OF THE TWO DIVINE ACCOUNTS.
" Umbra in Lege ; imago in Evangelio ; Veritas in Ccelo." — St. Ambrose.
"In the spiritual childhood of the world, outward signs were needed to make
known God's power and rule. The secret springs of the machinery were dis
played ; but, when the fulness of time was come, men were no longer to walk by
sight, but by faith." — Memorials of a Quiet Life.
The world is that theatre on which the drama of our life is
played. Possibly we should not trouble ourselves with what
goes on behind the scenes, unless fresh influxes from the
region beyond our own experience, and beyond our ancestors'
experience, came in upon us as from an ocean surrounding our
island world. Reflection on the nature of things also discloses
that there are two modes of existence, and on two different
planes : Real existence, which we feel or perceive ; and Ideal,
that which is imaged in our consciousness, or of which we
have intellectual and emotional conception. Conscious, in
this manner, of existence, of co-existence, of pre-existence ;
the necessary movement of thought is with the flow of things,
and we carry, so to speak, a universe within, and a measure
for the universe without.
Deeply convinced as to the reality of a world behind the
field of phenomena, we are astonished by statements that it
stands in no relation to us, nor have we faculties by which
to know it. We utterly deny that there is any truth in the
statements. The educated man knows that the universe is a
great machine worked by unseen energy. It is possible to
reduce all phenomena to one cause, to see the many in the
One, and the One in the many. The first law of all science
is order, the second- — everything serves an end. The ablest
metaphysicians say — " The phenomena we deal with are
bi-polar, on the one side objective, on the other subjective,
and these are the twofold aspects of reality : " a double-sided-

282 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
ness which enforces the conviction that to the positive equation
of the world must be added the subjective equation — the
united meaning explains the whole. To say — the consciousness
we possess of God, of Sin, of Responsibility, of Eternity, are
creations out of nothing, utter fictions, is equivalent to sup
posing that the human race issued from Adam and the sons of
Adam, without the co-operation of Eve and her daughters.
We know these things not only through heredity, by revival
in successive generations of our race's experience in former
ages, but by our own fresh experiences of consciousness ; and
as all the parts of Nature are analogous, we learn that the
world within man and the world without man are alike
manifestations of realities.
This knowledge is by means of a faculty which, though
restricted within the sphere of experience, is able to appre
hend, though not comprehend, concerning the supra-sensible
and supernatural : a faculty which, by means of successive
reaches in symbolical procedure, as in mathematics, enables
gifted men so to enlarge and elevate sensible experiences,
that they attain a prevision in spiritual things like the aston
ishing previsions of exact science. The truth of this may be
discerned in the character and works of Moses, and in the
narratives of creation.
There are two separate accounts of creative work, which,
through want of sufficient critical skill, have been wrongly
considered as varying and erring records by two different
writers. The former account (Gen. i.-ii. 3) is a brief summary
or symbol of creative acts. The latter account (Gen. ii. 4-22),
after reference, in verse 4, to the creation of the world, describes
the planting of Paradise, and particularises the fashioning,
temptation, fall of man. The former, in which the Divine
name is Elohim, Q^'S, shows God's relation to all things as
the Creator, Owner, Lord of the universe. The latter, where
we find the name or names, E'DPS nipi1!, Jehovah Elohim,
represents the Lord, the eternal and infinitely powerful : the
Father — God in His own Essence, Source and Foundation
of all ; the Son — Mediating Principle, Deliverer, Saviour ;
the Spirit — the active Principle effectuating holiness in the
redeemed creation ; all included in Jehovah Elohim.

Variety of Statement. 283
The first chapter being Elohistic, and the second Jehovistic,
or Jahvistic, affords no conclusive evidence that the two
accounts are not by the same author. In the Pentateuch,
Histories, Psalms, one and the same writer will be found to
use both names. An occasional appearance and disappearance
of the sacred name, Jehovah, accords with the intense rever
ence in which it was held. Not only so, Elohim, " Mighties,"
is a more suitable word in describing creation ; even as the
name Jehovah gives a more touching character to redemption
and represents the Divine Personality.
The evident contrariety of statement, both as to matter
and manner, is proof of difference in the writer's aim. The
proof can be given in detail : — •
In the first chapter, six days form distinct and separate
periods or eras of creative operation. In the second chapter,
as if to show that the works of God are one work, and
the days of God are one day — all the days become one
— "the day that the Lord God made the earth and the
heavens." The first chapter, after stating that God is the Creator of
all things, describes the use of means in development of the
earth. The Spirit moves upon the waters — the chaotic fluidity
was not water, such as we are now acquainted with, which
could not collect until after the appearance of light, nor until
the glowing earth began to cool on its surface. Light may
be regarded as that means of effectual operation by Divine
energy when will was enunciated, as figuratively expressed,
by word. The firmamental expanse was cleared, the waters
were gathered into seas, continents and islands were formed.
Afterwards, the earth put forth vegetal power by which sea
and land were replenished ; the earth being that fruitful
mother, able, by endued energy, to give birth to plant and
to animal, as we now say, " by natural power " — all being
done according to law. By law is meant that order and
sequence, of varying intensity and rapidity, called natural.
This chapter, we are told, " contains no error as to cosmical
science." x
In the second chapter, the admirable mechanism and the
1 " Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures : " Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B.

284 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
work which was wrought by it are specially ascribed to a
personal God. As if the notion of Democritus had been
foreseen and corrected — " All life and change are due to the
combination and separation of molecules ; '"' as if the thought
of Lucretius was anticipated and reproved — " Nature is seen
to do all things spontaneously of herself ; " and, as if the
error of materialists had been prophesied of and condemned
— " Matter is the universal mother ; " we are plainly told —
" The Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every
plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of
the field before it grew : for the Lord God had not caused it
to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the
ground." Not from man was the pleasant pasture ; nor did
the mechanism and beauty of herb and flower proceed from
the earth ; nor is the exquisite structure of animals due to the
ground — the Lord God made them all.
The word n'rpin, " generations," heading the second narra
tive — "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth
when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made
the earth and the heavens " — is not to be understood as giving
an account of the original beginning, but taken in the sense
of one thing proceeding from another, as (Gen. v. 1) — " This
is the book of the generations of Adam;" and (Gen. x. 1) —
" These are the generations of the sons of Noah."
The growth or advance speedily assumes an intense mystical
signification. The Garden has to be dressed and kept, not
merely to be kept from running wild ; the meaning of dressing
and keeping is deeper than that of trimming flowers. The
Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are mystical tokens
of development : the command not to eat contains a warning
against evil ; and the entrance of a Tempter shows the need
of these teachings, warnings, premonitions, concerning human
duty, responsibility, and peril. The service and disservice,
the submission and rebellion, the temptation, fall, death of
man, are those things, proceeding from one another, of which
this chapter records the generation.
The generations are connected with a change in the
name of God. He is not simply &rp$, God, as He stands
to matter, and to unintelligent life as the Divine energy,

Physical Condition of Paradise. 285
but 0T!% niiT:, Jehovah Elohim, God known to Man, the
Personal, the Covenant God, to whom obedience is due, the
Promiser and Restorer.
" God had not caused it to rain '' — is not a denial of pre
vious rain, but an assertion of the Divine origination of plants
and animals. Paradise may have been a rainless, not treeless
locality ; but we do not understand, if so, why the dense
warm vapour did not condense into rain. The statement
signifies — Things did not exist of themselves, nor merely by
the fertilising influence of rain. In the mind or wisdom of
God every plant was created before it existed. The ideal
first, after that the reality. The whole was conceived and
spiritually wrought out before there was any rain. We may
also take it thus — " God had not caused it to rain ;" there was
no new or special creation for rain, but there went up a mist
from the earth. That rain did fall is certain. The Divinely
ordered constitution of Nature required it. Rain-drops fell on
sand, mud, soft clay, and left their marks on the sea-shores of
the ancient world ; and the rocky legend proves, by the shape
of these little indentations, that long before man appeared
the meteorologic state of the earth as to rain, wind, cloud,
electricity, was the same as now.
" There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the
whole face of the ground " — may be limited to Paradise. The
dew is plentiful and rain is scanty in those parts where God's
Garden is supposed to have been planted. We prefer this
interpretation — The plant and herb were not created by
growth-power of the earth, nor by the fertilising influence of
rain, nor had man to do with them ; they were God-made.
The argument is — There was no rain, nor any power in rain,
to form of themselves the exquisite and marvellous herb ; nor
was there any co-operation of man ; God formed it, and with
dew refreshed it. The mist going up from the earth returned
in water to refresh the whole face of the ground. The origin
was in that energy, above and beyond Nature, which comes
down into Nature.
The view stated above, as to the distinct and separate
purposes for which both accounts are given, is confirmed by
one from whom we little expected confirmation. He writes of

286 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
the first — "None but a professed mystifier of the school of
Philo could see anything but a plain statement of facts ; " but
" the circumstances related in the second narrative of creation
are indeed such as to give at least some ground for the sup
position that a mystical interpretation was intended to be
given to it." x It would have been well had the writer sought
out this mystical meaning ; he might have found the true
interpretation of the second narrative, and been preserved
from the error of counting it a mere repetition of the former,
and by a feebler hand. The chief purpose of the mystery,
we venture to suggest, is to give in concrete form, so far as
the nature ofthe thing and human capacity allow, an account
of man's departure from the Almighty. The reality under
the figure, and the figure with underlying reality, are that
awful spectacle, the growth and consequences of spiritual
depravity, which no man, with unveiled face, can safely look
upon. The fact, moreover, of the second narrative being mystical
affords matter for study to those who say — " Your belief and
our science are not possible in the same mind. Why the
stupendous miracle of no rain on that spot of spots, Paradise
— so beautiful in verdure — so rich in animal life ? Rain must
have fallen, even before the sea collected in mass : the exist
ence of continent, of island, of river, necessitated the action of
rain and denudation." We ourselves also, as men of science
and of faith, must be at one with ourselves — intellect and
emotion be duly content. Making, therefore, no attempt to
explain the miracle — if miracle there was — not insisting even
that Eden was a rainless locality — we have shown that pro
bably it was not — regard the garden and the planting, the Trees
of Life and of Knowledge, the formation of the woman, the
visible appearance of the serpent and audible speech, as sym
bolical statements and embodiments to give simplicity and
clearness to common understandings concerning spiritual
transactions. Not the less but more real because spiritual ;
not weakened in truth because the whole may be recorded in
allegorical form ; not losing intensity of power, of meaning, of
sacredness, but living with more life, and of motion supremely
1 "Essays and Reviews'' — Mosaic Cosmogony : C. W. Goodwin, M.A.

Varied Arrangement of Facts. 287
beautiful, because God arranged the Divine Plan as a land
scape, and placed His own and human doings in Paradise.
While thus putting the whole, so far as possible, in a form
acceptable to scientific minds, we do well to remember our
Lord's words—" Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou
hast believed : blessed are they that have not seen, and yet
have believed " (John xx. 29).
Further, that the two accounts were written for distinct and
separate purposes appears plain from — (1) Facts left out, (2)
The enlarged and' varied arrangement of facts, in the second
narrative.
1. — Facts left out.
There is no mention of the earth being originally without
form and void, nor of darkness upon the deep, nor of the
command, "Let there be light." The fact of creation is
simply stated. The moving of the Spirit, the ordination of
day and night, the formation and operation of the firmament,
are not spoken of; nor the gathering of water into seas, nor
the appearing of dry land. Sun, moon, stars, are not even
named, whether as lights or rulers. Creation of fish in the
water, and the image of God in man, are passed by ; nor is
there any mention of the Sabbath.
2. — The Enlarged and Varied Arrangement of
Facts. There is no separation of days, they are all one day.
Chronology is not thought of. Birds brought forth by the
water (ch. i. 20) are placed (ch. ii. 19) with animals, and formed
out of the ground. The latter statement is not incorrect, for
though science affirms that fish were the progenitors of birds,
not immediately, but through the reptile, they may be said
to come from the ground as mother of all things. Animals
are placed after man, and woman is formed of man, not with
man from the ground. Woman is produced from man by
means of fission, not known to us as a natural possibility
except in some low orders of life.1 The special mention of
woman, and the words — "Therefore shall a man leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife," are
undoubtedly to sanctify marriage, and to make the position
1 " The Origin of the World," J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S.

288 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
of woman one of purity and safety as to her husband. It is
hard, indeed, to resist the conviction that the whole is a
proemium to the narrative of temptation and ruin, and of
redemption from ruin. Adam and Paradise, temptation and
transgression, ruin and redemption, are the central objects.
Geologist, astronomer, theologian, who attempts to explain
the Hebrew narrative, is bound to take it with all belonging
to it.
Consider somewhat more deeply the nature and meaning
of the second narrative.
Man is " a living soul," &%}. : the living or efficient soul in
the flesh — body and soul being one man. Sometimes, as the
soul is the efficient or chief, it is taken as title for the dead
(Lev. xix. 28). The soul is not an exile from happier exist
ence, and placed in the body to do penance for formerly
committed sins, but that which the self-movement of God
Himself called into being by effectual interference when He
made man. We rightly say — the cause was God. The
material of the outer body was earth. The inner spiritual
ground or consciousness was fashioned into the Divine form,
image, likeness, by Inspiration. The effected object was a
human form, of flesh subsisting, with inner Divinely embodied
spirit. If there was any man before this, he was not a true
man, but a psychical man, not having the pneuma, spirit.
The peculiarity separating the real man from animals and
angels is, that animals have a nature which is wholly used up
in the necessary expenditure of life ; but man, being spiritual,
is not expended in natural use ; angels are in the image of
God, being sons (Job i. 6, xxxviii. 7), personal, not corporeal ;
but man, the earthly one in God's likeness, has a bodily form.
This — which leads some of us erroneously to regard God as
man-like, because we, in a sense, are God-like — means that
the spirit-embodied man, being exalted above the material
world, yet not purely spiritual, stands between the impersonal
bodily world and the personal bodiless spirits as the connecting
link of all created beings (Ps. viii. 5, 6). Not only so, man
being a law unto himself, while God was shining forth in his
spirit, his life was in very deed the vision of God. This light
was quenched in the Fall, and life became a dead -life ; but the

Soul of Man and Soul of Beast. 289
living spirit, though in moulded dust, subsisted ; that by
restoration in Christ we may be transformed again and assimi
lated to God. Thus viewed, man is God-man ; and when laid
in the grave, is that grain of wheat out of which springs, by
Divine energy, perfect and glorified humanity. In Christ's
life, death, resurrection, there is a manifest oneness with our
own. In the Scriptural sense, we live and die in Christ ; in and
with Christ are buried ; in, by, and with Christ we rise from
the tomb, ascend to heaven, dwell with God.
Cattle, reptiles, beasts of the earth, are called " living souls ; ''
but there was no embrace of love, no breath, no special
moulding in their creation. They grew, every one after his
sort, having life from God — nutritive life, sensuous life, but all
by means of the earth. There was no in-breathing, whatever
that may mean, nor spirit from Jehovah, whatever that may
convey. As to man, there was creation of body, enduing
with life, inspiration of soul.
Scripture traces man no further back than to Adam from
whom we all proceed. Adam is placed in Paradise to dress
and keep it. Through some strange influence, a brute
becomes an intelligent speaking creature, a means of temp
tation, and a power by which man, who was to subdue evil,
is himself overcome by evil. If the whole be counted an
allegory, the underlying truth is not the less intense or real.
The world, in consequence of evil, seems a mingling of wrath
and love — but love has supremacy ; and Satan, who had been
banished into narrower dominion (2 Pet. ii. 4), setting himself
to war against man (Ephes. vi. 12), is to find that man whom he
abused — man who began with lower powers, made yet lower
by sin — shall attain to high, even glorious state (Heb. ii.
10, 11).
Man is called "Adam," ^"}<$, "earth," because of the earth
was formed that body which. became a vessel to contain the
soul wherein resides the spirit, which is the image of God.
Adam is the earthly one, in contrast with that second Adam
who is the Heavenly One. The former was a living soul, the
latter a quickening spirit (1 Cor. xv. 45). One is the likeness
of God in an earthen vessel, the other is the likeness of God
(Phil. ii. 6) in brightness of glory (2 Cor. iv. 6, 7 ; Heb. i. 3).
u

290 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
Adam, and we in him, are earthly living souls, and, having a
spirit, are in the form of God. It is characteristic that, being
in the form of God, our natural life is transformed and raised
into the participation of spiritual living. The matter may be
seen in fact ; for Christ, by generation, is God-man ; and we,
through Christ, by regeneration, are God-men. This confirms
our kinship with the whole earth, and the promise of our
elevation above the earth into the "house not made with
hands." Man is as other earthly things, yet above other
earthly things. He lives in twofold relation : first, to all
natural and physical life by special operation ; and secondly,
in Divine kinship and communion by inspiration, regeneration,
sanctification. If we draw a little nearer, the truth appears in this form :
the entire life of Nature, in reciprocal action and varied powers
has unity and purpose in and from the great Architect. The
vegetative life is subordinated to the animal life, and the
animal to the spiritual. The human body contains all the
substance and powers of previously existing life ; and these,
being combined by special operation, constitute that organic
individuality into which the Lord breathed the breath of life :
not making man a part of Godhead, but creating a spirit of
moral and intellectual power in likeness to the Godhead. At
our death this created spirit is separated from the mortal, and
at our resurrection is joined to the immortal body. The soul
is the body of the spirit, the flesh is the body of the soul ; so
far as soul is animal, it is the informing part of that which is
corruptible ; in so far as it is spiritual, or the vessel containing
the spirit, it is the inner man.
The narrative is the simplest story ever told, suited for the
childhood of our race, and for children now, yet the grandest
ever written, the most mysterious ever conceived. We have
in it "truths that perish never,", requiring thousands of years
for fulness of growth. Many a discovery in science died, like
a thing born out of due time, and lived not again till ages had
passed away. These living things never die. They are a
song of strangest, sweetest melody which saddened yet glad
dened the purest spirits of our race ; God's psalm of life,
giving glorious ideas, making deeps where was no depth nor
inwardness.

Chaldean Account. 291
No argument as to the verity of these two narratives —
the former in historical reality, and the latter as containing
symbols of mysterious and spiritual, yet actual events — will
be deemed conclusive without the evidence derived from the
cuneiform inscriptions, or " Chaldean Account of Genesis."
The discovered tablets are fragmentary, and in a mutilated
condition ; not one. is complete, and only a general view of
the whole subject can be obtained. The inscriptions agree
with the Scriptural account of Creation, and of the Fall ; and
it is conjectured that every creative day had its own tablet.
Taking the best known arrangement of the fragments accord
ing to subjects,1 we have —
1. An account of chaos and the generation of the gods.
2. A fragment, perhaps of the second tablet, on the founda
tion of the deep.
3. The creation of land.
4. Part of the fifth tablet, giving the creation of the heavenly
bodies.
5. Fragments of the seventh tablet, giving the creation of
land animals.
6. Fragments of three tablets on the Creation and Fall of
man.
7. Fragments of tablets relating to the war between gods
and evil spirits.
The translation of the fragments of the first tablet is : —
1. "When above, were not raised the heavens ;
2. and below on the earth a plant had not grown up ;
3. the abyss also had not broken open their boundaries ;
4. the chaos (or water) Tiamat (the sea) was the producing-
mother of the whole of them.
5. Those waters at the beginning were ordained ; but
6. a tree had not grown, a flower had not unfolded." 2
The other translated portions — except 8, " a plant had not
grown, and order did not exist "—refer to the creating of
gods. " The three next tablets in the creation series are absent,
there being only two doubtful fragments of this part of the
1 " The Chaldean Account of Genesis," pp. 62-100 : George Smith.
2 Ibid. pp. 62, 63.

292 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
story." x It is conjectured that they contained an account of
the bringing forth of light, of the firmament, of dry land, of
plants. The fifth tablet narrates the creation of the heavenly bodies
as contained in Genesis under the fourth day ; and a sub
sequent tablet, probably the seventh, records the creation on
the sixth day. This double example leads to the inference
that every day's work was recorded on a separate tablet, and
in the Genesis order of the days. A tablet, thought to be
the eighth, appears to state the Creation and Fall of man.
There are several other tablets, but very mutilated ; and no
number can be positively proved beyond the fifth tablet. The
moon is created before the sun.2 As to the fragments regard
ing man, one fragment might belong to the purest system
of religion, but mutilations render the sense uncertain. On
another fragment is an account of the curse after the Fall.3
" The obverse of the tablet giving the Creation of man, when it
breaks off leaves him in a state of purity, and where it recom
mences on the reverse man has already fallen." 4 " The word
' Adam,' is not used as a proper name, but for all mankind.
The Tree of Life seems referred to as the grove or forest of
the gods. The dragon of the sea, answering to the serpent in
Genesis, is connected with the Fall, bringing it about, and
sharing the curse." 5 He is conceived of as a spirit of evil,
self-existent, eternal, belonging to the original chaos, opposed
to and older than the gods. " He is ' the intelligent guide,' or,
according to another interpretation, ' the intelligent fish,' ' the
teacher of mankind,' ' the lord of understanding.' One of his
emblems is the ' wedge ' or ' arrow-head,' the essential element
of cuneiform writing, which seems to be assigned to him as
the inventor, or at least the patron, of the Chaldean alphabet.
Another emblem is the serpent, which occupies so conspicuous
a place among the symbols of the gods on the black stones
recording benefactions, and which sometimes appears upon
the cylinders. This symbol, here as elsewhere, is emblematic
of superhuman knowledge — a record of the primeval belief

"The Chaldean Account of Genesis," p. 67 : George Smith.
Ibid. p. 75. » Ibid. pp. 82-85. * Ibid. p. 86. s Ibid. p. 90.

Age and Source of Chaldean Account. 293
that 'the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the
field.'"1 The Assyrians, who made these tablets, acknowledge that
they borrowed from Babylonian sources ; the greater part
being copied in the age of Assurbanipal, B.C. 670.2 It is
certain that the Babylonians, in the period about B.C. 2000 to
1500, believed in a story similar to that in Genesis.3 We may,
therefore, regard it as settled for ever that the Bible account
of the Divine Creation of Man, of his Temptation and Fall
by means of an evil spirit or serpent, are not modern inven
tions. It follows that the doctrine of redemption recorded by
Moses (Gen. iii. 1 5) in connection with the Transgression and
Fall, disposes of the error as to Christianity having been
evolved from human consciousness, apart . from Divine or
Supernatural influence. The essentials of our faith are all
fore-shadowed in the primeval record.
The superiority of the Mosaic record may be seen by read
ing, as specimen, a fine passage from fragments of the fifth
tablet, an account of the fourth day of creation." 4
Obverse —
1. "It was delightful, all that was fixed by the great
gods.
2. Stars their appearance (in figures) of animals he
arranged.
3. To fix the year through the observation of their con
stellations,
4. twelve months (or signs) of stars in three rows he
arranged,
5. from the day when the year commences unto the close.
6. He marked the position of the wandering stars (planets)
to shine in their courses,
7. that they may not do injury, and :may not trouble
any one,
8. the positions of the gods Bel and Hea he fixed with
him.
1 "The Five Great Monarchies of the Eastern World," vol. i. p. 154 : George
Rawlinson, M.A.
2 " The Chaldean Account of Genesis," pp. 22, 28 : George Smith.
3 Ibid. p. 100. 4 Ibid. p. 69.

294 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
9. And he opened the great gates in the darkness
shrouded
10. the fastenings were strong on the left and right.
11. In the mass (i.e. the lower chaos) he made a boiling,
12. the god Uru (the moon) he caused to rise out, the
night he overshadowed,
13. to fix it also for the light of the night, until the shining
of the day,
14. that the month might not be broken, and in its amount
be regular.
15. At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the
night,
16. his horns are breaking through to shine on the heaven.
17. On the seventh day to a circle he begins to swell,
18. and stretches towards the dawn further.
19. When the good Shamas (the sun) in the horizon of
heaven, in the east,
20. . . . formed beautifully and 
21  to the orbit Shamas was perfected
22  the dawn Shamas should change
23  going on its path.
24  giving judgment.
25  to tame
26  a second time
27 
Now read from the Bible, Gen. i. 14-19 — " God said, Let
there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the
day from the night ; and let them be for signs, and for seasons,
and for days, and years : And let them be for lights in the
firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth : and it
was so. And God made two great lights ; the greater light to
rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night : He made
the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the
heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day
and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness :
and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the
morning were the fourth day."
It seems hardly credible that the determined resolve to be
rid of miracles, inspiration, prophecy, everything supernatural,

Why the Account in Scripture is Retained. 295
should lead any man to regard Moses as having obtained his
theology and cosmology from a jumble of serpent-worship,
devil-worship, and Babylonian myth ; yet, " some have gone
so far as to argue that the Mosaic account was derived from
it. Others, who reject this notion, suggest that a certain ' old
Chaldee tradition ; was ' the basis of them both.' If we drop
out the word ' Chaldee' from the statement, it may be regarded
as fairly expressing the truth. The Babylonian legend
embodies a primeval tradition, common to all mankind, of
which an inspired author has given us the true groundwork
in the first and second chapters of Genesis." x
There are a few persons who say — " Theologians retain the
Genesis account to prop up the theory of the Fall and of
Satan's personality — retain it against reason ; and if the book
of any other religion gave an account of a speaking serpent,
and of woman formed from the side of man, the whole would
be counted an absurdity." Doubtless, but these marvels, even
if regarded as allegorical, are certainly true in their deep
meaning ; really live in moral and physical events now
operating. They are written in a manner so as to be under
stood by children, yet with depths for profoundest minds ; are
related in a Book which holds and will hold the world in awe ;
are connected with a scheme wonderfully comprehensive and
mysterious ; are the only accepted narrative which sufficiently
explains the sin, the misery, the past and future of mankind.
If you take away the ancient narrative, deny the recorded
events, refuse the essential meaning, assert that there is no
record of the universe having received damage, what then ?
You are without any explanation of that in man which leads
to devil-worship, and of those almost universal traditions which
relate of sin entering by means of an evil principle. Nor do
you get rid of marvels ; the gradual growth of the universal
mind of humanity, as asserted by some philosophers, and the
redemption and sanctification affirmed with better authority
by Christians, are nobler works, more lustrous in beauty and
goodness, greater marvels, than any old wonder. These
1 "The Five Great Monarchies of the Eastern World," vol. i. p. 182 : George
Rawlinson, M.A.

296 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
supernatural works have stimulated the mind of Europe to all
its highest efforts. They go home to the hearts of men in all
ranks of society, in all countries. The most practical men
that the world has ever seen maintain that the knowledge of
those old mysterious transactions was handed down to Moses
through a tradition which had become the almost exclusive
possession of the few who retained their faith in the primitive
religion ; the tradition being confirmed and probably enlarged
to him by new revelation.
In full confidence we retain our faith, revere the narratives,
the ceremonies, the symbols in which it is embodied. Our
confidence is further warranted because the verity and reality
of both narratives are foundation of the whole spiritual
building which Scripture erects.
The first narrative is full of spiritual reality and instruction,
extending from the fact that God did frame the worlds (Heb.
xi. 3), until it arrives at the startling statement that this frame
encloses a spectacle of such vast import that angels learn the
manifold wisdom of God (Ephes. iii. 10).
The reality underlying the second narrative manifests itself
not only in the symbolistic and allegorising exegesis of
patristic theology, but especially in the doctrines of Holy
Scripture. The creation of heaven and earth is the fact on
which rests the declaration that we shall see a new heaven
and a new earth (Rev. xxi. 1). The beginning of all things
is treated as the beginning of manifestation concerning the
mystery of the Divine nature (John i. 1). The Spirit brooding
over the waters and bringing forth life, prefigures the con
tinual operation of God in our souls (John iii. 5). The spring
ing up of light is an analogue of the glory and the light in the
city of God (Rev. xxi. 23). The birth of land from the sea
(Gen. i. 9) reminds us of all things being made new, and of
there being no more troublous tnings like the sea (Rev. xxi. 1).
The springing up of plants (Gen. i. n) is a figure of the tree
with food for all nations (Rev. xxii. 2). The sun, the moon,
the stars, are a witness of mystery not yet fully known (Rev.
xii. 1, xxi. 23). The Sabbath rest is symbol of the rest that
remaineth (Heb. iv. 9, 10). Who will forego the hope which
is set forth in the fact of paradise? (Luke xxiii. 43). From the

Growth of Divine Truth. 297
ground, out of which we were formed, we shall again arise,
re-formed, other than this body, of a higher essence : our
personal identity residing within the inner man, not the earthly
outside (1 Cor. xv. 24-44). In material substance we are like
all flesh, yet all flesh is not the same flesh, even as the stars
are not all suns (ver. 39, 40). The rivers of paradise flow
into one river of life. The tree of death, by the tremendous
death on Calvary, has become a veritable Tree of Knowledge ;
and we have access unto the Tree of Life with twelve manner
of fruits. Not once, but a hundred times, are the actual facts,
in their reality and their doctrinal truth, recorded in the
Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels. All these
fruitful interpretations would be unfruitful and no interpreta
tion, did they not grow out of the real actual germ — God made
the. world and all things that are therein. The physical is
alphabet of the spiritual. All the works of the Most High
are two and two, one against another (Ecclus. xxxiii. 15).
" Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet ; Vetus Testamentum
in Novo patet."
The whole becomes more wonderful when compared with
Auguste Comte's famous but erroneous law of scientific pro
gress. Every science, he says, passes to perfection by three
stages — the theological, the metaphysical, the positive. Biblical
science is the very reverse of this, and founded on the most
positive and simple statements which it is possible to make.
The whole race of man, and afterwards Israel in particular,
were dealt with in the directest,most real, and positive manner.
Those were the true days of sacred positivism. The Lord is
declared to be One God, Nature is a work of creation and
order, a living expression of the might and omnipresence of
the Deity. The visibLe world is not self-dependent, but in
relation and subjection to higher spiritual power. He who
doubts may compare the simplicity and reality of Genesis
with the myths, poems, rhapsodies, of all other nations.
From that positive was a transition into the metaphysical :
the prophets are witnesses. Then appeared Jesus who, with
perfect truth, established the world's theological school. His
piety rested on true wisdom, and that wisdom was based on
positive fact. Our knowledge of it is like a view in a glass

298 Comparison of the Two Divine Accounts.
— yet not a view in a glass ; it brightens and elevates the
human mind into a likeness of the Divine Mind. Man's duty,
high and lifted up above the mists of human error, has the
body of heaven in its clearness. Faith ascends to God —
Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. Our will, if we are not un
believing and rebellious, is becoming conformed to His Will ;
our thoughts are being fashioned by His Mind. When perfect
in Christ, we shall be one with God, and He one with us
(John xvii. 21-23). "Oh, my friend,
That thy faith were as mine ; that thou couldst see
Death still producing life ! And evil still
Working its own destruction — couldst behold
The strifes and tumults of this troubled world,
With the strong eye that sees the promised day
Dawn through this night of tempest ; all things then
Would minister to joy ; then should thine heart
Be healed and harmonised, and thou wouldst feel
God always, everywhere, and all in all ! " Southey.

STUDY XVI.
THE PRE-ADAMITE WORLD.
" Christian, try to solve the problems
Which life's mystery surround.
Why God made thee ? Why He loves thee ?
Where thou art, and whither bound ? "
The Three Bibles ( Unpublished).
Hseredi aeternitatis Adam vixit fieri.
The account of creation, if a true account, is proved by that
truthfulness to be Divinely inspired. Early unscientific
thought could not, of itself, know or invent those deeply
hidden facts of which accurate science has but lately obtained
possession ; however clear the mind's eye of ancient contem
plative genius, it could not, without Divine aid, see how the
world was framed. A revelation, therefore, of the fact that
God did create the world is vastly important, and establishes
the kingdom of God in the universe of matter ; as the moral
history and salvation of man establish it in the world of spirits.
It is not a picture of the Divine action drawn by an ancient
geologist, though there is agreement with the discoveries of
geological science, as regards the antiquity of the earth, and
as to the process of its formation ; nor was it depicted by
man's imagination trying, in its own way, to account for
Nature's origin and phenomena. Imagination was used, but
only as the faculty through which God made a revelation of
Himself. There was knowledge, but, so far as we can judge,
not scientifically obtained as is our modern conception of the
universe. " It is the production of a writer who seems to
possess an acquaintance with natural history, and might
almost be suspected of knowing some facts of geology j"1 yet
this acquaintance he could not possess. The simplicity of the
1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 14 : Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B.

300 The Pre-Adamite World.
words and deep accurate meaning agreeing with latest attain
ments of science ; the painting of things which men could not
have seen, and description of works which man could have
no knowledge of; are from a human mind mysteriously
acquainted with the deep things of God.
The heavens were undoubtedly in existence when our earth
was formed. The heavens are not the firmament, which was
created the second day ; nor are they simply the sun, moon,
and stars, spoken of in the fourth day. Heavens may mean
all these and many more. The Apostolic word (Ephes. iii. 10)
declares that the manifold wisdom of God is made known by
the earthly Church to angelic powers of heaven ; as if to show
that God's eternal world-plan did not begin with the earth,
even as it will not end with the earth. Science tells us that star-
formation is yet in progress ; and Scripture states that the Lord
is even now preparing mansions (John xiv. 2). It is not
needful to inquire whether heaven may be a spiritual world
which enters, encloses, extends far beyond, all material exist
ence. The Scriptural doctrine is — " Long before the earth was
fashioned for man, there were heavens, morning stars, angels,
regions more glorious than the earth, heavens more ancient
than the firmament, heavenly inhabitants who excel in
strength." x
Consequently, there have been wonderful and startling acts
of which we possess but few incidents, whether as to physical
creation, or the origin and fall of spirits (Job xxxviii. 12, 13;
Isai. xiv. 12 ; Luke x. 18 ; John viii. 44 ; 2 Pet. ii. 4; Jude 6 ;
1 John iii. 8). The fall of angels, as connected with our
own early history, may be thus briefly stated : — Man was
placed in Paradise to dress and keep it. The secret mean
ing of this service becomes apparent in the fact that a
tempter became the cause of ruin. There was evil for man
to overcome : evil outside of him, not human — but angelic or
spiritual. How far demoniacal malignity introduced or magnified
suffering in the early animal world, Scripture does not reveal ;
unless the " wasteness or emptiness," spoken of in the second
verse of Gen. i. mean, as some think, a caused or wasting
1 " Mosaic Record of Creation : " A. M'Caul, D.D.

The Fall of Angels. 301
desolation. In Jer. iv. 23, the words are used of destruction
wrought as punishment for sin. In Isai. xxxiv. 11, they
mean an after-destruction of that which once had been beauti
ful. In Rom. viii. 20-22, we are told that the creation was
made subject to vanity, not willingly, but in hope. Neverthe
less, we need not take the wasteness as having been caused
maliciously, for the Scripture statement — " God did not make
the earth to be waste " — is verified by the six days' process. The
earth was wasteness and emptiness, or, as translated, " with
out form and void," because it had not yet been shaped, nor
fitted for living creatures, .mri, " wasteness," is sometimes used
as synonymous with 1!*?, " non-existence," and ?3[> for " nothing
ness." It is certain that all good operation, all healthful and
orderly production, proceed from the Will of God ; and that
the Divine plan, working by a conditioning influence, renders
even wasteness and desolateness receptive of Divine energy.
The disorder, in its degrees of evil, though made a means of
discipline, is attributed to the agency, direct or indirect, of the
devil and his angels ; who, having fallen from their allegiance
to God, sought to mar His good work. Hence we know why
wrath seems mingled with love ; why there is pain, strife,
death ; why providence is that entangled maze which only a
faithful, wise, loving heart can understand aright.
The fall of angels, and their evil influence on men, must
not be put away as poetical and figurative ; there is meaning,
and that of a most awful character. What it is, as to the earth,
we are painfully conscious of in the sin of our race, in the
continual conflict of flesh and spirit, and in the dread of
judgment to come. The record is a true history of real acts,
not a mythological account of natural disturbances, nor a
personifying of processes and laws by which God worked.
There is certainly a magnetism of attraction and repulsion
pervading all things. Subtle universal influences vibrate
through all classes of organic and inorganic substance. It is
not a shallow but deep philosophy that finds, in the bad
passions and moral diseases of intelligent creatures, something
that corrupts, or may corrupt, the whole course of Nature
(Rom. viii. 20-22), even as a whole history of sorrow may
be read in the accents of some peculiarly plaintive voice,

302 The Pre-Adamite World.
" Specially remarkable, miraculous it really seems to be, is
that character of reserve which leaves open to reason all that
reason may be able to attain. The meaning seems always to
be ahead of science, not because it anticipates the results of
science, but because it is independent of them, and runs, as it
were, round the outer margin of all possible discovery." x The
numerous passages of Scripture which affirm or imply human
responsibility, the existence and agency of extra-human and
superhuman orders, are connected with a vast scheme. Accurate
study will give consistency to this evidence, dissipate many
difficulties, and expand our knowledge of those mysterious
beings with whom our own destinies are so marvellously in
volved. The pre-Adamite world, occupying innumerable ages,
answers the request of geologists for vast duration ; and
allows, if need be, for pre-Adamite men. If such precursors
existed of the Adam-man, as the Adam-man preceded the
Christ-man, they were brute men, in whom was no breath of
God ; but, at best, only life yearning for more life. It is just
possible, that as plant and animal had their order ; the more
primitive of each being more simple, and those following, for
the most part, more highly organised ; there may have been
rudimentary men formed, as Scripture says, out of the ground.
These may possibly have lived on for many generations until,
in fulness of time, they were regenerated or recreated as the
Adam, our forefather. There are thoughtful men who accept
this as not unscriptural, and as explanatory of a scientific
difficulty. They are quite prepared to admit that the psychic
man may have come from some lower form of life ; but they see
in the pneumatic man something that the theory of evolution
cannot account for. We will not say, as Delitzsch — " The man
who, in the ape, greets his brother only a little left behind,
must needs have first substantially brutalised himself, or he
would rather shudder at this counterpart of his own degrada
tion." 2 It is better to allow those who think that our struc
tural resemblances to the nearest allied quadrumana are of a
character indicating that both man and ape are derived from
1 "Primeval Man," p. 367 : Duke of Argyle.
2 " Biblical Psychology, " part ii. sect I.

Pre-Adamite Man. 303
some earlier common stock, to state their opinion. There is
no harm done when they say — " The body being formed by
a perfectly natural process, and existing so that —
" ' The soul did but mean the breath,
It knew no more ; '
then came the Divine gift of immortality by means of endow
ing the (crapZ.) flesh, \vith (irvevpa) the spirit ; thus the (cwpa)
body, dwelt in by the (ipvxv) life, became, through (Trvzv/xa.) the
spirit, a Divine man." Hence, though descended from' the
brute, man is immortal by the birth of a spirit in him which
bridged the gulf between meanness and majesty. Since which
time it has ever been —
" More upward, working out the beast ;
Letting the ape and tiger die. "
As for ourselves, we are in no hurry to solve every difficulty.
All the sciences, even those professing most accuracy, are
surrounded by many and great mysteries. Theology is one
of the sciences. Every root of study is lost in the unknown,
and every height of knowledge enters a transcendental
expanse. All scientific men, in the course of life, change their
opinions as to the mysterious agencies and complex mechanism
of the world. It is well to accept as part of our discipline,
and an exercise of faith, that we must watch and wait. We
are imperfect but progressive beings, and Revelation not only
promotes the study of Nature, but renders it honourable as an
inquiry into the ways of God. The exact point of time in
which it pleased the Eternal to create man cannot be deter
mined, but if man had existed very many thousand years
on the earth, whether in brute form or rational image, he
must have left memorials ; yet not a vestige is found of that
assumed ancient life — not a relic of old bestial condition. All
flint instruments are accounted for by a reasonable antiquity ;
and the savage forms of life, however degraded, were not
brutal ; the so-called Palaeolithic men possessed great cerebral
development ; and probably were not in a more degraded
condition than the aborigines of Cape York.2 The hypo
thetical advance of our race through stone, bronze, iron ages,
2 See Moseley, "Notes of the Chgllenger Expedition. "

304 The Pre-Adamite World.
does not fairly illustrate the advance of art ; certainly not the
growth of mind, nor " progression from blind force to conscious
intellect and will." There is accumulated evidence showing
that the earliest historical races excelled in many processes
of art and in many kinds of culture. All primitive traditions
commence life about the same era, and the oldest reliable
historical record is the Hebrew, the right interpretation of.
which gives high antiquity to the genesis of man.
Savagery, moreover, is a condition much further advanced
from brute life than is the cultured man from the savage ;
therefore, savagery and civilisation must be taken as lower
and higher stages of the same formation. To assume the
development of brute into savage, and to endow the brutal
original with all those elements which culture develops into
the faith and science of a Christian philosopher, take for
granted and natural that which is without one example in the
whole course of history. The best applied scientific treat
ment, however extended and systematic, cannot develop a
brute into a human being ; nor, when we have the savage
human being, can we always civilise him — he generally
perishes under the operation ; nor, having civilised him, can
we choose our individuals, and by higher culture develop
Homers, Miltons, Shakespeares, Newtons. The Divine nar
rative, that man was created with mental and spiritual
capacities, contains fewer elements of real difficulty than
those which cumber the brute hypothesis.
Some ancient records tell of our ancestors in caves, clothed
with skins, eating raw vegetables. The teeth in old skulls
never exhibit caries. They are worn down flat, and therefore
roots may have been as often eaten as flesh. We need not
go to Lucretius for a large -boned, hardy, lawless race ; nor
to poetic traces of culture beginning outside and ending inside
the range of human memory ; Scripture records that a child
like condition was the earliest stage ; but the children soon
became men. Prior to the classical age, the civilisation of
Egypt culminated ; behind it lay the progress of the pyramid
kings ; and, yet earlier, Scripture record shows considerable
culture of that kind which belongs to a primitive people.
Even if we assume, with those who support the savage theory,

Degenerate Man. 305
that man found out, unaided, all that he knows ; it is fatal
to the savage ,'theory : for discoverers of the use of fire, of the
use of grasses now known as corn, were, as regards their
value, the most splendid of men. It were strange indeed if
the most useful arts, and the grandest moral truths, were not
only discovered in primeval times, but by men only a little
removed from savagery.
Advancing art, if piety is lost, corrupts simplicity. All
historical civilisations are, indeed, notorious for the separation
of worldly intelligence from piety ; so that the true theory
of mankind is that both development and degradation have
their place in history ; but against the brutal or even savage
condition of the primitive race exists the fact — " No example
can be brought forward of an actually savage people having
independently become civilised ; " 1 and the result of European
intercourse, during the last three or four centuries, has been
the destruction rather than the development of barbarous
tribes. If we ask the counter question — " Is there any recorded
instance of a civilised people falling into a savage state ? " the
answer is — " Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese, tracing civilisation
back to a period more than five thousand years in the past,
testify of a culture better than that now possessed." It is
well known that impurity tends to degradation, and causes
the loss of more than was gained by artificial culture. Ancient
Grecian genius slumbers, and no cry can awake it. The
modern Italian has long lost the proud state and place of
the old Roman. The Hebrideans were for ages under the'
influence of comparatively high civilisation, yet they lost it.
The ancient Irish had a better style than that described by
Fynes Morgan, about A.D. 1600. The lords of the wild, or
" meere " Irish, dwell in poor clay houses, or cabins of boughs
covered with turf. In many parts, both men and women
have but a linen rag about the loins, and a woollen, mantle on
their bodies. "It turns a man's stomach before breakfast
to see an old woman in the morning." There are instances
of civilised men taking to wild life in outlying districts of the
world ; and degeneration acts more destructively on lower
1 "Romische Geschichte, " part i. p. 88 : Niebuhr.

306 The Pre-Adamite World.
than on higher culture. The small knowledge and the few
appliances of savage hordes render them peculiarly susceptible
of degrading influences, and incapable of the efforts necessary
to attain and maintain high physical and mental state. The
colossal figures of hewn stone in Easter Island were shaped
by ancestors of men now incapable of such gigantic works.
Ancient Negro kingdoms of extended political organisation
preceded the existing small communities of blacks which
possess little or no tradition of their previous greatness. The
Red Indians were surpassed by the Mount-Builders, those
former inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley. The Chinese
and rude Indian, appealing to the authority of ancestors
against modern civilisation and science, testify of a good time
that is past. The degradation of Arabians and Spaniards
is historic. If it be said — "All these have fallen, but none became
savage," the reply is crushing — "The miserable Digger
Indians of North America, the Bushmen of South Africa —
persecuted remnants of tribes who have seen better days
— are degraded into savage life. The Algonquin Indians
look back to golden days, when life was less bitter and
manners less rude.1 The rough Kamchadal counts that the
world has grown worse and is growing worse.2 The western
coast of Greenland has been for ages familiar to seamen and
men of science : to civilise the Eskimo is as impossible as to
cultivate the country he inhabits. He is an example of
degeneracy from a comparatively civilised to an almost savage
state. He has fallen into that state which philosophers who
explain human progress by evolution have pronounced to
be impossible and almost inconceivable. There is, indeed,
abundant evidence of degradation and fall amongst nations.
The splendid days of Augustine and Trajan were speedily
darkened by clouds of ignorance when barbarians subverted
Roman laws and palaces ; even as now savages, without the
dignity of savages, in the great cities of Europe, are a danger
to vaunted refinement. There is proof of degeneration, but
1 "Schoolcraft Algic Res," vol. i. p. 50; quoted in "Primitive Culture,"
vol. i. p. 43, E. B. Tylor.
2 "StellerKamtschatka,"p. 272; ditto, ditto.

Evolution may be a Divine Process. 307
not one example of any nation advancing from savagery to
civilisation. If, moreover, modern savages are direct descend
ants of the primitive race — no man of science regarding them
as a late development from brutes — they must be a degenera
tion from the old race."
Sir Charles Lyell, in his "Antiquity of Man" (cap. xix.),
argues that, if the original stock had been endowed with
superior powers, inspired knowledge, and the improvable
nature of their posterity, we should now, instead of digging
up rudest pottery and flint implements, find sculptured forms
surpassing in beauty the masterpieces of Phidias or Praxiteles,
lines of buried railway and electric telegraphs, with astrono
mical instruments and microscopes, examples of perfection
in art and science. He forgot that Scripture states the high
condition was lost, and that men were degraded by iniquity.
He forgot that history reveals, and relics from buried cities
bring to light, a grand and very ancient civilisation ; a civili
sation of such splendour and power that we are apt to think
the old builders were giants — the modern pigmies.
Those who prefer evolution as a more satisfactory explana
tion of man's origin, thinking thereby to avoid everything
miraculous, do not get rid of mystery, nor of Divine inter
ference ; they, indeed, establish mystery and render inter
ference perpetual : for as matter cannot create more matter,
nor unintelligence create intelligence, it is equally certain
that vegetable life cannot of itself create animal life ; nor can
brutes, by any effort of their own, acquire the intellectual and
moral powers of human beings. This is all that Christians
contend for : not that men were created mechanics, astrono
mers, philosophers ; but, though having common sense, were
childlike and of no experience. The laws of mind were the
same in the days of Abraham's fathers as they are now.
There was a making of men, and a marring of men, as they
did good or evil — the evil tending to degeneration, the good
advancing to civilisation. If civilisation became separated
from faith and purity the people perished. We need to
realise this, and that man was not necessarily low because
he had no temples and no machinery. Nature is higher than
fine art. In contemplating Nature, in seeking after God, man

308 The Pre-Adamite World.
had highest teachers. Indeed, highest culture enables us now
to see that the primitive refinement was very good.
The argument seems conclusive, but we will view it some
what differently.
There is definite progress not only in the genesis of the
earth, but in the genesis of life. The advance is from dark
ness and chaos to light and beauty ; from low forms of
vegetation to the higher ; from the life that swarms in water
to the fish, the reptile, the bird ; from the living creatures on
land to those of increased definite complexity in structure and
function ; until, in man, we have intellectual and emotional
changes. It would be in the highest degree unscriptural and
unscientific to deny that the progress from the less special to
the more specialised may hav$ been wrought by means of
natural orderly causes during a long course of time, and by
well-nigh insensible gradation. So far, therefore, evolution
may be that long creative process of organic advance, by
minute increments, which tends to perfection.
Concerning this organic advance, experience shows that out
of the general web of existence special threads are drawn and
woven into new and peculiar patterns. The elements of new
organisms, however differently arranged, are the same as those
contained in the original mass ; nevertheless, by new grouping
surprisingly novel phenomena emerge. We do not think,
when the physical motions of molecules are rearranged in
chemical actions, that any addition is made to the primitive
energies ; nor do biologists generally suppose, when physical
and chemical actions are specially grouped and vital pheno
mena emerge, that any essential addition is made beyond
that of the new grouping of old material and of old energy ;
so in the emergence or creation of man, and afterwards in
the development of social life, there is no casting away of the
old threads, they are rewoven into more beautiful patterns.
As the flower which comes into existence and grows by energy
imparted by the sun, is but a reproduction in new form of that
which was imparted ; so sentient organisms reproduce all that
produced them ; and — this is the mystery — something more
in every advance : for without this something more there could
be no evolution from low to higher degree, from vegetable to

The Mystery of Advance. 309
mammal, from mammal to man. How long the process, how
slow and gradual the development, science can only guess.
Scripture defines all these advances, wrought by means of
Nature, as essentially a Divine process — a work of High Art.
When, despite the evident differences presented by light, heat,
sound — as quantitative phenomena ; they were, by a triumph
of analysis, identified under one common form — undulation ;
it was a beautiful greeting of the spirit : so when Moses laid
aside idolatry, gave up Nature-worship, identified all things as
possessing Divinity in their origin and progress, there was
that triumph of genius, that greeting of the spirit, which
devout men and scientific men are alike bound to revere.
Undulations, however manipulated, will only yield undula
tions : nevertheless, out of things with limited and peculiar
range are brought those varied aspects and real existences
which are impossible to uniformity and irreducible to one
another. For example — our notion of light can never be
resolved into that of heat, nor into that of sound, though all
three are reducible to undulations. Noises are the irregular
mingling of vibrations, and tones are that regular recurrence
of vibrations out of which music is constructed : so, between
radiant heat and light there is only quantitative difference ;
nevertheless aether, of luminous rapidity, beats in vain on the
skin-nerves — no light is felt or seen ; nor do transverse vibra
tions, of whatever rapidity, produce heat through the retina.
Hence, essential differences grow out of original unity, and as
this is impossible, for things equal in themselves are equal to
one another, something must come in from without. Behind
this complexity of visible and invisible facts is the whole
universe ; nor is any explanation possible without that greeting
of the spirit, seen in the genius and piety of Moses, by which
we are conscious that there is the Weaver's side of the
tapestry. All flesh is not the same flesh, nor all life the same
life, beasts are not low men, nor are their sensations capable
of being prolonged into human intelligence and emotion.
These facts are ground for a new argument — Man, being
man by God's creative energy acting according to law upon
matter, fashioning it into life and inspiring it with spirit, is
that Adam, the tree of humanity of whom we are branches,

310 The Pre-Adamite World.
and is that living soul by whose soul our souls are kindled as
light at a light. Was this man the first man ? We may-
argue, indeed it is seriously maintained by some, that D?¥,
Adam, is the word for Adamites ; and ®% " man," is the word
for men, mankind, not Adamites. This will not hold as
establishing two races : for Adam uses the feminine of the
latter for Eve (Gen. iii. 12) ; and Eve uses &% " man " — " I have
gotten a man" (Gen. iv. 1) — in speaking of Cain, her first
born. The two words are often used in contrast (Ps. xlix.
1, 2, lxii. 9 ; Isai. ii. 9, v. 15), but never as of separate races.
" The daughters of men " (Gen. vi. 2) were certainly daughters
of Adam, not of a savage pre-Adamite race. On the other
hand, " the sons of God " cannot be children of brutal an
cestry ; for such to marry Adam's daughters would be an
elevation, but God's anger was moved at the inter-marriage
as a degradation. We are shut up to one of these conclusions :
either the pious sons of Adam married the daughters of Cain,
' the murderer ; or, in some mysterious way, there was unholy
communion by angels — this latter interpretation, which some
considered to be favoured by Jude 6, is almost universally
given up.
The following has been asserted with some confidence —
Cain, having done a dark deed, was not slain, but branded
for preservation and execration. He went forth, married,
built a city. A city required men to build it, and his going
forth to be a fugitive and vagabond among men who might
kill him, seems to show that there were other people, and that
from them he took a wife. If it were so,
"The shrewd
Contriver, who first sweated at the forge,
And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel
To a keen edge, and made it bright for war,"
had not a pleasant pedigree in murderous father, and mother
little removed from the brute : but to reply soberly — Cain
married a sister, as Seth did. The building a city would be of
lowly beginning — of one hut, cottage, or house ; great gaps
in the Scripture record are acknowledged, and the children of
Cain called the slowly built city by his name.
If any race, moreover, could be proved of brute ancestry,

The First Man. 311
say the Negro, there would be an argument for slavery founded
on natural and essential inferiority ; for the fact of God making
men of " one blood " does not prove all mankind descended
from one pair of ancestors ; but may be taken to mean that
there is one flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of
fishes, another of birds (1 Cor. xv. 39). The argument; how
ever, falls to the ground when we consider the whole force
of the statement — We are all the offspring of God (Acts xvii.
26-28). The unity of men is further evidenced by death and
redemption — " In Adam all die, in Christ all are made alive "
(Rom. v. 12-14; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 49). If there are other men
than the Adamite, not having his image, they have not his
redemption, nor any heavenly image. To say that the Mongol
and Negro partake of redemption, just as four-footed beasts,
and wild beasts, and creeping things were presented to St.
Peter (Acts x. 1 1— 15), is to misconceive the whole thing. The
Mongol and Negro, if pre-Adamite, did not sin in Adam, are
not of his race, nor possessors of the blessing of redemption.
We conclude, from all the arguments accessible at present
to our reason, that the Adam of Scripture was the first man ;
and admitting, on Scriptural and scientific grounds, that the
human frame is that structure which crowned the long process
of organic life on the earth, firmly maintain that the first man,
Adam, not only manifested a great and marked difference
and improvement in structure, excelling all other creatures;
but, in the essence of his nature, in personal consciousness,
intellect, emotion, excelled them in an immeasurable and
practically infinite degree. That which so differenced him
from the animal, which the science of physics cannot hope to
detect, barely hope to conjecture, was a spirit uniting the
fleshy organism and the rational animal life into an immortal
personality. If, notwithstanding, as some assert, we must be prepared to
admit that the psychical man may have proceeded from some
lower form of life ; then we can regard the pneumatic man as
a grand step, surprise, leap — such as Nature presents examples
of. Even the Fuegian has an instrument of thought nearly as
perfect as that possessed by the highest forms of the highest
human family. The earliest human remains are those of

312 The Pre-Adamite World.
perfect men. If, very long ago, some lower nature received
a marvellous impulse by which higher life, higher thought,
higher emotion, became so shrined in flesh as to become an
image of that we rightly account Divine, our faith in Holy
Scripture is not weakened, but rather strengthened, by the fact
that Adam was of such high personality.
In connection with this personality, and the gift of respon
sibility, appeared an evil of most appalling character — Sin.
Sin is a wilful violation of law, is an act or a course of conduct
voluntarily pursued to the damage of physical or moral com
pleteness of life. Law is disclosed in every throb of the
mighty rhythmic life of the universe, law is implicated in
every action of our life, obedience to it is our only guarantee
of purity and happiness. Man, in pure personality, had
conscious possession of God's love ; and his own love to
God, occupying will, thought, feeling, determined the sanctity
of his whole being. By entrance of sin that personality
became impure, and unity with God was dissolved : for evil
will make Divine will appear loveless. We cannot fully under
stand this, there is some great secret reserved to be made
known hereafter to holy men ; but we know that the effect of
lawlessness was to raise strife in the soul, so that spirit and
flesh became contrary (Gal. v. 7) — strife issuing in separation
from God.
We must not forget that death reigned in the world before
Adam either lived or sinned. From the very earliest times
our earth has been an arena of conflict ; hence we are led
to think that evil originated in a preceding existence and
amongst other beings. " The opening chapters of Genesis
unquestionably set us down, not at the earliest but in a sub
sequent — the middle— stage of the mighty action, which it
is the purpose of Scripture to unroll. Far away in the un-
fathomed depths of the earliest times, and pre-hexameral
period, lies the beginning of the story ; far onward in the
future lies its consummation ; indeed, in some sense, if we
regard the design and the result, the narrative stretches from
one eternity to another." x This complexity and continuance
— affecting body and soul, and contaminating both with guilt
1 "Science and Scripture :" Rev. Philip Freeman.

Freedom and Sin. 313
—shroud Adam's death with mysterious horrors of woeful
anticipation, and make it a death which had not previously
existed — a death entering by sin (Rom. v. 12).
It is natural to wonder that one wail of sorrow should
mingle with the wide chorus of thanksgiving to God ; and
when we contemplate the past horrors desolating every land,
and the possible future' unimaginable eternal anguish to be
endured by rebels against the Almighty, our amazement
becomes an awful dread of some dire reality and calamity
which even Infinite Love, Divine Wisdom, Almightiness, may
not be able to prevent without violating the purity of moral
government. We can, however, conceive that Omniscience
may have foreseen that the gift of freedom would render it
impossible for the whole universe of spirits to be preserved.
So far as man is concerned, we can also see that linking the
inevitable danger with a type to show its reality and the
unreasonable folly of transgression ; and the giving a simple,
earnest warning, joined with dread penalty, would be the best
and only restrictions which purely moral rule could allow.
Our feeble nature, moreover, can form a true conception of
Omnipotence in Creation, of Wisdom in Providence, of Love
in Redemption. By Creation, God calls into existence all the
worlds — occupying them with manifold forms of beauty, and
giving them for abodes to living creatures, small as a point of
matter, grand as a seraph before the Throne. By Providence,
the world of matter is subjected to the physical law of God,
and the world of spirit or intelligence to the moral order of
God, spreading the profusion of Divine bounty and executing
Divine decrees. By Redemption is supplied guidance for the
erring, strength for the weak, moral suasion, motives, spirit-
power, pardon for the sinner ; that every fallen being who
wills it may be rescued from degradation and elevated to life
and honour. Thus, in some degree, we realise that freedom
of the creature involves the possibility and thereby an actu
ality of evil, which even the Supreme may not be able to
prevent, except by departure from the principle of moral rule.
" Te fecit liberum non nobilem ; quia impossibile est post libertatem."
Ludovicus Pius.
Evil is so intense, that sometimes we would that it were

314 The Pre-Adamite World.
put an end to at once. We say — " Let present misery and
future anguish in no wise be permitted." We must not be
rash in decision. The malignant influences, painfully felt by
us, and our spiritual dangers, "as tenants of this haunted
planet," we may be sure, tend to some good end. They are
so wrought into the physical and moral plan of the universe
that they cannot be regarded as a surprise on the Almighty,
or as an unforeseen calamity. The mighty tempter of man,
whom we believe to be a subtle fallen archangel, manifested
by that temptation how great a degradation had come upon
him by wickedness. That archangel chose evil for his good.
The fact of choice proves freedom, brings in responsibility,
casts out necessity. Freedom in its very essence includes
power of choice, and thereby capacity to bring in evil. Man
possesses powers of the same nature, but less in degree. If
we set before us the essential contrast of light and darkness,
of good and evil ; that good becomes a higher good by trial,
evil a greater evil by refusal of good ; that truth must be
manifested as separate from a lie, and righteousness must
be displayed as opposed to unrighteousness ; that through
eternal ages the height and depth of truth and right may be
seen ; we shall begin to know that the mystery of iniquity is
a necessary mystery ; that a parenthesis of misery must, some
time or other, be brought within the Divine rule. If you say
— " But for sin I might be happy as a glorious seraph, enjoy
an overflow of blessing, have deep insight of Divine goodness ;
and why should this good not be given at once instead of
having to be wrought out by slow process and the misery
of millions ? " We reply — " The highest and best gift to
created beings is freedom : freedom involves choice, responsi
bility, the possibility of transgression. Shall no free existences
be created ? nothing to love God ? nothing able by choice to
say — ' Lord, we are Thine and Thou art ours ! ' why, this
would be sin's most awful triumph ! fatal in the casting down
of moral perfection and goodness ! perverse in turning liberty,
which is guided by motive and reason, into supremacy of
blind and inevitable fate ! " For God not to create because
free beings must necessarily have power to abuse His bounty
were folly indeed. " How can we conceive a more awful

The Cure of Evil. 3 1 5
triumph of evil, than that its dark and hateful spectre, while
yet unborn, should tie up the hands of the Almighty from the
noblest exercise of His creative wisdom, and imprison His
infinite riches of goodness within His own bosom ; so that
matter should never exist, because it might issue in a soulless
and infinite chaos ; and no reasonable souls ever spring to
life, to love and adore their Creator, lest the dark power of
evil should seize upon them, in spite of all His perfection,
and drag them down into an abyss of ruin. To deny life to
infinite numbers of holy and happy beings, whom His power
could create and His wisdom govern, and in whom His good
ness might delight itself for ever, through the fear of the
victory of evil, in the abuse of His own gifts — what were this
but for the Supremely Good to play the coward and the
murderer, and thus to deny His own being, and renounce His
Godhead, lest the abusers of His free bounty should suffer
the just punishment of their crimes ? " 1
There may be mercy even in the condemnation. Punish
ment may be Divine medicine, the alone effectual, for sin of
the soul. Every stroke of God, as a rectifier, may not only
be against hatred and all evil, but much more for the enlarge
ment of love, wisdom, and joy. We may be sure that when
we have attained that point whence we can view the Divine
plan as a whole, we shall find the power of God has not gone
beyond His wisdom, nor wisdom exceeded goodness.
Allowing that wisdom permits the entrance of evil, and for
bids the exercise of physical power in its destruction ; that
evil is the abuse of freedom granted to angels and men ; evil
is not an arbitrary thing on God's part. We are not to
think that Divine Omnipotence means the power of dispens
ing with moral growth, the voluntary exercise of mental
power and obedience, or of condensing into a single moment,
without the free creature's intelligent and loving co-operation,
the great results of the revealed plan of mercy. Granting that
evil is a veiling to some, and a casting down to others, it is an
unveiling to many more, and the disciplinary means to every
creature of receiving power to ascend beyond the former height.
Trials, which strand or sink the careless and ill-found, are as
1 "Difficulties of Belief," pp. 66, 67 : Prof. Thomas Rawson Birks.

3T 6 Tlie Pre-Adamite World.
those tempests on the sea, which purify the whole earth, and
make mariners skilfully bold. Men are not victims to " the
ruffian violence of an impure reprobate ethereal race." The
poet may write — "Video meliora proboque,
Deteriora sequor,"
and the saint exclaim — " The good that I would, I do not, but
the evil which I would not, that I do ; " nevertheless, God
gives victory to the valiant ; and the ruin of those that perish
must be ascribed wholly to their own sin, not to the denial,
on God's part, of grace. Moreover, who can tell what may
happen "when their irremovable sorrow finds beneath it a
still lower depth of Divine compassion, and the sinful creature,
in its most forlorn estate, and in its utter shame, encounters
the amazing vision of tender, condescending, infinite love ? " 1
It may be seen from such reflections that the origin of sin
by abuse of freedom, in the fact of provision against its
existence, and provision for its destruction, drives out chance
and fate from the world. We men are highly endowed intel
ligent creatures, connected from the very beginning with
transactions which concern many worlds. The living God
has ordered that we shall have the power of life in our
selves, and be free. We are free : not a man lives but
knows that his freedom counts for something in the world,
and freedom includes the possibility of disorder, and the
only thing able to banish it is knowledge of the direful
consequences. Our state of painful probation appears to be a
process to render evil impossible hereafter. Even the present
physical struggle is not so much pitiless and embittered, as an
adjustment of endless variety, and a display of power exercised
with skill. Satan, circumstances, motives, may persuade : not
compel. The body loaded with chains so that we move not ;
a seal on our lips, we speak not ; yet, in our conscience, with
every moral power, we resent the insult — not as by a new
power of freedom, but by the gift that conveyed it of old to
the first man. God, who made him free, foreseeing the peril
of that freedom, not only rendered the peril conspicuous by
1 "Difficulties of Belief," p. 239 : Prof. Thomas Rawson Birks.

Return of the Banished. 317
type, by warning, by threat, excluding sin on the one side
and defining it on the other ; but did also meet and rectify
the inexcusable abuse of freedom by preparing celestial
machinery, spiritual power to work repentance, to effect a
moral change, and convert ungodliness into a righteousness
that leads up to fulness of peace and joy. Thus, the trans
gression of the first man, transmitted to us by natural inherit
ance, is made the ground of advance into higher knowledge
and life. The son dies not for the father's sin, but being
warned, and sowing to the spirit, reaps life everlasting. Sin,
however, and here no mistake must be made, is always sin,
and the wages of sin is death ; yet if a man say — " I have
erred, but mean to err no more," the door is opened to that
man. God Himself helps, comforts, saves. Jesus has greater
power for moral good than the great archangel possesses for
evil. Salvation does more than walk side by side with de
struction. The second Adam outruns the old Adam to tell
us that the malice of him who assailed our race, and the
weakness of him who betrayed our race, are but the small
dark cloud that specks the firmament. The miseries of time,
the career of sin within a sphere of limited extent and dura
tion, are as nothing in comparison with the infinite and
eternal sway wherein, evil being overcome, holiness and bliss
are supreme. Even now the tears of Nature glow with a
beautiful bow of promise of powers unrevealed, of wisdom un-
fathomed, of love inexhaustible, by whose beneficent influence
the Adamite and pre-Adamite fault will be made to display
the wisdom of universal Providence, and establish the govern
ment of a righteous King.
' ' Lord, grant me grace to cling to Thee,
In this presumptuous time,
When reason, by distorting, mars
Thy mysteries sublime,
When none will creep along the ground,
But all must soar or climb. "
Poor Man's Quarterly Review.
" Non est ad astra mollis a terris via."
" Afflictiones flores sunt, quibus nectitur tua corona ccelestis."

STUDY XVII.
MAN : ORIGIN, NATURE, LANGUAGE, CIVILISATION.
"I cannot but believe, that, if we would so regard the ills and sufferings of man
as to endeavour to assuage them, we must deliver ourselves from notions, however
plausible, and from theories no matter how clever, which reduce him to the level
ofthe beasts that perish." — Address in British Medical Association, Norwich, 1874.
J. Russell Reynolds, M.D., F.R.S.
"Beata vita nisi amatur, non habetur."
There was an old superstition which saw in Nature the action
of capricious deities ; there is a modern superstition which
sees nothing but the action of invariable law ; both being
regardless, or ignorant, that everything done in Nature mani
fests a knowing how to do it.
Ancient seers ascribed even the gentlest, most constant, as
also the mightiest works of Nature, to the operation of God.
" The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth ; by under
standing hath He established the heavens. By His know
ledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down
the dew " (Prov. iii. 19, 20). " God created man in His own
image, in the image of God created He him ; male and female
created He them " (Gen. i. 27). We do not, nor did the wise
ancients, think that a likeness was moulded in plastic clay of
the spiritual and invisible God. Ancient and modern thought
regards the words and act as symbols expressive of some
special operation in the creation of man, and of his separate
ness from all other creatures.
We have been curiously fashioned by natural forces into
animal life ; and by mysterious influence, of external operation
and interior assimilation, enabled to bridge the gulf which
separated earth-life from consciousness of Divinity. There is
something very tender in the words — " God breathed into
man's nostrils the breath of life." They endue the ideal image
with vitality, and awake it into consciousness by a kiss of

Separation of Man from Brute, 3 1 9
love. They are the poetic simile of a Divine process, a loving
symbol of Divine action, a contrast of God and man, spirit
and flesh, soul and body, the sweet summing up, reXog, of all
things. The fact may sustain the superstructure of various
thoughts. Our never being able of ourselves to originate any form of
mental activity ; no one ever acquiring the creative power of
genius, or making himself a great artist, or a great poet, or
gaining by practice that peculiar insight which characterises the
original discoverer ; shows that these are mental instincts or
spiritual intuitions.1 What we can do is — call upon our will
by "purposive selection!' by attention, by direction, to train,
utilise, and perfect natural gifts ; therefore, spirit is placed
within the body, and subjected to the internal mechanism of
thought and feeling for discipline of the whole man.
Thus separated psychically and pneumatically from the
brutes, we are enabled to pass from the Fiji, who delights in
the shrieks of his human victim, to that higher kind of self-
pleasing which leads a man to risk his life in rescuing even an
enemy from drowning, and to consecrate his body and soul to
God. This action of sympathy and love and reverence is not
selfish, though sacredly self-pleasing, any more than the work
ings of Shakespeare's genius are, but reflex actions of that,
whatever it be, which forms the groundwork of canine clever
ness. Not only so, as human emotion and intellect have their
roots in the past, indeed are partly animal, partly human, run
ning down into the earth out of which we were taken, and by
upward growth soaring toward Heaven ; there is reason to
think that our powers not beginning with the present conscious
existence will not end with it. Every man's consciousness,
both for good and evil, not being the product of one body, but
an effect wrought by human progress during the past — the
inference is that our end, whether as to soul or body, is not by-
and-by. The leaves of our life-book contain writings of former
ages, the present issue, or edition, does not complete the
series ; there will be a further reprint, a quickening of intel
ligence and extension of memory, by mysteriously regulated
advance, to higher correspondence with the Eternal Spirit of
1 " Mental Physiology," p. 25 : Dr. W. B. Carpenter.

3 20 Man : Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
the universe. Memory may possibly be plenary, no longer a
place of sepulture for the remains of many generations, but
a habitation of thought endued with the power of endless life
(i Cor. xiii. 12).
This " Plenary Memory " x will lead to higher processes of
life, the measure of which will be our capability and fitness.
Unclouded by fumes of laboratories, untainted by sensual
appetite, unhindered by life's ills and weaknesses, we may
presume that we shall not travel by the present methods of
logical reasoning, but be nourished and grow up in truth by a
sort of mental assimilation. The process being somewhat akin
to the present work of the Holy Ghost (John xvi. 1 3). The
soul, combining with itself every element of knowledge, alway
moving on, not wasting organic force, will advance into the
continuous power of knowing more and more. The spiritual
faculty, discerning all the links of the great chain which binds
diversity of operation into unity of wisdom, will gather every
luxury of love and knowledge.
Accepting " Development " as a fact, we hold that " Adam
is the princeps, and so the ideal prius of the creaturely world." 2
Using the idea of " Natural Selection," so far as it conceives
an intelligent work in the world, the conversion of the lower
into the higher by heredity, adaptation, variation, distribution,
we maintain that man is something more than a material
organism. His structure, wonderful as it is, does not even
approximately represent his essential nature. With a certain
difference in structure, between the lower apes and the gorilla,
we find a moderate and measurable difference of nature ; but,
with a less marked difference of structure between the gorilla
and man, we have an immeasurable and practically infinite
divergence of nature.3 Man's chamber of consciousness is the
meeting-place of the material and the spiritual, he forms anti
thetical conceptions of both, correlates their energies, and in
part understands the meaning of the wonderful machinery of
which he is a portion.
Now change and enlarge the view — Man, as the highest
1 " The Physical Theory of Another Life," p. 79 : Isaac Taylor.
2 " Lange on Genesis," p. 211. English translation.
3 "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," p. 103 : Prof. Huxley.

The Human Soul. 3 2 1
animal, is an actual microcosm, represents the whole of life
in the world. Represents it as being of the earth, and taken
from the ground ; yet excels it not only by possession of
superior mechanism, but in the use of mental and moral
faculties. Considering his mechanism, we find that it is an
improvement of all that had gone before ; but the organism
in many respects nearest to him, the Anthropoid Ape, the
Gibbon in particular rather than the Gorilla, is not a
diminution of that which would otherwise have become
human ; but a formation by lateral and diverging operation
which, however long continued, could never arrive at man.
" The two series, ape and man, diverge from one another . . .
the youthful individuals are more alike than the older ones
. . . the ape, as he grows, becomes more bestial ; man more
human." x
The moral and spiritual powers, summed up in one word,
Soul, cannot be explained by the material properties of
protoplasm, nor find an equivalent in mechanical adjustment,
nor is the soul made up of psychical bits which have passed
through the life and mind of lower animals. The dog pos
sesses attention, abstraction, imagination, judgment, desire,
grief — indeed, a share of many intellectual faculties and
emotional passions. " The dog, the cat, the parrot, return
love for our love, and hatred for our hatred ; they are capable
of shame and sorrow ; and, though they may have no logic
nor conscious ratiocination, no one who has watched their
ways can doubt that they possess that power of rational cere
bration which evolves reasonable acts from the premises
furnished by the senses — a process which takes fully as large
a share as conscious reason in human activity." 2 The soul is
very much more than this. When we can conceive the nature
of matter apart from its properties, when we know the em
bodiment of the inner man, when we know our spirit as a
habitation of the Living God, then we may begin to investi
gate the nature of the soul ; at present we have neither power
to understand it nor words to describe it.
The withering conclusions of atheists as to the mortality of
1 " Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism : " Prof. Schmidt.
3 " Antiquity of Man," p. 495 : Sir Charles Lyell. Y

322 Man ? Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
the soul are unwarrantable and unscientific : if matter cannot
be annihilated, it appears highly unscientific to assert that the
spirit in man, which subdues and rules matter, is of less
enduring nature. Moreover, the principle of the conservation
of energy is antagonistic to the utter loss of that great mental
energy which subjects to itself the physical world. The cause
of these effects cannot be annihilated. We pity that flippancy
which contemns this high spiritual gift ; and pray not only
for the unwise who would refuse, but for the rash who despise
the glorious distinction. It is a mystery, and the small vessel
of our human reason, able to receive it as a gift, is utterly
unable to comprehend its nature.
" It cometh from afar —
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our Home." William Wordsworth.
We are rudely aroused from our joy in this perpetual bene
diction of Heaven, and degraded by grovelling hypothesis to
bestial fellowship. We are as some scion of a noble house
suddenly told — " You are not of honourable birth, you lie
down with a dog-twist, your laugh is taken from the hyaena,
your song from the mocking-bird, your tears from the croco
dile, and your speech from the rudiments of animal cries.
You are not a child of God, morally and intellectually en
dowed ; you crawled into existence through many brutal
shapes " — " Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris."
Horace, Sat. i. 3, 99.
" When men first crept out of the earth, a dumb and filthy
herd, they fought for acorns and lurking-places with their
nails and fists ; and, then, with clubs ; and, at last, with arms
which, taught by experience, they had forged. Then they in
vented names for things, and words to express their thoughts,
after which they began to desist from war, and to fortify cities
and to enact laws."
We will not multiply classical quotations, writers of our own

Bestial Theory.

0*3

day state — "Men, originally brutes, attained nobleness of
mind. Before and during the transition they were not men,
but creatures without the spiritual part of our being; nor
endowed with the awful attribute of immortality." It may be
put more definitely — there was a common point from which
the present apes and men were derived. No greater difference
exists between a man and a brute, than between one brute
and another brute. Some animals are very upright, and some
men are very hairy. " The soul of a new-born infant is, in
its manifestations, no way different from that of the young
animal."1 Negroes and Indians are a low sort of men, but
not so low as the Australian and Papuan ; all these have not
got on, and are left behind the average individuals of our race.
Hence the fear of Mephistopheles lest men should be alarmed
at finding themselves too much like God, is now changed into
the dread of being too much like sheep. The course of trans
formations, we are gravely assured, was along the vertebral
column ; indeed, we have only to look at the first vertebra of
a sheep's neck and the last tail-bone to see our identity
established, and the gradual transition exemplified. The
ape struck out a disastrous path, persisting in a brain of small
volume, and a large air-sac in his throat ; but man selected a
high conformation of well-formed plastic cranium and aborted
the sac. Young monkeys and calves are still like us, they
have not the bony skull and horns which are afterwards
developed. One rather likes the humour ; clever men are evidently
making fun for us. The monkey has been given up, and now
we are all sheep of an improved breed. The change is rather
too sudden ; and if it is hard to see how from the monkey's
foot, which has extra muscles, rendering it a foot-hand for
climbing and grasping, could have been evolved the flat
treading and walking human foot ; it is yet harder to have got
it from anything which became a sheep's trotter. Moreover,
when did man get rid of his throat-sacs and of his inter
mediate wrist-bone ? and when did he obtain the glutei and
the muscles of his leg calf ?
As to reason, we are told man cannot be widely separated
1 " The Doctrine of Descent : " Prof. Schmidt.

324 Man: Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
from the lower creatures ; for little children do not manifest
great intelligence. Human progress is regulated by speech ;
and dogs talk, and are confessedly more civilised and intel
ligent than the wolf and stupid jackal ; " who can question
that they, like men, have raised themselves mentally far above
their ancestry ? " Who can " doubt that the honey bee, as
it gradually attained bodily advantages and peculiarities,
developed likewise the higher mental powers, correspond
ing with the more minute and complex organism of the
brain ? " Even tame seals come like dogs at the call of their
keeper. " As to man's free will, little," we are told, " can be said for
that ; the individual mostly acts upon the will of the tribe — I
might say of the herd." " The astonishing premeditation with
which some few happily organised individuals, of some few
species, turn circumstances to account with apparently com
plete free will," disposes of our conceit as to human freedom.
As to conscience, there are very conscientious dogs, and some
animals dream. " That highly interesting dwarf people, the
Niam Niam of Central Africa, have no word for God, and
therefore, it must be supposed not the idea." As to progress
in art, science, agriculture, architecture, the tactual sense
common to every creature, is mother of it all. With regard
to languages, they have been developed. When there were
races and no nations, man was a speechless animal. All
languages have progressed : first the root, then the stem, after
that a determinative element. In the root state, articulate
sounds grew into words ; in the stem stage, the words stuck
together, and formed the agglutinated languages ; finally the
whole stood complete with inflexions in the speech of many
nations. Those who talk thus conclude that, "from the irrational
primordial state, man-like beings gradually became human ;
while with language, the work of many years, reason made its
appearance." Some complete this sketch of ourselves by
imagining a miserable ape, crossed in love, or pining with
cold, conceiving in its poor addled pate, " the dread of evil to
come : " so he became the father of morality and theology, the
very patriarch of the old worthies. " Fortunately for mankind

One Universal Plan of Life. 325
no actual legislators have ever been quite so foolish as some
philosophers."1 " Dieu me garde d'etre savant
D'une science si profonde.
Les plus doctes, le plus souvent,
Sont les plus sottes gens du monde. "
There are three centres around which the Animal-Theory
Arguments cluster :
i. Man was originally a brute.
ii. Human Language was developed from animal cries.
iii. The Process of Development was by Civilisation.
i. Man was originally a Brute.
For a long time we counted ourselves of ancient and honour
able family ; but now, because the beaver builds — architects
are beavers ; the ladies who sing in our drawing-rooms have
been taught by the birds, and their sighing swains are de
scendants of grotesque creatures anciently crossed in love.
Probably the Australian and Papuan are the stuff of which
future men must be built ; even as the present high races
originated from the lower. These statements, which shock
our best feelings, are so far true that some people have an
uneasy feeling that scientific discovery is at war with religious
convictions, is removing God from the world, and primeval
inspiration from the circle of facts. A brief, yet sufficiently
accurate inquiry, as to the whole subject, will probably
dissipate that fear.
We know from the Divine Narrative, that man, other
animals, fishes, plants, were created of the Earth. We know
from science, that all forms of life, animal and plant, complex
or simple, high or low, are a marvellous variation, adaptation,
and extension of one universal plan. These facts, of Scripture
and science, are confirmed by particular examination of every
individual : nevertheless, anatomy of the embryonic vesicle
in higher plants and of ova in animals reveals a difference.
The unicellular plants and animals are from small masses of
protoplasm, and probably each has a nucleus — extreme sim
plicity being found only in the lowest forms. The germs pro
ceed from pre-existent living creatures ; every germ so alike
• "The Reign of Law," Duke of Argyle.

326 Man: Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
that the microscope detects little difference ; every germ so
essentially unlike that one becomes a fungus, another a lizard,
another a bird, another a man, no one knowing why. There
is no advance into man through the fungus, lizard, bird, as if
human life were a series of Chinese boxes, completely but
differently shaped in every feature, shut up one within another.
Man's embrj'o does not advance to perfection through in
vertebrate stages : so soon as formed it is manifestly verte
brate, and then passes very rapidly through an ordinary
mammalian stage to that which is evidently human.
Forgetting the fact that all living things proceed from other
living things, find whether the ranks of the living may be
recruited from the not living.
All existing organisms, it is inductively proved, arise from
other organisms ; but there was a time when life must have
begun in an assemblage of unorganised materials. That an
organism which is to any extent specialised in structure could
arise directly from a union of unorganised elements is ruled
out of court. We are to think as if we saw, by chemical
experiments, specks of living protoplasm precipitated from a
solution containing the not-living ingredients of protoplasm ;
and we may regard this initial life as the effect, of which the
assignable cause is the chemical affinity exerted between the
enormously complex molecules which go to make up proto
plasm. This process helps us to imagine how Nature long
ago, by Divinity of process, gave beginning to life. Then, we
further suppose, that from those specks proceeded the first or
unancestral organisms ; and that these unancestral organisms
became ancestors, and did, in some way or other, transmit
ancestral peculiarities ; so that out of no definite tendency
came definite structure exquisitely adapted to function. The
origin of protoplasm, thus guessed at, leaves the association
of vital properties with protoplasm unexplained, and organic
construction remains an insoluble mystery.
The man of science, trying to show how life may have
originated, contents in some degree the curiosity of the reli
gious man who knows, from Scripture, why life was originated.
The supposed initial germ was multiplied and magnified by
natural operation into the manifold series and gradations of

The Process of Progression. 327
terrestrial existence ; and the whole process is exemplified
and accomplished in every case of individual human pro
gression. Hitherto we have travelled on safe ground. The unity
of all physical life is a fact. We come now to matters on
which men are not agreed. To account for the maintenance
of life during the infancy of primeval existences, to be rid of
the imagined difficulty as to untold millions of organic mole
cules rushing together at some appointed instant to form
adult organisms, and to show that no new energies have
appeared at any period of the earth's history, the perverted
doctrine of evolution affirms that quick progression in the
individual was not realised until somewhat analogous pro
gression had been accomplished in and during the evolution
of a long series of species, from lower life to the brute, from
brute to man. In the brute the process was chiefly by
physical changes ; but, so soon as sufficient intelligence was
acquired to chip a stone into a tool and hurl a weapon,
growth of intelligence being of more use than variations in
physical structure, intellectual and emotional powers developed
with greater comparative rapidity. This, we are told, explains
why there is so little difference in general physical structure
between man and the gibbon.
Testing such a statement by common experience, we find
that the theory of evolution explains many things, but there
is no more ground for supposing that man grew out of brute
in old time than that he does now. The definite order and
progress in creation by which not-living matter became that
vital substance with which mysterious power constructed all
living things and bound them together ; not making porcupine
father to pig, nor monkey parent of man, but presenting in
every organism an exemplification of similarity in construction
with essential variety ; confirms the teaching of Scripture —
" Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree.
. . God made the beast of the earth after his kind . . .
and the Lord God formed man out of the dust."
Further, there appears to be no essential advantage in the
gratuitous assumption of an infinite series of developments
during incalculable time; seeing that a real development is

328 Man : Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
exemplified and completed in the course of one individual's
existence. Take the caterpillar, the chrysalis, the moth, every
change is a marvel which human science cannot explain, yet
ordinary intelligence reads and enlarges the parable. Man
at first was of the earth — of this we are sure, there was a
change — this we also know, then came the spirit by which he
soared to God — this we cannot doubt. Science affirms the
asserted progress, but of its essential nature knows nothing ;
Scripture states the progress — " God formed man . . . breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life . . . man became a living
soul" (Gen. ii. 7). Science and Scripture agree. Every
educated man knows that in all natural advances there was
the coming in of novel states, the entering of novel relations,
and so often as these came would non-existent and even
impossible laws become possible and necessary. There was
something fresh in the first formation of crystals, in the first
vegetable, in the first quadruped, in the first man. However
slowly you bring in a new thing, you do bring it in, and it
is new. The combination of inorganic substances into the
basis of a living organism was by an appearance of energy
in guise of a new force — force of life.
Passing from the phenomena of life to those of mind,
the region is still more profoundly mysterious ; and, whether
as to consciousness or volition, we have absolutely no reason,
however vague, for classifying either under the head of physics.
Physical energies represent a closed curve or cycle continually
returning upon itself; the introduction of organic energy
carries the line into infinitude, and the curve is as incapable
of closure as a parabolic projection. It is also to be observed,
as to physical energies, that some are of higher order than
others ; and from the higher we can obtain the lower ; but
the reverse is attended by extraordinary difficulties —
. . . " facilis descensus Averno ;
noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis :
sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras,
hoc opus, hie labor ..."
It is, therefore, unwise and unscientific to endue all matter
with the mysteries, qualities, occult powers of mind ; and we
may count it an evidence of incapacity and scientific impurity

Misrepresentation of tke Sacred Account. 329
to endow the physical atom with " the promise and potency of
all terrestrial life."
Those are not less blamable who, knowing that the sacred
account is figurative, use their science not for explanation but
misrepresentation. Take example — "The Hebrew writer
presents us with a concrete picture of the creation of man,
according to which a homogeneous clay model of the human
form is, in some inconceivable way, at once transmuted into
the wonderfully heterogeneous combination of organs and
tissues, with all their definite and highly specialised aptitudes,
of which actually living man is made up. But I suppose
there are few scientific writers at the present day who would
be found willing to risk their reputation for common sense by
attempting to defend such a conception." x It is really puerile
to charge Moses with the folly of the Negro, who thought
that God made a clay model, leaned it against a tree to dry,
and then breathed life into it. Why not say that Moses
attributed sex to God ? for he says — " God created man in
His own image, in the image of God created He him ; male
and female created He them."
If we give to the sacred writer's " concrete picture " scientific
explanation, the meaning will be generally accepted — " Sup
posing the molecules of the human body, instead of replacing
others and thus renewing a preceding form, to be gathered
first hand from Nature and put together in the same relative
positions as those which they occupy in the body ; that they
have the selfsame forces and distribution of forces, the self
same motions and distribution of motions — would this or
ganised concourse of molecules stand before us as a sentient
thinking being ? There seems no valid reason to believe that
it would not." 2 True science fights false science.
Irreligious persons generally impute their own shallow and
erroneous views of Scripture to the sacred writers ; but
advanced scholars who, with piety and prudence, ascertain
all that can be ascertained of the way in which man was
created, are conscious that true interpretation of the ancient
words reveals divinity of meaning.
1 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. i. p. 440 : John Fiske.
2 "Vitality:" Prof. Tyndall.

330 Man: Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
As to low races of men, ancient and modern, they are the
withered foliage of a degenerate stock. Inclemency of climate,
barrenness of land, which made existence an exhaustive and
losing fight, may have worn out the frame, left neither time
nor will for intellectual advance, and rendered the brain of
a savage what it is — nearly thirty per cent, less than the brain
of an Anglo-Saxon. Dark nations count the white skin
superior, and destined to rule. The legends of some savages
assert that their ancestors were white people ; and the Fetish
images of the Congo natives have broad foreheads, white
complexions, and hooked noses. Degeneracy lowers both the
moral and physical state ; as a rule, the worst men are of
the worst colour. Malte Brun says— "Our body depends
on our intelligence." M. Maire says — "The more the organi
sation of the animal is perfected, the more the spiritual
element produced by the action of the various functions is
itself perfected." If we take history and experience, apart
from sheer hypothesis, it is more probable that brute men
are not a generation advancing to higher life, but a degenera
tion from life.
The marvellously gifted Attic race were the cleverest and
most beautiful of men ; but, becoming impure, they degene
rated. In fact, the corruption of one generation suffices to
effect a degeneracy which ends in moral death — mental death
— material death. This accounts for the low intelligence of
persons long addicted to immorality, the almost impossibility
— when any one has put away thought, love, knowledge of
God — of quickening sacred reverence in him. The vicious
and godless, becoming spiritless and sensual, cease to have
a true conception of Divinity. They are the violent, criminal,
dangerous classes in our cities, amongst whom the shrewd
sharp demagogue is supreme, and to whom the atheist, with
the arrogance of a god, asserts — " There is nothing better or
greater than myself." To them belong the roughs who in
humanly abuse defenceless women, and from them proceed
the hopeless and helpless weaklings who are born paupers,
are bred paupers, and die paupers. The greatness of degene
racy receives horrible illustration by this statement of a
scientist — "The difference in weight of brain between the

Brain of the Highest and Lowest Men. 331
highest and lowest men is far greater, both relatively and abso
lutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest
ape."1 The assertion is too sensational, and must be cor
rected : man cannot utterly lose his nature and become a
mere brute. The average weight of man's brain is 1400
grammes, of woman's 1250 grammes. Owen found the
weight of a gorilla's brain to be 425-19 grammes (15 ozs.).
Huxley thinks that the latter may reach 567 grammes.
Cuvier's brain weighed 1830 grammes — this is one of the
largest known. One of the smallest was that of a Bojes-
woman, which only weighed 872 grammes — more than twice
that of a gorilla. It is another fact, that savage men, so
far from growing up into higher intelligence by means
of continual effort to increase their brain-power, actually
possess about one-third more brain-power than they use.
Their mental property is an inheritance larger than they
occupy, and not an acquisition laboriously gained in the past,
and so fully used in the present as to win enlargement in
the future.
To credit low forms of humanity with being the fathers of
all that is great and good, ignores the fact that there is
" hardly a single point of excellence belonging to the human
character, which is not decidedly repugnant to the untutored
feelings of human nature." Courage, cleanliness, disinterested
ness, self-control, truthfulness, justice, are all a conquest over
some natural impulse. Henry More says — " Of a truth, vile
epicureanism and sensuality will make the soul of man so
degenerate and blind, that he will not only be content to slide
into brutish immorality, but please himself in this very opinion
that he is a real brute already, an ape, satyr, or baboon ; and
that the best of men are no better, save that the civilising
of them and industrious education have made them appear
in a more refined state. . . . But as many as are thus sottish,
let them enjoy their own wildness and ignorance ; it is
sufficient for a good man that he is conscious unto himself,
better bred and born." 2
Even those who are better born and bred know that it is
1 "Man's Place in Nature : " Prof. Huxley.
2 " Conjectura Cabbalistica : " a.d. 1662, p. 175.

33 2 Man: Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
easier to lose than increase the good. In the Australian
bush, and in the backwoods of America, individuals of the
Anglo-Saxon race, possessing the highest feelings and noblest
instincts, rapidly fall into comparative barbarism. No Austra
lian language counts beyond four — are Australians the future
mathematicians ? Some wild tribes live together in herds,
do not know the use of fire, every attempt to introduce
civilisation has failed, it rather accelerates their destruction.
The Austrian missionary, Morlang, who long laboured among
the negro tribes on the Upper Nile, says — " Any mission to
such savages is absolutely useless . . . these brutal natives
are utterly incapable of any feeling of gratitude." He must
be hopeful indeed who can believe that this is a generation
tending to life. No teacher, no system of culture, has ever
raised an ignoble race to the fore-front of human progress.
There are no facts on which to base a theory of humanity
grounded on brutality planting a paradise.
Another argument has been lately put forth — •" The sense of
original sin would show, according to my theory, not that man
has fallen from a high state, but that he was rising in moral
culture with more rapidity than the nature of his race could
follow." x The theory is rather marvellous : we have been
growing and growing, for millions and millions of years, very
very slowly, and yet we have grown too fast — have outgrown
our clothes. After all, we are a new race; and, translated
into new conditions, our nature and instinct fail us ; new men,
made rich, we know not how to behave. Very few will
accept the theory that we are too good already, and are
rising in moral culture with more rapidity than our nature
can follow.
The Chinaman has for thousands of years been under " a
system of examination notoriously strict and far-reaching ;
boys of promise are passed on from step to step until they
have reached the highest level of which they are capable."2
" Chuan Yuan, the senior classic and senior wrangler thrown
into one," 8 the best man out of four hundred millions, is so
finished and polished that he remains for ever unruffled by
any emotion or conviction that anything he does is immoral
1 Galton's "Hereditary Genius." 2 Ibid. a Ibid.

Origin of Human Language. 333
or wrong. He ought long ago to have outgrown his clothing,
but he has not the least sense of having gone too far for the
nature of his race, or too rapidly grown in purity. The con
science of a poor negro is much more readily aroused than the
conscience of a Chuan Yuan.
The statement — " History is not wide enough, nor any
recorded time sufficient, to take in the ages during which
brute-man grew into human-man," surrenders the argument
as to quick growth. There is truth in Schiller's words — " Es
wachst der Mensch mit seinen grossern zwecken," man grows
as grow his greater aims ; but, going back to the utmost
limit of geological eras, there is no absolutely satisfactory
evidence that any inferior animal grew into a superior animal,
or one creature into another creature, or that the nature of any
surpassed that nature. During the historic thousands of
years no creature regenerated itself, nor took one step thither
ward ; are we to believe, against all experience, in asserted
transformations'during times beyond our experience ? Ancient
seeds, found in Egypt and Switzerland ; the frescoed likeness
on ancient walls of olden animals ; are of the same form and
size as those now existing. Variations are narrowly limited,
and if the laws of Nature are unchangeable, no time, however
extended, would suffice to make plant become animal, or brute
grow into man. We firmly retain and maintain the faith in
which we were nurtured — " God created man in His own
image, in the image of God created He him ; male and female
created He them."
ii. It is asserted that Human Language was developed from
Animal Cries.
The improbability is felt at once : nevertheless, a fact of
great value may be gathered from the assertion. All the
sounds produced by animals and birds, all notes evoked by
the wind, the mysterious noises of the forest, the strains of
musical instruments, have their representatives in the human
voice. No wonder, therefore, that some resemblance to
human language should be found in utterances of the beast ;
yet those utterances were no more the guiding principle in the
formation of language, than the perpetually rolling ocean, in
its motion rhythmically repeated, can be said to have taught

334 Man : Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
the human artist, in the outflow of his own emotion — now
gently gliding, now gracefully leaping, now violently stirred —
to pour forth a stream of sound which brings to our mind
mysterious moods, and lifts up our soul to the regions of ever
lasting harmony and repose.
William Humboldt said — " Man is man only by means of
speech, but in order to invent speech he must be already
man. . . . According to my fullest conviction language must
be regarded as naturally inherent in man, for it is altogether
inexplicable as a work of his understanding in its simple
consciousness. . . . There could be no invention of language,
unless its type already existed in the human understanding."
Co-ordination of many groups of muscles is necessary for
speech, and the nervous arrangement of the brain is en rapport
with the complexity of the function. Idiots never speak well,
yet it is as natural for man to speak as for bears and birds to
brum and twitter ; whereas the large air-sacs of the gorilla,
and most anthropoid apes, are incompatible with speech.
There is no trace in man of these remarkable structures.1
It is impossible to trace up all words to imitative and
exclamatory sounds ; for we frequently come upon roots of
fixed form and general meaning which are unexplainable
in themselves ; and, as to explaining the existence of these
roots, science stands helpless. There is no record, nor relia-
able tradition, that any race invented a language.
Languages do not greatly enlarge their capital, they mingle
and change as men themselves do ; but their path, amongst
all modern nations, is rather to directness and simplicity than
to maintain, amplify, and complicate the old elaborate texture.
It is certain that all modern speech, however varied and
adapted, has been derived from ancient, the cognate roots
strike into a depth of common structure. The educated man
of to-day uses substantially the method of the savage — only
expanded and improved in the working out of details. All
languages represent mainly the same intellectual art, no new
central principles are discovered, changes being wrought by
addition and improvement in detail ; even the American
languages seem rather the work of philosophers than savages.
1 " Cassell's Natural History;" see Gorilla; P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S.

Frontier Line between Man and Beast. 335
It is impossible to believe that the highly complicate and
accurate ancient tongues, Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, were the
workmanship of creatures not far removed from the brute :
nor is it credible, judging from experience as to the little or
no progress made in language by the most cultured modern
races, that any time, however vast, could have sufficed to
enable unaided mute creatures to invent, develop, and perfect
the languages now in existence. There seems to be language
because there is reason, and but for language reason would
speedily be degraded.
It was asserted by travellers, when language was seen to
be the frontier line between man and beast, that human beings
existed without religious ideas and without language. We
were told, again and again, that the Veddahs in Ceylon have
no language. Sir Emerson Tennant wrote—" They mutually
make themselves understood by signs, grimaces, and guttural
sounds, which have little resemblance to definite words and
language in general." In reply to this, Professor Max Muller x
states that more than half of the words used by the Veddahs
are, like Singhalese itself, mere corruptions of Sanscrit ; their
very name is the Sanscrit word for "hunter," vcdddh, or as Mr.
Childers supposes, vyddha. If they now stand low in the
scale of humanity they once stood higher ; they may possibly
prove, in language if not in blood, the distant cousins of Plato,
Newton, Goethe.
The dwarf Negrito race, an early if not primitive type of
humanity, as we are assured by Professor Owen, like those
of some prehistoric races in Europe, have " a quadrumanous
unconsciousness of nakedness," yet possess a language. Lan
guage seems a necessity of our race, and the direct conse
quences of intuition changing into idea ; 2 the capital act of
language is the wish to speak.8
Low orders of men have poor languages, and little or no
distinct sense of large numbers ; some, as the natives of
Kamchatka, possess numerals, say to 100, but can only count
to twenty by means of fingers and toes. Will it be said of
1 "Address." International Congress of Orientalists, 1874.
2 " De l'Origine du Langage : " M. Renan.
3 " Discours de la Connaisance des Betes : " Father Pardies.

336 Man: Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
these low orders — they are the latest evolutions from animals ;
their language is the most akin to brutal voice, an invention
growing with the growth of their culture from low to high
degree ? We think not. What we actually find is—" From
the highest to the lowest, all men speak ; all are able to inter
change such thoughts as they have. Language, then, appears
clearly ' natural ' to man ; such are his endowments, such his
circumstances, such his history — one or all of these — that it
is his invariable possession " x — given to him for purpose of
speech — as hands are bestowed for labour, a means of com
municating and receiving thought.
Language, far from uniting man and beast, places a vast
and deep interval, incapable of being crossed by the lower
animals, eternally separating their nature and power from our
own. He is a coward who, fearing for his supremacy, or from
want of faith in Scripture, would forbid scientific investigation.
The essential capacities and tendencies of man led him
universally and inevitably to speech, worked out a foreseen
and intended result. He has not risen from a brute-condition
by the product of speech ; for he could never have produced
language had he not been endued, at the outset, with those
powers, both of body and mind, which constitute man. He
was mainly what he is now when the first beginnings of speech
came forth ; as lion was lion when he began to roar.
Wilhelm von Humboldt says language is an "organism,"
and "man does not so much form language, as discern with
a kind of joyous wonder its developments coming forth of
themselves." It accords with this, that philology refers the
original forms of language to the primitive stage of the ancient
human race. All men speak, their power of brain and
capacity of thought are enlarged by speech, but no such dif
ferences are wrought as those which separate one animal species
from another : all men, however differently they speak, are of
one species. " Linguistic principles are actually worked out
with as much originality, and more extensively if not more
profitably, among savages than among cultured men." 2 Ex
amples are found in the Algonquin system of compounding
1 " Life and Growth of Language," p. 2 : Wm. Dwight Whitney.
2 " Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 216 : Edward B. Tylor.

Language as a Contrivance. 337
words, and in the Esquimaux — a scheme of grammatical in
flexion. Metaphor and syntax also belong to the infancy of
human expression. Indeed, language, in many respects, is
by a sort of rough-and-ready ingenuity, having more to do
with the rule of thumb, Mr. Tylor says, than with " systematic
arrangement and scientific classification." The " old barbaric
engine" is better, more precise, comprehensive, beautiful, in
many of the ancient tongues, than in any or all of the patched
and tinkered modern speech. Professor Max Miiller says —
" Nothing necessitates the admission of different independent
beginnings for the material elements of the Turanian, Semitic,
and Aryan branches of speech ; nay, it is possible even now to
point out radicals which, under various changes and disguises,
have been current in those three branches ever since their first
separation." This accords with the Divine account concerning
the beginning of human existence; and whether it results from
the psychical unity of the human race, or is a proof of the his
torical derivation of language from one root, is not so material
as the fact of unity.
We now, for variety of thought, treat language as the pro
duct of art, a contrivance, and regard human thought and
conduct generally as organic and working under fixed laws.
If language is the product of thought in union with capable
organism, and used as an instrument for imparting and
receiving thought, it is due to the power of intelligence
adapting means to ends. This is a highly complicate and
intricate capacity. The psychic energies underlying the
faculty and exercise of speech, bringing it into conscious
exercise — themselves trained and developed by it — belong
to those fundamental principles of religion, art, science, which
make man what he is. Inner consciousness was externalised
by language to be the revelation and interpretation of the acts
of the soul. Common sounds were imitated, self-expressive
or emotional tones were uttered with varying emphasis, force,
and speed, gestures and motions of the features were used ;
this being possible by the possession of those various faculties
and capacities which led inevitably to the production of
speech. So far, therefore, we may say, no man is born a
speaker, an artist, or an engineer ; a lone man would not
Z

338 Man: Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
speak, and every child learns the language in which he talks ;
but the child, the lone man, engineer, artist, speaker, are born
with the enabling faculties.
Carry the investigation somewhat further.
Every division of the human race has been long enough in
existence to form its speech-capacity into language. Should
we, if a new race came into being, by whatever means, find it
gifted with speech ? Or would speech have to be wrought out
in the manner work-tools are invented and improved ? In one
or the other of these ways must language have come. How
is it with the lower animals ? Not one of them originates
civilisation, or culture — whether linguistic or artistic. Their
utmost capacity only enabling them to receive training by a
higher race in activities, which they themselves have no
power to evoke ; and the imitative gesture, or grimace, or
tone, is never human, but parrot-like. Inward power fails,
whatever the outward occasion, but man possesses inward
power and outward opportunity.
A lone man, science says — " would not speak, nor initiate
culture " — we do not admit either as more than hypothesis ;
but are certain that man would seek his like and find woman.
This would be by cogitation of the individual, involving self-
knowledge or personality ; then by consciousness of other and
separate existences ; then by desire seeking for another ego.
This process of instruction and education is visible behind the
veil of Scripture words. The impelling energy leading man
from solitude, where he might possibly have remained speech
less as the lower animals, to pour himself forth in human
intercourse and in Divine communion. It is easy to imagine
how Adam's language grew out of the spiritual ground of his
heart. Thoughts and emotions being rooted then, as now, in
the spirit ; planted there by manifold sensations, quickened
in vivid and branched into distinct perceptions ; bloomed and
ripened into the flowers and fruits of words. Thus we have
the basis of speech in the powers of man, the impelling cause
in the soul of man — leading to consciousness of himself and
of others, and the necessity for speech in the various wants of
human nature.
We are told — "That is no acceptable explanation to a

Theories as to Origin of Speech. 339
scientific man which calls for a special force at the beginning,
to act like a deus ex machina, and then retire to act no more."
Keep the marvellous out of view, then, and say — " Man began
as a learner, and continued a learner ; " but before the training
and shaping process, a mental equipment, however small,
was necessary ; those animals which are nearest to man in
structural arrangement do not speak ; only creatures, such
as parrots, in whose vocal organs it is not easy to trace the
cause of the power. For a man to see as if trees are walking,
there must be a little vision ; and the apparatus of speech
would be of no use unless, in connection with consciousness,
a definite reach and power of reflection grasped, handled,
shaped, signs of conceptions and their relations in the different
departments of mental action. In fact, the active and creative
force of language resided in man as a marked and distinctive
characteristic : possessing the physical and mental instru
mentality, the need of expression produced speech.
It is not needful to adopt any theory as to the consonantal
triple roots and internal inflexion of the Semitic speech or as
to monosyllabic roots ; nor to decide whether the first words
were nouns or verbs ; nor yet to account for the fact that
clever people, like the Chinese, have a language which, in
many respects, is structurally the lowest, and in resource the
poorest ; nor is any dogmatic statement warranted either as
to unity or separateness at the beginning. Science inclines
to take "formless roots" as the origin of all language, but
what those roots precisely were can hardly be traced out.
It may fairly be thought, that as a calf will run about and
help itself even on the day of birth ; so man, having the organs
of speech, when the opportunity came would use them ; appli
cation and development necessarily follows, not with words
as parts of speech, to be put together in sentences, for no man
though capable as Homer and Demosthenes, can speak any
language until he has learned it ; but possibly with compre
hensive utterances, one word conveying a whole statement.
Demonstration, one way or other, is impossible.
Take words to pieces, or put them together ; compare modern
with ancient, and rich languages with poor ; yet neither philo-
logically nor historically is there any warrant for saying that

340 Man : Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
former men worked on any other linguistic base th^n that now
used. This is the more interesting, because there is not in any
known language a word which can be said to exist, fyixsu, by
nature. The cry of animals is instinctive, but human speech is
conventional ; and every word stands in its accepted use, dicrei,
by an act of attribution, determined by men's circumstances,
habits, and references.1 It is impossible to trace language even
to human natural cries, brutal are out of the question, though
many words in some languages are imitations — " cuckoo,"
for example ; and no uttered sound, nor any combination of
articulations come or came into existence as the natural sign
of an intellectual conception.2 We may as hopefully look to
the beasts for our language, as for the particular and definite
beginnings of the arts which develop our clothes, our instru
ments, our buildings.3 The voice has been given to us for
speech, but only as the hands are given to write with, and it
is simply because they are most effective for speech and
written word that they are the universal agents.
We may trace many languages to one parent language ;
take the sentences, words, letters to pieces, dissolve them by
crucial analysis into primitive forms, natural sounds, voluntary
expressions ; but what of that ? We cannot by any possible
synthesis form the primitive speech. Man, to be sure, is an
imitative animal, but not unreasonably, nor instinctively, nor
in a mechanical way ; he imitates because he has the ca
pacity, just as he is an artist. Take a mechanism to pieces ;
separate the brass, the iron, the wood, the leather, fuse and
burn them ; but, apart from the human intelligence adapting
and constructing the materials, they are not the equivalent
nor explanation of the machine. Animals make noises which
men fashion into speech ; birds have notes which men attune
to song ; in the woods and on the sea are heard those rust
lings, breathings, roarings, which men combine in orchestral
harmonies. Man is naturally that intelligent creature whose
material frame and inward spirit, possessing many and various
faculties and capacities, led inevitably to the production of
speech, and to elaboration of language. These capacities and
1 " Life and Growth of Language," p. 282 : Prof. Wm. Dwight Whitney.
2 Ibid. p. 288. • Ibid. p. 289.

Ancient Languages. 34 l
tendencies universally and inevitably worked out the Creator's
foreseen and intended result ; language becoming, in an
especial manner, the incorporation of the acts of the soul — a
living, breathing revelation of man to man, and of man to
God. "Comparative Philology has now succeeded in assigning
the dialects of mankind, with more or less precision, to three
families of speech ; the Turanian, the Semitic, and Aryan." x
The ancient languages are the most scientific, complex, and
perfect in their structure ; therefore, it is argued — " the forms
and laws of structure, involved in the most perfect condition
of language, were endowments of primeval man." 2 Know
ledge grew, the seeds of thought were sown, the experiences
of individuals and of races became registered, the intelligence
stored up in the brain obtained further expression in writing.
Revelation was made permanent, Divine Truth was written in
the Sacred Book, so soon as spiritual efficacy began language
had birth. In the very threshold of our self-consciousness,
when the external world was copied into the soul by psychical
forms of perception, the representative images and ideas be
came efficient and were translated into speech — the effluent in
which mind and matter reciprocate their respective properties.
It is mind that imparts to modulations of sound their hundred
thousand distinctions. When they rise to full utterance of
soul they are a swelling harmony of many thoughts, of many
desires, translating the heights and depths of human passions,
the fervour of devotion, the refinements of metaphysical ab
stractions, into symbols of intellectual and moral wealth for
augmentation of wisdom and virtue in the mass of mankind.
The vocabulary of a highly civilised people, as Greeks or
Romans, English, German, French, or Italian, comprises
many thousands of words, with various inflections, technical
terms, proper names. " What proof is this of the grasp, of
the elasticity of mind, that it can, with a sovereign ease, and
just as a man lays down one tool and takes up another, so lay
down and take up at pleasure this or that voluminous
machinery of signs ! " s This wonderful apparatus, however,
1 Prof. Max Miiller. 2 " Prehistoric Man," Daniel Wilson, LL.D.
3 " Physical Theory of Another Life : " Isaac Taylor.

342 Man: Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
is but a material machinery ; found scanty, inexact, feeble,
and in no wise commensurate with mind. The mind, or vovq,
receives impulses from a world of thoughts which, for want of
determination and fit symbols, are never born to augment
the wisdom of man. Of what may the same mind be capable
if furnished with a means of communication " homogeneous
with itself; plastic in quality, and commensurate with its
faculties ! " x If the light and power of sanctified minds could
pervade us as sunlight the day, so that innermost thought
and emotion were truly reflected ; we should possess sum-
mative unity in speech, and that true reflection and com
munion of personal consciousness, whereby pure minds recipro
cally satisfy and are satisfied. We may rationally expect that
language will acquire greater depth and power than we are
now wont to perceive or use ; enabling the willing to reveal
all their emotional and intellectual wealth ; to express, in
symmetry with the range of their mind, wonderful things
concerning creation, and glorious truths as to the power, the
wisdom, the love of God.
iii. Human Development was wrought by a process" of
Civilisation. True — but only in part. Real civilisation is not more a
means of growth than proof of growth, and the benefits of
civilisation are not unmixed with evil. The introduction of
civilisation amongst a savage race generally proves their
destruction, and manifests that progress is not something
necessary and universal, but in an eminent degree contingent
and partial. We say of all barbarian tribes- — ¦" They have no
history ; " that is, have made no appreciable progress. More
over, as an unnatural parent, civilisation often destroys its own
children : Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Athens, Rome, where
are they ? Was it not softness of manners, sensuality of life,
want of high purpose, that slew them ; rather than barbaric
force ? Or, if barbaric force, how came that to be the
stronger ? Those brilliant empires, so great in material
attainments, have been swept away : only a few gigantic
foundations, a few vast fragments of past grandeur, tell of
their existence. 1 " Physical Theory of Another Life : " Isaac Taylor.

Cities, Ancient and Modern. 343
' Old Athens possessed a social life in which the ablest
men delighted. Men of high culture found there, and
nowhere else, a companionship of genius and knowledge.
They were a race unrivalled in intellect, and in bodily form
matchless. Other ancient civilisations, Babylon, Nineveh, Palmyra, must
have been very splendid — of architecture almost superhuman ;
rats and mice were not the builders. That ancient statue of
Chephren, the Phra, or Pharaoh of the fourth dynasty, who
built the second of the great pyramids at Ghizeh, is cut out of
the beautiful but intractable stone — " Diorite." The features
are refined and intellectual as those of a modern European.
Its age may be thirty-seven centuries earlier than the artist —
Phidias, the king lived B.C. 4200. There are no signs of brutal
origin in this image of early historical civilisation; but the
civilisation was not prolonged, it wrought no permanent deliver
ance. It neither made, nor wholly marred men ; for sometimes,
even now, near the ruins of a sumptuous Eastern palace, is
found a man, princely in body and mind, amongst a horde of
degenerate race : a reappearance of kingly type in a place,
and amongst a people, whence and from whom the crown is
gone. It is distressing to witness the draggled, drudged, mean
look of the masses, specially the women, not only in the poor
streets of London, but in all the great cities of Europe and
America. Civilisation seems too hard for their constitutions ;
the present conditions of life and social arrangements of
property, are fast crushing them into degeneracy. Are we in
" a series of cycles ; every one, perhaps, beginning and ending
in a little change not in advance of its predecessor ; every one
closing in catastrophic relapse, and a period of barbaric dark
ness ? " We call for more brains and mental stamina in our
divines, statesmen, philosophers ; who, indeed, find it hard to
keep pace with their work. Are they already ceasing to run
well in the race, and giving way to another people ? Are the
needs and vices of civilisation, the excitement of quick com
munication, the friction of high culture, unmanning our men
and rendering women unwomanly ? Is religion ceasing to
influence the most progressive intellects ? will a deluge of

344 Man : Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
unbelief carry away the foundations of civil community ?
sweep away the faith and work of a thousand generations
into superstition — as of Spain, into subjugation— as of India,
into insignificance — as of Arabia ? who knows ? All ex
perience points to termination, not to indefinite prolonging of
civilisation. If our own civilisation is to last, we must not ground it on
material wealth, not on intellectual power, not on moral
purity, not on any one of these, but on all : it must be founded
on Christian scientific principles. If skilled industry elevates
the masses, gives them healthful homes and wholesome food ;
if intelligence guides them to the use of wealth, and forbids
the abuse ; if morality chastens selfishness into esteem and
love ; that relief of man's estate will be permanent, will be for
goodness and beauty, for the glory of God.
Things are as they are, and we must not shut our eyes
against facts. Of the three elect or world-moving peoples —
the Jews, governing religious thought ; the Greek, supreme in
intellect ; the Roman, ruling in law — the modern Jew is far
inferior to the ancient in high spiritual power and in true
knowledge of God ; the Greek of to-day is not better, but
worse than his fathers ; and we count the Italian — if a Roman,
a Roman decayed. Abraham in his tent was intelligent as
any ancient or modern Pharaoh of the palace ; Job could give
reasons exceeding nowaday arguments ; and prophets hold
their own against philosophers. The absence of mechanical
art does not prove that the primitive race was barbarous.
The old negro — think of Tertullian — was certainly far higher
in intellect than the present African : unless the ancient
civilised Africans were not of negro race. The red man of
America, the Australian, the Esquimaux, are generally
counted degenerate sons of a race whose glory has departed.
A remarkable instance of failure in the operation of artificial
selection is furnished on a large scale by the ancient Spartans.
All newly born children were carefully examined, the sickly,
and those affected with any infirmity, were killed ; only the
strong and perfect in form were allowed to live, to propagate
the race. By this means it was thought that strength and
skill would increase with every generation, until the race

Modern Tendencies. 345
became perfect in body and mind. What was the result?
They had rough hard valour, strength, endurance, but their
own hardness slew them. Some tribes among the Red
Indians of North America vainly cultivated bodily strength
and bravery by a similar selection. Modern nations have a
military selection, militarism is dangerously prominent, de
grading and destroying humanity.
Probably we shall not possess greater force, nor swiftness,
nor agility, in the future. The grand air, elastic energy of
step, resolute assurance of bearing, which Nature gives to her
aristocracy — wholly distinct and apart from polish of manner
and the urbane grace of high breeding — belong rather to
primitive than to artificial nature. It may have been more
common among the tents of patriarchs than in modern draw
ing-rooms, more frequently possessed by knights and barons
of the Middle Ages than by the polished gentlemen of our
cities. In mechanical skill, doubtless, advance will be con
siderable ; industrial and aesthetic arts will grow with high
intellectual and emotional development. If right conduct
comes and continues with these, the duration of life will be
increased ; but the tendencies of politics, society, opinion,
toward the supremacy of numbers — demoralised by recognised
infidelity, or by a corrupt religion — are fatal to any present
confidence in an earthly paradise. Communism, of which
wholesale robbery is the commencement, sensuality the con
tinuance, despotism the end, will not establish the reign of the
saints. Actual want and misery — keen incentives to outrage
and lawlessness, sometimes their justification — are not re
lieved by elimination of God from the world. Those who
count that they possess nothing, if they have not sensual
gratifications, are envious of the gold that shines, the diamond
that sparkles, the plumed pomp of rank : victims long enough
of sleights and tricks cunningly worked by priests and politi
cians, they would now grow plump and sleek with delicacies.
Despite these dangers, Christianity fills our hearts with
hope and spans the horizon with a bow of promise. Christi
anity teaches the principle of love to God and man — while
giving the motive. Christianity confirms our destiny as
masters of the earth, our privilege as sons of God, our hope

346 Man: Origin, Nature, Language, Civilisation.
as inheritors of heaven. These are the sublime character
istics with which men, men alone, are gifted ! " I say gifted,
for the surpassing organisation was no work of ours. ' It is
He that hath made us ; not we ourselves.' This frame is a
temporary trust, for the uses of which we are responsible to
the Maker. Oh ! you who possess it in all the supple vigour
of lusty youth, think well what it is that He has committed
to your keeping. Waste not its energies ; dull them not by
sloth ; spoil them not by pleasures ! The supreme work of
creation has been accomplished that you might possess a
body — -the sole erect — of all animal bodies most free — and for
what ? For the service of the soul. Strive to realise the
conditions of the possession of this wondrous structure.
Think what it may become. The Temple of the Holy Spirit !
Defile it not. Seek, rather, to adorn it with all meek and
becoming gifts ; with fair furniture, moral and intellectual." l
1 "On the Classification and Geographical Distribution of the Mammalia : "
Richard Owen, F.R.S.

STUDY XVIII.
HUMAN LIFE.
Personality, Individuality, Speciality.
" Between two worlds life hovers, like a star,
'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge :
How little do we know that which we are !
How less what we may be ! " Byron.
Shall we soil our hands with the earths, be concerned about
heat, light, electricity, the precious metals, the diamond, and
there stop ? Shall we condescend to that derogatory part of
our nature, that offensive condition in which we acknowledge
brotherhood with the sea-jelly, and animalcula of a stream or
pool, and not ascend the heights of life which are specially
our praise ? We are bound, if only to save endless wander
ings in a wrong direction, to ascertain whether the lofty soul
and god-like intellect are signs of a potential fellowship with
spirits noble and glorious ; whether they are the title-deeds
of a brighter world, or false lights and mocking delusions ?
They can hardly be delusions. If all our priests were drowned
to-day, and the Bible burned to-morrow, an irrepressible con
sciousness of things unseen would again call forth the prophet
and consecrate the priest. Religion is not for the great events
of life only, it is for the small. Bright with gladness to the
pure in heart, a familiar friend in the family circle, it is very
welcome. In hours of thoughtful solitude men rest in faith
and give God thanks. The monitions of eternal truth, whis
pered, in their infant ears, and pondered in after-days, are
not presages of woe, but comfortable assurances concerning
that life in which the weary rest and the good are happy
evermore.

348 Human Life.
Our Study is of Human Life.
We are told — " Life and Mind are not substances, but the
dynamical results of an organism's statical conditions. Mind
is only one of the forms of life ; and Life is not an entity, but
an abstraction expressing the generalities of organic pheno
mena." The assertion is not true : organism and function are
not the cause of life, but are themselves caused by life. The
initial fact, without which could be no organism, is life : it is
a theorem worked out by the organism.
It is asserted — "We come into the world with a heritage of
organised form and definite tendencies representing ancestral
experiences and adaptations. In like manner, the mind is
built up of assimilated experiences : perceptions and concep
tions being shaped out of pre-perceptions and pre-conceptions."
The statement is not adequate. Life is something more than
the synthesis of ancestral experiences — being, indeed, all that
the faculty of living encloses ; and mind is something more
than an aggregate of past and present perceptions — we must
add the potential existence of a Cognitive Faculty, without
which could be no mind. Life builds up the organism, and
mind mysteriously inhabits it ; so, whether you call life and
mind entities or not, they certainly look through the organism
at the outer world, have views of an inner world, and, strangely
enough, by means of these outer and inner, detect relations
which are obscure to Sense, and relations inaccessible to
Sense : the supra-sensible being got at analytically by analysis
of analysis.
It is manifestly impossible that we can know the exact
conditions in which organic life began. We do little more
than guess at its nature and origin. Of this, however, we
may be sure — our life is not merely sensations of colours, of.
sounds, of tastes, of smells : for sensations are the product or
act of life, not life itself. Those who think to explain it by
descending from organism to organism, quantitatively and
qualitatively, going down from organic to inorganic, from
masses to atoms, forget that the atoms are only the masses
" writ small " — the mystery remains. The chemist analyses
water into its constituent gases ; then, by synthesis under
certain conditions, reconstructs the water; not so with life,

Definitions of Life. 349
nor the substance in which life is manifested. The substance,
so far as we know, can only be made by life ; and without it
organism is not possible. Herein lies a world of mystery.
Those who would degrade man to a level with the beast and
slay religion, clutch at the dagger; but, like that which
hovered before Macbeth's imagination, it refuses to be grasped.
The " gouts of blood " upon its " blade and dudgeon " no eye
but their own can see ; man lives, moves, has his being in God.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, finding fault with various definitions
of life, says — "Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous
changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence
with external co-existences and sequences." It would be
more correct to say — Life^ effects definite combinations and
changes, etc.
Mr. G. H. Lewes states — " Life is the co-ordination of
actions, both of structure and composition, which take place
within an individual without destroying its identity." Here
also it is needful to remember — life is that by which the co
ordination, correspondence, co-existence, sequences, become
possible and actual.
The larger formula — " Life is the definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in
correspondence with external co-existences and sequences " —
may be approved by some. Others choose, as simpler — " Life
— including intelligence as the highest known manifestation of
life — is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations." To render the simple definition adequate,
make a small change, and read — Life, including intelligence,
as the highest known manifestation of life, effects the con
tinuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations ;
or, as Professor Flint states — is the cause of the direction and
co-ordination of the movements or actions characteristic of
bioplasmic matter.
Bearing in mind that life is the cause of organism, not itself
caused by organism, and raises for itself many-chambered
habitations of manifold structure and function, we may speak
of it after the manner of Descartes in " Traite de l'homme " —
The vital spirit is like a subtle fluid, or pure and vivid flame.
It is ever regenerated in the heart, and ascends to the brain.

350 Human Life.
Hence it passes into the nerves, is distributed to the muscles,
and causes contraction or relaxation. This spirit not only
fills the cavities of the brain, it enters the pores of its substance.
and is the means of all motion and emotion. As in the groves
and fountains of royal gardens, water issuing from the reservoir
moves various machines, makes them play instruments and
even pronounce words ; so the vital spirit, lodged in the
machine of an animal body, enthrones itself in the brain ; or
takes the engineer's seat to guide the mechanism ; and thence
increases or slackens, changes or suspends, motion and function.
Again, the body has been called an engine, of which food is
the fuel, and blood the life-oil ; but a body may have food in
the stomach, blood in the veins, and nevertheless be dead.
Living substances, when dead, can be converted into carbonic
acid, water, ammonia ; but it is impossible so to bring them
together that they give rise to the living substance. Our
organisation transmits impressions from without into sensation
within ; but life is not the organism, nor impression, nor
sensation, it is the master principle or secret of all — " an
original, specific, self-propagating endowment." x
Physical energy is correlative to vital acts, but not of
identical nature. Heat, electricity, light, air, are materials and
agents by which vital processes are educed ; but life is not a
mere aggregation or resultant of these conditions, materials,
powers. The living egg may be quickened by heat, and become
a growing bird ; but who can hatch a dead egg ? As certain
bodies in solution assume definite crystal forms, every form
after its kind ; and metals — gold, silver, copper, possess in
dividuality, called " life ; " so other bodies— agglomerating
into organic form and exhibiting the properties of life — have
their own special life ; yet we know not the how nor the why ;
nor do impressions from without, though they may determine
the occurrence of sensation, reveal the secret how motion is
converted into sensation. The mystery of life is still hidden,
nor is all life the same life : there is one life of fish, another of
bird, another of beast, another of man ; and man's life is three
fold — corporis vita, life of the body ; mentis vita, life of the mind ;
with one spirit pervading each for the safety of both.
' "Winds of Doctrine : " Charles Elam, M.D.

Personal Principle. 351
Speaking accurately — everything possessing consciousness,
perception, voluntary motion, may possibly have an immaterial
personal principle wholly distinct from animal tissues. There
is in every animal not only a plant life, a system of organs
used for assimilation and reproduction ; but a life by which it
merits to be classed apart as an intelligence using organs.
The immaterial personal principle of the beast seems to be
used up in the necessary expenditure of its natural life — it
goeth downward. A much greater distinction exists between
the natural life and personal life of the human being. Our
natural life is that into which we are born, it includes body,
soul, spirit : " soul is the external aspect of the spirit, spirit the
internal aspect of the soul."1 Personal life is the centre or
identity of our being in every stage and condition of growth.
It is the ego, capable of introspection, to apprehend and com
prehend the interests of our existence in self-representation,
common to all men as men, and elevating us above plants and
beasts.2 We are not merely plants — with life indeed, but no
soul ; not merely animals — with soul indeed, but no spirit ;
but men — with life indeed, soul indeed, spirit indeed.
We find further evidence in the fact that mechanical adjust
ment, or automatism, does not explain all the actions or
personality of brutes ; it is less able to define human conduct.
Some of our acts, which at first required attention and skill,
become automatic. This reveals the fact that mental states
have no resemblance to the physical states causing them.
Life cannot be weighed in a balance, nor measured by scale,
nor tested in crucible, nor seen by microscope. Our sensations,
volitions, consciousness, power, are not wholly from animal
organs : real sensations are often the product of mental states,
and are modified by our personality. Everybody knows that
brain is inseparably connected with the mechanical operation
of thinking, and that the nerves are correlated to our sensa
tions ; but thought is not explained by the hard word " cere
bration ; " nor is any new light cast on sensation by calling it
" an affection of sensory ganglia." We are wholly incompetent
to understand the connection between molecular processes and
the phenomena of consciousness : therefore we cannot define
1 "Bible Psychology," p. 179 : Prof. Delitzsch. 2 Ibid. pp. 180, 476.

352 Human Life.
one by the other. Very different kinds of emanations, vibra
tions, and other powerful agencies, act in and around us ;
tastes are brought into alliance with thoughts ; sensual things
are relieved, ennobled, graced, by intermixture with ideas of
beauty and order; so that our bodies are a point of contact
for two worlds — mind and matter : in both of which worlds
our volition counts for something, and has duties to perform.
Embodied, our mind is educated : its peremptory and efficacious
impulses to put moral and intellectual faculties into activity
spring from the corporeal constitution. This constitution
commences its education in bodies terrestrial : "first that
which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual : " it is a
curve whose elements having been determined in a world of
observation and experiment is prolonged into a future world.
Bones, muscles, nerves, come between mind and that which
is outside of mind ; but they are instruments only by which
the molecules of the blood, or of the organism considered in
the aggregate, are moulded into the peculiarity of their own
type. This process of integration and reintegration, by which
diffused units are arranged into special compound forms, seems
akin to the polarity of crystals — a power of whose nature
nothing is known. The totality of the living tissue, or
zoological individual is a zoon, or person, possessing union of
parts, and separateness from other objects; possessing a centre,
or axis, able to carry on independently that continuous adjust
ment of inner to outer relations which is not life itself — but
the work of life.
Life acts mechanically in every person, but, in the very act,
we are conscious that our mind, which moves the mechanism
of life, proves that we are more than a material machine : for
if all vital action is the result of molecular energies, and there
is no substantial difference between the protoplasm of lobster
and that of man, then the functions of both should be identical,
but the lobster is confined to intuitive motion and reproduc
tion, while man possesses multifarious and complicated
activities of intellect, emotion, will. Moreover, that function
of the brain, memory, is a book of blank leaves which we
continually write on, as with magnetic fluid, to ensure the sur
vival and embodiment of our personal consciousness. The
J ,

Individuality. 353
leaves are not always open, though they are the infallible
means by which we know the integrity and continuance of our
personality. When the leaves are open, the characters are not
all legible; nevertheless, we continually repossess our past
existence ; and learn, by successive states, even to project
ourselves into the future. It follows, from all this, that our
personal life is a real thing, that we have open doors in the
palace of our dwelling, and run through them to see, to taste,
to admire, to comprehend.
On the ground of Personality erect the scheme of Indi
viduality. The simpler forms of individuality are seen in the per
cipient, voluntary, reasoning principles of brutes : but as there
are two corporeities in man — a natural body and a spiritual
body (i Cor. xv. 44), so are there in brutes the animal tissue and
the immaterial principle ; but the immaterial principle seems
used up in natural expenditure of brute life. Man, animal,
bird, fish, plant, are all from one source : every one in its order,
every life of its kind, but man according to a Divine Pattern.
Leibnitz saith — "Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos
ames, mais il les possede sans bornes : il est un oc^an, dont
nous avons recu que des gouttes." x Between the instinct of
a brute, not knowing itself; and the consciousness of man,
determining itself from itself ; is an impassable gulf. Indi
viduality is the peculiarity of the individual man, whereby he
is distinguished from the other beings of his kind. Individual
is opposed to species, and person to nature. To put it more
familiarly — the Hottentot, the Australian, the black fellow,
and " swinked hedger," have common personality say — with
the members of the British Association ; but, individually,
they are as distinct and separate as is the President from the
Queen of Ethiopia.
The true life of this personality and individuality is in the
spirit. The body, in itself, is only sensual except as elevated
by the spirit. Flesh and spirit are contraries : exeept as flesh
becomes formed and informed by endowment with soul so as
to be able to receive spirit. Flesh, "1^3, and spirit, nn, are
in contrast (Gen. vi. 3 ; Isai. xxxi. 3 ; John vi. 6^). Man ori-
1 " Theodice "—the Preface.
2 A

354 Human Life.

t>

ginated in a body of earth, specially fashioned and breathed
into ; and was thus the synthesis of two distinct elements.
The outward, being more than a veil or covering for the
inward, was penetrated in every part by the inner essence ;
indeed, the relation may be called sacramental — the body
being the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
mind ; the two uniting to form human individuality. The
spirit in man was not a portion of the Divinity, but man's
spirit related to the Eternal Spirit as effect to cause. It is
customary, in Scripture and in conversation, to speak of man
as body and soul (Gen. ii. 7 ; 1 Sam. i. 26 ; Job iii. 20, x. 1 ;
Ps. lxii. 1 ; Prov. iii. 22 ; Matt. x. 28) ; but the more compre
hensive expression is — body, soul, spirit (1 Thess. v. 23 ; Heb.
iv. 12). Our fleshly life partakes of high character through
the work of the spirit of life, and unites the soul with the
spirit. Soul and spirit are, nevertheless, separable elements
in man ; yet there is no gulf between them — man has not three
lives, but one life ; not three persons, but one person ; he is
three natures in one person, a trinity in unity.
It may be said — "soul, Etej, is applied to the beast ; " so it
is, and means the person of the beast, not the beast as a
person : and though we can only apply soul to man as person
in the human body, nevertheless, the soul in beast and the soul
in man are in essential diversity. The brute has soul person,
or a living nature, by that cosmical life which pervades all
Nature. The body of man receives soul — not by cosmical,
but by Divine life (1 Cor. ii. 1 1). The spirit is the power of
self-consciousness, the soul is the place, the whole man its
object. The spirit is that which comes from God, and is of
God ; it is the pneuma, or candle of the Lord in man, the
power of progressive and improvable reason ; but chiefly the
power of will in selecting good or evil, true or false, right or
wrong. Hence, we may say — The tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, which was not to tempt but to try our parents,
is the real criterion between man and beast : the probation of
the spiritual faculty by obedience was an indication that
only by the tree of life — only by consciousness of, and willing
submission to Deity — could that of knowledge be rightly
approached.

A Physician's Point of View. 355
Change^and somewhat elevate the argument :— Man, to be
come conscious of himself, distinguishes himself from the outer
world. Thus, becoming self-conscious, he is conscious also of
others besides himself; that neither he nor they are original
or self-existent, but derived and conditioned. This derived
consciousness presupposes and renders essentially necessary
an absolutely original unconditional self-consciousness— an
eternal Self-Consciousness from which proceeds " the Divine
Spark of the personal spirit into the dark stuff of naturalness,
and preserves it there in still concealment until it is able to
realise itself in the light-flame of human self-consciousness. " x
Herein are the roots of our consciousness of God : true
reflection on ourselves, breaking through the crust of mere
cosmical consciousness, leads up to Him in whom we live and
move and have our being.
Look at the fact naturally and experimentally.
Whole classes of products consist merely of carbon and
hydrogen, yet every one has its own individuality. A chemist
proves that a piece of graphite and a diamond are essentially
the same, but we recognise their individuality by using the
graphite to draw with, and the diamond as a jewel.
Regard the fact from a Physician's point of view.
Individual human peculiarities are special, frequent, distinct.
We cannot tell why one has Addison's disease, and another
suffers from ataxy ; why this endures cancer, and that is
plagued with writer's cramp ; why ipecacuanha will make
some sneeze, a grain of iodide of potassium iodise one person,
a grain of grey powder salivate another, and opium produce
colic in a third. Nor is that all — every stage and period of a
man's life from infancy to old age has its special distinctive
peculiar characters ; and material and immaterial peculiarities
are frequent and distinct as to light, heat, electricity, food,
drugs. " We call these peculiarities, idiosyncrasies ; we meet
with some of them two or three or more times in twenty
years, but others are so rare that a long life of varied and
wide experience may have witnessed but one example. Some
people are most delicate electrometers and magnetometers ;
and I knew one such who became blind in a thunderstorm
1 " Christian Doctrine of Sin," vol. i. p. 81 : Dr. Julius Miiller.

356 Human Life.
eight years ago, and whose physical frame before and since
that time was always contorted by electrical and magnetical
disturbances long before the former are recognised by ordinary
people, and when the latter have only been displayed by per
turbations of the machinery for electric telegraphy. . . . With
regard to food : — One person cannot take egg, in any shape
or form ; to another tea and coffee are poisons ; some cannot
eat flat-fish ; others are put into cutaneous tortures by straw
berries." x Such facts as these compel the recognition of the
individuality, for pathological and therapeutical purposes, of
every member of the human family.
Daily experience shows that •there are peculiar morbid ten
dencies. One man will sing over ghastly toil, another weeps
with the infant in trouble. We are alike yet unlike. There
are things common to all, yet in the innermost recesses of
every life is something that has not been seen by the most
earnest gaze. Emotions and feelings are often counted hypo
chondriacal, hysterical, nervous, unreal : because thorax,
abdomen, limbs, excretions, are nothing wrong. Having
weighed the patient, electrically examined the limbs, looked
at the retina, marked the beatings of the pulse, and not found
him wanting ; he is told to go in peace. A deep unrest ; a
failing power felt by him, not seen by the physician ; a sense
or dread of impending evil in brain or heart, weakness of intel
lectual grasp, averseness as to physical exertion ; seem, when
tested, to be delusive notions1; for he can do all things well.
He is urged to disregard these warnings, does disregard
them; but they come from life's centre, and some terrible
catastrophe, breaking down of the mind, heart ceasing to
work, suicide, pour contempt on careful auscultation and
scientific diagnosis.
The suffering man may have mistaken notions ; and the
unwise physician, following them, may lose his clue ; but even
morbid sensations and wrong notions are part of the disease
itself, to be studied as a whole ; and are a proof to the
scientific pathologist of more than mechanical mysteries in
many a disordered life. This leads the physician in his own
1 Dr. J. Russell Reynolds, "The Address in Medicine to the British Medical
Association at Norwich," 1874.

The Histologist and Schoolboy. 357
sufferings to some one who knows him well and has known
him long ; who knew his parents and their belongings ; and
would " hit out some common-sense line of treatment, the
result of much experience and far-seeing ; rather than commit
himself to the care of the most highly trained graduate in
medicine who could see his retina, trace his pulse, qualitatively
and quantitatively examine his excreta, record his tempera
ture, and bring to bear upon his case the last generalisation
of the latest writer on his peculiar malady. While desiring
all that the skill of the younger man might perform, he would
prefer not to lose the wisdom and experience of the older
friend." x
" With regard to many diseases, we are in a position that
might be described as somewhat like that of the physiologist
and the schoolboy in combination, when they have found two
birds' nests. The one — the histologist — shall examine the
contents of one of the eggs of each nest, and apply all his
microscopic powers on the cells that he shall find ; he may
call the chemist to his aid, and yet fail to give, after the most
searching gaze and chemical analysis, even a guess as to the
nature of the bird that would be developed by the simple
application of warmth to another egg which he has not broken.
The other — the schoolboy — looks at the shell and decides in a
moment that this will become a blackbird, and that the other
will produce a lark. What the relation may be between the
colour and the marking of the shells and the wonderful con
stitution of their contents, that shall determine the develop
ment of this bird or of that, we do not know. What is the
difference between those contents we do not know, but let us
remember a quite specific and wide difference does exist
between them, although it is far too fine for any of our pro
cesses of investigation to demonstrate its nature." 2
If there is a speciality, an individuality, in the egg which
escapes every process of investigation ; one egg growing into
a blackbird, another into a lark, no man being able to say,
without seeing the shell, which it shall be ; may we not safely
conclude that man — differing from man in ten thousand
1 Dr. J. Russell Reynolds, "The Address in Medicine to the British Medical
Association at Norwich," 1874. 2 Ibid.

358 Human Life.
ways, and separated from the beast by a multiple many times
more — has his own speciality, his own individuality ?
That his life, as all life, is one of the great facts in God's
Creation ?
We exist instant by instant, but know not the rate of our
progress, nor can we render it equable. Our individuality,
our mind, are not, like the brain, prisoned in an " attic story ; "
but occupants of the entire animal organisation. Endless and
distinct peculiarities of bodily and mental conformation con
stitute recesses, or inner pavilions of being, from which other
men are excluded. Therein our peculiar faculties stretch out
to the full : some with inscriptions — as on a scroll ; some
transferred — as by the statuary to a fair and ample surface
of Parian marble ; some by the artist to a picture, that they
may abide for ever.
A few of us can pursue certain difficult complex specula
tions in peace, liable to no interior disturbance ; others are
exposed to gust and eddy from every ravine and temptation
on the way of life. We know the aspect of idiocy, but who
can tell why reason is unable to hold her seat ? Less terrible
is it to behold the body wasted, and features sharpened by
the great life-struggle ; than to look on the face whence mind
is gone. Such a sight is a startling shock to the materialist.
We cannot express all our thoughts and emotions, they need
many voices and instruments to pour forth the full meaning ;
but every good man confesses — The renovation of my nature
when brought about, will be effected in a manner bearing
upon my peculiar condition as individually accountable.
The Speciality of Human Life.
" The peak is high and flush'd
At his highest with sunrise fire ;
The peak is high, and the stars are high,
And the thought of a man is higher. " Tennyson.
Human nature, in its present form, is only the rudimentary
stage of an extended and more desirable existence. The
future lies so involved in our bodily and mental organisation
that we discern traces of it within our inner man. This inner
man makes us somewhat like those poets of grand and

Speciality of Life. 359
comprehensive genius who unite the ideal and practical. Our
mental and moral history far surpasses whatsoever may be
accounted analogous in the natural instinct and material
changes of the body ; and exceeds everything that any
combination of material forces can produce. A heathen could
say — " Aperta simplexque mens, nulla re adjunct! quae sentire
possit, fugere intelligentiae nostrae vim et notionem videtur." x
" There stir within us yearnings irrepressible, longings un
utterable, a curiosity unsatisfied and insatiable by aught we
see." These appetites, passions, and affections come, not as
Socrates and Plato supposed,2 nor as our own poet, Words
worth, sings, from the dim recollection of some former state
of our being — ' ' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting.
And cometh from afar." Intimations of Immortality.
" Still less do they come from the delusive inheritance of our
progenitors. They are the indications of something within
us, akin to something immeasurably beyond us ; tokens of
something attainable yet not hitherto attained, signs of a
potential fellowship with spirits nobler and more glorious than
our own ; they are the title-deeds of our presumptive heirship
to some brighter world than any that has yet been formed
among the starry spangles of the sky." 8
We may attain a similar thought by starting from a lower
level : — As to the brain, Dr. Andrew Combe says — " We cannot
conceive, even in the remotest manner, in what way the brain
— a compound of water, albumen, fat, and phosphate salts —
operates in the generating of thought." We know and feel
that thinking expends force ; close, earnest, continuous appli
cation of the mind to high studies is hard work, and produces
bodily exhaustion ; not only so, the power producing the
impresses by which we derive our conceptions, runs up and is
lost in the mental region ; as well the faculty of knowing, as
the materials of knowledge, being vastly more extensive than
¦ Cicero, "De Nat. Deo," lib. x. c. ii. 2 See Plato's "Meno."
1 " Modern Science and Natural Religion : " Rev. C. Pritchard.

360 Human Life.
they appear. The mind, which, by use of a brain — brain shut
within near and limited receptacle, discerns planets by calcula
tion, and stars and constellations incalculably remote, and
foretells their future movements, warrants belief of everything
concerning the future which can be proved to come within the
compass of analogy.
Take a Mechanical and Chemical View.
A bowler, who imparts a velocity of 30 feet to an 8-lb. ball,
consumes in the act one-tenth of a grain of carbon. A man,
the weight of 150 lbs., consumes the heat of a grain of car
bon in lifting his own body to the height of 8 feet. Jumping
from this height the heat is, for the most part, restored. The
consumption of 2 oz. 4 drs. 20 grs. of carbon would place
the same man on the summit of a mountain 10,000 feet high.
To maintain all this, he places food, as so much combustible
matter, in his stomach. It is dissolved by chemical processes,
and the nutritive fluid is poured into the blood. It comes
into contact with atmospheric oxygen, admitted by the lungs,
and the production supplies animal heat, nourishment, and
replaces that which has been used in the wear and tear
of life.
This, which is quite true of the body, as a machine ; quite
true, as to physics and chemistry ; is applied to the brain ; and
thence, altogether erroneously, to the mind : so much blood,
so much phosphorus, so much heat, without which will be no
brain, no thought. We say erroneously : for the difference is
not only of degree, but of kind, that separates between the
genius of Pascal and the mind of an idiot who suns himself
under the wall that shelters him. The expenditure of the
same heat, phosphorus, blood, will produce totally different
results in the brains of Marat, of Howard, of Napoleon, of
Milton. The adjustment of nutriment, qualitatively and
quantitatively alike, to two brains, does not produce even
the same kind of consciousness : the difference shall be as
of light and darkness, as of good and evil, as of pure and
impure. Hence, allowing that the physical frame is to be
interpreted physically, the process utterly fails as applied to
the mind.
The molecular motion of the brain, linked to consciousness,

Speciality of Powers and Ailments. 361
has its own series of physical processes ; but the stirring, the
thrilling, utterly fail to explain consciousness ; or why the
same action, in the same parts of two different brains, shall
lead in one case to murder, in another to the saving of life.
Our success in life, our happiness, our moral state, cannot be
measured by physical or chemical analysis, or by synthesis of
the material elements composing our brain. It is impossible
to explain, on mechanical principles, the speciality of that
internal action by which the same physical nutriment is
perverted to desperate wickedness, or used to good will, or
becomes a power that makes for righteousness.
View the whole as should a Physician.
The physician must not so correlate vital and physical
powers as to ignore the fact and speciality of life. Life
lies in the organism, and translates physical energy into vital
acts. The five senses do not reveal everything to us. It is
certain that manifold agencies, of which at present we know
little or nothing, add to or take from our life-force. Great
is the error in treatment of disease when, in place of con
serving vital force, vital action is elicited. The processes of
life may be changed, seemingly for the better, but the patient
is worse. Stimulants are given to help a man through his
work," and he has done things that otherwise he could not,
but his life has been wasted : what he required was food and
rest, a nourishing of organism, a building up of tissue and
restoration of energy. On the other hand, having lessened
the force and frequency of vital functions that are beyond the
normal range, the result is evil.
Various ailments have their speciality indicating speciality
of life. The most frequent cause of their occurrence, and the
most potent elements in their aetiology "lie in the working
of those social, moral, and intellectual processes, which are
unlike and apart from anything which can be even tortured
into resemblance to the causes of disease in animals." The
cares of professional life, worry, excitement, luxurious idle
ness, the intellectually guided epicureanism of sensual excess,
the urgent pressure of family and social needs, "the fierce
conflict between moral sense and religious training, on the
one hand, and doubtful practices and honest and dishonest

362 Human Life.

o

scepticism, on the other, are the most fruitful causes of loss
of rest, recourse to stimulants and narcotic drugs, failure of
appetite, disturbed digestion, mal-assimilation, nervous break
down, and all the thousand ills that flesh is heir to. I say
designedly ' that flesh is heir to,' because I am now speaking
of bodily ailment only, and affirm that this kind of causation
of malady is peculiar to man, and that we lose sight of much
it behoves us to consider if we fail to see the broad line of dis
tinction which, in this particular, separates him from the
animal kingdom to which he is allied." x
"The inferences drawn from the phenomena of diseases
"apparently common to animals and men have been pushed
too far. The differences between the human and the animal
organisation have been sometimes lost sight of."2 Variola
and Vaccinia afford a striking illustration of the difference
between human and animal organisation. Many examples
show that to infect human beings with virus from the animal
world there must be the inoculation of its poison. The
action of many drugs is different in animals to that which
occurs in man. The furnace of human life is filled with a
different fluid, heated by a different fire, moves a more com
plex machine, than does the 'furnace of brute life.
Disturbances of the higher faculties of man exhibit many
forms of disease from which members of the animal kingdom
are exempt. Something like the cleverness and stupidity of
men may be seen in our domesticated friends — "there is a
disobedience almost human ; " and sailors say — " the monkey
will not speak lest he should be set to work." Some monkeys
are perversely brutal, and nothing can be made of them ;
others of the same species are kind, full of fun, like their
keepers, and can be taught tricks easily. Insanity has never
been observed in them, certainly not in the striking forms
found by the physician who deals with human beings.
Not only should all the particulars which conduce to
physical health be regarded, higher training or education
requires equal or greater care. We recognise faculties in
man, possessed by none other ; mysterious windings of intel-
1 "The Address in Medicine, "by Dr. J. Russell Reynolds, forty-second meeting
ofthe British Medical Association, held at Norwich, 1874: 2 Ibid.

Transmission of Qualities. 2>^>2>
lectual and moral being ; powers, elsewhere only found in
feeblest resemblance, fill him with joy, or cast into depths of
despair, as he stands apart and alone in peculiar responsibility.
Conscious of duty and the need of self-sacrifice, he searches
for the unseen and looks to the future ; not merely floats or
drifts on the stream of life, but controls weariness and dissatis
faction, as to the merely temporal, by a joyful belief in the
Eternal. There are two worlds, and two lives — he belongs to
both, whether he will or not ; he must not, cannot sink to the
brute. The science of life is evidently the highest of sciences.
Obey no misdirection, make no failure. The purity of the
pure is a ministering angel to every life. Dark shadows and
fearful loss are the lot of some whose memory is a field of
sepulture filled with carcases of evil and only evil continually-
From the dust of their corruption evil spectres will come forth
to walk hereafter. The lives of wicked men project horrible
Wretchedness into the present life, and fearfully shadow the
future. Crime is developing a Cainite race. We recognise a
law by which physical and moral taint cleaves to the children
of evil-doers. The unclean thought of a polluted mind, like
the disease of a pestilential body, extends its defilement to
those who are yet unborn.
The facts are of startling character. Few children of honest
families take to theft ; thieves, generally, are the descendants
of thieves, hereditary paupers, vagabonds ; a race with physio
logical and pathological distinctions ; one-third are diseased
in mind, or body, or in both. Examine the heads of convicts,
whether in prison or in the haunt of thieves at large, they are
of brutal type : foreheads low and narrow, features coarse, and
skulls — not of the high Aryan shape. Their likeness to one
another, their unlikeness to the honest and pure, are an awful
explanation of the Second Commandment, and make known
the fact — " Accumulated evil of generations has produced a
low degenerate form of humanity." The clever-looking,
bright, good-humoured thief? even this man is not only
immoral — that is a matter of course ; but often without the
power of making moral distinctions. Take out those whom
sudden and too great temptation has overcome, the perverted

364 Human Life.
children of honest parents, the residuum is visibly brutish and
bestial. The following details, copied from the New York Times,
appeared in many papers : — " Six convicts, all near relatives,
were confined in the prison of Ulster County. The circum
stance excited the attention of the United States Commis
sioner of Education, and he took pains to trace back their
genealogy to a single family of sisters, who had lived among
the woods and fens, long ago, in that condition of squalid
misery and crowded indecency in which too many young girls
live in our courts and alleys. He went on to trace out the
descendants of these sisters, following up the fortunes of rather
more than half the entire race, and the results are given as
follows : — One girl grew up, as hundreds of such children are
growing up through the States, without known parents (in all
probability she and her sisters were illegitimate children)
without friends or education, or being reached by any religious
influence. The vagrant girl grew up to a wicked womanhood,
and died shortly after 1825, aged, it is believed, about sixty-
five years. The family line has been carefully searched, and
834 persons are distinctly traced, but it is believed that the full
number of descendants is at least 1,200 from the three sisters.
The number whose fortunes are most clearly known amounts
to 709—327 males, and 319 females; remainder unknown."
Mentioning only 569 of these, " 106 were illegitimate, 164
prostitutes, 17 keepers of houses of ill fame, 142 receiving out
door relief, 64 paupers in almshouses, y6 criminals. The
number of indictable offences committed by them is 115; the
number of years' imprisonment they have suffered, 116 ; the
number of years' individual relief, 734. Of the whole 709,
only 22 ever acquired any property ; and of these, 8 lost what
they had gained."
In view of facts like these, it is time to cease questioning
about things that profit not, and to work tenfold more for
regeneration of those who are degenerate in body and in life.
These degenerates are a spectacle to secularists, sensualists, ,
positivists, atheists. The old doctrine of Original Sin is
receiving awful physical and psychical proof. The evil done
by a man lives in his children. Wicked thoughts, moral

Connection between Moral and Material Good. 365
pollutions, selfish, godless minds, are open sepulchres. The
connection between moral and material condition is known to
be a reality. The marks of sin on hands and feet, prints of
vice on the face, the broken and misshapen limbs of trans
gression, seams and scars of lies from the scourge of villainy,
the crookedness of falsehood and imposture, deform and dis
figure polluted men. We can imagine the spirit set free to
traverse space, but a prey to those malignant powers which
an evil life has made supreme. No merciless tyrant encloses
his victim more helplessly and hopelessly, by chain and
dungeon, than do retributive miseries. Fierce and mocking,
they grapple with and bind the self-made slave ; bear him, not
from star to star, but from depth to depth of amazing woe.
Turn from this depth of amazing woe, the miseries of vice
and doom of iniquity. Our lives are bad enough and sad
enough, they form but ugly pictures to hang upon the walls of
consciousness ; our real business is to adorn life with fairer
scenes, to make our will right, and cause it to count for
something in the world. We make it right by finding some
supreme, some universal, some attainable good to strive for : —
" Work, without hope, draws nectar in a sieve ;
And life without an object cannot live."
Hopefully striving, we shall not only rejoice in the possession
of satisfying happiness, but attain the possibility of every
virtue, and freedom to make our life a power.
We shall not be free in the sense that our volitions originate
without a cause ; but free in the manner implied by our con
sciousness of responsibility ; " voluntas libera tanto liberior
quanto sanior, quanto divinae voluntati subjectior ; " the deter
mination by motive not being casual but moral and rational ;
ourselves, by inner power, giving decisive preponderance to
this or to that.
These motives are the fruit of desires, aversions, habits,
disposition, combined with outer circumstances calling incen
tives into action ; hence, volition is a moral or immoral effect
— an effect which we feel that we help to produce and are
responsible for ; an effect produced by that power or freedom
to choose which constitutes the grandeur of our nature. On

366 Human Life.
this account, we educate ourselves, are subject to discipline,
exalt the desire of right conduct, awake hatred against all
iniquity, that we may use our freedom in highest and purest
manner. The difference between a bad and a good man is that the
latter has an aversion to evil and desires right. Even Neces
sitarians possess a strong sense of right and wrong, and con
fess that good or evil ought to befall a man according to his
conduct. We all admit that there is a difference, must be a
difference. Whoever cultivates a disposition to wrong, places
himself out of sympathy with his fellow-creatures, and they
account it their duty to protect themselves as against a noxious
beast. Even conceding that a man is corrupt by birth, and so ill
bred that he is sold to do evil ; he must be kept in fear of
punishment, made to feel punishment, that his will may be
governed by deterrent motives. Hence, the benefit of the
offender and the protection of those whom he would offend
justify punishment.
We are not mere links in a chain of causation, nor mere
grains in a mass of existence, nor is law an adamantine
barrier. Receiving impressions from Nature and intelligently
reacting upon Nature, we weave, according to the fundamental
property of our organisation, that which is beneficial into our
life, and shun the hurtful. We know what volition is, and the
causation of it. We need not think of will as an entity in
itself, which it is not, but as the result of organic, physical,
psychical, mental changes, in the centre of our being. Freedom
consciously aiding to form the strongest motive, having power
to obey that motive. Out of this arises the universal opinion
that men can voluntarily determine their own actions. What
ever a man's theories may be, he practically ignores and dis
credits the doctrine that volition is lawless.
We are now ' ' Upon the world's great altar stairs,
That lead through darkness up to God ; "
can see how men may form or weaken, perfect or cause to
perish, the faculty and function of God-consciousness in them.
If we pray, endeavour to use and enlarge our consciousness of

Reverse of the Old Parable. 367
God, we attain a sense of nearness to the Master Intellect —
the Oversoul — the Father of our spirit. If we never pray, nor
strive, consciousness of the Supreme, even if it have been formed
in us, is weakened and may become altogether dead. The
sanctification of our intellect as an altar to God, the presenta
tion thereon of our thought and emotion in sacrifice, the
going up of fervent desire from the heart, are generally
necessary for the descent of heavenly fire to kindle our spirit.
If a man will not endeavour to obtain this fire, but allows cold
mental states to misrepresent — not present God, and idols of
the market or flashes of sensuality to spread their glamour,
there will be no sense of Divine presence in the garden of his
thoughts, no striving, as of Jacob with the angel, no talking
with the Lord in the cool of the day.
We have been led by our investigation to the very boundary
of our intellectual powers, and enter the region where most
men fail ; for it must be confessed that, though making end
less advance in knowledge, we are almost at a standstill in
moral goodness and spiritual-mindedness. We stand, since
the days of Christ, as if again in Paradise, in presence of the
Trees of Life and of Knowledge. Too many rehearse the
old tragedy ; whereas, the reverse of the parable of the trees
should now be tried.
It is not enough to possess great knowledge, that may lie
outside the centre of our being. A licentious scoffer can be
very intellectual, but he cannot, while a scoffer, be spiritual.
He may have a consciousness of God, not much stronger than
an exercise of ideality. His soul will be a sort of romance
in life, so that he says — " If you are content to make your
soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the
yoke of ordinary mechanical laws, I, for one, would not object
to this exercise of ideality." x Men who thus speak of the
soul — the organ of God-consciousness, are in danger, through
disuse, of so far losing the Divine gift as to become incapable
of true worship. There are three natures in man — the fleshly,
the intellectual, the moral ; and there are three degrees of
sin — sins of the flesh, sins of temper and intellect, sins of
1 Address, by President of the Midland Institute, at Birmingham. Reported
in the Times, 2nd October, 1877.

368 Human Life.
spiritual wickedness. When men, like Balaam, pervert their
God-consciousness; and speak lies — not from infirmity, as
Peter did ; not from cowardice, as Jacob did ; but from a
desire of earthly gain or of pleasure, a seal is set upon their
character — Judas and Balaam stand forth.
Men of noble form adorn their natural and mental position
with moral and spiritual beauty. They know that the entrance
of a human being into the world by the common course of
Nature is as real a manifestation of the power of God as were
the Creation of Adam, the Translation of Enoch, the Ascent
of Elijah. They do not live as creatures of a day, but for
the world to come. They say — " Our intellectual and moral
structure promises and seems to render necessary an after-
stage of expansion. The natural is pierced and pervaded by
the spiritual. There is a beauty transcending all beauty,
concerning which even our dreams are not wholly false ; a joy
above all joy, which we hope to attain by a graciousness of
God exceeding all other graciousness." These men — whether
at the Bank, on 'Change, in the mart, by the forge, with the
plough, or in the dust and smoke of battle — are well known, of
sound understanding, to adorn and replenish the earth. They
exult in the light and beauty of a promised new and fair
creation. They regard the spirit's birth into the world of
matter as a means whereby, even through solid extension and
mechanical properties, the soul is made more personal, more
exact, and possessor of joys which disembodied spirits cannot
share. These joys to come break in upon them by antici
pation, rendering things ever and ever new, revealing the
universe in its meanings, beauties, glories, immensities, and
God as All in all.

STUDY XIX.
THE INVISIBLE.
" We have a visionary gleam ;
Is it glory, or but a dream?"
We have now concluded that portion of our subject, the
Divine Narrative of Creation, special study of which leads
to the conviction of Divine operation, and to demonstration
that Religion, which embodied the highest thought of the time,
widens and deepens with our ever-growing experience. The
explanations which were given of the universe are not childish
guesses made by barbarous tribes, but are equally suitable
for the infancy and the grandeur of human intellect. They
reveal the universe as one splendid unity, a glorious temple of
the Almighty, and the present life as that wonderful stage
on which, by due exercise of our freedom, we are fitted for
an exalted future existence. The dogmas of our Faith, being
experimentally verified, shine with a light that was never on
sea or shore — the light of a new world.
The remaining Studies give completeness and thoroughness
to the whole subject.
It is asserted that there exists a power of perceiving what
is passing in the mind of another, or of thought to read
thought, which may be voluntarily exalted, but acts generally
by unconscious interpretation of indefinable indications — the
assertion is not to be utterly rejected. Some of us detect in
the best photographs a peculiar delicacy, possessing within
the surface a spiritual relief which we at once recognise as a
true likeness of the inner man. Heinrich Zschokke, we are
informed, was able to describe many particulars of an indi
vidual's past life. Certainly, nerve-force may exert itself
from a distance and bring the brain of one person into direct
dynamical communication with that of another. This power,
2 B

370 The Invisible.
which we know to be exercised, seems akin to the link which
unites the invisible universe, so that it becomes part of our
consciousness. There is, at times in some of us, a delicacy
and acuteness of hearing — a subjective sensation producing
ideas — that, when on the sea-shore or sitting in a meadow
of stillness, the ripple of the waves in soft murmurs among
the pebbles and the, to all other ears inaudible, insect
music, and that of grasses vibrating in responsive touch as
they gracefully move, form sounds sonorous and grand as the
thunder-peal ; or are full of sweetest harmony as had the
melodies of heaven come from the upper fields. This cannot
be put away as wholly a freak of the imagination ; there are
two parts in every sensation — what we get, and what we add
to it. Some men have less feeling than others possess, but
none are wholly without experience of an inner faculty, nor
destitute of feeling as to the mystery of the universe, nor
unvisited by thoughts of a life beyond the present, nor dead
to the stirring impulses which excite belief that the sorrows
of mankind will be remedied and their pleasures enlarged.
The scientific exercise in which we now engage will call
into use our highest faculties, those specially with which
genius effects her greatest triumphs.
" Even in the strictest of sciences— Mathematics— it can be
easily shown that no really great advance, such as the inven
tions of Fluxions by Newton, and of the Differential Calculus
by Leibnitz, can be made without the exercise of the imagi
nation." x There seems to be in Nature something like a gal
vanic circle, something that reveals itself in peculiar processes
of thought— like that which suddenly solved the problem that
for fifteen years had haunted Sir W. Rowan Hamilton. Such
facts must not be regarded as fortuitously presented. There
are many instances, thoroughly well attested, in. which know
ledge of the death of a relative at a distance has been con
veyed, with all the particulars, to persons during their sleep ;
and there are examples of some special information, buried in
the bosom of the dead, being imparted in sleep to the living.
" The singularity of the facts conveyed, and the impossibility
of their coming through any ordinary channel, ought, on
' " Mental Physiology : " W. B. Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S.

Procession from the Unseen, 371
every principle of philosophical and of forensic evidence, to
be admitted as furnishing proper proof of an invisible inter
ference." x
Can these things be scientifically measured, or must we
confess that they escape both hand and eye? Doubtless,
they can be known according to the measure and kind of a
man's ability — " irav rpajfia eyh Suo Aa/3ae"
Swedenborg, who though dreamer was yet a man of
spiritual insight, states, " that the whole natural world cor
responds to the spiritual world collectively and in every part ;
for the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual
world, just as an effect does from the cause." Delitzsch says
— " The creation realised in time is actually only the tem
poral realisation of that which was everlastingly present to
the triune self-consciousness of God ; and of the latter as of
the former the same principle is true, that it is God in the
totality of His nature from Whom and in Whom it has its
ideal existence." 2 It is the every-day experience of a devout
man that only he who lives in the world as at the same time
belonging to the invisible leads a true life.
A scientific man formulates the fact somewhat in this
fashion — The doctrines of the Conservation of Energy, and
Uniformity of Law, require that there be no sudden wrench,
or absolute break anywhere ; nevertheless, the creation and
existence of the visible universe from its first manifestation to
the final overthrow, from the beginning in time to the end in
time, are not a series of smooth continuity and invariable
uniformity ; but that infinitely various and complicate opera
tion by which all things visible and invisible are wrought in
splendid unity.
Science rightly pushes back to the furthest our knowledge
of the Great First Cause ; but cannot do away with the
original production of the visible universe, from the invisible.
If we entertain the hypothesis that all Nature once existed in
a diffused form, we cannot conceive or know how this could
be. A If we speculate on the future, no limit can be assigned
to the marvellous succession of ever-unfolding phenomena.
1 " Physical Theory of Another Life," cap. xvii. : Isaac Taylor.
2 "Bible Psychology," p. 63.

372 The Invisible.
If we look inward, we cannot remember how consciousness
began, nor can we examine the essential nature of the con
sciousness that at present exists, nor shall we know its end : the
beginning, continuance, termination, are equally mysterious —
an impenetrable mystery lies under all. To ignore every
thing but what is visible breaks the doctrine of continuity
and disrupts the grand chain of entity. To be told that the
visible universe is only a huge fire which burns itself out,
and leaves nothing but ashes — dead worthless residuum
— is enough to startle every one. Science must modify the
doctrine of Continuance by acknowledging the kindling, as
it owns the quenching of the fire ; must allow that the
visible is the realisation of the unseen, and possibly forms but
an infinitesimal part of that whole which we call the universe.
Put the fact in three shapes. I. Did the visible spring out
of an order, or no order of things, with which it had no con
nection ? II. Will it pass into an order or no order of things,
wholly unconnected with it ? III. Is it a transference from
the invisible ; which, passing from grade to grade of realisa
tion, becomes transposed into some other order of things
with which it is intimately connected ? Now, if the scientific
affirmation is correct, that the requisites for existence connect
every organ and organism with the past — we must hold, as
the very root of our life and the foundation of all existence,
that the scientific doctrine of Continuity, if true, is proof of a
transposition of the past into the present order of things ; and
of the present into some other order with which it is connected.
The third proposition therefore is true ; so when
" The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve," Shakespeare.
there will be a continuance, or state, into which the present
visible existence is an avenue. Those who, in the name of
science at one end, or in the name of religion at the other,
would Wall up the path and affix a placard — " No Road This
Way," mistrust their own principles.1
The physical properties of matter have been well called —
1 "The Unseen Universe," p. 211.

Three Mysteries. 373
"the alphabet which is put into our hands by God to enable
us to read that great book the Universe." In that universe
are three mysteries : the mystery of matter, the mystery of
life, the mystery of God. The laws of matter seem simplest
of the three; but, how great soever the circle of light sur
rounding them, the circumference of darkness grows more
mysterious and tremendous :
"Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,
Yet dazzle Heaven. " Milton, Paradise Lost, iii. 380, 381.
Matter, even as to what it is, and how it is, eludes and will
for ever elude our grasp. Then, when we come to apply the
laws of matter to living things, we are forced to admit
the existence of something lying beyond ; a something, sui
generis, working with and through those laws to an appointed
end. Passing from life to a region even more mysterious —
that of mind, we find something as much transcending life
as life transcends matter. It is of no use theoretically to
drive life into the structural depths of the universe ; of no
avail to transfer mind into the thick darkness of the dura
tional past ; of no help to conceive of the Great Cause as only
operating in the eternal aforetime ; we do not get rid of Him,
nor of them. A scientific conception of the universe must
embrace — Matter, a manifestation of underlying Energy ; Life,
an unveiling of hidden Existence ; Mind, affording conception
ofthe Highest Intellectual Power — the Supernatural.
Against this we have a few sophistries which sound like
echoes of the old speech from under the Tree of Knowledge.
" Everything in Nature is natural, and not supernatural ; or
it would not be a part of Nature." Then, if a bird flies into a
room it belongs to the room, and is part of the furniture.
" Every unknown cause must be accounted a natural cause."
Then, we are to build upon ignorance, and call the house
knowledge. The folly of this being evident, we are assured —
"We know nothing about causes, we can only trace ante
cedents and consequents." Very well, then say nothing about
that of which you know nothing. It is asserted — "Matter
either made itself, or is eternal ; in any case, it made every
thing else." This irrational faith unfaiths all rational belief,

374 The Invisible.
and can only be received by those who believe eveiything
that is not in the Bible. We know, as well as we can know
anything, that matter once was formless, and without proper
ties ; that motion must have come into it from without,
was therefore preternatural, and without it Nature would not
have been possible. The high energy in the universe is ever
passing into lower forms ; the reversal of low energy into
the higher can only be accomplished, even under the most
favourable conditions, by loss of the far greater part ; and,
when the lowest form has become universal, there can be no
reversal except by infusion of energy from without. We also
know that no amount of pushing by unintelligent force in
time and space could create the world we live in, any more
than the shaking of pebbles would build Westminster Abbey ;
nor are the vibrations of atoms equivalent to moral emotions
of will, love, reverence, in a self-conscious intellect — they
are at least vibrations plus the emotions.
We are told — "It is impossible for us to conceive the
Supreme Being acting otherwise than we actually see in
Nature." Really this is babble ; turn the asserted fact — " It is
impossible for us to conceive the Supreme Being acting as we
actually see in Nature," and every atheist in the world will say
" Amen." " Progress," we are told, " is necessary to existence,
or life ; " take the reverse — " Progress is necessary for non
existence and death ; " both are true. " The highest effect is
to bring man into perfect harmony with law ; " yes, but the
aim of all science and all intelligence is to control natural law
by human will. " In obedience to law are life and safety ; "
yes, but knowledge and power to subdue natural law are im
peratively demanded for life and safety. All this shows that
there is something unseen in all that is seen, something trans-»
cending Nature in Nature.
Some admit that miracles are theoretically possible, but
deny that any have been wrought, and would ignore them by
means of truisms. " If we neglect gravitation, we shall be
dashed in pieces at the foot of a precipice, or be crushed by a
falling rock ; if we despise sanitaiy law, we are destroyed by
pestilence ; if we disregard chemical laws, we are poisoned by
a vapour." " Yes," we reply, " because God, who likes simple

Supernatural not Unnatural. 375
folk, approveth not simpletons." It has been proposed that we
erect two hospitals ; in one the patients are to be " physicked,"
in the other " prayed for." Evidently the proposer had need
of both remedies. The wisdom and order of Divine conduct,
whether in giving or withholding, cannot be tabulated by man ;
so as to form a theory of prayers, and a register of the varying
degrees of faith and intensity, for production of greater or
lesser results. Sickness unhealed, even as sickness healed,
whether a rod or a reproof, may be for the glory of God.
Out of folly, wisdom may be got ; by gravitation, levitation ;
from sickness, healing; and poison, not always deadly, be
comes medicine ; so things contrary turn to our part.
Sometimes a noise is made about the supernatural being
unnatural — as if what came into Nature from without, did not
thereby become part of Nature and natural. Walking on the
sea is a plain reversal of laws ; but so also, antecedently, is
sending a message under the sea. If the latter is accomplished
in our days ; so the former, in the example of Christ and the
experience of Apostles. To say — " The alleged sea-walking
and submarine telegraphy have nothing in common ; because
to accomplish the miracle, either the body or the water
must have been invested with new properties ; and, in the
telegraph case, it was merely required that old and persistent
properties should be ascertained and utilised" — is really to
assume that we know all about the miracle that is to be
known ; that there are no energies, either in heaven or earth,
by use of which a man may walk on the surface of the sea.
The fact is, to our forefathers, telegraphy was an impossibility
equal to the miracle wrought by Christ. Doubtless, it will be
established, if ever men do walk on the sea, that they do so
by ascertaining and utilising old and persistent properties
of the universe.
We are able to explain why miracles are wrought; but
the definition of so unknown a quantity as how they are
wrought is sure to be imperfect. To say — " Whatever is con
trary to universal and invariable experience is antecedently
incredible," is but a truism ; yet what man or nation has
universal and invariable experience ? The saying of Professor.
Baden Powell — " In Nature and from Nature, by science and

37 '6 7/£e Invisible.
by reason, we neither have nor can possibly have any evidence
of a Deity working miracles ; for that we must go out of
Nature and beyond science " x — is double-edged ; for neither
Nature nor' science, in that case, can possibly present any
evidence against miracles. Really, such sayings remind one
of making a fog and then trying to escape ; they limit science
to its present capabilities. It is puppyism grown into dog
matism, as Douglas Jerrold would say, to assert as a universal
truth — "It is more probable that testimony should be mis
taken than that miracles should be true ; :: for the meaning
unveiled is this : It is more probable that the evidence for
a miracle is false, than that other men, if there were miracles,
should not have seen them. If the assertion be taken as
a denial of the truth and reality of anything not generally
known, it is a flagrant petitio principii, an absurd attempt to
correct experience by inexperience, to make every unknown
and unlikely thing antecedently incredible, and to measure
knowledge by ignorance. It is demonstrable, adopting the
generally received nebular theory as to the origin of worlds,
that there have been continual interventions of energy, even
if all the morality, intelligence, life, strength, beauty, variety,
existed potentially in the primary diffused mist. Scientific
theory and experiment are, however, eliminating all material
properties from the primal substance : and, ere long, the
evidence for intervention may assume the power of demonstra
tion : for if the original atoms had not material properties,
those at present known could not have been got out of them —
unless put in by creative energy. The ablest of our scientific
men teach that there is something more than matter or stuff
in the universe ; and that the doctrine of Continuity, whether
they go backwards or forwards, brings them to an invisible
universe. There are two classes of miracles. Those which from the
very nature of the case are excluded from investigation, such,
for example, as are wrought by the Glory of the Father upon
the Son, say the Supernatural Birth ; which must be received
as " miracula de quibus ipsa est fides," not as " miracula quae
sunt ad fidei confirmationem " — the objects of faith, not for
1 " Essays and Reviews : Study of the Evidences of Christianity."

Miracles are Credible. 377
the confirmation of faith. The other class are those miracles
which may be tested by the manner, time, circumstances,
of their accomplishment. These surpass the ordinary powers
of Nature — "praeter naturam, supra naturam, contra naturam ; "
not that the effect is unnaturul, but such as could not be
produced unless new powers were evoked.
These latter miracles are as credible, if we have trustworthy
report, as if we saw them with our own eyes ; there is no
absolute difference between the two testimonies. In the
case of many witnesses, indeed, we have far more conclusive
evidence than could be afforded by our own unaided and
uncorroborated senses.
Three things make miracles antecedently probable and
subsequently credible : alleged adequate power ; sufficient
motives for their performance ; permanent results arising from
their occurrence.
As to the Power, the term Swa/uiQ seems a fit word to
describe the putting forth in a rkpaq, "wonder, or prodigy,"
evidence for the existence and presence of the Almighty, or
of one from Him. Sufficient motives are manifested, in a
ideological point of view, by the ar\p.uov, or "sign," or instructive
light, by which we are made to understand that Divine love,
wisdom, purity, the kingdom of heaven, are nigh at hand.
The permanent results are the opening of secret sources of
power, of holiness, of wisdom, which make the children of
men so strong, pure, wise, that they lay hold on eternal life.
In this latter sense miracles are also prophecies : not only
do they sometimes foreshadow future events, as in 2 Kings
xx. 8-1 1 ; they also foretell the victories of the Son of God,
and prefigure the rich potent balm with which the Great
Physician /will heal the deep and deadly diseases afflicting
Nature. The view of God, in Nature and beyond Nature, moving
along all radii from the infinite into the present finite creation,
physical and psychical, and passing into the infinite future,
most powerfully attracts scientific students, religiously inspires
them, and imparts to their glorious studies yet greater glory.
God is not only outside, but within the universe ; the Book
of Nature is the biography of the Author. Dynamical agency

37% The Invisible.
is fundamentally distinct and separate from material condi
tions. In other words — "The material conditions, in fact,
merely furnish the fuel and the mechanism ; it is the force or
power that does the work." x The whole process, intellectual,
vital, chemical, mechanical, the convertibility of physical
forces — their correlation with vital, the nexus between mental
and bodily activity, lead up to that Mind whence is all power.
From the apex of this pyramid it is seen that God cannot be
" cribb'd, cabin'd, and confined " within any agencies — cannot
be adequately expressed by any materialistic formula. He
is not a remote and retired mechanician, but higher than the
highest conception we can form of Him, the extension, to
infinity of all our noblest attributes, and certainly possesses
that personality which is presence to Himself. Around Him,
we conceive, is some everlasting glory ; which, by self-revela
tion, He framed to be the Heaven or Dwelling-place for the
body of the light of His spiritual nature ; which goes forth
eternally to be everywhere the all-pervading, all-sustaining
Power, the inscrutable essence of all, without which the world
would be as the baseless fabric of a vision and thought itself
would perish.
We now pass to those spectres of thought, ghostly pictures
hung in the chambers of our mind by a mysterious power.
Is it a power making visible whatever has been reflected in
the depths of our nature ? Is it a faculty, as yet scientifically
undefined, causing what is disembodied and invisible to the
natural eye to be spiritually apparent ? We certainly seem
to have intelligence concerning that unseen land —
" The undiscover'd country from whose bourne
No traveller returns." Hamlet.
Is it true that there has been no return, no reappearance,
no answer ? Are all men liars ? If so, they do not lie always.
Our perceptions are twofold : sensual, by our senses ; intel
lectual, by ideas produced in the brain, that is, cerebral. Is it
utterly impossible for impressions to reach our brain from an
1 " Mental Physiology," p. 694 : W. B. Carpenter, M.D., LL.D.

Spectral Illusions. 379
altogether different source — impressions wrought by our own
inner organisation, working on the brain precisely as do im
pressions from the outer and material world ? It is not im
possible, and their difference in origin and effect cannot always
be discerned. Their instrument is the cerebrum, and the
transmission of an impression along the nerves of the internal
senses to the sensorium, is equivalent to that of an impression
through the nerves of the external senses. Dr. W. B.
Carpenter, in his "Mental Physiology," says of spectral
illusions — " These are clearly sensorial states not exceed by
external objects ; and it is also clear that they frequently
originate in cerebral changes, since they represent creatures
of the mind, and are not mere reproductions of past sensa
tions." If the mind is duly impressed, a thing will seem heavy that
is very light ; the odour of a dead body may be perceived
from a new and empty coffin, and acute agony be endured
from an imaginary wound. The influence of ideas on sensitive
subjects is so great, that flames have been seen to issue from
magnets, luminous phenomena became visible in dark rooms,
sounds were heard in perfect silence, and intangible things
touched. Imagination has produced various shades and
brilliant coruscations of flame from bare walls ; self-deceived
and spell-bound, the victims become a prey to their delusion
— a delusion which proves the extraordinary power of mind
over body. It is obvious that the fact, " real sensations are
produced by mental states," enables us to understand how
Sir Isaac Newton could recall the spectrum of the sun, by
going into a dark room and intensely applying his mind ; and
explains the fact of some men being able, at will and at any
time, to surround themselves with spectres ; and how others,
without will but at any time, may be haunted by horrid
illusions. Sir Walter Scott (" Demonology and Witchcraft ")
gives an example — "Passing from his sitting-room to the
entrance-hall, fitted up with the skins of wild beasts, armour,
etc., he saw right before him, and in a standing posture, the
exact representation of his departed friend (Lord Byron),
whose recollection had been so strongly brought to his imagi
nation. He stopped for a single moment, so as to notice the

380 The Invisible.
wonderful accuracy with which fancy had impressed upon the
bodily eye the peculiarities of dress and posture of the
illustrious poet. Sensible, however, of the delusion, he felt
no sentiment save that of wonder at the extraordinary
accuracy of the resemblance, and stepped forward towards
the figure, which resolved itself, as he approached, into the
various materials of which it was composed — great-coats,
shawls, plaids, and such articles as are usually found in a
country entrance-hall."
Apply these admitted facts — The visible universe and man's
physical frame are connected by bonds of energy with the
invisible, are capable of receiving energy from it, there exists
a bridge between the two — a something that welds the two
into one. The motions which produce and acccompany
thought affect the whole order of things — visible and invisible.
Thought may scientifically explain the past state of the earth
and by prevision foretell its future condition. Science, in
fact, accepts as physically probable, that which true religion
asserts as spiritually true : that Moses was enabled to reveal
the past, and that prophets were inspired to make known the
future. We do not offer this as an explanation of the power
of prophecy, but as an attempt to show that so far from
spiritual vision, or prophecy, being impossible, there are states
of mind in which science may shortly be able to show that it
is a real, though an unusual, possession.
Reflection will make this clear. We do not doubt the
possibility of a science of meteorology ; nor of science dealing
with phenomena which are the product of many and complex
factors ; nor do we, while allowing that sociology cannot be
brought under the control of mathematical deduction, refuse
to admit that physiological and psychological laws are true,
precise, inevitable in their result. Accepting the fact, there
is a sense in which Buddhism and Mohammedanism might
have been predicted. The production of gigantic personalities,
and the peculiar impression produced by them, could be
foreseen ; such predictions being possible to an intellect able
to contemplate and comprehend the many and intricate
factors producing and controlling the progressive life and
opinions of the world. This prevision, at present, is crude

Dreams. 381
work, little more than guessing ; but can become systematic
and thorough so soon as we know and are able to trace the
application of law to the vastness and variety of biologic
phenomena. That the antecedents of the phenomena are
irresistibly working out their results is certain ; our knowledge
of them is uncertain, owing to their vast complication ; owing
also to the operation of that unknown factor — human will ;
but the science is already in existence, and gathering precision
with the development of human skill. This being the case,
so far from men of science refusing to acknowledge prophecy,
they can conceive the flash of prevision as somewhat similar
to the sparks which fell into Sir W. Rowan Hamilton's mind
concerning the long-sought fundamental equations.
Pass to another series of thought.
When we dream, it is often against our expectations and
wishes. Things, which we would see, are not seen ; those not
desired, forcibly intrude. Insight, invention, origination, even
creative genius, bearing the well-marked stamp of our indi
viduality, yet transcending ordinary power, are possessed in
dreams. The imagination is sometimes constructive, at others
lucky guesses are made ; a dullard, when awake, will pass in
sleep through long process of thought and years of experience
in the twinkling of an eye. The mind not only feeds upon
the store of past ideas, but works them up into never-ending
combinations. Those who have become deaf, as in the well-
known case of Beethoven, compose music involving new
combinations of sound ; and men who have lost their sight,
rejoice in the imagined beauties of a glorious landscape, or of
a visionary picture.
Condorcet, in a dream, found the last steps of a difficult
calculation which no power of his waking thought could dis
cover. Tartini in a dream, heard, as he thought, the archfiend
play ; but when awake could not satisfactorily reproduce the
visional music. Coleridge's " Kubla Khan " is notable as a
dream-poem. Some find that their dreams, however vivid, are
always incoherent and unreasonable, often impossible in some
parts : so true, nevertheless, are dreams to us while they last,
and work in such new shape and unaccountable directions,
that intended crimes have been prevented and past crimes

382 The Invisible.
discovered— not by mere coincidences, but by occult action of
the mind. Some impression, or succession of impressions, in
waking moments, has given to the dreamer an almost reve
latory power. The wife of General Sleeman slept within a
tent which had been pitched in a lovely opening of a jungle.
Her dreams were haunted all night by the sight of dead men.
The general, because of information which he had received,
caused the ground to be opened, and fourteen corpses, victims
of the Thugs, were discovered. It is easily conceivable that
the foul odour of these dead suggested to the lady, in uncon
scious cerebration of the dream, the horrible vision.1
If it be said, " These things are not of sufficient certainty
to be used as arguments ; " use them simply as illustrations.
Sometimes, dreaming, with closed eyes, we see the realities
around — -our bedroom and everything in it ; our library and
persons entering. We are fast asleep, it is a dream — but the
objects are true, clear, defined. The horizon of the dream
expands, the whole street is visible, distant places are brought
nigh, the inward scene is a true picture of things really existing.
At times, old things become new ; forgotten events are re
membered ; words long ago said, in a now unknown language,
are repeated ; the dead appear as living ; and, as by clairvoy
ance, there are visions of the absent. Inward influences seem
the stronger the more our brain is given up to rest and sleep :
or, as others assert, the operation is carried on not when we
sleep soundest, but with the maximum of sub-consciousness
consistent with sleep.
Whatever these perceptions are, unconscious, sub-conscious,
flashes of insight whether scientific or poetical, our brains use
them in the same manner as were they outward impressions
received through the senses. They are not a mere play ofthe
fancy : for when we are awake, no imagination, no fancy, has
power to produce the objective perceptions and realities of a
dream. Some persons, when they dream, are as dramatic as
Shakespeare. Sometimes, on awaking in the morning, there
is no remembrance other than a confused notion of having
lived another life in sleep ; but in course of the day some
trifling incident, that has no apparent connection with dream-
1 "Mental Physiology," p. 590 : W. B Carpenter, M.D., LL.D,

Seeing from Within. 383
land, recalls the whole procession of events to form a living
mental scene in the light of day. Most of us, awaking, have
to fight our vivid perceptions before we find that they are
only shadows ; and important events float before the soul —
the soul veiled in doubt whether they are visionary or real.
We do, or think we do, unreasonable and impossible acts —
unconscious that they are so. We dream that we dream, or
dream that we awake, and thus the dream is yet more clothed
with the realities of life. Sometimes our spirit seems apart
from the body, and looks on the dead clay. We are in a cave,
consorting with ghosts and idiots. Walls even are no hindrance,
space has no limits, though all the conditions of physical
sight are absent. Men, who never painted, conceive pictures
most charming and artistic ; the unpoetic have glowing
thoughts, clothe them with the language of Tennyson or
Byron ; the unmusical make to themselves exquisite melody.
Such dreams cannot be produced solely by outward in
fluences on our senses ; unless we are like a harp which,
uninfluenced by outward sound when played on, resounds
with gentle excitement and sympathetic nerve when not
played. Even so, how is it? the eye sees when no light
shines ; the ear is filled with melodies, discords, or cries of
anguish, when no sound is without ; the sense distinguishes
odours, nerves of taste are delicately excited, and there
seems no cause — except that of the brain's peculiar fancy.
The fact is, we possess a power by which we see and hear,
taste and smell, fill space with forms, when our outer physical
senses are closed to the external world : we are endued with
a faculty of seeing from within, unaided by impressions from
without. Does it not render possible the actual existence of
a power by which visions of every kind — prophetic as to the
future, inspirative as to doctrine, perceptive as to facts, reve-
lative as to Divine dealings — are brought within the circle of
human knowledge and experience ?
Lord Brougham recorded a most marvellous incident.1 In
his youth he had frequently disputed with G  on the
immortality of the soul and on a future state. They actually
committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written in
1 "Brougham's Life and Times," vol. i. pp. 201-204.

384 The Invisible.
their blood, to the effect that whichever died the first should
appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts they had enter
tained of " the life after death." They grew up, and Brougham
had well-nigh forgotten his young friend, who went to reside
in India. On the 19th of December, 1799, after a day in the
cold and open air, in Sweden, Brougham had a warm bath.
While enjoying the comfort, he turned round and looked
toward the chair on which lay his clothes. There, on the
chair, sat G  looking calmly at him. The apparition
was so startling that Brougham fell down, and on recovering
his senses was sprawling on the floor. There had been nothing
to recall G  to his mind, nor had he thought of him ; yet,
though regarding the whole as a dream, he felt sure that G 
was dead. Returning to Edinburgh, he received some time
after a letter from India, " announcing G  's death ! and
stating that he had died on the 19th of December !!" Singu
lar coincidence, an analogy of some of the affairs of life, so
Brougham regarded it. Like other ghost stories it is, of course,
capable of explanation ; but who shall explain the explanation ?
Of course, it may be said— "Who will guarantee the
witnesses and narrators of these marvels ? " No matter, we
reply, whether guaranteed or not, our capacity and reality of
consciousness are the greater marvel, and affirm the reality
of wonders.
" Between the two states " (of dreaming and somnambulism)
" there is a gradational transition. There are many, for
instance, who talk much in their sleep, yet never attempt to
leave their beds and walk. And among slee-p-talkers there
are some who merely utter meaningless sequences of words,
or strangely jumbled phrases, and are incapable of being in
fluenced by suggested ideas ; whilst there are others who give
utterance to a coherent train of thought, still without any
receptivity of external suggestion ; and others, again, obviously
hear what is said to them, and attend to it or not according to
the impression it makes upon them. . . The somnambulist
differs from the ordinary dreamer in possessing such a control
over his nervo-muscular apparatus, as to be enabled to execute,
or at any rate to attempt, whatever it may be in his mind to
do ; while some of the inlets to sensation ordinarily remain

Somnambulism and Magnetic Sleep. 385
open, so that the somnambulist may hear, though he does not
see or feel, or may feel, while he does not see or hear." x
Somnambulism, viewed simply as night-wandering, is a
dream of reality for a direct purpose ; and Nature is sometimes,
not generally, the guardian in such perilous and mysterious
walk ; the wanderers frequently fall and are hurt. Somnam
bulists sometimes avoid every obstacle, walk on narrowest
paths, climb dangerous heights, leap precipices, write without
mistake, are conscious of the outer world by other means than
their external senses, and certain faculties of the brain are
used with greater precision and perfection than when awake.
Carrying these facts into the region of magnetic sleep, we
find that the clairvoyant somnambulist may have the atten
tion directed to any place he wishes to see ; where he will
know everything that happens, and perceive, so it is asserted,
things in advance which do not yet exist, but will happen, in
course of time, as sequences of accidentally working causes.
This, as also spontaneous somnambulism, brings visions, which
do not arise from outward influences, into relation with per
ceptions which are derived from the material external world ;
and dreams having reference to the health, or sickness, or death
ofthe dreamer, have been verified by events.2 Such dreams
may be called prophetic or clairvoyant, others can be explained
as mere misgivings and forebodings, most of them are utterly
false. Genuine sleep may be produced in a few moments ; the
biologised subject be caused to sleep by the expressed deter
mination of the operator that he will ; not only so, spon
taneously to awake at the time he was directed. Metals,
accounted the simplest and primitive productions of magnetic
force, are said to be related to the system of ganglia in the
same manner that the brain is related to light. Persons are
not only sensitive to contact with metals, but even without
metals or magnets the biologised "subject" may be acted on
by mere suggestion ; and the mind which has lost the power
of volitional direction will be in complete subjection to a
dominant idea given by the master mind. There may be no
1 "Mental Physiology, " p. 591 : W. B. Carpenter, M.D., LL.D.
2 Fabius, " De Somniis."
2 C

386 The Invisible.
need to call in any special or new force to explain the
influence which is exercised over what are called good
"subjects." The power of paralysing by a masterful ex
pression of determination, by positive assurance of certain
things, by earnestness of suggestion, makes the subject assume
the personality of the operator. " The undue repetition of such
experiments, however, and specially their frequent repetition
upon the same individuals, are to be strongly deprecated ; for
the state of mind thus induced is essentially a morbid one ;
and the reiterated suspension of that volitional power over the
direction of the thoughts, which is the highest attribute of
the Human mind, can scarcely do otherwise than tend to its
permanent impairment."1
In the higher degrees of somnambulism, the " rapport "
between magnetiser and magnetised becomes so perfect that
the latter is conscious of all that passes in the brain of the
magnetiser, of all impressions received by him from without,
and is entirely under his control.2 If this be the case, if such
a force comes into play during magnetic sleep, " why should
it not show its power at certain moments of our life, when we
are awake, placing coming events before us either in a direct
or allegorical form ? " 8
We are able, in conception, to separate space and time from
pure intellect ; and efface all distinction between the near and
the distant, past, present, and future ; proving that there is no
insurmountable barrier to the occurrence of prophetic visions, .
" visio in distantia et actio in distantia," instantaneous acquaint
ance with events happening at any distance both in space
and time. " If we hear that clairvoyant somnambulists are
capable of seeing, in advance, what is to happen in the future,
we must assume that they had an insight into the hidden
and secret machinery from which everything proceeds, where
everything is already at the present moment what it will be
in future, and which represents itself only seen from without
through our optical glass-time — as a future and coming
event."4 We do not understand this,- nor wholly endorse the
1 "Mental Physiology," p. 565: W. B. Carpenter, M.D., LL.D.
a " Spiritual and Animal Magnetism," p. 65 : Prof. G. G. ZerfK.
3 Ibid. p. 94. 4 Ibid. p. 69.

Thought and Memory. 387
statement ; but are thankful for every reverential attempt to
reveal the secrets of matter and spirit, everything which gives
insight as to the hidden machinery by which our Father moves
the world.
Consider the mechanism of these various mysterious
actions. Suppose that a new idea is attended by the passage of a
wave of molecular motion along a new path of the brain, and
an old idea is the passage of a wave along an old path ; the
recollection of these ideas is the passage of later waves along
these paths, and memory is the keeping open of the paths
by a continual transit of waves. Reflex action and instinct,
travelling along these fibrous paths or transit lines connecting
nerve-cells, are the simplest psychical phenomena ; and, as a
matter of fact, arise without any corresponding experience ;
so that flycatchers catch flies, and young pointers indicate
the birds, previous to any experience. We are told, the ex
perience of past generations has determined these peculiarities
of demeanour, and produced " the automatic cohesion of
psychical states." The explanation only puts the difficulty
further back : magnifies the experience of a race within a
larger nervous arc, makes the repetitions in whole life-times
of countless ancestral flycatchers prophetic of similar phe
nomena in generations unborn, elevates automatism in height
of mystery, brings it nearer to conscious psychical life-
emotion, memory, reason, volition ; while these latter are
thus shown, not only to possess that prevision which the
-astronomer or chemist has by knowledge ; but to possess the
sines of the angles of incidence and reflection in such constant
or varying, yet perceptive rates, as differ only from the definite-
ness of actual knowledge in the remoteness and complexity of
prevision. We confess that the words used are partly of spurious, and
in part of uncertain value ; but, in the use, philosophers
establish their theories, some by progression, others by
retrogression, yet others by ever-recurring cycles ; and thus
we shall find, if it is to be found, the lost secret of the
foundation of Rome, and attain a science of history.
A sufficiently elevated and enlarged mind may discern

388 The Invisible.
that prophecy, like sociology, is not the product of few and
simple factors, and cannot be brought under the control of
mathematical deduction — yet, as there is unquestionably a
science which could have foretold Buddhism or Moham
medanism, there is as certainly within any mind sufficiently
vast, if indeed we admit causation and a definite order of
sequence, ability to formulate the activities of forces — includ
ing the motions of the sidereal universe for all ages. A mind
sufficiently vast may discern all the arrangements for origin,
maintenance, development of life; not omitting the yet
more complex differing actions of free intelligences — by which
everything, is brought out of helter-skelter and fitted into
Divine science. That race, or nation, or family, or individual,
is highest in intellectual power who is capable of vividly
realising groups of future conditions, and of adapting the con
duct thereto.
Magnetic and other energies stream forth from our bodies
and produce strange effects. The strokes of a magnetiser's
hands, though having nothing to do with magnetism, give
direction and decision to the will of the magnetised. These
energies, whatever they are, must be tried by experimental
physics. All energies acting on matter, if our science is
correct, operate according to certain laws ; but where is the
explanation of the following mystery ? There are moments in
which our senses of vision and hearing may be awake and active
with that strange power of perception which effaces from our
consciousness all distinction between the past and the present,
the far-off and the near, and seems to be unrestricted both as
to time and space. It is asserted that coming events can be
and are placed before us in a direct, or in an allegorical form,
in which may be traced a thread of causation. Thousands
of persons, clerical and lay, rich, poor, learned, ignorant,
pagan, Christian, sceptic, have had spectral, allegorical, pro
phetic, second-sight visions. If these visions were due to
magnetism, if that be the means by which God pleases to
make the preternaturals to be natural, and to bring the
invisible into view ; well. If in some way, not understood,
but more instantaneously than the mind of man in England
communicates by means of metal wire with the mind of man

Provision is Uncertain. 389
in America, God pleases to reveal Himself to us, and vouch
safes a view of unseen and eternal things, are we to refuse the
vision because some men deny and others think that they can
explain the process ? When, all the while, even at the utmost,
they only know the manner of the doing, nothing of the
power ? x
Science asserts that the operation of this force, if force it
be, cannot be relied on : it is capricious and erring, more
frequently calling visions from the chambers of imagination
than evoking the shadow of coming events. Real and
maddest delusions — which are not unfrequent, can scarcely
be separated from the few rare cases of actual prevision.
What of that ? in a little while we may be able. It has been
said with truth that the boundary is narrow between genius
and madness, but will any one on that account deny the
reality of genius or the wonders it has wrought ? Can the
existence of Inspiration be reasonably denied because its
utterances are counterfeited by visionaries and mystics ?
There was something in the mind of John the Apostle,
which assured him that he did see things in heaven; and
something which convinced other men also. Future prophets
will possess and communicate the same conviction. In
any case, we are so far from being acquainted with all
the powers of Nature and their modes of action, that it is
unphilosophical and unscientific to deny assertions, even of
the most startling phenomena, simply because they are
startling. The admitted circulation of a magnetic fluid in us,
gives a new spirit not only to our bodies but to the mechanism
of the world. Natural energies may become almost super
natural ; some kinds of miracles, essentially inexplicable as all
miracles are, may receive a measure of explanation ; and
yield light concerning that life-giving energy which pervades
the universe.
Occult sciences afford no explanation of the mystery. They
are rejected by most thoughtful men as false, and condemned
by Scripture — not as wholly false, but detestably wicked.
Sorcerers, witches, astrologers, interpreters of dreams, revealers
of signs, still exist ; but are accounted degraded beings even
1 See Isaac Taylor's " Physical Theory of Another Life," p. 210.

390 The Invisible.
by those who seek them. The practice of the dark arts is-
rooted in savage life, for the most part guided by antique^rules,
but it cannot be limited to low levels of civilisation : for the
development and elaborate systematisation, say of astrology,.
are the work of great men in the ancient and mediaeval world ;
and the evolution was by processes still understood and
attractive to the human intellect.
It is not a little mortifying to physicists who have long
sneered at the words of Bishop Butler—" I cannot but judge
it highly probable that every faithful person at least hath his.
particular good genius or angel, appointed by God over him,
as the guardian and guide of his life"1 — to find doctrines
concerning disease-demons, helping angels, ancestral spirits,
even now inculcated by men of distinguished mental power.
One of the favourite taunts, used by scoffers of Scripture, to-
vex pious men, was taken from the Divine Laws against the
seekers of evil spirits. The laws, it was asserted, were cruel
in enacting death as a punishment ; and were intensely silly,
because no evil spirits exist. Some of these revilers are now
seekers of the dead. They talk of " elective affinities," of
"spiritual matches," and are being prepared- — some for
physical debility, some for profligacy, some for insanity. The
seances, counted free from vice and ecstasy, are intensely
trivial and of low culture. A wild North American Indian,
except for the spelling and writing, would be at home in a
spiritual stance at London. It is not improbable that, ere
long, the culture may equal that of the Chinese ; and the
devotees possess a war-god, a mechanic's god, a swine-god,
a gambler's god ; and recognise in the desperate gamester a
devil gambling for cash ; and distinguish hog-breeders, in
ventors of tools, and great soldiers, as favourably presided
over by their respective spirits.
Modern Spiritualism, however, possesses little novelty,
much chicanery, and is scarcely worthy of notice. The
Poltergeist has gone about for ages knocking and routing.
Some of the ancient Vampires were Poltergeists, or knockers ;
and in Franconia, on St. Thomas's Day, damsels go to a tree,
knock thrice, and solemnly listen, for the indwelling spirit
' " Sermons : " second edition, 1714, vol. ii. p. 506.

.Spiritualism. 391
to answer by raps as to the husband they are to have. As
for binding and loosing, the crafty Ulysses, on board the
Thesprotian ship, is a very ancient example : —
" Me on the well-benched vessel strongly bound,
They leave, and snatch their meal upon the beach :
But to my help the gods themselves unwound
My cords with ease, though firmly twisted round."
As to turning of tables, "John Bull," of the 16th century,
" Interlude Concerning Nature," writes —
" I can make stoles to daunce,
And earthen pots to praunce,
That none shall them enhaunce,
And do but cast my glove."
As to rising and floating in the air, it is a reproduction of the
ancient Indian marvel. Men and women rose and floated in
the air without any visible support.
In fact, the old heathen practice of divination isjpartially
revived ; that which God's Word denounces under the terms
— witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, seeking evil spirits, con
sulting the dead, is again amongst us as " Spiritualism, or the
art of acquiring supernatural information by communication
with the unseen and spiritual world." Men, instead of seeking
God, inquire of spirits who, if spirits at all, are lying spirits.
It is not likely that holy beings should come from " the
presence of the Lord," to twitch and toss, to crawl under
a table, break crockery, ring bells, and scrawl bad writing
with worse spelling. Undoubtedly, men of weak intellect, of
shaken and perverted nerves, are liable to a fascination as to
consultation with the spirits of the dead, which deludes while
it destroys. Yielding to this fascination throws down those
mental and spiritual barriers which are the natural safeguard
against such revolting pursuits.
That we stand in awful nearness to mysterious beings we
fully believe : the warnings of Scripture are not against un
realities. The magicians of Egypt possessed divination — not
wholly unreal, but wicked. The witch of Endor answers,
some think, to professed mediums in the present day. The
coming of Samuel seems to have been contrary to her wish

392 The Invisible.
and despite her power ; the appearance of a holy one whom
she could not control. Manasseh, one of the most wicked
kings of Judah, used enchantments, and dealt with familiar
spirits (2 Chron. xxxiii. 6). The damsel of Philippi, according
to common report, was possessed with a spirit of divination —
deluding the whole city, and perverting her own intellect :
when the spirit came out of her she ceased to be a medium
(Acts xvi. 16-18). The seven sons of Sceva were renowned
exorcists, and the man by whom they were assaulted was
more than a maniac (ch. xix. 14-16). Elymas was a sor
cerer (ch. xiii. 6-1 1). Simon Magus was Simon the magician
(ch. viii. 9.) These examples, and the manifold cases of
demoniac possession, prove that there were acknowledged
spiritualists in ancient time, and that wicked spirits were
reputed to have fellowship with men and to control them.
Modern spiritualists are not all wicked deceivers and
necromancers. Most of them are victims of delusion. The
others, in professing to be mediums of supernatural influence
from the spiritual world, do, either in pretence or reality, as
did the witch of Endor, consult familiar spirits ; or are
victims, as the damsel at Philippi ; or are of unsound mind,
as were the mediums generally who gave responses in the
oracles of the ancient heathen world.
Modern departings from the faith, revival of diabolical arts,
degrading trivialities of spirit-rapping issuing in contemptible
frivolity and lowest superstition, remind us of the times when
men will give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils,
or demons (1 Tim. iv. 1) ; and, like Jannes and Jambres, resist
the truth (2 Tim. iii. 8). Various other portions of Scripture
(Matt. xxiv. 24 ; 2 Cor. xi. 14 ; 2 Thess. ii. 8-10 ; Rev. xvi. 14)
are equally clear. Turning to the Old Testament (2 Kings
xvii. 17, 18 ; Deut. xviii. 9-12 ; Lev. xx. 6) — it is not necessary
to multiply references — this delusive working, whether pre
tended or real, " with signs and lying wonders," is reckoned
as the wickedness of adulterers and murderers, the deceiv-
ableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, a work of
darkness ; not because it attempts to foretell events, to trace
the inner connection of things — that may be a high aim ; but
because even the pretence, much more the reality, of unhal-

Why Revealed. 393
lowed fellowship, levels those barriers by which our spiritual
consciousness is guarded.
The Invisible World is revealed for a very different purpose :
that we may know of the reaping which follows our present
sowing, that we may have fellowship with God, partake of
His Divine Nature through the Incarnation of Christ, and be
personally holy by operation of the Holy Ghost.
The New Jerusalem is a city in that world, spiritual gold
paves its streets, and around the safe and blissful homes
jasper walls are a defence. Earth holds no such city; nor
sea such pearls, nor caverns the rubies and diamonds, that
adorn the inhabitants of heaven ; and so many are the great
men there that we shall know more of them than we do on
earth. It is true that, here on earth, the leaves of every
forest, the flowers of every garden, the waters of every rivulet,
contain inner worlds teeming with life ; and we learn from
them that beyond and above all that is visible are fields of
creation immeasurably vast and gloriously beautiful. When
the curtain that hides them from view is drawn aside, we
shall behold more and greater wonders than astronomy has
unfolded : find that, as a universe may be contained in the
compass of a point, our wonder-working God fills infinitude
with these inner worlds, enclosed within spheres supremely
varied and majestic, that the evidences of His glory may
afford eternal blissful occupation to innumerable multitudes
of holy, happy creatures.

STUDY XX.
VARIETY IN NATURE.
¦ " Nisi. Deus esset immutabilis, nulla mutabilis natura permaneret."
Y) " See God's hand in all things . . . believe that things are not set in such
\ inevitable order, but that God often changeth it according as He sees fit. " — ¦
i George Herbert.
. "To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the Infinite may
^ be seen."
The general invariability of natural law must be taken as a
fundamental fact without which no scientific interpretation of
Nature is possible. The same things will always happen
under the same conditions. If gravitation acted sometimes
at one angle, sometimes at another, instead of pulling in a
straight line, the cry of " stand from under ! " would be a
delusion and a snare. The most hidden and unaccountable
movements, the fitful agitations of the weather, the waving of
every leaf, the number of drops in a shower, the shaping of
clouds, are by a', rule so wise and strong that error, chance,
mischance, can never enter.
Natural uniformity is sometimes made to appear — not an
order laid down by Infinite Wisdom for beneficent and effec
tual rule, but a chain of fate blindly, rigorously, invariably,
binding all things with iron links of necessity. We agree
with Mr. John Stuart Mill that, next to the greatness of the
cosmic forces, the quality which most forcibly strikes one is
their recklessness — they go straight to their end without re
garding what or whom they crush on the road : but enlarged
consideration shows that this seeming recklessness is benefi
cent, by calling upon intelligence to provide safeguards and
remedies ; it, in fact, enables the will of man to count for
something in the world.
The uniformity of Nature and the invariability of law are

Nature All-Sided. 395
not rightly understood, nor well interpreted, unless we know
and act upon them as a platform for infinite variety. Laws
are conservative, yet the untiring agents of change ; and the
ever-varying conditions of time, place, material combination,
render it certain that no two series of phenomena can be
absolutely the same. If, on the one side, a man maintains
law is uniform and universal ; he may be met, on the other
side, with the fact that it incloses infinite diversity and a
series of surprises. Out of darkness we extract most brilliant
light, and analyse white light into all the colours. Who,
looking at the field in winter, would predict, were it not for
experience, the fruitfulness and glow of harvest ? What man
is able to prophesy why and how the caterpillar has a resur
rection life of winged beauty ? why and how the seed attains
development in herb and flower, in shrub or tree ? Nature is
not one-sided, but all-sided. The student of physics carries
the light of his private intelligence only a little way, and on
one line, into the dark by which knowledge is surrounded ;
but Nature faces us on all sides, carries on her work centri-
petally, centrifugally, circularly, in spirals, ever extending
into wider regions of the all-embracing infinitude. What
seem the wildest meteors of our imagination are sometimes
proved to be brightest flashes of thought — with counterpart
in the world of fact. Intellectual penetration of surrounding
darkness depends not so much on method as on spiritual
insight : the force carrying furthest is that of genius in the
investigator. Our experiments constitute a body, of which
purified intuitions are the soul ; " we can also magnify,
diminish, qualify, and combine experiences, so as to render
them fit for purposes entirely new." 1
Law, far from being an argument against, is a prevailing
plea for miracles. It may be thus stated — Where all things
are by chance, no law exists. Law produces that invariability
of mechanical action in the universe which renders miracles.
possible and necessary, it is the platform for miraculous opera
tion. Uniformity of law, when brought into connection with
the novel relations consequent on the contrary or consentaneous
acts of free beings, gives rise to novel effects. To prevent,
1 " Scientific Materialism : " John Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S.

396 Variety in Nature.
restrain, or enlarge these, new powers must be evoked : miracles
are the result of these powers.
This view renders it possible to establish conformity between
the Scientific idea of Law and the Theological idea of Will —
Will exerting itself with a fixed purpose according to a pre
determined plan. Of that plan, Revelation furnishes the
moral scheme ; and Science seeks to unravel the physical
process. Divine actions are based on unerring knowledge as
to the future ; and creation, begun upon a plan, is sustained
and governed by an all-embracing Providence. It is evident
that if Foreknowledge be Infinite, if Power be Almighty, if
Goodness be All-pervading, the Law or Rule will be so far
perfect as to render any subsequent correction unnecessary —
unless the action of free beings necessitates interference : all-
provident infinite Wisdom neither requiring nor allowing
break or irregularity. Scientific men are so sure that the
universe is the work of Intelligence, to be understood by intel
ligence, that they make their study an honest endeavour to
unravel its laws. They find, or seem to find, a reason and
purpose, infinitely greater than human intelligence could
project, weaving the weft and warp of history with idea. The
initial passage from the Divine ideal to the actual being that
moment of interference in which Nature begins to realise and
express Supreme Thought. This thought embraces all worlds,
all time, everything contained in them, and ensures the liberty
and responsibility of intelligent creatures by providing that
means for interference, and those agencies for readjustment,
which the good and evil wills of free intelligent responsible
beings render necessary.
Our conception, that natural uniformity is a chamber in
which Divine Will displays variety, may be carried further.
The unexpected conclusion has been drawn from certain
recondite investigations that more than three dimensions in
space are possible. In the career of the solar system we
may be passing to regions in which space has not precisely
the same proportions that we find here — where something
will necessitate "a fourth dimension form of matter" for
adaptation to the new locality. Nature, therefore, such as
we know, possibly does not include all times, places, things.

Government of Free Creatures. 397
That which now concerns men, forming the natural part of
their experiences and analogies, may be but a small portion
of the Almighty's infinite dominions. When we are told of
natural uniformity and invariability of law, we accept the
statement, but confine it within the limits of our own experi
ence : for things which seem utterly impossible here may be
natural in other experiences and analogies. Consequently,
that pre-arfangement which provides for every eclipse of the
sun and occultation of a star ; and which the government of
free intelligent and responsible creatures renders necessary ;
may weave into the world a loving, spiritual, elevating process,
by which purity, now chiefly ideal even in the holiest of men,
shall ultimately become actual in all. If so, Inspiration,
Prophecy, Miracles, Spirit-power, are not less real parts of
Nature than is material and mechanical order.
Such a scheme of government, the highest our minds can
conceive, seems to be that of a great and good God. Free.
responsible creatures, forming an essential part in it, are the
most perfect creations of the Infinite. Their freedom, happy
existence, righteous and effective government, require that in
finite wisdom and might weave the web of existence, and
intersperse the Divine plan with a variety surpassing finite
understanding. The philosophical statement may be verified by experi
ment. Let us take matter as a beginning for examples of
variety underlying " Natural Uniformity," and an illustration
of the infinitely elastic medium encircling "Invariability of
Law." The various kinds of elements, though of a rigidly accurate
mechanical base, geometrical figures lying at the bottom
of the whole, are adapted to an infinity of complicate and
different purposes. The dense elements are pervaded by
those less dense. All solid bodies are penetrated by mois
ture, or by the gases, or by the imponderables — light, heat,
electricity, magnetism. Fluids are pervious by fluids, gases
are traversed by gases. Sometimes the path is traced by
expansion, by fusion, by active chemical affinities. At other
times, the path is secret, and the manner of transit a mystery.
The elements, being impelled, aided by electric and other

398 Variety in Nature.
forces, produce what has been called " Electro-vegetation ; "
and advance to the mysteries of vegetable and animal life.
The world, as a material organism, contains more than
sixty-four known kinds of elementary atoms, several elements
having been lately discovered. Possibly, these atoms, though
we cannot convert any one into another, are compound, and
were primarily one formless diffused substance. Mr. Crookes's
experiments — taken in connection with a paper, read early
in 1879, by Professor Osborne Reynolds, before the Royal
Society — demonstrate the molecular theory. Mr. Crookes has,
in fact, practically demonstrated a truth which Faraday only
divined by the instinct of genius sixty years since. Faraday
expressed the belief that matter might exist in four states,
though we know it but in three. To solid, fluid, and gaseous
he added radiant ; and Mr. Crookes claims to show matter in
this " radiant " state. His beautiful experiments, with their
striking, and to the ordinary mind inconceivable, results, were
one of the greatest attractions of the meeting of the British
Association (1879). "The phenomena in these exhausted
tubes reveal," says Mr. Crookes, "to physical science a new
world — a world where matter exists in a fourth state, where
the corpuscular theory of light holds good, and where light
does not always move in a straight line, but where we can
never enter, and in which we must be content to observe and
experiment from the outside."
Now we arrive at a startling result. So far from the
elements being somewhat inadequate, or all used in the many
singularly contrasted substances and results exhibited in
Nature, only a few are largely present. As a mass, the
outside contents of the globe consist of few elements : silicon,
iron, aluminium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium,
hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, carbon. Animals and vegetables
are varieties, chiefly of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen.
The broad ocean, throughout its vast bulk, is narrowed to two
elements — oxygen and hydrogen ; other substances are indeed
a small part of it. Considering that the human body, pro
gressing to suitable form and fit use for the genius of Shake
speare, the imagination of Milton, the piety of Wicklyff, is
resolvable into a few elementary atoms, we discern that the

Calculating Machine. 399
band encircling natural uniformity and invariability of law is
infinitely elastic.
It might be thought that the mathematical basis of the
forms of matter necessitated such invariable procedure, and
production of like by like, that the whole future could be
calculated and formulated ; whereas Mr. Babbage, in his ninth
" Bridgewater Treatise," shows that we have no right to ex
pect such invariable and fixed process. Deviations of the
most startling character may co-exist with controlling law.
A calculating machine can be constructed which, after work
ing in a correct and orderly manner up to 100,000,001, then
leaps ; and, instead of continuing the chain of numbers un
broken, goes at once to 100,010,002, "The law which seemed
at first to govern the series failed at the hundred million and
second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000."
The law thus changes : —
100,000,001. 100,100,005.
1 00,0 1 0,002. 1 00, 1 50,006.
100,030,003. 100,210,007.
100,060,004. 100,280,008.
" For a hundred or even for a thousand terms, they continued
to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers ; but
after watching them for 2761 terms, we find this law fails of
the 2762nd term. If we continue to observe, we shall discover
another law then coming into action, which also is dependent,
but in a different manner, on triangular numbers, called
triangular, because a number of points agreeing with their
term may be placed in the form of a triangle, thus —

1, 3, 6, 10. This will continue through about 1430 terms,
when a new law is again introduced over about 950 terms ;
and this too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to
other laws, which appear at different intervals."
Such a process renders it evident that all calculations
beyond what serve for the immediate guidance of our life and
practical reliance on Nature's uniformity, may be and probably
are subordinated to some higher law which, at various seasons,
interrupts and changes it. How then can any philosopher

400 Variety in Nature.
assert — " There never has been, and never will be any inter
vention of natural laws " ? x There must have been an in
tervention, a series of crises, on the formation of elements out
of primeval atoms ; grouping and giving them powers as
solids, fluids, gases ; combining the inorganic ; organising it,
doing that which no chemist can — vitalising it ; and building
up the world in harmonious beauty. The development,
whether by an almost infinitely extended process, or sharp
abrupt, absolute, is inexplicable, except by intervention of an
Inscrutable Power. During the historical era ordinary ob
servation might discern no change ; the procedure, with which
we are acquainted, may have been uniform ; but, in ages pre
ceding, we know not what happened ; nor can we, with
certainty, forecast the future ; the invisible and unknown are
indisputably great factors in the universe. The particles of
every substance belong to a vast number of systems,
communicating with one another in a manner wholly in
comprehensible. We may think of natural variety in various other ways.
Well-nigh infinite change has been wrought since our planet
began. No part of the surface is now, or ever has been at rest.
There is a constant change in life, solar radiance is ever gaining
or losing in intensity, the density and moisture of the air are
continually increasing or diminishing. Take the . molecular
theory of gases — The particles fly about with very great
velocity, impinge upon one another and against the sides of
the containing vessel, thus producing what we call the
pressure of the gas. At ordinary pressure, every particle
has to move a distance, say, of something like ;i60*0uoth or
soo^oooth part of an inch, on the average, .before it comes in
contact with another particle, and is sent on a new path. The
pressure may be decreased by partially exhausting the gas, so
that there are fewer particles in a given space ; or, by com
pression bringing them so much closer that, on the average,
the particles are not more, say, than T0-,oo1o,oooth part of an
inch asunder. The average square of the velocity of the
particles corresponds with the energy of heat in the gas or
its temperature. When a gas is so far condensed as to
1 " Conflict between Religion and Science : " Prof. Draper.

Gases. 40 1
approach the liquid state, its particles are scarcely ever free
from collisions ; in the solid state its particles are, practically,
in a permanent state of collision one with another.1
We obtain by mathematical methods a faint conception of
the complexity and mystery ; for example : in a mass of
hydrogen, at ordinary temperature and pressure, every particle
has on an average 17,700,000,000 collisions per second with
other particles ; in every second its course is wholly changed
17,700,000,000 times ; and the particle itself moves at the rate
of 70 miles in a minute. In air the number of collisions is
about half, and the velocity about one-fourth of that in hydro
gen.2 In a cubic inch of air, in the ordinary state of the
atmosphere, the number of particles is approximately about
3 x io20, that is, 3 with 20 cyphers after it ; and the effective
diameter of a particle is not very different from one-
250,000,000th part of an inch.3
Careering amidst the tumult and storm, are minute living
creatures hustling one another, or keeping out of one another's
way, feeding and propagating themselves ; in every room, not
myriads only, billions exist.
We are told that distilled water is homogeneous, and a
germ of life is absolutely structureless, because the microscope
fails to distinguish difference or structure ; but, in reality,
even the microscope is blind as to these things. What shall
we say then to skyey particles, so infinitesimally small that
the minutest "vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic field
are as behemoth and leviathan ? " The diamond and amethyst
have structure, but no structure can be detected ; particles
of water, changed so as to be diametrically polar, twist a
ray of light, yet present nothing for the microscope to reveal,
and germs of life, which seem absolutely simple, possess a
complexity transcending our comprehension as it surpasses
our powers of observation.
We hardly have patience with men who, knowing the world
to be thus mysterious and utterly incomprehensible, full of
things baffling and transcending human intelligence at every
step, tell us — " there never has been any Divine Interference." I
1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," pp. 245-247 : P. G. Tait, M.A.
' Ibid. p. 324. 3 Ibid. p. 317.
2 D

402 Variety in Nature.
Divine Interference is continual — matter, life, intelligence, are
as a garment of the Living God : shall He not move in it, lay
it aside, or change it, as He sees fit ? Commonest things
manifest incomprehensible peculiarities. Take a cold highly
polished plate of metal, place a wafer on it, breathe on the
wafer : when the moisture has disappeared, and the wafer
been thrown off, no trace of wafer or breath will be seen ; but
breathe again, and a spectral image of the wafer comes to
view. Tried again, after many months, the shadowy form
once more emerges — a symbol of resurrection and life from
the dead.
The farina of flowers appears to the naked eye like simple
dust, but when magnified is seen to possess beautiful shapes of
great variety, according to the character of the plant. Leaves
are among the most delicate and gorgeous forms of Nature.
The leaf of the Box is supposed to have 344,180 pores, and
the back of a Rose leaf is diapered as with silver. "The
Crowberry of our moors (Empetrum nigrum) habitually ex
hibits a peculiar mode of variation in the arrangement of its
leaves on different parts of the same twig. Out of fifty Crow-
berry twigs, taken at random, only four (and these fragments)
preserved the same arrangement throughout. In the remaining
forty-six the leaf arrangement was found to undergo a pro
gressive change in ascending from the base of the twig to the
summit — a change from a simpler order to others more
complex." x It seems that complex spiral leaf-order " is the
result of condensation operating on some earlier and simpler
order or orders, the successive stages of that condensation
being ruled by the geometrical necessities of mutual accom
modation among the leaves and axillary shoots under mutual
pressure in the bud.2 It is supposed that the original form of
leaf-arrangement was two-ranked ; that this two-ranked form
gave rise to forms with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc., ranks by sporting ;
that of the orders so formed, those with an even number,
except 2, became whorled ; and those with 2 or an odd
number assumed an alternate arrangement ; and that all
" Leaf-Arrangement of the Crowberry. Proceedings of the Royal Society,"
1876, No. 172. Hubert Airy, M.A., M.D.
2 Ibid., 1874, No. 152, p. 301. ;

Work of Light in Plant Life. 403
orders have been subject to vertical condensation under the
need of vertical economy of space.1
Some consider that the sun is the only source of the energy
exhibited in these and all other vital actions, but when
mushrooms are grown in the Paris Catacombs there is no
light. It is more correct to say — Life is peculiar to organism,
all life proceeds from former life ; the material constituents of
living substances cannot by mere combination and interaction
produce life, nor can the sun give — it only stimulates and favours.
Yeast will increase indefinitely in the dark. There are organ
isms, beneath two or three thousand fathoms of water, almost
if not wholly deprived of light. Aided by solar influence,
or apart from solar influence, the structureless colourless life-
fluid infinitely transforms itself, groups the transformations
into molecules so marvellously that though the life-wave in
two consecutive moments is never composed of the same par
ticles, similar living creatures are continually and unerringly
produced : this germ proceeding to the plant, that to the animal ;
but both, while agreeing in general parallelism and analogy,
developing into different and opposing forms of structure.
How is it all wrought ? The business of light in plant
life is to enable the leaflets to shake apart the carbonic acid
of the air and build up the plant. Oxygen is exhaled as an
incident in plant nutrition. The proteids which nourish proto
plasm are probably constructed by the plant from a carbo
hydrate and ammonia. Plant protoplasm contains less nitro
gen than animal protoplasm. The fact being that the plant
exhibits little physical activity as a mass, and has the
minimum of protoplasm distributed throughout its frame
work, needful to sustain vitality. The animal, compared with
the plants, brings into play a far larger aggregate of protoplasm,
on the contractility of which the movements exhibited by
animals depend. Again, the protoplasm of plants is contained
in inelastic chambers (cells), the walls of which are composed
of an inert substance (cellulose), of which nitrogen is not a
constituent. The walls of animal cells, where they can be
said to exist, are more of the nature of inert protoplasm, and
• " Leaf- Arrangement of the Crowberry. Proceedings of the Royal Society,"
1874, No. 152, p. 307. Hubert Airy, M.A., M.D.

404 Variety in Nature.
are therefore nitrogenous. Bulk for bulk, plant tissues contain
less nitrogen than animal, but mainly because they contain
less protoplasm— this fact being correlated with the absence
of any power of movement en masse.
Some suppose that by means of electrical agency ^ form
is imparted to organisms, and that the leaves and twigs of
plants all terminate in angles or sharp edges by electrical
operation. Among Phanerogamous Plants, a certain number
of organs, either developed or rudimentary, is always present ;
and the rudimentary are capable of development. Flowers,
bearing stamens on one stalk and pistils on another, can be
made to produce both. Where and when a new function is
required, Nature provides — not a new organ — but a modifica
tion of the common one by metamorphism. Some plants,
if transferred to the sea-shore, produce thick fleshy leaves ;
the same plants, placed in a dry hot locality, get thin hair
leaves. Out of the wild acrid sloe, some say the almond,
have been produced our rich variety of plums, peaches,
nectarines. Individual peculiarities are more accurately trans
mitted by non-sexual than by sexual propagation. When,
for instance, a tree with stiff and upright branches accidentally
produces down-hanging branches, the gardener, as a rule,
must obtain a weeping tree by planting cuttings or slips :
seedlings would generally have the stiff and upright form. A
species of Aloe is said to blossom once in a century. Not
less wonderful is a bamboo that grows among the hills in the
south-east of Mysore : the natives report that it seeds once
every sixty years, and the product, marvellously abundant, is
called bamboo rice. In the husk it resembles cleansed paddy,
but more like wheat ; sweet and palatable as food, more
satisfying than rice. The periodic falls of this great spon
taneous abundance attract to the region not only men, but a
vast assemblage of rats, birds, deer, pigs, squirrels. The decay
of the plants dates from their seeding, and they fall about
three years afterwards ; by which period the young bamboos,
that have struck root around them, attain a height of eight or
ten feet. He is presumptuous and rash who, professing to
know all about these varieties and sports of life having at one
end of the series something infinitely less than a tadpole and

Life a Series of Surprises. 405
at the other end a man, asserts "there never has been any
insertion of Creative Power."
We now vary and extend the inquiry.
Law, as applied to all phenomena within range of human
observation, stands on an equal footing with the axioms
of geometiy itself ; but as all phen©mena are a continuity or
extension of the invisible into the visible, and of the visible
into the invisible, whatever we know is bounded by the
greater unknown. For example — the chemical composition
and actual state of living matter is wholly unknown. It
changes and dies as we try to analyse it ; and the dead, not
the living substance, is in our hand. It is probable that
during the living state the elements are not in any ordinary
chemical combination, that the causes of transformation reside
in the lowest germs, and operate in every interval of time.
The initial point, the start, in all and everywhere, seems
absolutely the same ; nevertheless, the organic energy is
essentially different. What surprises, variety of results, differ
ences of structure and of functions, are contained in carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen— those four elements ot the living
creature ! Where man finds neither distinction nor diffeience,
a great gulf, which may not be passed, separates kind from
kind. From the very centre of invariable uniformity inscrut
able energy works infinite variety. From a kindred substance,
aye, the very same substance, emerge creatures which, as
plants, are perfected in the tree ; as animals, are glorified in
man. ' ' The greatest wonder
Is, that to us the real true wonders can
Become so commonplace, and must become so. "
Lessing.
Offspring resemble their parents, but the similarity never
amounts to absolute identity either in body or mind. The
tendency to general likeness is constantly checked by an
impulse leading to variety. Brothers and sisters, children
of the same parents, are unequal from their birth. Many
animals produce several young ones at a time ; but all those
young differ in size, colour, strength. In the wild state, differ
ences are less marked. Some divergences of child-organism

406 Variety in Nature.
are so great and striking as to be monstrous. There are no-
two individuals which can complete their life under quite
the same external or internal conditions ; and the difference
first affects the functions, then affects the form of the organism.
On the same field depasture the sheep, the horse, the bird ;
but one turns his nourishment into wool, another into hair,
the third into feathers : who knows how or why ? To Pericles
were born Paralus and Xanthippus ; just Aristides produced
the infamous Lysimachus ; Thucydides, the powerful-minded,
was represented by the idiotic Milesias and the stupid
Stephanos ; the son of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Com-
modus. What a difference separated Oliver Cromwell from
his son Richard ! Who cares for the children of Shakespeare,
or regards the daughters of Milton ? The only son of Addison
was — an idiot.
Evidently an unknown law does, notwithstanding, establish
heredity. We talk of the wit of the Montemarts and of the
Sheridans. Many celebrated fathers have sons of renown :
the two Herschels, the two Colmans, the Kemble family, the
Coleridges, the Darwins ; Sebastian Bach's musical genius
descended to three hundred of his race. These are cases
of transmission.
The power of an organised germ to unfold into a complex
adult, and repeat ancestral details in the minutest traits, even
when placed in conditions unlike those of its ancestors, is a
capacity we cannot understand. A microscopic portion of
seemingly structureless matter contains such an influence
that the resulting man shall, fifty years after, become gouty
or insane.
In the higher animals, every separate organ is a manifold
structure, every organism is a complication of related organs,
the whole having many relations to the internal and external
worlds. Were changes made by blind fortuity, the chances
against the continuance of an organism, and against any
permanent improvement, would be as those attending the
production of Milton's poem, "Paradise Lost," from the
fortuitous upsetting of a box of unassorted type. Were
permanence ensured by rigid uniformity, progressive ameliora
tion would be impossible. To regard creation aright, we must

Evolution of an Individual. 407
see it as a whole, working itself out in orderly yet varying
sequence. We may compare it to the mathematical artifice
of expanding a function into a series ; but the series adds
nothing to the function — it is implicit in it. The comparison
is not adequately complex, for the whole of Nature is, in many
respects, analogous to the evolution of life. Life, from the
appearance of the first speck of living matter in the world to
the organisation of the most elaborate plants and animals, is
strictly analogous, we may say, to the evolution of every
individual man in himself. Every one of us began as a speck
of protoplasm, with scarcely any appreciable structure. Bit
by bit, this evqlved into the adult complex organism. Our
individual life seems to be a recapitulation of cosmical life.
The idea is not fanciful, but solidly scientific, and may be
applied also to the sphere of morals. Let him who reads
discern a new meaning in the Apostle's words — " The wages
of sin is death."
Until the year 1824, it was thought that the blood of every
animal took one definite and invariable direction. In that
year, M. von Haselt, happening to examine a little animal,
the Ascidian, found that the heart, after beating a certain
number of times, stopped, and then began to beat the opposite
way, reversing the course of the current. Professor Huxley
says — " I have myself timed the heart of these little animals.
I found it as regular as possible in its periods of reversal, and
I know no spectacle in the animal kingdom more wonderful
than that which it represents — all the more wonderful that to
this day it remains a unique fact, peculiar to this class among
the whole animated world."
Uniformity is evidently the floor of Nature's workshop ;
the tools and mechanisms prove that variety is aimed at as
a beauty, not always for utility : some beauty not being of
any use. Coral — formerly counted a seaweed which had
the singular property of becoming hard when brought up
from native depths into contact with the air — we know to
be an animal, with stem and branches, and fixed to the soil.
" It is a sort of natural co-operative store," one that buds and
divides, a living thing laying numerous eggs. The young,
coming forth from the eggs, have no resemblance to their

408 Variety in Nature.
parents ; swim about until, having lost their cilia or hair-like
filaments, they settle down in the sea bottom, or become fixed
to the rock, and grow up like their ancestors. Here is a plant
— no — an animal ; the young go forth unlike their sires, in
infancy volatile ; but, finding discretion betimes, build upon
a rock. Other creatures have little or no infancy : " their
young are in good liking, go forth and return not unto them."
Birds of passage, without chart or compass, find their path
across the sea, even to a place six thousand miles away, for
suitable food. True, as the needle to the pole, are these
birds to their right place and at the right time. Gallinaceous
fowl are, even at the first, equipped with instinct ; and their
bodies are clothed with feathers, yet not like the adult.
The fishes, Helmichthyidce, have such clear fleshy bodies
that the words of a book may be read through them. Fishes
have no voice, yet the Mambra utters a cry, and has breasts,
with milk j1 and that fish, the Amia, grunts in disapproval of
the doctrine, "Nature in all things is uniform." Sundry,
for no very obvious reason, ramble about on land. The
fish, Perca Scandens, is sometimes found scaling rocks, climb
ing bushes, ascending trees. The squirting fish shoots drops
of water at its prey, and seldom misses making booty of it.
Mud-fish bury themselves, and remain dormant till the rains
of the wet season set them free.
Closer inquiry discovers yet more interesting varieties.
The synthetic types which comprehend in one the properties
of several groups of life, and those embryonic changes by
which the young both of plants and animals pass through
comprehensive stages of existence belonging to other crea
tures, prove that there are wonderful physical and organic
changes strangely connected with some vastness which escapes
us on every side. A series of intermediate agencies of which
we have no knowledge intervene, not a series of uniform
agencies, but often surprises. Science, far from rendering the
universe a less mystery, proves it a greater mystery ; the
genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis
of a planet. Creation is not mechanical — a man may put
together a machine, but not a machine that shall develop
1 Livingstone's "Africa," vol. ii. p. 44.

Rhythm of Life. 409
itself. The process is even more wonderful ; formless diffused
matter was raised into the present universe and filled with life.
The variety of process in the operations is infinite. We
give, as examples, a few specialities of life.
The fact that the embryos of all animals, apparently not
different, are really different, is proved ; for if the mammal
throws off its embryo with heart in two-chambered or fish
form, it does not live ; or in the three-chambered reptile form,
it does not live ; nor though the brain of a child passes through
some lower forms, is it at any time other than the brain of a
human being. Every organic structure is not merely a thing
conditioned by circumstances for circumstances; but passes
beyond and above circumstances into the peculiarities of
special and unaccountable conditions. Take the highest
example : at some point in the development of the individual,
the human embryo became a living soul.
This variety of life's rhythm may be illustrated by light
and sound. They are undulations of an elastic medium,
simply wave-movement : the sounding body exciting undula
tions in the air, luminous and heated bodies exciting undu
lations in the aether. Owing to the differences of the media,
the sound-waves are longitudinal, those of light are transverse
the course of direction. By differences, far more minute than
those which separate light from sound, some life is limited to
a monad — compared with which a grain of sand is an earth ;
other life is complicated and perfected in those functions of
man which require cyclopaedias to describe, and is able to
explore that universe in comparison with which our earth is
but an atom.
There are oddest eccentricities. Porcupine men of the
Lambert family, covered with thorn-shaped horny substance
projecting more than an inch. Six-fingered and six-toed,
people, as the famous Spanish family of no less than forty
individuals. Descend to smaller creatures — The Hyrax (coney
of Scripture) is like a rabbit, but with strange divided hoof,
miniature of the Rhinoceros's hoof. The Rotifera, despite
complex structure and aquatic habits, can be nearly dried ;
and again brought to life by the addition of a little water.
This wetting and drying, dying without death, can be repeated
many times without killing.

410 Variety in Nature.
The Frog is the only creature that has a calf like a man.
Inquiry as to the nature and affinities of the Frog reveals the
independent origin of remarkably similar structures — such as
a shielded temporal fossa and elongated tarsus — which, with
structures like the tooth of the Labyrinthodon, neither
minute oscillations of structure nor any sexual phenomena
will account for. This process, considered in connection with
the curious transformation of the Axolotl into a creature of
quite another genus — the genus Amblystoma — shows the
powerful action of internal tendencies which may long be
latent, and points to the probability that such forms arose
through evolution of implanted powers, that is, by specific
genesis. In ordinary Mammals the milk is obtained by voluntary
suction on the part of the young, but in the Marsupials
(Kangaroos, Oppossums, etc.) the milk is forced into the mouth
of the young animal by the action of a special muscle.
Plants grow up, almost into animals ; and there is a lowering
of some animals, as into plant-like condition. We find an
intelligence, well-nigh human, in the beast ; there is scarcely
anything which we would not believe ofthe dog; and, at times,
the human becomes more inhuman than the beast. The
JEthalium septicum, appearing upon decaying vegetables, is
a fungus ; yet the ^Ethalium, in another condition, is a moving
creature, and takes in solid matter as food. The Venus Fly
trap is an insectivorous plant, laying traps for insects, squeezing
them to death, and devouring or dissolving their substance for
nourishment. The Drosera plant digests animal food. Life's
variations combine in forms so strange, habits so various, contra
dictory, startling, unaccountable, as transcend all our philosophy.
There is no reason, in the nature of things, why creatures
covered with feathers should always have beaks ; yet it seems
they do, and the Penguin has feathers somewhat scale-like.
A certain Actinia keeps house, on the hermit-crab. The
creature goes with that crab to share the prey, and even
snatches morsels that its companion is eating. Water does
not seem a good medium for a fly, yet more species than one
live beneath the surface — coming up only occasionally for air.
Red clover could not exist without the humming bee ; which,

Equilibrium not Maintained. 411
in sucking the honey, brings the pollen in contact with the
stigma — so the flower is fructified. How red clover began to
be red clover without the bee we do not know, nor how it
could be produced by " a merely mechanical relation acting
unconsciously." You cannot continue the perfect equilibrium of a pair of
scales; eventually one scale will descend, the other ascend.
Professor Hughes's Induction Balance is one of the most
exquisite pieces of apparatus ever designed to measure differ
ences in the molecular constitution or the weight of metals.
If two shillings fresh from the Mint be placed, one in each
electrical coil, a perfect balance is obtained ; but even a breath
on one of the shillings, or its being rubbed between the fingers,
makes a difference which is at once indicated by a sound in
a telephone attached, which is called the sonometer. This
sonometer has been used by Dr. Richardson to measure minute
differences in hearing under the name ofthe audiometer. This
has led to the curious discovery that right-handed people hear
best with the right ear, and left-handed persons hear best with
the left ear.
Water, however kept, will inevitably become of unequal
density and consequent currents. Heated matters soon
become different in their outer and inner parts. All masses
assume heterogeneity by action of various forces. These
things are strange as the sudden combustion of stars ; and
all natural principles and modes of life are acted upon as by
a centrifugal force ; which, nevertheless, is so controlled that
even exceptive cases gather around some centre of uniformity.
Silence may be produced by intersecting waves of sound.
Flames are made musical for hours, and dance to sounds.
Few people know that the only objects which they see single
are those they look at directly ; all others, behind or before
these, appear double. Who has found the blind spot in his eye ?
These strange anomalies, stranger still in being subject to
strictest law, are as nothing to the fact that, though we connect
our sensations with the things producing them, no kind nor
degree of similarity exists between the quality of a sensation
and the quality of an agent inducing it and portrayed by it.
The facts of consciousness present a class of phenomena whose

412 Variety in Nature.
connection with physics Professor Tyndall declares to be
" unthinkable," a chasm, "which must ever remain intellectually
impassable ; " therefore, though the material basis may be
argued for, life can never be proved purely mechanical in
essence. We possess, moreover, a faculty of projecting life
and mind beyond the body : for in thinking of the mind we
place ourselves outside the world of space, nor can we think
of it unless we do ; thus a faculty of living apart, of acting
without the body, seems attributable to the mind. Even if
we do not admit all this, when we speak of a. mental act, we
have always the concave and convex — a cause with two
faces ; the effect is not merely produced by the mind, but by
mind joined with the body. The construction of the sentient
and the imaginative principle reveals a universe of elaborate
structure, in which our intelligence and life are facts real as
any other. The assertion — " There is nothing in the world
but matter, force, and necessity," is utterly without justification.
Varieties in Reproduction.
Some animals are sexual, others are non-sexual ; Some,
strange to say, are sexual at one time, non-sexual at another;
others combine the two sexes in one individual ; others bring
forth in a virgin state. One creature, the reproductive Zooid,
or jelly-fish, has been known to attain a size of seven feet
across with tentacles fifty feet in length, though the fixed
organism from which it sprang was not more than half an inch
in height. With regard to the Water-flea (Daphnia pulex) it
seems a well-established fact that the female, when once
fertilised by the male, not only lays eggs for the rest of her
life, but can transmit the power of producing fertile ova to her
young for several generations. Among certain lower animals
and plants there are alternations of generations (metagenesis).
The Salpce, which float on the surface of the sea, have the
first, third, and fifth generations alike ; but unlike these, yet
like one another, are the second, fourth, and sixth generations.
All breeders of animals know that occasionally by reversion,
or " atavism," individual animals assume a form which has not
existed for many generations. There is no known law con
cerning this relapse to a more ancient type.
The Tapeworm is hermaphrodite in every generative joint,

Entozoa. 413
and contains innumerable ova. Variety not only distinguishes
things which are lovely, making them yet more beautiful, it
acts as a warning that we be clean. Repulsive things in
endless variety of disgusting existence are symbols of those
low and vile among men who defile the very course of Nature ;
whose life seems " a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by
an impish finger." The strangest part of all is, that these bad
cannot live but by means ofthe good, by help of nobler natures ;
evil, in itself, being only destructive — working itself out, if the
pure touch not, taste not, handle not. Examples are afforded
by entozoa. The ova of tapeworms cannot live unless they
are swallowed and nourished by a pig. For further develop
ment they must enter the alimentary canal of man. If a
portion of measly pork be eaten, it becomes an adult tapeworm
in the human stomach. Another tapeworm of man is developed
from the measles of the ox. A kind of tapeworm, found in
the stickleback, is barren ; but if the stickleback be eaten by
a water-fowl, the worm lives and reproduces after its kind.
There is a tapeworm in the mouse, and it remains infertile ;
but if a cat eat the mouse the worm lives and multiplies.
The tapeworm of the fox comes from the cystic worm of hares
and rabbits. The disease Hydatids in men is caused by cystic
worms, which are ultimately developed into the tapeworm of
the dog.
The Cod-fish spawns its million of small ova and leaves
them without protection. The Hippocampus has its fewer
large ova carried about by the male in a caudal pouch in its
skin. The Arius Boakei — a fish six or seven inches long,
produces ten or twelve eggs, large as marbles, which the male
carries in his mouth till they are hatched. After building a
nest, the male Stickleback guards the eggs ; the great Silurus
glanis does the same for some forty days, in which he takes
no food, until the eggs are hatched.
The males of most creatures are generally larger than the
females, but some females, as the parasite, Sphcerularia
Bombi, are a thousand or many thousand times larger than
the male ; and the male Balanus is small and rudimentary.
Of nearly all Raptorial birds, Vultures excepted, the females
are larger. In this, the eye sees what it brings the power to

414 Variety in Nature.
see ; and intelligent men ought to perceive that instinct and
laws of Nature are not an immutable fate, but act in a plastic
medium, drawing complication out of existing elements, ever
bringing a new message concerning new issues, revealing new
ways for attainment of new purposes, and awaking
"Sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused."
Among Bees the queen is universal mother. The males, or
drones, are produced at certain seasons ; neuters, or sterile
females (workers), are the ordinary production. These workers
procure food, build the nests, feed the young, fight for the
community. They can so modify a larva which would result
in a worker that it shall be a queen. They enlarge its cell,
make it assume vertical instead of horizontal position, keep it
warm, and feed it with queenly food. The queen requires
sixteen days for development, the workers twenty-one, the
drones twenty-five. Not only bodily organisation but psychical
nature is essentially altered by nurture.
Ants form communities of males, females, workers. The
males and females are born with wings, soon after fly away,
but in a little while the females cut off their wings, and settle
down to be careful and steady housekeepers, laying their eggs
during the first early days of the year. The workers take
wonderful care of the eggs, place them in special chambers,
every now and then lick them, and alternately carry them to
the upper and lower stories of the nest to keep them at due
temperature. When hatched, the little vermiform larvae cannot
move, but have instinct to raise the head and open the mouth,
into which their nurses put the food, feeding them like little
birds, and cleaning them by a rub over with their palpi. When
the larvae are full grown, they spin a silky oval cocoon. The
metamorphosis completed, the ant being too weak to tear open
the silk of its cocoon, would actually perish — a prisoner, were
it not for the vigilance of the workers. These, using their
mandibles, set it free, nourish it, lead it all over the nest, intro
ducing it to new life.
The red ants, Formica sanguinea, enslave other ants. Huber
describes a curious scene which he saw in 1 804 near Geneva.

Ants and Aphides, 415
A great mass of large ants of reddish colour crossed a road
with great rapidity, marching in a body from eight to ten
feet in length by three or four inches in breadth. They
pierced a thick hedge, entered and passed over a grass field
in regular array for about twenty yards, and arrived at a nest
of blackish ants. Those about the door gave an alarm and
attacked the invaders, while a host rushed from within ; but
the red ants thrust the black ones back into the nest, clambered
the dome, some forcing a way into the large avenues, while
others worked with their mandibles to open a breach in the
walls, by which the invading army entered. In three or four
minutes the red ants came out quickly, every one holding
between its mandibles a larva or nymph, and bore it home.
This was a clear case of slave-making. A wonderful instinct
causes these — which cannot work the soil, nor construct
underground edifices, nor nourish their own larvae — to capture
and enslave the nymphs and larvae of workers from the nests
of other species ; which, so soon as they have completed their
metamorphosis, build cells and feed the larvae of their captors.
Some ants are sure to be found on the plants crowded
with Aphidce: not to harm, but to rub them gently with their
antennae ; then the Aphidae, apparently pleased, distil a little
drop of sugary liquid which the ants sip up — using the Aphidae
as cows. Hundreds of observations prove that these indus
trious creatures communicate with and understand one
another. They may be seen to stop, and touch one another
with their antennae, which seem to be special organs of a
peculiar insect language. Wounded brethren are helped, led
to the nest, operations are conducted, and battles are fought
in military array.
Aphidae present curious and interesting facts. The males
have large wings, but nearly all the females are without
wings. In autumn their eggs are laid on plants ; hatched in
the spring, not as caterpillars or grubs, but imperfect Aphidae,
all females. These females are the mothers of millions and
millions exactly like themselves — females and wingless — to
nine or ten generations. Then the last generation does not
produce its like, but perfect males and females with wings,
which lay eggs in autumn to be hatched in spring. Only the

41 6 Variety in Nature.
first generation of imperfect females is hatched from eggs, all
the rest are born alive at the rate of three, four, or seven a
day ; but the last generation have inside buds which, when
born, are not like their mothers, but resemble the parents
which laid eggs the year before. This anomalous system of
reproduction is known as parthenogenesis, breaking the rule
— that like produces like.
The glories of the perfect insect are not marked in the tiny
grub. Important organs, and new combinations of structure
for peculiar functions, are added and shaped by the unknown
energy of growth and metamorphosis. The parts of an adult
are not on a small scale in the creature as it escapes from the
egg ; they can no more be found than our own soul, or inner
man, the angel part, is discovered by anatomical research and
post-mortem dissection.
Some insects, like Grasshoppers, change their skins several
times during growth. There are changes inside the egg, and
moultings and metamorphoses outside, during the history of
most of the Articulata. Some change so greatly as to become
wholly different creatures, others submit but to slight changes
of shape and structure. Things very similar end in differences
most striking ; nevertheless, between the immature and adult
forms anatomy discovers close resemblance. The lobster
and the prawn, for example, are closely allied by similarity
of construction ; but the former changes little, the latter
presents three forms before attaining the mature beauty of
prawn life.
The Death's Head Moth possesses the power of squeaking.
The caterpillars, Attacus oicropia, from Louisiana, at first
nearly black, decorated with hairs, look like little hedgehogs.
Moulting, they become grey-green or russet in colour, all the
tubercles or spines brilliantly black. Again moulting, they
are bright green with five rows of black spots ; two magnifi
cent tubercles of a carmine colour are on the second and third
segments, and two of light yellow are on the dorsal part of
every other segment. At a third moult, the body is azure
blue on the back with black spots on the sides and head ; the
tubercles form two rows on the back, are red and much
enlarged ; the other tubercles have a single spine upon them.

Metamorphoses. 417
At the last moult, the caterpillar is of a pale green colour, all
the lateral tubercles are light green, the red tubercles take
an orange tint and have only one spine. Then it forms a
double cocoon — the outside hard and like parchment in
texture, the interior silky— where it is transformed into the
moth.1 Some caterpillars fast for nine months ; larvae of the next
kind eat and grow big; there is more in the philosophy of this
than we know : metamorphosis is not determined by simple
physical influences, it often refers back to ancestral peculiari
ties. The processional caterpillars go forth under a leader to
their food, return in the same array, yet nothing distinguishes
the leader from the others. Caterpillars, much alike, become
moths which present marked distinctions ; and moths, which
resemble one another, proceed from very dissimilar cater
pillars. Metamorphoses are generally an advance, but the female
winter moth, Climata brumata, and Psyche, positively retro
grade ; the male advances, has wings, but the female is with
out even the moving power of the caterpillar : whereas, the
females of a Nemoura are perfectly developed as winged flies ;
but the wings of the males are rudimentary and short. Of
the Psyche helix moth, we only know the female ; the virgin
females lay eggs which become perfect females. In like
manner, isolated female wasps give birth to eggs which turn
to females, no males ; which again produce their like.2
The Hymenoptera, most highly endowed of all insects, are
in an early stage most helpless ; the larvae of ants, for ex
ample, must have the food put into their mouths. On the
other hand, the instinct, or sense of hearing, or of smell, that
enables the parasitic Hymenoptera to discover a larva inside
a fruit, or within a branch or trunk of a tree, and perfectly out
of sight, makes us wonder. Some non-carnivorous insects
hunt and catch prey for their carnivorous young ; then stupefy
the prey so that it may remain alive, even months in helpless
state, for the young to feed on. All known Beetles lay eggs,
but in 1864 Schiodte discovered that the Staphylinidce pro-
1 "Transformations of Insects," p. Ill: Dr. P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S.
2 Ibid. pp. 158, 238.
2 E

41 8 Variety in Nature.
duced living larvae. All the Myriapods respire by agency
of tracheae, but Sir John Lubbock describes a curious little
myriapod, Pauropus, which has a look of cheerful intelligence,
no tracheae, and respires, he supposes, through the skin. All
these varieties, of which natural uniformity is the theatre for
display, are indications of a mysterious energy working in
particular ways, adjusting inner and outer relations ; and,
however elevated and complicated the result, it is wrought
by means of the simplest elements, and generally by insensible
degrees. The smallest amount of intelligence requires perfect organi
sation : but mechanical appliances, implements, tools, neces
sary to produce good work, do not convey intelligence, though
they may be called its mechanical basis. Nature seems to
have a purpose in everything, and works as knowing how to
do it, though the purposeless or " silent members " in animal
frames are hard to account for. Some animals have teeth,
never meant to eat with ; the rudiments of toes in a horse,
and teats in male animals, are utterly useless. Are we thence
to infer that eyes are not meant to see with ; nor feet to walk
with ; nor teeth to eat with ; nor was " a duck expressly
intended to be a duck with a web-foot, that it might pleasantly
move on the water ; but forefathers and mothers a long way
back began, under pressing circumstances, to get a duckish
disposition ; and by dint of endeavour for ages to try their
chance of paddling themselves about on the pools of a puddly
world, were at length rewarded with complete success — so
remarkable indeed, that a generation sprang from them
thoroughly equipped for the waters with web-feet, oily back,
boat-shaped bodies, spoony bills, and bowels to correspond
with mudworms and duckweed ? " 1 Surely it is time to lay
aside notions so grotesque, and to live, as did Newton and
Boyle, in the conception that
' ' God dwells within, and moves the world and moulds,
Himself and Nature in one form enfolds." Goethe.
If not able to assign a purpose for these purposeless struc-
1 " The First Man and His Place in Creation," p. 36 : George Moore, M.D.

Rudimentary Organs. 419
tures, we are less able to account for them as a natural selec
tion : they would be unnatural. It is inconceivable that any
creature could or would voluntarily grow them ; nor can we
credit that any brute is able to make an intelligent attempt,
by means of purposeless structures, to become intelligent. It
is incredible that any animal would put swiftness from the feet,
fangs from the mouth, claws from the paws, cast aside the
acute sense of smell, in order to advance in life ; or that any
intelligent creature would divest itself of those advantages.
As for time and space, they are not structural causes, and
could never enable any brute to generate a progeny that
would submit to conditions of moral responsibility. If, how
ever, we consider that " silent members " were of use in the
past, or are for use in the future ; that there is in Nature
an agency of use and disuse ; light begins to shine in the
darkness. Rudimentary organs then show somewhat of the
stages by which old forms die out and new forms come in :
by modifications acting through generations of ancestral
organisms. If not, there is another explanation : — The
finished and complicated parts of our most wonderful
machinery are all found typified in simpler shape, and
narrower use in smaller or in primitive engines: so the im
perfect organs of lower animals become perfect in higher
creatures. In like manner, the human mind is a real though
faint emblem of the Wisdom of which all natural phenomena
are manifestations. We have a sketch, in ourselves, of the
detail and plan which are worked up into the universal fabric :
the lower anticipating the higher, the higher fulfilling that
anticipation. The battle of life through all time and in every field repre
sents an unseen influence, but visible in effect, taking away
the feeble from an unequal contest, laying aside the lame if
they cannot be made to walk, carrying off the blind if .they
cannot be made to see ; that the strong, the swift, the clear^
sighted, may attain perfection. Butler's comparison may be
true ; waste of seeds, like waste of souls, is a condition of
psychic and organic progress ; an analogue of selection carried
out in the spiritual world. " Life is not a bully who swaggers
out into the open universe, upsetting the laws of energy in all

420 Variety in Nature.
directions, but rather a consummate strategist, who<, sitting
in his secret chamber over his wires, directs the movements
of a great army," x and leads his forces to possess the
world. We pass from Varieties in Life to the Manifold Changes of
Inorganic Matter.
Chemistry is the science of experimental surprises. The
most inert substances often produce, by combination, com
pounds of the strongest energy ; the tasteless becoming
intensely sour, sweet, or bitter ; water, that quenches fire,
contains the elements of fire ; and things which give and
gladden life turn into demons of destruction. Many mineral,
vegetable, animal poisons, having apparently little in common,
produce the same effect on the muscles as heat. The chemical
union of different kinds of atoms, in the definite proportions
of whole numbers, entirely changes their characters and pro
perties. Paint is made which so absorbs and retains bright
light as to become luminous in the dark. Two different
liquids often condense into a solid ; and the result of the
chemical combination of two various gases or vapours, in
quantitive proportions, may be solid, liquid, or aeriform.
The ingredients of that acrid, dangerous, corrosive liquid,
aquafortis, in different proportions, are constituents of the
summer breeze. Another affinity of our atmosphere pro
duces " laughing gas." More surprising, there are compound
substances absolutely identical in the number and relative
proportions of elements which in colour, odour, taste, are
wholly unlike. The same substance will act as an acid in
one combination, and as a base in another. Indeed, chemical
laws seem imperfectly stated cases of some more general
law of combination.
A piece of sugar falls into water, sinks by law of gravity ;
but, in a little while, is found to have pervaded and sweetened
the whole. The same happens with salt, alum, and various
other substances ; yet, oil poured on the water will not diffuse
itself through the mass ; and gases of different densities put
into a vessel will not take different levels according to gravity,
but commingle, by the law of diffusion.
1 "The Unseen Universe."

Temperature. 42 1
Every different body requires a different quantity of heat
to produce in it the same change of temperature ; and the
volume of most substances increases continuously as the
temperature rises ; but there is at least one exception among
solid bodies — Iodide of Silver. The three principal states in
which matter is found are the solid, the liquid, the gaseous ;
but most substances, probably all, are- capable of existing
in every one of these states. The solid, passing into the
liquid state, is actually hotter than the liquid — the surplus
heat, used up in liquefying, is called latent. There is gene
rally a change of bulk in the act of fusion ; some substances
expand, some diminish, we know not why. Ice dissolves
into water of less bulk, but most substances enlarge by
liquefaction. It requires more heat at high than low tem
perature to warm liquid one degree. Most liquids contract
with cold, but water expands from 39° F. to 32° F., and then
crystallizes. A glacier moves slowly on like a viscous
body, although ice is not viscous. An indiarubber band
suddenly stretched out becomes warmer, if you pull out a
steel spring it becomes colder. The conversion of liquid into
vapour requires an amount of latent heat which is generally
much greater than the latent heat of fusion of the same
substance, and when a gas is near its point of condensation,
density increases more rapidly than the pressure. When it is
at the point of condensation, the slightest increase of pressure
condenses the whole into liquid, which seems contrary to the
law — "the pressure of a gas is proportional to its density."
In the liquid form the density increases very slowly with the
pressure. When temperature has attained a certain point, the
properties of a liquid and those of the vapour continually
approach to similarity, and above a certain temperature the
properties of a liquid are not separated from those of a vapour
by any apparent difference between them. Hence, the gaseous
and liquid states are only different forms of the same con
dition of matter, and pass into each other without any in
terruption or breach of continuity. In one way you can see
this, in another you cannot. Begin, for example, with water :
take this path B, a, A ; return by A, a, B. We begin with
water at B, we have water and saturated steam about a, then

422 Variety in Nature.
superheated steam till we reach A. On our way back we
have no such stages — though when we reach B there is water
as at first.1 M. Daubree, by heating water to a very high
temperature, and under pressure in strong glass tubes, has
produced silica in a crystallised condition similar to the
crystals of quartz. There is now a process for the production
of carbon in the state of crystals. The products do not seem
to be diamonds, nor is the crystalline substance truly carbon ;
but, possibly, diamond dust may be manufactured, and
ultimately diamonds of magnitude. Industrious workers are
pushing investigation and experiment into every field, are
adding to our knowledge year by year, and increasing our
power to use the forces of Nature for our own purposes.
Potassium and sodium are somewhat remarkable : these
metals are near akin in their specific gravities, their atomic
weights, their chemical affinities, and the properties of their
compounds. Potassium fuses at I44'5° F., sodium at 20770 F.,
but the alloy or mixture of the two is liquid at the ordinary
temperature of the air. Cold is made to exist amidst hottest
fire, and ice may be taken from a burning crucible. These are
facts which only experiment discovers, and can only be reduced
to law by a formula which includes the usual course and the
apparent exception. Observe more particularly as to water ;
when in contact with ice, it cannot be cooled below zero without
being converted into ice. In heating the water the ice melts,
but the temperature of the mixture is never raised above
320 F, so long as the ice remains unmelted. Hence, the water
contains a greater quantity of heat at 320 F., than ice contains at
32° F, and gives up or uses its heat in the effort to become ice.
Physicists state that changes in consciousness are correlated
with molecular motions of nerve-matter, which are highly
differentiated forms of solar radiance. They mean — vital
energy differentiates the waves of solar radiance into those
undulatory motions of nerve-matter which excite organic
consciousness. Waves of this radiance speed to the earth at
the rate of more than five hundred trillions to the second,
and impart their energy so that we have growth of grass.
Cattle browse on this, and hold in another form of equi-
1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 335 : Prof. P. G. Tait, M.A.

Assimilation. 423
librium, by integration of tissues, these metamorphosed sun
beams. Man, assimilating the nitrogenous tissues of the cow, j
builds up that wonderful white and grey nerve-tissue by the \
vital action of which is obtained the astonishing and com- I
pleted transformation of solar radiance into human con
sciousness. We know of nothing more wonderful than this
continual miracle : a miracle of progress by daily infinitesimal
steps and transformations, and without our being able to say
— " there is the place of birth."
Mental life comes out of physiological life, but how mental
activity was originated in organisms by the simple elementary
modifications of external to internal relations, and passed
from the automatism of lowest creatures to the highest act of
consciousness in man, is a mystery ; nor can we say where nor
when " turned the dense black element
Into a crystal pathway for the sun."
We can think of a world, all dark, beginning to vibrate diffe
rently and in various rapidities until all gorgeous colours
shine in light and beauty ; or we may conceive the low
rumblings of many motions acquiring tone until every musical
note vibrates in world-wide oratorio ; but infinitely more \
miraculous and varied is that operation by which, from things \
dark and silent, God brings the light of human intellect, and /
the many prayers and praises which make the earth a vast j
cathedral. Turn to the exactest of sciences, Astronomy.
The planetary motions, and those of the more than two I
hundred planetoids, are so complex, and their relative posi- '
tions so change, that the place of the general centre of
gravity in relation to the mass of the sun is never the same
for two consecutive moments ; therefore, the disturbances of
the sun's motion must be most irregular and complex ; nor is
any particle of matter throughout the whole solar system in
the same state or place for any two consecutive seconds.
This example of immeasurable variety in connection with
marvellous uniformity, is only exceeded by the same fact as

424 Variety in Nature.
extended to all worlds. How vast and many are those worlds !
Before our scientific gaze the diamond dust in the sky becomes
suns and stars. Little cloudlets expand and reveal spheres of
majesty. There are variable suns, binary and multiple systems,
stars suddenly blazing forth in splendour, and mysterious
dark orbs rolling in night. Great is the variety of systems,
yet not a tithe of the various orders of bodies is known, we
have only a faint conception of the wonderfully varied forms
of creation within the stellar spaces. Not long ago, astrono
mers could scarcely allow that the vast depths, wherein the
planets pursue their career, are the home of countless smaller
bodies rushing in wide orbits round the solar mass. Few or
none believed that those faintly gleaming lights, passing with
silent swoop across a star group, leaving no trace of their
existence and seeming of as little importance in the universe
as a rain-drop or snow-flake, indicated the close of a career
which had often, by uncounted millions of miles, surpassed
the utmost limits of the known planetary system. These
crowds of independent orbs, rushing disorderly round the sun,
in no sort an obedient family, would, it was considered, make
the sweet bells of the planetary system to jangle, be out of
time, and harsh : nevertheless, the earth, sweeping on in her
path, is exposed to cannonade from more than a hundred
meteor systems ; and at critical periods is assaulted with
heavier metal than that encountered in the second week of
November ; not only balls weighing many pounds, but of
several tons, have been shot against her.
How wonderful are the coloured suns ! The brilliant Vega,
a splendid steel-blue star, in the constellation Lyra, at mid
night in winter, and earlier with the approach of spring, as it
skirts the southern horizon, scintillates with red blue and
emerald light. Arcturus, low down in the east and north
east, in spring evenings twinkles yet more beautifully.
Capella, towards the north, in summer nights, notably sparkles.
-Sirius, noblest of all — " The fiery Sirius alters hue,
And bickers into red and emerald."
These various colours are caused in part by our own atmo-

Colours of the Stars. 425
sphere ; but the stars are not wanting in real colours of theif
own. Sirius, Regulus, Spica, are white stars ; Betelgeux,
Aldebaran, Arcturus, Antares, are red ; Procyon, Capella, the
Pole-star, are yellow ; Castor is of slightly green tint ; Vega
and Altair are bluish ; Castor has a green companion, Antares
also, and there is the well-known "garnet star." In the
double, triple, and multiple stars are many tints of the rainbow.
" Here we have a green star with a deep blood-red companion,
there an orange primary accompanied by a purple or indigo-
blue satellite. White is found mixed with light or dark red,
purple, ruby, or vermilion." One of the most startling facts
is^ — their colour is not unchangeable. Of old, Sirius was red,
now it is white. A double star in Hercules changed in
twelve years "from yellow, through grey, cherry-red, and
egregious red, to yellow again." These show that the stars
are formed of different elements, and that their- vapours burn
with variable brilliancy. There is Mira, the marvellous,
shining brightly for two days thirteen hours and a half, as a
star of the second magnitude ; then, suddenly losing her light,
in three hours and a half falls to the fourth magnitude ; then,
the brilliancy growing, in another three hours and a half she
reattains her former lustre. The times of at least twenty-
four variable stars have been calculated. Sometimes, as in
the case of temporary stars, a spectrum of the fourth class is
suddenly crossed by the bright lines of hydrogen, showing
either a last discharge of red flames, or a flicker due to some
last chance impact of meteoric matter.
Suns far off in space, and, for aught we know, important as
our own, quickly blaze with wonderful brightness, and after
wards lose their splendour. A beautiful star appeared in Cas
siopeia, A.D. 1572. It surpassed all other stars, was as Venus
at her brightest, became of the first magnitude, exhibited
various hues, and disappeared in March, 1574. In May, 1866,
a star which had long shown feebly in the constellation of the
Northern Crown, suddenly burst into flames, and attained the
glory of a second magnitude star. Scientific men thought
that the hydrogen encircling it passed from a relatively cool
state, like that surrounding our sun and Capella and Alde
baran, into intense heat which made it glow with a hundred-

426 Variety in Nature.
fold brightness. It is now, again, a star of the tenth magni
tude. "For the years A.D. 807, 840, 1096, and 1607, and
several others ... a great deficiency of the sun's light has
been recorded. Thus in the annals of the year A.D. 5 36, the
sun is said to have suffered a great diminution of light which
continued fourteen months. From October, A.D. 626, to the
following June, a defalcation of light to the extent of one-
half is recorded ; and in A.D. 1547, during three days, the sun
is said to have been so darkened that the stars were seen in
the day-time." 1
We can study, not only changes in splendour, fatal catas
trophes, the succession of phases of life in one particular star,
but different simultaneous phases in many. Some stars start
into life, others become older, others older and older ; some
times a dead star — a star scarcely noticeable by the astro
nomer, lives again. One, lately examined by Dr. Huggins, a
star which had cooled down to its lowest stages, became bright
by an outburst of hydrogen. Does all this, like the rolling of
the ocean, rhythmically repeated yet ever varying, while it
rivets our attention and hurries us along, leave a final impres
sion of solitude on the mind ? No : the motions of the stars,
orderly and stately in gorgeous hue, bear down into the
beholder's soul conceptions of hitherto unimagined glory and
beauty. Take our own system : the rule of law within may itself be
regarded as a miracle, if wrought by chance. The chances
against the uniformity being by chance are, Laplace states,
four millions of millions to one. The movement of the sun
on its axis, of the planets round the sun, of the satellites round
their primaries (those of Uranus, possibly Neptune, excepted),
and the motion of all on their axes, is from west to east.
There is nearly a regular gradation in their density, the dis
tances are curiously relative, weaving them into one web of
mutual arrangement and harmonious agreement. Neverthe
less, the uniformity is not an invariability impressed by
unintelligent force. Variety prevails everywhere. Take the
rates of axial rotation. The sun revolves in about twenty-
five days eight hours ; the moon requires a month to turn in ;
1 " Outlines of Astronomy : " Sir John F. W. Herschel, Bart.

Changes in our Earth. 427
the earth occupies one day; Mercury, twenty-four hours and five
minutes; Venus about twenty-three hours and a half ; Mars,
somewhat more than twenty-four hours and a half; Jupiter,
less than ten hours ; and Saturn, say, ten and a half hours.
We are sure that there is reason in all this : for " if the universe
be delivered over to the undisturbed action of its physical
processes, all force will finally pass into the form of heat, and
all heat come into a state of equilibrium. Then all possibility
of a further change would be at an end, and the complete
cessation of all natural processes must set in . . . the universe
from that time forward would be condemned to a state of
eternal rest." x
From such a state of eternal rest the world could not raise
itself ; and into such a state it would long ago have passed,
were it not for Reason guiding and Energy sustaining. The
leaps, surprises, reversals, new beginnings, found within our
system (for the births of planets occurred at widely remote
periods, and the stages of their growth differ enormously in
duration) are of a nature that requires not only might but
wisdom for their maintenance. "We see our earth passing
through a vast period from its first existence as a separate
member of the solar system, to the time when life appeared
upon its surface : then began a comparatively short period,
now in progress,' during which the earth has been and will
be the abode of life; and after that must follow a period,
infinite to our conceptions, when the cold and inert globe of
the earth will circle as lifelessly round the sun as the moon
now does." 2 We know that our earth may so change in the
course of hundreds of thousands of years to come, that none
of the present forms of life could live in those changed con
ditions; nevertheless, we also know that descendants of the
creatures now living may then be as well fitted to the existing
circumstances as are the most favoured races of our time : so
great and marvellous are the varieties of God's handiwork.
Wander whithersoever we may, far as we can, long as we can,
we shall yet find ourselves within the populous dominions of
the Almighty. 1 " Interaction of Natural Forces : " Prof. Helmholtz.
2 "Science Byways," pp. 15, 16: Richard A. Proctor.

428 Variety in Nature.
This study of varieties may well end in leading heart and
mind to some, though faint, conception of the great changes
and catastrophes yet to come.
At every transformation of heat-energy into work a large
portion is degraded, and only a small portion put into real
work. It is easy to transform all mechanical or useful energy
into heat, but only a small part of this heat-energy can be
turned back into work. Every change degrades or dissipates
the heat : it becomes less and less available for further trans
formation : nevertheless, energy whilst dissipating may be
available ; thus the earth cools and loses its potential energy
by radiation into space, but the rocks contract and lay up a
store of available kinetic energy and curve the surface of the
earth.1 Heat is really the communist of the universe, tending
for ever and ever to equalisation, and will, no doubt, bring our
system to an end. The sun, supporting us with heat and
energy, is becoming older and colder. By something analo
gous to aethereal friction, the earth and planets are spirally
drawn nearer, and will be engulfed in his mass. By that
collision, energy will be converted into heat, and the power of
the sun have partial and temporary restoration to do more
work ; but this process also will come to an end. Then the
fall together, say of some other sun, distant as Sirius, and our
sun, would generate thirty or forty times as much energy for
future radiation to other planets. Then, the fall together of
other suns will convert more energy into heat and matter
to be evaporated and transformed into gaseous or nebulous
condition. Ages and ages pass away, but ultimately all
masses share the same fate, give out their light and heat into
space, become dark, and no more seen.
Whether this process completes itself independently in
different parts of the sidereal system by local integration and
disintegration, or by aggregating the whole matter of the
sidereal system, the diffusion will undo all previous concentra
tion. Without entering any transcendental inquiiy as to the
existence or non-existence of infinite systems, but keeping
to a practical and soluble question, there is reason to think
1 Presidential Address to Geological Society, 1877 : Dr. P. Martin Duncan,
F.R.S.

Passing Away of Worlds. 429
that all existing solar systems will be reduced again to nebulous
form. The universally co-existent forces of attraction and /
repulsion cause, when attraction prevails, creation to pre-/
dominate ; and when repulsion predominates, chaos to prevail.!,
The actions of the past are repeated in the future, in form,
in motion, in life ; the same in principle, never the same in
concrete result. Destruction follows destruction, through
periods long delayed, until the things seen and temporal pass
away. Then, if He will who rules, other beginnings and crea
tions arise to occupy an immeasurable future as preceding
rhythms of Divine Power occupied an infinite past.
Our mind contemplates with awe the sublime spectacle of
space and time, of creation and chaos, of life and death,
shrined within the omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence,
of God. The epochs of transformation may be separated by
time-intervals so enormous that the duration of life on our
earth and the duration of our earth itself, may be but a second
as compared with a thousand years.
Energies wholly unknown to us are at work, and at any
moment may produce weal or w-oe. That which overtakes
other worlds may happen to our own ; for this, and, something
yet nearer, our own dissolution, we have to prepare. Many
considerations are involved in it. We will take one that fits
our study — The life-sustaining orbs around us, are surpassed,
probably a thousand-fold, by those yet lifeless, or those long
since dead. It is not unscientific to think that some of us may
wander as spectres among inert lifeless masses of ruined
worlds — where the dead bury their dead ; while others, en
tering that which is now invisible, possess worlds truly
amazing. The lower animals are a parable to us. At certain seasons
they abandon their usual haunts, turn from wonted enjoy
ments, and seek some asylum as if to prepare for new untried
condition — they follow a sure guiding of Nature. Even the
insect is not deluded in preparing for metamorphosis — no,
not one ; and awakes unto the gaiety of a new and higher life.
Nor shall human dust be irrecoverably scattered by the winds :
for good purpose our eyes traverse and oversee the immensity
of space, our minds form true notions of the universe. The

430 Variety in Nature.
sun, the stars, the planets, are " brilliants floating in an upper
aether," to light us in that pathway of the just which shineth
more and more unto perfect day. Beside all this, we have
the loving influence of human soul on human soul. We are
conscious of a baptism and consecration in which the true
belief of holy men binds us to purity and rectitude. Blessed
influence, not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic ;
mysterious, effectual, mighty, as the hidden processes by
which life is quickened. Words are but poor ghosts of the
grand reality of things that make themselves felt as if they
were our flesh. They breathe upon us with warm breath,
they touch us with responsive hands, look at us with sincere
glad eyes. The presence of soul to soul is a power filling
with emotion, attractive as flame to flame, drawing with
gentle compulsion to the sweet enjoyment of union with the
Lord. For this union we are being prepared by the existing variety
in Nature. Eternal Energy is not limited to natural unifor-r
mity, but comes forth in all changes of the world's ever-varying
forces. Similar antecedents do not always determine similar
consequents. Involution and evolution of a Divine character
advance by manifestations increasingly unlike their precedents.
From chaos went forth creation, out of the dead came the
living. From the present creation and the present life, by
different degrees in Nature, as lower steps to the higher, we
shall ascend those glorious heights, whither Divine thought
and work successively conduct. No wonder that our discipline
is somewhat sharp, for the destiny before us is .very splendid,
and in the coming hallowed glory that our Creed tells us of
the universe will never lose its soul of loveliness.
" My spirit was entranced
With joy exalted to beatitude ;
The measure of my soul was filled with bliss,
And holiest love ; as earth, sea, air, with light,
With pomp, with glory, with magnificence." William Wordsworth.

STUDY XXI.
FOLLIES OF THE WISE.
"Not as yet
Are we in shelter or repose,
The Holy House is still beset
With leaguer of stern foes. " Keble
" Conquer we shall, but we must first contend ;
'Tis not the fight that crowns us, but the end." Anon.
We propose to investigate certain statements made by a few
scientific men concerning Scripture. If the inquiry should
prove that remarkable fact — " the natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto
him : neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned " (i Cor. ii. 14) — it may lead them and us to a more
reverent heed of that which God has spoken by the prophets,
and by His Son Jesus ; that the world may be full of a re
vealed Deity, yet the outside manifestation exercise little or
no influence for good, unless it awakens the conscience and
regenerates the affections.
Our investigation may also correct that hard theological
dogmatism which, professing adherence to the very letter of
Holy Scripture, departs from that letter through ignorance of
the real meaning ; and violates the spirit through want of that
pure, wise, loving, obedient heart, without which no one is
accepted of God.
At the outset we encounter a puzzling truth: the Bible,
neither teaching science, nor written scientifically, has well-
nigh for ever seemed against the secular science of the age,
yet the Old Book and the Old Faith survive. Not only so,
theologians have been among the first to point out astro-

432 Follies of the Wise.
nomical and other difficulties in the Bible ; while the greatest
astronomers and most renowned physicists always assert that
Mind planned the world, its processes and laws having in
terpretation by intelligence as they are the manifestation
of Intelligence. To mention only two — who can doubt
Newton's piety, or distrust the simple child-like faith of
Copernicus ?
The oppositions of Science in one age against Scripture
have generally been removed in the next, and though the
time for full mutual reconciliation and verifying has not
arrived — the mechanism of the world not being wholly re
vealed, and the best of us "stretching but lame hands of
faith " — the ablest men have a growing and abiding convic
tion that intelligence and piety unite in the perfect man.
The objectors of old were acute as are objectors now.
Ancient heathens well handled, and then cast away as use
less, the very weapons which men of our own day gather
and refurbish. The Jews, long ago, by pseudo-criticism,
did all well-nigh that could be done against the Messianic
Prophecies ; but those Prophecies yet testify and truly.
The complaint that science was not Divinely taught is
evidently unreasonable — " If the Jews had been told that
water existed in the clouds in small drops, they would have
marvelled that it did not constantly descend ; and to have
explained the wisdom of this would have been to teach
Atmology in the Sacred Writings. If they had read in their
Scripture that the earth was a sphere, when it appeared to
be a plane, they would only have been disturbed in their
thoughts, or driven to some wild and baseless imaginations,
by a declaration to them so strange. If the Divine Speaker,
instead of saying that He would set His bow in the clouds,
had been made to declare that He gave to water the
property of refracting different colours at different angles,
how utterly unmeaning to the hearers would the words
have been ! " x It is not for the sake of physical science ;
but for the eternal problems which lie behind all natural
phenomena, and are unaffected and unchanged despite all
1 "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p. 686: Rev. W. WhewelL
D.D.

Bible as viewed in Different Ages. 433
other changes ; that the world reverently holds in her hand
the ancient Book, and makes an effort to understand her
childhood. Some parts of the Bible have always seemed more adapted
to particular periods ; and, conversely, some more opposed.
In the Crusaders' times such words as — " Take up the Cross,"
"Glory in the Cross," filled every mouth. During Puritan
days, the New Testament being greatly neglected, the Old
was all in all. Now the Old is neglected, and some parts are
furiously assailed under the mask of science. We have no
Ulphilas to take away the aicavSaXa, or stones of stumbling,1
even if we needed one : but as Abbot Joachim's prophetic
book of the Everlasting Gospel is forgotten,2 and the attacks
of Voltaire and his literary progeny, wicked as witty, are dis
regarded ; we, reviewing the past, are sure that speech of the
following sort will soon be silenced: — " Revealed Religion is
on its trial before the world. The question is not so much
whether we shall recite the damnatory clauses in our Athana-
sian Creed, as whether any creed whatever is worth reciting.
Christianity is on its trial before the world, not for some
trifling blemishes which a little mild correction may mend,
but for its very life ; and if the clergy, its natural defenders,
can show no intelligible reason why it should stand, common
sense, in this country at least, will very speedily decide upon
its merits in a somewhat rough-and-ready fashion." 3 This
writer mistakes the errors of believers for faults in the grand
old Faith : Christianity is not on trial — men are on trial by
Christianity, not Christianity by men. Our blessed Lord did
not make every one pleased with religion, or with Him ; and
those who expect Christianity to answer riddles before the
riddles are made, must themselves answer this riddle — that
despite the opposition of secularists, "no amount of know
ledge, of the kind which alone physical science can impart,
can do more than widen the foundation of intelligent spiritual
belief." 4
1 Dean Milman's "Gibbon," small edition, vol. iv. chap, xxxviii. p. 322.
2 Dean Milman's "Latin Christianity," 8vo, vol. viii. book xii. chap. vi. p. 347.
3 "Modern Christianity a Civilised Heathenism," Preface to second edition.
4 ' ' Reign of Law : " Duke of Argyle.
2 F

434 Follies of the Wise.
We shall not take in hand sensual and irreverent ones,
who glory to find fault with whatever is pure and sacred ;
and would fain be witty by making a jest of those things
which wiser men worship. They, gloating over a good man's
error, and glad to find any nakedness of Scripture, imitate an
ancient odious sin (Gen. ix. 22, 23). It would be equally
unwise to notice men who if they chip a bit from a rock
contemptuously fling it at the Sacred Shrine. Those bone-
finders in caves who threaten to break down all the houses of
God in our land must be left in their self-confident possession
of Samson's weapon. Those, moreover, who count the result
of galvanic experiments on a frog as proof that the pheno
mena of Nature are wholly apart from the Almighty, certainly
believe that the mist they live in is a mountain-height, and
affirm that " the whole complexion of religious and scientific
thought must be changed." Such men recall to our memory
the words of Thomas Fuller, whose humour was full of wisdom,
and wisdom full of humour: — "To speak plainly, it is not the
fierceness of the lion, nor the fraud of the fox, but the mimical-
ness of the ape, which in our age hath discredited the un
doubted truth : but what if the apes in India, finding a glow
worm, mistook it to be true fire, and heaping much combus
tible matter about it, hoped by their blowing of it thence to
kindle a flame ; I say, what if that laughter-causing animal,
that mirth-making creature, deceived itself; doth it thence
follow that there is no fire at all ? "— " If some did not believe ?
Shall their unbelief make the truth of God without effect ?
God forbid."
Our task is specially difficult and painful : for the follies of
wise men are a personal disadvantage to every one, and a public
loss. To belittle great men is to dwarf ourselves ; and when
their folly concerns the best hopes of our race every good man
must weep rather than exult.
It is asserted — "Genesis is a narrative based upon legends ;
Exodus is not historically true ; the whole Pentateuch is un-
historical and non-Mosaic ; it contains the most extraordinary
contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to involve the
credibility of the whole — imperfections so many and so con-

Charge against the Pentateuch. 435
spicuous that they would destroy the authenticity of any
modern historical work." x
The writer thus taxes the pious and faithful, confessedly the
most thoughtful men in the world, with grossest ignorance ;
capable of being deluded by the most extraordinary contra
dictory and impossible things. He cites from an apocryphal
book, 2 Esdras xiv., as proof that Ezra, aided by five other
persons, " wrote these books in the space of forty days."
Against this, first, take the fact that Moses did write the Law,
(Ex. xxiv. 4 ; Deut. xxxi. 9) ; and was so confident that he
wrote by Divine Inspiration, that though stating — " He wrote
upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten command
ments " (Ex. xxxiv. 28) ; he states afterwards that God wrote
them (Deut. iv. 13, v. 22, x. 4). Secondly, notice that the
author of the Books of Esdras lays no claim at all to author
ship of the Pentateuch. He states that the Law was burnt
— that is, the copy that had been kept in the Temple ; and
asks that he may write an account of God's works " done
in the world since the beginning" (2 Esdras xiv. 21, 22).
He did write, but not the Pentateuch. He and Sarea,
Dabria, Selemia, Ecanus, Asiel, in forty days, wrote two
hundred and four books (ver. 24) — seventy for the wise,
one hundred and thirty-four for the unwise. Thirdly, we
use the testimony most likely to avail with men who make
and credit gross denials of Scripture verity, that taken
from their own school of thought — "Tradition has (without
any variation, as I believe) ascribed the history of these
transactions to Moses. . . . The language and the degree of
minuteness of the Israelitish history, from the first energetic
expostulations with the Egyptian king, to the entrance into
Canaan, are, to my mind, evidently those of a contemporaneous
account. The details of interviews with the king, on the one
hand, and of transactions with the enslaved people, on the
other hand, can only have been known to the leader of the
nation. The history of the occurrence at the burning bush
(whatever difficulties may accompany it), and of other events
nearly at the same time, can scarcely have been invented by
another person. . . . The arguments, therefore, for the truth
1 "Conflict between Religion and Science :'' Prof. Draper.

436 Follies of the Wise.
of the established tradition appear to me so strong, that nothing
short of irrefragable reasoning seems sufficient to destroy it."1
" I do- not allude at any length to the recension in the time of
Ezra, because no critic, as I believe, has suggested that any
addition to or modification of the Hebrew Books, as they then
existed, was made at that time." 2
Another groundless charge : " Sacred cosmogony regards
the formation and modelling of the earth as the direct act of
God ; it rejects the intervention of secondary causes in those
events." 3
The statement is wholly incorrect. With far more fairness
and truth it might be said — Scripture gives the true theory and
real facts of the scientific doctrine of Evolution ; for water is
said to produce the things of the deep ; and from the earth,
as mother, proceed every plant and living creature of the
land. David, with true science and common sense, used these
words as to God — "Who maketh His angels spirits ; His
ministers a flaming fire " (Ps. civ. 4). The LXX. translation,
and the Epistle to the Hebrews i. 7, lead us to understand
that God maketh His angels like winds (viz., incorporeal,
swift, powerful), and His ministers (His heavenly servants)
as a flame of fire. In Mendelssohn's " Beor " the verse is
explained : " He maketh the winds His messengers, and light
nings His ministers." Kimchi, Yarchi, and others take it
much in the same way. The best thinkers hold that the
universe is not only the skilful work of a Creator, but of a
Creator acting by means of those physical properties and
chemical combinations of matter which He had Himself
conferred. The professor further states — "A Divine revelation of
science admits of no improvement, no change, no advance. It
discourages as needless, and indeed as presumptuous, all new
discovery, considering it as an awful prying into things which
it was the intention of God to conceal." 4
Scripture— it seems we must state it again and again — is
not a revelation of science, therefore the charge is'groundless.
1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures, " p. 23 : Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B.
2 Ibid. p. 7.
s "Conflict between Religion and Science : " Prof. Draper. A Ibid.

Two Asserted Errors. 437
So-called scientific statements are, for the most part, popular
illustrations for the use of unscientific people. David shall
admonish the professor as to the studies of those who love
Scripture—" The works of the Lord are great, sought out of
all them that have pleasure therein " (Ps. cxi. 2). Solomon,
no mean man, gives a rebuke, for he greatly studied those
works (1 Kings iv. 30-33). The founders of universities, the
ancient endowers of schools, rightly thought that our know
ledge of God as Creator leads to a more reverential and better
understanding both of Creation and Revelation. These devout
men, far from thinking that Scripture allowed no improvement,
no change, no advance, encouraged as useful, as reverential,
all search after truth : pious men have ever been the great
promoters of learning and of science.
An able man, in his own line of things, praises and dispraises
at the same time : — " Two great and fundamental ideas,
common also to the non-miraculous theory of development,
meet us in this Mosaic hypothesis of Creation, with surprising
clearness and simplicity- — -the idea of separation or differentia
tion, and the idea of progressive development or perfecting.
Although Moses looks upon the result of the great laws of
organic development (which we' shall later point out as the
necessary conclusions of the doctrine of Descent) as the direct
actions of a constructing Creator, yet in his theory there lies
hidden the ruling idea of a progressive development and a
differentiation of the originally simple matter. We can there
fore bestow our just and sincere admiration on the Jewish
lawgiver's grand insight into Nature, and his discovering in it
a so-called 'Divine revelation.' That it cannot be such is
clear from the fact that two grand fundamental errors are
asserted in it, namely, first, the geocentric error that the earth
is the fixed central point of the whole universe, round which
the sun, moon, and stars move ; and secondly, the anthropo-
centric error, that man is the premeditated aim of the creation
of the earth, for whose service alone all the rest of Nature is
said to have been created." x
The learned professor ought to know that Moses says
nothing about man being " the premeditated aim of the
1 "The History of Creation : " Prof. Haeckel.

438 Follies of the Wise.
creation ; " but that man, being the highest work of God, was
made lord of earthly creatures. Further, it is somewhat
inconsistent to credit Moses for far-reaching wisdom ; and
yet, to tax him with rudest ignorance in that very thing con
cerning which he was wise. The Geocentric Error is no error ;
the earth is popularly, figuratively, poetically, and as our own
standpoint, the centre. The A nthropocentric Error is likewise
to be explained as a popular mode of speech. In reality, all
true spiritual presentation passes into the infinite — suggests
rather than expresses. Scripture must be judged in accord
ance with all the facts : the earth is great, the sun is greater ;
as to far-off worlds, assertion becomes unscientific, yet to those
worlds and beyond them travels the human spirit, as if
exceeding all, seeking brighter light and higher life. It is the
height of unreason, for materialistic and atheistic professors —
blaming the statement of Scripture that man's true greatness
is found in likeness to God — to tell us that we are merely
clever beasts, and yet — the only god ! With utter loathing
we give the following reprehensible declaration : — " The dim
and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away
from before us ; and as the mist of his presence floats aside,
we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of
a yet grander and nobler figure, of Him who made all Gods,
and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and
from the inmost depth of every soul, the face of our father
Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his
eyes, and says — ' Before Jehovah was, I am.' " x It is con
temptible folly for these men to talk thus of "our father
Man." Why, they assure us that he was nothing better than
— a monkey !
The expressions — rising, setting, travelling of the sun, the
fixity and foundations of the earth — though the only in
telligible language, have been found fault with. We are
told — " Scripture speaks of a flat earth ; and of the sky as
a watery vault in which the sun, moon, and stars set ; of the
firmament as a solid arch, literally something beaten or ham
mered out ; and of the Almighty as a gigantic man."
Really, such fault-making displays neither intelligence nor
1 "Lectures and Essays," W. K. Clifford, vol. ii. p. 243.

Movement of Sun and Stars. 439
candour ; if opponents would remember that no science is
involved here, that these are the every-day statements of all
ages ; and if they discriminate as to what is fact and what
figure, where literal accuracy is to be looked for and where
a poetic thought, they will be preserved from an infinity of
folly. The firmament is that in which, to the eyes of the
people, sun and stars do set ; and is, indeed, a space for waters.
The earth, in common language, is ever spoken of as a plane.
In a higher sense even than is stated, the sun does go forth as
a giant to run a race.
The stability of the earth is counted an error : —
" The world also shall be stable, that it be not moved "
(1 Chron. xvi. 30).
" The world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved "
(Ps. xciii. 1, xcvi. 10, cxix. 90 ; Eccl. i. 4).
The real meaning is — God, who made the earth, will sup
port it ; the excellent order which He established shall be
maintained ; heither storms from without, nor any commotion
from within, shall unsettle its abiding.
The principal texts mentioning the movement of sun and
stars are :
" The sun was risen upon the earth " (Gen. xix. 23).
"The sun was going down " (Gen. xv. 12).
"The sun ... is as a bridegroom coming out of his
chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his
circuit unto the ends of it " (Ps. xix. 5, 6).
"The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and
hasteth to his place where he arose " (Eccl. i. 5).
Science uses the same language now, and it is the best
language. He who finds fault with Scripture for poetically
and popularly speaking of the sun, must deal with other books
in the same manner. If, however, scientific accuracy is un
reasonably demanded ; we answer that even here, " deep
answers to deep within the sacred oracles " — the sun revolving
on his axis, as actually viewed, from the earth by scientific
men and as revolving around his own great centre, does rise,
set, go forth and return, in a manner truly wonderful, and
surpassing all expectation.

440 Follies of the Wise.
Two other passages are asserted to be incorrect : —
" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon ; and thou, Moon, in
the valley of Ajalon " (Josh. x. 12).
The sun and his shadow are stated to have returned ten
degrees (2 Kings xx. 10 ; Isai. xxxviii. 8).
The words translated " sun " and " moon," rather refer to
the light than to the substance of those bodies. In what way
God continued the sunlight, or a light resembling it, so that
Israel fought as in the day, we know not, nor does it seem
in the power of man to explain the wonder which confirmed
Hezekiah's faith ; but a scientific eye-witness might possibly
have discerned some of the means by which the different mar
vels were wrought, though the stopping of the earth in its
axial rotation, or the return of degrees, may be inexplicable as
a change in natural order naturally effected. No human effort
can bring Scripture miracles within the understood range of
natural order; indeed, their evidential value may depend upon
deviation from that order. Both of those in question may have
been special providences — coincidence of the physical event
with the moral lesson in illustration of Divine rule.
Providential and miraculous arrangements are probably
similar to those operations which we see day by day in the
course of Nature ; for all things, ordinary and extraordinary,
are wrought by the eternal omnipresent Power. As Nature,
ever flowing onward in the uninterrupted rhythm of cause
' and effect, is mediately used and subordinated by the human
1 will acting as a trigger to liberate controlling power, so Divine
Will acts mediately by Nature, and directly upon Nature, with
infinite wisdom and might.
With somewhat of scientific affectation calculations have
been made to show that the miracle wrought on behalf of
Israel, in the days of Joshua, required the energy of six
trillions of horses ; was a wasteful expenditure, in a few hours,
of that which would have provided fighting power for all the
armies of the world during millions of years.1 Such trifling
needs no grave reply. Match it with another calculation :
the wisdom and power requisite to form and give life, by
human means, to a cheese mite, would require more than all
1 " Miracles and Special Providences : '' Prof. Tyndall. ,

Charge as to Waste of Power. 441
the millions of men from the beginning of creation till now
have possessed ; what a waste of power for God to have been
at such expenditure for a cheese mite ! Moreover, of 2,300
million parts of light and heat emitted by the sun, our earth
only receives one part. Surely those who blame us for liken
ing God to man — when we exhort men to be God-like, are
more blameable for making God man-like, by accounting that
anything is either little or much to Him. Greatness and
smallness are relative— nothing more: "there is absolutely
nothing to show that even a portion of matter which in our
most powerful microscope appears as hopelessly minute as
the most distant star appears in our telescopes, may not be
as astoundingly complex in its structure as is that star itself,
even if it far exceed our own sun in magnitude." x
If miracles were bound up with credulous prattle, and stood
alone, doubtless, faith in miracles would pass away with our
childhood ; but, being associated with words and deeds of
imperishable wisdom and sublime purity, they are regarded as
sparks from the great wheel of Divine operation. They are in
connection with examples of moral grandeur, nowhere matched
in the history of mankind, proving that they are not inventions
of the crafty and deceitful. If opponents answer — " We do
not deny the moral grandeur of those who asserted the
miracles, but we maintain that in an unscientific age moral
grandeur is compatible with an uncritical belief in the mar
vellous ; " then we reply — The men used as agents to work
them, and many ofthe eye-witnesses, were the most thought
ful and experienced of our race : not likely to be, and, in many
cases, could not be deceived : and the Power displaying the
marvels is that very Power which Science acknowledges to
exist behind all phenomena. Nor is that all : those physical
marvels are given in attestation of whatever knowledge is
possessed concerning Forgiveness of sin, Redemption from
evil, Immortality of life.
We are gravely told — " The universe of the Bible is limited
to a few thousand years in time, and to a narrowly bounded
area in space."
Where is it so limited ? Certainly not in the Bible, where
1 " Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 284 : Prof. P. G. Tait.

442 Follies of the Wise.
are glowing descriptions of the grandeur and antiquity of the
universe. Limitations, that do exist, must be interpreted by
the larger accounts ; or explained by the. purpose for which
limitation is made. The Inspiration of a Prophet was not
universal as to knowledge ; but special for his ministry. As
to the Earth's antiquity, the Rev. R. Greswell, in " The Three
fold Cord," says — " In the very year, which, it has often been
shown, is assigned by the chronology of the Hebrew Bible as
the year of the Mosaic Creation itself, B.C. 4000, we find all
the measures of time, both the natural and the civil, which
have entered this system from the first and are still making
part of it, meeting together." We cannot agree with the above
statement. It is not in man to know, with any accuracy, when
time began to be measured by day and night. Job was
admonished of this — " Where wast thou when I laid the foun
dations of the earth?" (Job xxxviii. 4). Moses, so far from
counting the world new, spoke of the mountains as very old
(Ps. xc. 2). Other passages (Gen. xlix. 26 ; Deut. xxxiii. 1 5 ;
Job xv. 7 ; Prov. viii. 22-31) plainly declare the antiquity, even
as " The laying of foundations," " The laying of the corner
stone," " The stretching out of the line upon it," mark a slow
and progressive operation.
The time occupied by the Mosaic Days has been a subject
of controversy from the earliest times. Some great men,
considering the eternity of God and the infinitude of His
works, maintained that everything done in connection with
the earth occupied only a moment of time ; but that this
moment it is impossible to imagine or to explain. Biblical
archaeologists, of modern times, agree that the common
chronology is too narrow. Ancient records, the development
of commerce and government, the time required for the pro
duction of a thousand languages from the confusion of early
speech at Babel, the separation of so many human families
from the early race, "require a cradle of larger dimensions
than Archbishop Ussher's Chronology." The early Church at
Antioch counted six thousand years from the Creation till
the birth of Christ ; the Greeks took five hundred from that
number ; Eusebius, taking three hundred more, was content
with an antiquity of five thousand two hundred years ; the

Blindness of Secularists. 443
Samaritans counted thirteen hundred and seven years from
the Creation to the Deluge; the Hebrews, sixteen hundred
and fifty-six ; the Septuagint, two thousand two hundred and
sixty-three. The sum of all is — we have no revelation as to
the time which has elapsed since God made the world. We
agree with Sir G. B. Airy, concerning the tenth chapter of
Genesis, to interpret " the filial relation of persons as meaning
the colonial relation of tribes." x
We agree with Aristotle — Nature is not full of incoherent
episodes, like a bad tragedy ; yet we supplement the dictum
of Leibnitz—" La nature n'agit jamais par saut," by wider
experience — " Nature sometimes does make a leap." While
allowing the Pythagorean doctrine of pervading order in the
universal Koo-juoe ; or, as the Bechuana chief said — ¦" One event
is always the son of another, and we must not forget the
parentage ; " we do not reduce history to nothing better than
an almanac, nor allow that morals can be explained by
mechanics. It is somewhat premature for a few physicists to
account orthodox theology a graveyard, the Bible a coffin,
and our Lord that dead one to be buried out of sight. Those
who will not believe, who arrogantly refuse Scripture, and
choose to be guiltily ignorant of its marvellous evidence and
proof of Divinity ; who want the Lord to be always walking
on the sea — but, even if He did, would have less than the little
faith of Peter ; who profess to educe the world from something
that was ever less and less, so that Nature began from no
Nature, and life from no life ; surrender their position and
accept the miracle of miracles — " Can there be anything more
miraculous than the existence of man and the world ? any
thing more literally supernatural than the origin of things ? " 2
From many painful examples of the unbelief that clings as
a parasite to certain physicists, take a work from the pen of a
leader. He says concerning the observance of the Sabbath Rest —
" To give sanction to this precept, the authority of at least a
myth was requisite. I believe it was simply for this reason
that the myth of the six days of creation was preserved." 3
1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 45. 2 "Lothair."
3 " Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 17 : Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B.

444 ¦ Follies of the Wise.
The second narrative in Genesis ii., was " to confirm the
solemnity of marriage ; and for this purpose only, or chiefly,
the second history of creation was preserved." x
We are to believe that Moses, who has produced a greater
effect on the history of the civilised world than any other
man, one only excepted ; Moses, of whom it is stated, " that
the mighty inspiration came upon him which convinced him
that, great as were the difficulties, he could lead his people to
independence and to territorial possessions ; but that it must
be done by the establishment among them of a new and pure
religion ; " 2 became, in order to establish " a new and pure
religion," one of the greatest deceivers in the world. We are
to believe this in order to disbelieve miracles !
The death of Abel is stated to be " simply a myth, explain
ing the hostility between the feeders of sheep and the tillers
of the ground." 3 The punishment of Cain is a myth — " a
holy myth would be required ... to restrain a half-savage
people." 4 Concerning Lamech — " It appears that the history
of Lamech is a mere myth, floating down from some distant
age, and preserved by Moses as a sanction for the beneficent
measures which he was anxious to enforce." 5 The terrors of
the Lord on Mount Sinai, are attributed to a volcanic erup
tion ; 6 and the glory seen in the cloud was " either the smoke
of Sinai, or the reflection of its fire as seen in the clouds." 7
The unwise guessing is rebuked by the fact that there is
no volcanic formation in the Triassic rock of Sinai. The
water obtained at Rephidim (Ex. xvii. i), by smiting the
rock, receives this explanation — " I think it will appear that
this was some artificial, or (in modern terms) engineering,
process by which water was procured." 8 A larger explana
tion of verses 5 and 6 is given — " The meaning seems to be
that, instead of patiently relying on the goodness of God,
under circumstances which would have justified waiting, he
undertook some mechanical work for obtaining water. Or,
possibly, he may have used some forced labour, carried out
with cruelty, in the engineering." 9 How the people were per-
1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 18 : Sir G. B. Aiiy, K.C.B.
2 Ibid. p. 54. a Ibid. p. 26. 4 Ibid. p. 30. 5 Ibid. p. 33.
« Ibid. p. 81. ' Ibid. p. 80. » Ibid. p. 91. = Ibid. p. 96.

Narrowness of Assailants. 445
suaded that God helped them, though all was done by
engineering, is not explained. The punishment of Nadab
and Abihu by fire from God (Lev. x. 1, 2), is thus misrepre
sented — " I suppose Moses put them to death immediately." x
The destruction of the two hundred princely rebels (Numb.
xvi. 35) was not by fire from God, but "by the act of Moses.
What kind of pitfall had been prepared for the few, and what
form of death for the many, we cannot precisely say." 2 No
character seems sacred ; as for Elijah and Elisha, we are
told — " Of those who, with great ability, displayed unlimited
ferocity are Elijah, who slaughtered without mercy the party
opposed to him ; Elisha, who instigated Hazael (vizier) to
murder Benhadad (king) of Syria, and who set up Jehu
apparently for the express purpose of committing wholesale
slaughters, in which he was aided by the savage Jehonadab.
The legendary history of Elijah and Elisha may be compared
with that of Dunstan." 8
The irreverence exhibited in these unwarrantable inter
polations and misinterpretations, the rash charges made
against holy men, the believing anything rather than that
which is in Scripture, are astounding — as coming from one
whose reasoning faculties have been highly cultivated. To
get rid of miracles, to tie down God to modern notions, it
is thought worth while to charge holy men, the best and
greatest of our race, with cruelty, lying, and grossest deception.
To credit that the scheme of Redemption is without Divine
authority, we must account all recorded marvellous acts of
God unsubstantial figments, Prophets and Apostles must be
denounced as the greatest deceivers in the world. Moses,
who describes God as " The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and
gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth
. . . that will by no means clear the guilty " (Ex. xxxiv. 6, 7),
is charged with the guilt of lying and murder ; yet, from this
man we have " a code of social laws to which nothing then
existing was comparable for purity and for clear definition of
justice in the infinity of social relations. I imagine that

1 " Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures,'' p. 92 : Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B.
2 Ibid. p. 95. 3 Ibid. p. 102.

446 Follies of the Wise.
everything good, in the legislation of modern times, has had
its origin in the Sinaitic laws of Moses." x
We will endeavour to find a cause for the weakness, irrever
ence, want of sanctity, assumption of authority, painfully
marking such perversions of Holy Scripture.
A high degree of complexity wearies and confuses any
ordinary intellect. Few minds either will or can apply the
needful power of attention, and mental energy of several
faculties, continuously in an involved process. The most
vigorous experience a sense of fatigue, followed by lassitude,
if they transgress either time or season in arduous manifold
work ; and the penalty has to be paid in confusion of ideas
and collapse of mental energy. On this account it has been
thought necessary for intellectual action to be defined, so that
men become Divines, Mathematicians, Logicians, Artists, in a
technical manner. The result, to the individual, is a weak
and partial apprehension and narrowing of general knowledge.
The advance of every mind along such narrow track has, it is
true, the advantage of penetrating further into that which is
unknown ; for example, it is said — " It takes a man fourteen
years to make himself acquainted with what has been done,
and can now be known in regard to chemistry alone ;" never
theless, this narrowing tends, when men are not profound and
circumspect, to sectarianism in religion, and to a hard narrow
mechanical spirit in science. The division of labour certainly
enables explorers to push further in particular directions ; but
unless the greater men attend to philosophy in its wider
range, and to those elevated themes of theology which stand
related to all sciences, physicists will be liable to that un
natural indifference and unbecoming ignorance, as to letters
and learning, as to the spiritual and eternal, now so pain
fully and irrationally exhibited by a few who are otherwise
scientific and moral.
Theology suffers greatly from this narrowness. Its com
pendious themes cannot be apprehended by any simple faculty ;
nor can the mere theologian, nor the simple physicist, co
ordinate the natural and the spiritual which require the whole
moral and intellectual nature — the old learning and the new
1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 93 : Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B.

St. Paul charged with Error. 447
science. Nor must we omit to state, that the constant oppo
sition to science, manifested by a few narrow theologians, has
reacted in the unbelief of scientists as to Revelation. At
present there .is no pre-eminently great one endowed with
synthesis of human powers. Individuality and technicality
sound their own notes in utter neglect of harmonious and
simultaneous movement, and the result is humiliating in the
melancholy spectacle of men, capable of better things, adopt
ing the wildest theories as to theology, and converting the firm
land of physics into a materialistic slough.
A few examples will serve to explain what we mean by
narrowness. Hume gave himself to history and philosophy. Had he
never even seen a New Testament, his works would be sub
stantially what they are. Voltaire had little or no scholarship
as to Christianity. He made disgraceful blunders as to
Biblical incidents. Gibbon was about twenty-two years old
when he said — " Here I suspended my religious inquiries."
Experience shows that those who refuse the Bible do not
know the book which they deny, and that those who know it
best love it most.
Pass to later examples.
St. Paul is charged with maintaining the error that a seed
dies before the young plant springs from it — ¦" ' Thou fool,
that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die ' (1 Cor.
xv. 36). Whereas if the seed did die there could be no young
plant." x The contention is, that a writer claiming to be in
spired by Divine Wisdom illustrates his botany by stating as
a fact what is not a fact. We reply — the seed dies in giving
life ; the germ initiates the new plant, but the seed perishes.
Jeremy4Taylor says — " Every meal is a rescue from one death,
and lays up another ; and while we think a thought we die."
The law of all Nature is that it lives by dying ; in, by, and
out of this death we are born again, atom by atom, every
moment of our life. No one thinks that St. Paul was a
scientific botanist, or used the illustration in any other than
a popular sense, and the accuser himself unconsciously vin-
1 "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis : " Prof. Huxley.

448 Follies of the Wise.
dicates the accused — " Physiology writes over the portals of
life— ' Debemur morti nos nostraque,'
with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to
that melancholy line. Under whatsoever disguise it takes
refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the living pro
toplasm ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and
lifeless constituents — is always dying, and strange as the
paradox may sound, could not live unless it died." x In like
manner, Dr. L. S. Beale constantly uses the graphic expression
that the protoplasm of this or that kind dies into this or that
tissue or secretion. " Every form in Nature — leaves, flowers,
trees, shells ; every tissue — hair, skin, bone, muscle, results
from the death of bioplasm " (" Biop." p. 10).2
Professor Helmholtz, pointing out some defects in the eye,
states — " It is not too much to say that if an optician wanted
to sell me an instrument which had all these defects, I should
think myself justified in blaming his carelessness in the
strongest terms, and giving him back his instrument. Of
course, I shall not do this with my eyes, and shall only be too
glad to keep them as long as I can — defects and all." 3
We do not think that the learned professor meant to charge
God with " carelessness," but a critic, even on purely optical
grounds, should not speak of " defects " as if God had been
remiss. What are these defects ? They shall be stated fully, but
briefly. The cornea is the transparent window in front of the
eye, like a watch-glass in front of the metal case. A short
distance behind is a crystalline lens, covered by the iris — a
curtain of varying colour perforated in the centre by the pupil
— a round hole, the edges of which are in contact with the
front of the lens. The lens is circular, biconvex, elastic. It
is attached at the edge by a circular band, the ciliary body, to
the inside of the eye. The tension of this ring and of the
lens itself, is regulated by muscular fibres, called the ciliary
1 "Physical Basis of Life."
2 " Protoplasmic Theory of Life : " T. Drysdale, M.D.
3 "The Recent Progress of the Theory of Vision."

Defects of the Eye. 449
muscle. The contraction of this muscle diminishes the
tension of the lens ; and its surfaces, chiefly the front one,
become more convex. The healthy eye, when at rest, sees
distant objects distinctly ; by contraction of the ciliary muscle
it is accommodated to discern those which are near ; thus,
the images of objects, whether near or far off, are brought to
a focus on the back of the dark chamber of the eye. This
mechanism is sometimes disarranged, defects and different
conditions of accommodation produce squinting, short sight,
long sight, and no man can be said to have perfect sight.
The failures are partly the result of our artificial way of life,
partly of changes wrought by old age.
The chromatic aberration of the eye is that defect by which,
all the colours not being brought to a focus, a " dispersive
image " is formed. In common use it is of little or no ill
effect ; and in 'scientific use, the fact of the eye not being
achromatic is guarded against. Another defect is known as
spherical aberration : the cornea of most human eyes is not
a perfect symmetrical curve, but is variously bent in different
directions. Owing to these two defects, chromatic and
spherical aberration, we cannot see vertical and horizontal
lines at the same distance perfectly clearly at once : in all
eyes, it may be said, there are distinct though often slight
deviations from accurate centreing. In consequence of this
ill centreing, the image, say of a star, is not a single illuminated
point ; but the focus is irregularly radiated, and the rays
which we see around stars and other distant lights are images
of the radiated structure of our lens.
Another defect : the crystalline lens, though it looks so
beautifully clear, is not optically uniform in structure. There
are shadows and dark spots, chiefly due to the fibres and spots
in the lens ; corpuscles also, and folds of membranes floating
in the vitreous humour, cause muscce volitantes in our vision ;
so called, because they move with the movement of our eye.
Lastly, there is that blind spot, the break or gap in the retina,
where the optic nerve enters ; and those smaller gaps of vision,
caused by the minute shadows of the blood-vessels of the
retina cast on the field of vision.
These defects no more prove that the eye is not good, than
2 g

450 Follies of the Wise.
moral evil demonstrates that no Divine government exists,
Our contention is not simply, the eye is good enough — it
might be contended that the world is good enough ; but we
contend that while Nature testifies of eternal power and God
head (Rom. i. 20), it attests the mysterious fact that Nature
partakes of vanity and trouble (Rom. viii. 20-23). Science,
therefore, actually confirms Scripture as to the imperfection
of all things : nevertheless, the defects described, which would
be very troublesome in an artificial camera obscura, are not
any real trouble or hindrance in the eye ; in fact, it is very
difficult to find some of them. We not only have two eyes,
so one makes up for the defects of the other ; but, as we are
continually moving them, the field of vision is freed from
those defects which irregularity and imperfection might occa
sion. Our eye has not only a very large field of vision, and
all other optical instruments a small field which becomes
smaller with the increased size of the image ; but it is neces
sary for the image on the retina to be exactly over a very small
surface merely, namely, that of the yellow spot. In this
small part of the field, our power of vision is so accurate that
it can distinguish the distance between two points, of only
one minute angular magnitude, a distance equal to the sixtieth
part diameter of the thickness of the finger-nail. Hence, the
image which we receive by the eye, is a picture minutely and
perfectly elaborated in the centre, with a rough sketching in
all around. Every instant, with rapidity, we turn the eye
from one point to another in the field of vision ; and this
rapidity, with perfection of the smaller field, and the rough
sketching in of the larger, make the eye far superior to every
other optical instrument. We turn our eye to one thing at a
time ; so soon as this has been taken in, we hasten to another ;
the sense of vision accomplishes all that is necessary. What
ever we want to look at we see accurately, and so quick is the
transition from one object to another, that practically we
possess the same advantages as if we viewed the whole field
of vision at once, Just as quickly as the eye turns up or
down, from side to side, the accommodation changes to bring
the object looked at into focus ; thus both near and distant
objects pass with rapid succession into accurate view. The

Lecture at Sion College. 45 1
eye shows them so rapidly that most people, who have not
thought how they see, are not aware of any change at all.
By the eye alone we discern the wealth of form and colour
among flowers, the distant landscapes of our earth, all the
varieties of sunlight that reveals them, and know the countless
shining worlds that fill immeasurable space. It is the unsur
passed model of opticians, philosophers extol it as an organism
full of wonders, poets and orators justly celebrate its praise.
The following words are printed in an address on scientific
education : — " Some time ago I attended a large meeting of
the clergy, for the purpose of delivering an address which I
had been invited to give. I spoke of some of the most
elementary facts in physical science, and of the manner in
which they directly contradict certain of the ordinary teachings
of the clergy. The result was, that, after I had finished, one
section of the assembled ecclesiastics attacked me with all the
intemperance of pious zeal, for stating facts and conclusions
which no competent judge doubts ; while, after the first
speakers had subsided, amidst the cheers of the great majority
of their colleagues, the more rational minority rose to tell me
that I had been taking wholly superfluous pains, that they
already knew all about what I had told them, and perfectly
agreed with me. A hard-headed friend of mine, who was
present, put the not unnatural question — ' Then why don't you
say so in your pulpits ? ' to which inquiry I heard no reply. In
fact, the clergy are at present divisible into three sections : an
immense body who are ignorant and speak out ; a small pro
portion who know and are silent ; and a minute minority who
know and speak according to their knowledge."
The assembled ecclesiastics were not irritated at the state
ment "of facts and conclusions which no competent judge
doubts : " their " pious zeal " was aroused by the assertion
that these facts were in opposition to Revealed Truth. It is no
wonder, when a learned professor insults the common sense
and attainments of educated men — men in the habit of en
countering unbelief and misbelief— that they regard him as
trifling with them ; and say, with some little warmth  " No
one doubts the elementary facts in physical science : " no

452 Follies of the Wise.
wonder that the more courteous minority think and say — " We
know all about what you have told us."
The same professor writes flippantly, as if glad to announce
his belief that Christianity is false. " In this nineteenth century,
as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of
the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher
and the opprobrium of the orthodox. . . . Extinguished
theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the
strangled snakes beside that of Hercules ; and history records
that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly
opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists,
bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated ; scotched if not
slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought.
It learns not, neither can it forget ; and though, at present,
bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist
that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and
the end of sound science ; and to visit with such petty thunder
bolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to
degrade Nature to the base of primitive Judaism " (" The
Origin of Species," Westminster Review, April, i860).
The professor reminds us —
" Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined,
Often in a golden house a wooden room you find."
" The fire of rage was in him, and 'twere good
You leaned unto his sentence with what patience
Your patience may inform you."
He states the saddest thing in the world — if it be true. We
are a duped race led by knaves, or fools taught by maniacs.
Is it possible any true man can be glad that there has been
no revelation of God to men ? that Christ's spotless life,
wise words, mighty deeds, possess no truth, no reality ? that
all good men, past and present, who made the world better,
who enlarged our views and use of Nature, made life happier,
death more peaceable and hopeful, were deluded? Such
conviction were enough to make the merriest-hearted weep
and mourn.
Every one, even but a little acquainted with history, is
well aware that science and true doctrine are never opposed.

Science and True Doctrine not Contrary. 453
Religious, intellectual, industrial progress culminates in the
most splendid series of researches when God's glory and
man's welfare are the motives which unitedly urge devout
and thoughtful men to fearless investigation of truth. The
fanatical and ignorant, in all ages, have been rash, violent,
unjust, cruel. They seem to think that the face of Truth is
full of dread. They are afraid to unveil her statue, they say —
"We will none of this dogma, none of that science." The
great and good have no fears that, perchance they may
encounter a ghastly death's head.: they know that the
beaming countenance of the image of Truth, raised by God
Almighty, is the face of Jesus Christ where Divine glory and
human purity meet in rarest beauty. Feeling their way, as
best they can, into that limited portion of facts lying within
their reach, they interpret the Two Books of Revelation, the
Works of God and the Word of God, as they are — not as
men might like them to be. The mediaeval conception of the
material and spirit world, as presented by Dante, was some
what in harmony with the best science and the urgent wants
of the time ; but the Copernican revolution displaced all, that,
and scientific light enables us more largely to understand
Providence, and to see that God's plan is written in the
physical laws of the universe and in the pure morality of
Holy Scripture.
It is time that all good and true men, whether students
of Science or of Religion, put down every feeling of anta
gonism. The roll of names, illustrating the annals of science,
of itself ennobles that pursuit ; the Newtons, the Wallises,
the Wollastons, the Davys, the Rumfords, the Faradays,
confer imperishable renown. Will not praise be added to their
successors if, enfranchised from narrowness, they recognise
those other lights of' charities and moralities which shine
in the path of human life that wayfarers may walk cheerily
onward to their future home ?
For those who would falsify our high lineage, make us
"cunning casts in clay," and require that we discard, as a
romantic delusion, the ennobling conviction that we are little
lower than the angels ; we have an answer in the words of

454 Follies of the Wise.
Goethe — "No strong-minded man suffers his belief in im
mortality to be torn from his breast." Indeed, we can show
that their science is neither far-searching nor deep-piercing,
and show it in their own way. Acting on their words — " take
nothing on trust, . . . learn of Nature, . . . listen to the
voice of truth " — we try their knowledge ; we empty a lark's
egg into a little vessel, a thrush's egg into another little vessel,
a starling's egg into a third little vessel, and a blackbird's egg
into a fourth little vessel ; and, having destroyed the shells,
ask these men to justify our confidence in their skill by
severally naming the birds ; they cannot — no, not even by aid
of a microscope.
These are a small matter, try something great. Take a
camel, show the skeleton, and inquire — our teachers never
having seen a camel before — " Is it possible that skeleton can
represent an animal with a huge hump on his back ? " They
will either say — " We know not ; " or prove from the bony
structure that the hump is an absurdity almost approaching
the impossible.
Try a lion, a tiger, request an explanation of the osteo-
logical differences which constitute the one a lion-frame, the
other a tiger-frame. They have no explanation. The most
skilful can only point out some few small differences in the
skulls. Respectfully ask why, during the whole controversy about
man-like apes, we were not told that these apes have a huge
air-sac packed away in front of the windpipe, and amongst
the muscles of the neck,1 rendering the man-like apes very
unman-like, and utterly unable to speak : so that we are not
of them, nor they of us ? If they knew of this, why were we
not informed ? If they did not know, it was ignorance that
exalted the monkey and abased the man. Knowing, more
over, that the power of uttering articulate words is not found
in races possessing structures nearest in likeness to man's;
but in creatures, such as parrots, with vocal organs so
different to ours that it is not easy to trace the analogous
parts ; surely, our scientific teachers ought to remember what
Pascal said — " It is dangerous to show man how much he
1 "Cassell's Natural History," p. 67 : Dr. P. M. Duncan, F.R.S.

Presumption of Subordinate Science. 455
resembles the beast, without, at the same time, indicating his
own greatness."
We accept evolution, so far as verification warrants, but
when those who profess to explain everything lower man
until there is " no essential difference between the drowning
of a superfluous baby, and a superfluous kitten " — for no faith
means no morals ultimately, we disregard these teachers of
little science and of less faith, with "their maxims of the
mud." We are sure that there is " an end worth living for —
an end supremely good for us to gain, and supremely ill for
us to lose — an end that we can only gain by virtue, and must
lose by vice."
The subject may be viewed with somewhat more largeness.
Physical Science, properly so called, concerns the relations
between natural phenomena and their physical antecedents.
The investigation is conducted by processes of mathematical
reasoning as to whatever regards quantity and conditions of
space. A lower department of natural science, phenomenology,
examines and classifies phenomena ; and infers, by induction,
their laws. These laws cannot, however, be determined as
the necessary results of physical energies until so interpreted
by the higher science — they can only be regarded as serial
occurrences. The subordinate science has of late invaded the
province of the higher ; and, no longer servant, masterfully
asserts, with high-sounding phrases, that though the world was
not made, in any proper sense of making, all powers are
mechanical, all mysteries can be explained by the laws of
tangible matter and its energy.1
On examination, we find no clear evidence in favour of this
wide masterful assertion. Matter, simple as it may seem, " is
the complex of so many relations, a conjuncture of so many
events, a synthesis of so many sensations, that to know one
¦ Real thoroughly would only be possible through an intuition
embracing the universe." 2 Common sense refuses to believe
that matter is everything : for we find that even scientific
conviction of the objective reality of matter is obtained only
1 Church Quarterly, April, 1876.
2 "Problems of Life and Mind," vol. i. p. 343 : Geo. Henry Lewes*

456 Follies of the Wise.
by experiment under the guidance of mind ; and that Heat,
Light, Sound, Electric currents, are real objective existences
though not matter, but forms of energy. A shadow or
reflection is real, though not a solid ; a motion is real, though
not a substance ; a feeling is real, though neither substance
nor motion ; intelligence is real, though not motion, nor a
solid — but certainly energy with other things thereto added.
As to scientific conception of matter, we find it convenient
in mathematical reasoning to dispense with the ordinary
meaning of the word ; and, in place of the hard atom, to
suppose a mere geometrical point "with repulsive and at
tractive energies tending towards or from a certain point —
but nothing at the point." The points are fictions without
relations, solidity, extension, • or colour. Nor is that all ;
physicist and metaphysicist both admit that we never feel
matter, never see it, never hear it ; our perceptions are symbols
of the externals, but are not more like them and have no more
community of kind than a numerical figure has to the form
of the numbered objects ; indeed, our sensations are merely
mental affections which are called up by impulses on the
nerves. Our notion of Matter, as well as of Mind, "is the
notion of a perpetual something, contrasted with the perpetual
flux of the sensations and other feelings or mental states which
we refer to it ; a something which we figure as remaining the
same, while the particular feelings, through which it reveals
its existence, change.1 On one side is the world of forms, of
colours, of movements ; on the other is a mirror which reflects
their images ; not in any respect a plain transcript, but an
ideal picture of external order. Sensations, terror, hope, cal
culations, are psychical phenomena associated with molecular
motions set up in. a previously prepared brain ; but we do not
know the causal connection, if any, between the objective and
subjective — between molecular motion and the state of con
sciousness. In astronomical speculations we take into account
dark stars, scattered through space, hidden from observation
not being luminous ; so, in everything around and within us,
innumerable hidden factors are at work, and he is a rash man,
1 "An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's 'Philosophy," p. 205: John
Stuart Mill.

Vortex Rings. 45 7
no true philosopher, who asserts — "Matter is the beginning
and end of all."
Indeed it may be demonstrated that the mechanical theory
utterly fails to explain the origin of the world. The follow
ing experiment seems to have been made first of all by
Professor P. G. Tait : —
Suppose that we have a wooden box : at one end is a large
hole ; we remove the wood from the opposite end, and in place
of it affix a tightly stretched towel. To make the air visible
which you are about to expel from the box, sprinkle the
bottom of the box with strong solution of ammonia ; then put
into the box a dish containing common salt, and over the salt
pour sulphuric acid of commerce. You have now in the box
ammoniacal gas and muriatic acid gas, they combine and form
solid sal ammoniac ; and whatever escapes from the box that
is visible consists of small particles of sal ammoniac ; and they
remain suspended like smoke in the air. Now give a sudden
blow to the end that is opposite the hole in the box ; and, at
once, a circular vortex-ring moves, as if it were an independent
solid, through the room. Observe, when two vortex-rings
impinge upon one another they vibrate like solid elastic rings.
This vibration of a vortex-ring can be produced, without any
impact on another, by simply making an elliptical or even a
square hole instead of the circular. The circle is the equili
brium form of a simple vortex, and if a simple vortex be
produced of other than circular form it will vibrate about the
circular form as about a position of equilibrium.
If the air were a perfect fluid — if there were no fluid-friction
in it — that vortex-ring would go on moving for ever ; and the
portion of fluid containing the smoke would remain for ever
the same set of particles ; and could not be made by any
process, except an act of creative power, to unite with the air
in the room. Now, if we adopt the supposition of Sir William
Thomson, that the universe is full of this perfect fluid, some
thing not like matter, but which really is matter, " this property
of rotation may be the basis of all that appeals to our senses as
matter ; " indeed, that which we call " matter " may be only
rotating portions of something which fills space — vortex-
motions of an everywhere present fluid ; but nothing less than

458 Follies of the Wise.
creative power could produce a vortex-ring in a perfect fluid ;
consequently, no mechanical theory, apart from creative power,
can explain that which appeals as matter to our senses ; or
sufficiently account for the origin of the world.
In this process of reasoning concerning a perfect fluid and
vortex-motion, we have been thinking of matter apart from its
usual properties — -putting ourselves outside of it ; or, as we
may say, standing out of the body that we may look into the
body so as to know the nature of it. We have been acting as
if our spirit was an aeolian harp thrilling to accordant tremors
of the breath of life, apart from material touch, learning of
existence ; and it is certain that by supposing a substance
wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, power of moving subsist,
we have as clear a notion of the substance of spirit, as we have
of body.1 If this be so, it is unwise to doubt concerning the
existence of spirit ; seeing that, as philosophers, we can only
know of other things by its means ; and to doubt of that by
which we know, and to believe in that of which we should
be ignorant were it not for the other, is in the highest degree
unreasonable. The case is not made better, as to Matter and Nature, by
the assumption that material atoms and vortex-motions have
been from everlasting in the perfect fluid ; for no mechanical
theory can account for their existence. There is no help in
the assumption that no perfect fluid exists : for, then, without
continual restoration of energy, which no mechanical theory
affords or sufficiently explains, the universe would long since
have burnt out.
We conclude, from the whole argument, that neither for
primal origination, nor for successive restorations, does
mechanical power yield the equivalent.
A similar process of investigation may be carried into the
unwise assertion as to the physical intervention of the Deity
in human affairs being to the scientific thinker, a priori, so
improbable that no amount of historic testimony suffices to
make him entertain the hypothesis for an instant.2
1 " Locke on the Understanding," book ii. ch. xxiii. sect. 5.
"Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii. pp. 379, 380: John Fiske.

Intervention of Deity. 459
The fact that all sciences, specially that which concerns the
Dissipation, of Energy, points to a beginning, to a state of
things incapable of being derived by means of any existing
laws from any conceivable previous arrangement,1 is proof of
physical intervention ; therefore, that which is unwarrantably
declared " a priori improbable," becomes a matter of actual
science : there have been physical interventions, or all our
knowledge is at fault. Those who deny this imagine that
their own dull element is all, and that no deep sea echoes
round the world.
Take outside things, either as materials for the scaffold of
our argument, or, using them as a sort of algebraic symbol,
submit them to the necessary operations for ascertaining the
unknown quantity — whether of Divinity or miracle : thus
proceed : —
The agency of light is wave-movement, but the moving
agent we know not; the mode of operation by chemical
affinity is known, chemical affinity is not known ; the laws of
motion seem to be laws of heat, but we do not know what is
moving nor how it moves ; 2 thus our conviction of the exist
ence ofthe unknown is verified by experience.
Now advance somewhat further — Do we know all Nature's
combinations ? Certainly not : many, indeed all operations
are wrought by means of a complexity so extreme as to
present an almost insuperable obstacle to our investigations.
It is impossible, therefore, to have any evidence which can be
accounted sufficient to enable a scientific thinker to conclude
that miracles are, a priori, improbable.
Try another mode of investigation.
Human consciousness is brought into connection with
material things by means of nervous tremors — a neural process ;
it is easy to conceive of a succession of sentiments, of con
sciousness eternally prolonged ; indeed, our recollections are
not limited to the present — they embrace the past, and our
expectations take hold of the future. There is organic union
throughout : our thoughts are not separate beads, but as a
necklace ; and the string is " organic union " — so we continue
1 " Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 26 : Prof. P. G. Tait.
2 "Natural Philosophy," vol. i. p. 311 : Thomson and Tait.

460 Follies of the Wise.
to be ourselves. If we say — the Mind is a series of feelings,
we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series
of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future. Thus
we are brought to the alternative of saying — the Mind is some
thing different from any series of feelings, or that a mere
series of feelings can be aware of itself, as a series, which is
absurd. In all this, philosophers who have most carefully studied
decide, " there is no need of substance, except as the support
and bond of phenomena ; " x the ego, our own mind, is the real
existence. As we proceed in investigation, the lines become
finer and finer, are concerned with new unimaginable elements
though the process is thinkable, and we are conscious that
go far as we may an untried universe lies beyond ; a region of
" The measures and the fonns
Which an abstract Intelligence supplies,
Whose kingdom is where Time and Space are not. "
Our consciousness of existence may be thought of as pages
of algebraic figures which the scientific student reads off into
conception of the facts which reveal the splendour and variety
of light with untold gradation of blended colours ; or as notes
written on the mental tablet, which a musician stirs into
sweetest and complex harmony. Thus, arguing on scientific
principles, we • have, by means of our sensations, an actual
revelation, direct or indirect, in signs and symbols to our
thoughts, concerning things material and immaterial ; and the
laws of thought are laws of our organism. Scientific truths,
like spiritual, are waves of the universal flow of existence.
Hence, concretes and their abstractions are as the convex
and concave of things, the outer and inner meaning, body
and soul, the matter and meaning of the stony leaves of
history. All modes and grades of knowledge are only dif
ferentiations ; therefore, our intelligent consciousness, our
reasoned faith as to the unknown, our convictions and ex
periences as to fine lines of intelligence and emotion extend
ing beyond the world's material surface, claim a place within
the domain of human intellect. Not only is Revelation to be
found in Holy Scripture, there is a revelation to our conscious-
1 "English Psychology," p. 119: Th. Ribot.

Human Progress. 461
ness concerning the Almighty's operations. It binds the
natural and supernatural into one splendid unity. It is the
bond of continuity in all existence, correlates the mind of man
with the body, and, in its concentrated view and comprehen
sion of Nature, is a symbol of the complexity and mystery of
the universe.
Further : —
It is demonstrably certain, if Materialism is true, that we
cannot take a step physically or mentally, religiously or
morally, but in the way and according to the thoughts of the
millions who have gone before us. It is not given to any
man, however endowed, to rise spontaneously or quickly into
intellectual splendour ; there is no break, no solution of con
tinuity. At any and every given moment of our history,
knowledge has limits which it cannot pass, and every one of
us is weak, standing alone.
As if to disprove this mechanical theory, an unknown
law intervenes. Not only the thought and work of other
men converge in us, the long travail of past centuries — the
patience, experience, emotion of all former ages, make us
what we are. This rule or empire of the dead is a great and
increasing empire ; not a small and measurable thing, the in
terpretations are illimitable ; a reservoir of experience for all
the living. That is not the whole : a choice few receive un
wonted special gifts of which ancestry affords no explanation.
Hence, we fairly argue, the human mind is not a gloomy cave,
or winding passage leading no whither, dimly lighted with the
flame of departed intellects, and filled with the ghosts of dead
men's thoughts, but a vessel well prepared, which, receiving
rich stores from the past, carries forward the whole man
towards perfect truth and supreme good.
Such a revelation from ancient source, to every living man,
disposes for ever of that huckstering traffic which would
measure the exercise of thought, the flight of fancy, the
brilliancy of creative genius, and sell it by weight over the
counter of physical experiment. The psychical laws of it are
real, true, and further reaching than the physical ; their effects
may be likened to thrills of the earth seen and measured in
a magnetic mirror. There is a revelation of things to our

462 Follies of the Wise.
mental centre, and an interpretation played with exquisite
variety on the chords of our emotion : emotion, which makes
successive ages spectators, and the great souls of all periods
contemporary. Enlarge the fact.
Energy and brilliancy of thought not being of unvarying
quantitative or qualitative stability in an individual, a race,
or a period, we are not surprised by appearances, when and
where least expected, of great and sudden splendour. The
progress not being uniform, but intermittent ; at times gather
ing strength in the clearness consequent upon repose, or some
thinker of exceptional power by mighty and sudden wrestling
thrusts aside barriers, and wins a wider circle in which thought
entrenches itself, thence to go forth with new strength once
more to conquer. For example, enormous distance comes
between the experience of Pythagoras and the scientific com
putations of Newton, between common minds and the genius
of Shakespeare, between profane persons and men of piety-
Throes arise out of the long travail of centuries, from the
trouble and struggle of a million workers, and, by passionate
exercise concentrating much light and power, turn common
places of effort into miracle-scenes of a wonderful life. This
accounts for Moses, the son of a slave, delivering a nation of
slaves — rendering them free men ; and giving laws which
evermore preserved them as a pure race and a peculiar people.
This shows how holy Apostles, not having movement and
tone from their age, received world-enlightening thought from
Jesus Christ.
Timid souls, alarmed at the complicate nature and vast
extent of inquiry, exclaim — " Let us leave one another alone ;
keep to your own province, do not enter ours ; let there be
peace between us." This will never do : the pact can be
observed only so long as neither party is quite in earnest.
By no treaty can the domain of truth be divided. No bar
gaining, nor fencing off, nor any form of process, will maintain
artificial barriers against inquiry, or bar the right of way :
blessed right, enforced by rightful power. The natural world
and spiritual world, the intellectual and the emotional, cannot

Work of the Clergy. 463
be separated in any such fashion. That fatal objection — " It
is not true," will cast down any system. Truth will not admit
nor allow a lie. Every truth, whether physical or psychical,
is connected with all other truth. Science, therefore, must
be allowed, without suspicion or hindrance, to pursue her own
proper work. The Church will certainly, despite all hindrance,
do hers ; nor is it limited to purely spiritual consolation, to
academic speculation, or mere philosophy ; her work is of a
very practical nature — to make men honest, true, and pure ;
you cannot cause it to cease from the pulpit, nor from the
hearth, nor from the printing press, it will win and replenish
the earth.
The clergy, well aware of this, count it their special office
to teach from the pulpit and exhort in the house concerning
the great facts — Redemption, Sanctification, Everlasting Life.
Not the precise antiquity of the human race — not the exact
line separating allegory from history in Scripture — not the
interval between miraculous operation and natural cause —
not the reconciliation of the Supernatural with ordinary law
— are to be greatly enforced on the Holy Day ; though it
were well for fit men to show what a good and holy thing
is Physical Science. Most of them, and rightly, will enforce
simple Bible Truth : that every man, as he lives and when he
dies, may use Professor Henslow's prayer — "Washed in the
Blood of the Lamb : enable me to submit to Thy Holy Will :
sanctify me with Thy Spirit." Faith and Prayer of this sort
will exist despite scientific difficulties, and outlive them : for
God fulfils Himself in many ways, and more is wrought by
faith and prayer than the world dreams of. Truths, that
seem simplest, are deepest ; and in guiding those who have
gone astray, helping the tempted, consoling the troubled,
our clergy tell us what God has done, what Christ has done,
what the Holy Spirit has done, and these truths breathe
in the thoughts, burn in the words, are the power of God
to the soul.
This teaching, throwing light Into many dark places of the
Bible, shows that the face which answered to our face in
childhood, becomes, as we grow, a reflection of manhood in
Christ : an unseen intelligence becoming visible. This en-

464 Follies of the Wise.
largement of meaning with our growth of understanding, the
rising of precept and doctrine into rules of higher discipline
for the advancement of purity, had long been matter of
spiritual experience to devout minds ; but accurate scientific
thought led to inquiry whether those parts also which address
our reason, not the emotional and reverential faculties, do not
possess equal power of enlargement. What have we found ?
We have found that the Bible is the boldest and truest book in
the world. It says — " Go with the antiquary among ancient
ruins, you will find confirmation of my veracity on every medal
and in all inscriptions. I love light, hate darkness, rejoice in
true science — for it is death to superstition and life to faith."
This excellency of the Bible above all other books, and its pecu
liarity as the Word of God, prove it to be a spiritual organism
(Heb. iv. 12). The words are not chosen and arranged as by a
scientific man, nor do they contain latent systems of science ; but,
when scientific facts become known, they confirm the old letter.
As an artist beholds spirit and life in that which, to a common
eye, is dead ; or as the sculptor sees genius live and move
in the marble that, to another man, is lifeless ; the believer
finds the chambers of Scripture to be full of true and holy
living things. He says — " I am not great, yet I feel some far-off
touch of greatness, not mine own, but of a Heavenly Friend,
by whom I shall be great." There are some rare human
countenances in which an honest homely look might be
counted all ; but in a moment, as if light from heaven shone,
depths of soul are revealed glowing with love and truth : so
is it with the Bible.
We respectfully ask scientific men whether cold, mechanical,
narrow conception and interpretation of the Book are not
as scientifically wrong as some old conceptions of Nature are
actually false ? whether the difficulties in Scripture do not
arise, for the most part, from the low state of knowledge
among translators, expositors, readers ? Can a book excite
holy emotion, quicken pious resolve, overcome fear of death,
enable the low, the vicious, the cruel, to attain elevation,
sanctity, and mercifulness, and its powers be accounted for
by mechanical arrangements ? Are its peculiar construction
— sometimes setting aside modern rules of grammar; its

Cure for the Folly. 465
splendour of imagery — adorning every chamber of our mind ;
its array of facts and historic narration — delighting to con
found our theories ; to be interpreted, or corrected, or rejected,
because some of our systems are not yet in accord with its
statements ? Ought it not to be meted by another measure
than the hard analysis of criminal court procedure ? Surely,
godly emotions, sense of the Supreme, desire for immortality
in purity and truth, are valuable parts of human nature, more
worthy of cultivation and reliance than the carnal instincts
which crave only to eat, drink, and be merry ?
Let it be a matter of duty to develop the high, as it is a
necessity to appease the low. Let the mastery of logical
methods and the accuracy of experiment, partake of those
more elaborate, delicate, and comprehensive processes of
thought and emotion which during long ages have drawn the
pure in heart to Scripture, to Faith, to God. If a critic
asserts — " Shakespeare had no genius, and Milton no imagina
tion," will not men smile at his folly ? Is it not greater folly
to call Moses, the most wonderful of men, " a semi-barbarous
Hebrew ; " to account the Prophets enthusiasts, Jesus as
wholly human, and the Apostles as deceived or deceivers ? We
cannot but hope that He who, in compassionate and un
faltering love, prayed for His enemies — " Father, forgive them,"
will look from the Cross upon those who count themselves
wise, turn His sublime suffering countenance upon them,
draw them with His love, save them in His mercy.

2 H

STUDY XXII.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
" Institutions are to be judged by their great men ; in the end they take their
line from their great men. The Christian Church, and the Une which is natural
to it, and which will one day prevail in it, is to be judged from the saints and the
tone ofthe saints." — Matthew Arnold, The Church of England.
" Deus est homo factus ; quid futurus est homo,
Quem propter Ipse factus est homo Deus ? "
" FROM the consideration of ourselves, and what we infallibly
find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the know
ledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal,
most powerful, and most knowing Being" — these are the
words of John Locke.1 The existence of God is a verity real
as are mathematical axioms : so thought Descartes — the
Infinite, Eternal, Unchangeable, Self-existent, Omniscient,
Omnipotent, Creator, is God.2 Add the belief of Malebranche,
that God acts in all things by the counsels of wisdom, and
by inspiration of love. Take Newton's words — " He is not
eternity and infinity, but Eternal and Infinite ; not time and
space, but the Ever-Living and Ever-Present, in whom time and
space have existence and foundation ; " " Non est seternitas et
infinitas, sed seternus et infinitus ; non est duratio et spatium,
sed durat et adest. Durat semper et adest ubique, et exist-
endo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium constituit" 3
We thus form that idea of God which conscience and Holy
Scripture approve, and conclude with Descartes — "God is
the first and eternal of all the truths which can possibly exist,
and the One whence all others proceed." *
1 "Human Understanding," book iv. ch. x.
2 " Discourse on Method," i. p. 161.
3 "Philosophiae Xaturalis Principia Mathematica, Scholium Generale."
* " Letters," i. p. 112.

Highest Life. 467
On this fact, the First Study — " Intelligence is not divorced
from Piety," was established
The same truth takes another form.
The perfect human life is that most conformed, not to blind
appetite, but to the enlightened desires of wisdom. Con
sciousness of this wisdom leads to the conviction that an
infinite guiding Mind holds all events within control, and says
to every surging wave — "Hitherto shalt thou come, no further."
This intelligent Governor is a personal God : for knowing, as
well as we know anything, that our own wisdom cannot spring
from a world of blind fatality ; we also know that the world is
not one huge terror, rolling on with mighty speed and energy,
mind-less, reason-less, soul-less, crumbling our every hope into
disappointment ; but a world in which we reach through every
thing felt and seen, to depths of inwardness, to springs of life,
to law of knitted purport. Not one living thing is too minute
for Infinite care, or too stupendous for Divine strength. The
sun in heaven, or the lowly life rejoicing in his beams ; the
destiny of an empire, or a tear on infant's cheek ; are cared
for by One omniscient to guide, omnipotent to save. To
know and serve such a God, love and obey Him with fervent
emotion and clear intelligence, is highest, happiest, fullest life :
it satisfies the purest desire of our being, gives reality to
virtue, truth to religion, unity to mankind. The existence of
God is written as a law in human nature, and is the immortal
original which men have sought to transcribe in all their
faiths.1 " No fantastical art of juggling with words," no sen
suality of low animal-men, ever stifled our consciousness of
the Supernatural, "We have a more certain knowledge ofthe
existence of a God, than of anything our senses have not
immediately discovered to us." 2 The desire of all nations for
freedom of conscience is not because of unbelief, but a yearning
for inquiry to establish more life and fuller faith. The best
man, the man in whom piety and intelligence are duly
combined, will say, as Plato did long ago — "The world is
guided by an accompanying Divine Power, and receives life
and immortality by the appointment of the Creator." s
1 "Descartes' Ethics — Liberty," part v. prop. xx.
2 John Locke, " Human Understanding," book iv. ch. x.
3 "Plato's Dialogues — Statesmen," p. 270 : Jowett's translation.

468 The Kingdom of God.
In Studies of " The Supernatural," " Threshold of Creation,"
" Rudiments of the World," we arrived at the Creation as a
fact. We are not " a crowd of wretches, equally criminal and
unfortunate," but children of God — not looking from the out
side into halls and saloons, but tenants of a spacious house, to
whom all doors are open. Competent to labour, mentally
capable of investigation, spiritually desirous of knowing whence
we came and whither we go, we somewhat apprehend the
influence of spirit on matter ; how it is possible for a being to
go forth from his own sphere to influence the development
of another being : nevertheless, the effective real physical
action of one substance upon another is really " unthinkable ; "
therefore, the actuality of it in Nature, being "unthinkable," is
a continual miracle. Unbelievers will have no miracles, and
say — " What is so absurd as perpetual miracles in Nature ? "
Yet the universe is one splendid, universal, all-comprehending
miracle : an infinite number of incomprehensible energies
acting in, by, and through matter ; of living units, the same in
essence, but different in degree and capacity of development.
The different degrees are classed in families, orders, species,
and rise from brute nature, in which life sleeps, to life's
spiritual awakening in the splendour of humanity. Minerals
and plants, animals and men, things gross and things sublime,
all that can be imagined and not imagined, our own world and
existence in other known worlds, are but a small part of the
infinite whole of the universe. All these existences, separate
but mingled with one another, alike and unlike, ever dying
yet continuing through innumerable ages in successive evolu
tion, so act for, with, and against one another, that the sounds
of life are a grand march-tune of the universe. Every
existence is, in itself, a little world ; represents, in diminutive
mirror, the whole universe. Every creature lives, not of itself ;
but continues by continual efficacy of the unknown eternal
energy in whom all lines of life centre. We all know that the
visible is the actual and continual outcome of the Invisible, a
manifestation of the Supernatural, a splendid miracle in the
whole and essentially miraculous in every part ; yet, forsooth
our blind men do not see a miracle, nor are the ignorant
conscious of Great Intelligence.

Demonstration of Miracle. 469
An objection is raised — " A miracle is beyond usual law,
and science declines to admit such weakness in Omnipotence."
We reply — Law is administered and explained by such infinite
variety of operation, that no man is able to limit the power
of usual operation when an unusual element is introduced. It
is gross presumption to imagine that we know all the operation
of law, and are so acquainted with the whole course of things
that we can say — " It would be a weakness in Omnipotence
to act outside the course that we know of, in another course
which we do not know."
This statement does not express the whole argument :
demonstration may be given.
The highest act of creation is to produce free, responsible
beings. We may be sure that a perfect God will perform
perfect work and create these free beings. They must be
finite beings : for everything created is so of necessity. These
finite free beings, in the roll of infinite duration and varying
cycles of experience, are liable to misuse their freedom :
otherwise, they are not free. This freedom of action in
evitably brings in new elements modifying law, requiring new
procedure, necessitating special operations of wisdom and
power. These special operations, not being in accord with
the law hitherto prevailing, but manifesting new powers so as
to co-ordinate novel relations, are miracles, actualities to meet
necessities ; yet not out of, but within the Divine plan ; not
marks of weakness, nor of short-sightedness, but proofs that
omnipotence and omniscience control all existence.
The Studies— " Creative Words," "Days of Creation,"
"The Two Divine Accounts," "Pre-Adamite Earth"— could
not explain the two great mysteries, which must ever be
buried in the depths of Divine existence, why God is, and how
creation was possible : but they show that God was neither
indifferent nor powerless as to the image of the universe
eternally imprinted on His Intelligence : He realised it as a
manifestation of Himself. The might of God was the worker ;
the love of ' God was the inspiring motive; the wisdom of
God was the guide. Divine Intelligence is not circumscribed
as is our intelligence, and certainly it is better to speak

470 The Kingdom of God.
of God's attributes as those of mind rather than those of
matter. Did God create the world from without Himself? If so, a
being acting from without himself is not infinite, but as
a sculptor who fashions from marble.
Did God act upon chaos, as Anaxagoras said — Mind moving
inert matter ? or, as the Demiurgos of Plato — impress luminous
ideas of the good and beautiful ? or did the world, being
eternal, in virtue of God's secret aspiration, as Aristotle would
say, move towards Him who attracteth all things ; yet in His
Solitude and Bliss, regardeth them not ?
Put it otherwise : — Did God create the world from within
Himself? then the world is Himself, His substance, His life:
this is Pantheism. Did He create the world from without
Himself? then He is not infinite.
How are these difficulties, as to a personal God and as to
Pantheism, to be overcome ?
A personal God is an Individual, not an absolutely abstract
notion which we form concerning infinitude and universality,
but the I Am, the self-existent, all-perfect Being. Do we, by
this Personality, represent to ourselves a superb idol who
truly may dwell in heaven — that is, a limited space ; yet,
though we load him with brilliant gifts and magnificent attri
butes, is but a dwarf in comparison with the Infinite whose
abode is immensity, whose duration is eternity ? Certainly
not : for the more we meditate upon personality and creation,
the surer becomes our conviction that all difficulties arise only
from our ignorance ; whereas Pantheism contains fatal con
tradictions. Pantheism reproaches Scripture for making God like man,
yet falls itself into something lower than anthropomorphism —
grossest materialism ; by attributing the properties of matter
and the imperfections of creatures to the Creator. There is
nothing more contrary to the idea of perfection than that it
should develop ; yet this is the Pantheistic illusion. Pantheists
liken God to the activities of the universe ; make Him a being
who changes, who develops ; and, consequently, is infinitely
short of perfection. Nor is that all : their God, without the
world, is incomplete; a God — wanting essence, a power —

Divine Personality. 471
without effect, a cause — without activity, wisdom — without
purpose, love — without object ; such a God, without the world,
is no God ; and His extinction takes place with the extinction
of Nature.
Our God, the Personal God, is the Principle, the Spirit, the
Universal, who inhabits heaven, earth, infinity, eternity. He
is not, in creating, as a Michael Angelo, who draws forth
Moses from a block of marble. He is not, in His own life, as
a grain of wheat germinating ; not as an oak extending its
branches ; with profounder energy and more sublime activity
than matter can exhibit, or we conceive, He exists and creates.
He is not to be conceived of as under the necessity of acting
from within or without Himself; such conceptions are human
and finite, have their limits in space, in time ; God is Infinite,
Eternal, Perfect, Self-sufficient, but the world is in course of
development. God is in eternity — the Eternal ; the world is
in time — the temporal. The moments of time do not com
pose eternity ; time is neither within nor without it ; yet,
eternity is the reason of its being. In like manner, the world
which is incomplete — but becomes complete, is not strictly
either within or without Him — the Eternally Complete ; yet
He is the reason, cause, founder of it. The relation is unique,
incomparable, mysterious, but a relation certain and demon
strated. Whatsoever is gross in words must be laid aside
and the inner spirit regarded : God, in eternity, eternally
sees time, space, the world. In time, He sees the expression
of His Eternity ; in space, the expression of His Infinity ; in
the world, the expression of the communicable powers of His
Infinite Being. Our happiness consists not, nor will it ever,
of full possession — nothing further to know, no more to desire :
continual progress will find new pleasures, ever discover new
perfections in the Infinite and Eternal.
The Studies of Divine Operation in the various creative
Works of the Days, evidenced the reality, definiteness, com
prehensiveness, simplicity, complexity, of the Scripture narra
tive. The Study, "Variety in Nature," was of the endless
versatility in Nature : Law is not bound with links of Fate,
but beautiful in capacity of adaptation, and a means of

472 The Kingdom of God.
trial and discipline for improvable and responsible creatures.
The Study of " The Invisible Universe " regarded worlds as
a vast procession from the unseen to the seen ; to return in
due order from the House of Time to the Eternal Dominion.
By " Follies of the Wise," we learn that there is a wisdom of
the world which is proved to be folly.
The argument, in all the Studies, has been variably and
variously conducted. The inquiry progressed unrestrainedly
along many lines of thought, that through intelligent inter
course with ourselves and Nature we might see by reason, by
conscience, by science, that the Bible is the Book of God : not
an evolution or a product of unaided human intellect, but
a Divine Revelation of things wholly unknown, that our dis
ciplined freedom may partake of more glorious Freedom,
of some greater Reality.
" The Kingdom of God," our present Study, has several
times and meanings allotted to it: I. The Gospel period; 2.
The kingdom for which we pray — " Thy Kingdom Come ; " 3.
The kingdom of Glory. Not in any of these senses, but in
the large meaning of God's Providence and Spiritual Rule
amongst men, is it now to be considered. Our investigation
therefore, is as to Religion in the world generally, and will
aim at the establishment of sound knowledge concerning our
Christian Faith : according to which Faith we believe that
God is distinct from the world — is a living God, possessing
His Own life, a God to be worshipped — the Creator.
Religion and History possess a kind of organic existence,
which enables us to explain, by general laws, many past and
present phenomena of human life. We calculate and enume
rate special faults, habits, and vices of mixed communities ; and
see the agreement of immense multitudes as to traditions and
beliefs, " quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum
est," extending from remotest periods to present time ; from
primitive culture until the high Faith of Christianity stands
complete in doctrines, in rites, in ceremonies. It is thought
that we can trace the growth of Faith in the world, as were
it of human origination — a product of human culture. It is
asserted that evidence as to the ancient phases of religious

Natural Philosophy of Religion. 473
consciousness ; evidence concerning the nature, meaning, prac
tice, of rites and ceremonies ; evidence of their transmission,
expansion, restriction, modification ; gives a natural explana
tion of the most sacred and high powers of religion.
The fault, or weak part, in the assumed Natural Philosophy
of Religion is, that as the culture of science and art, of history
and philosophy, displays a world-long evolution of civilisations
wrought out wholly by men in their ascent toward highest
development ; the same process is assumed as to religion, but
the great fact of the Supernatural, on which all religion rests,
and without which all religion is vain, is either denied or
persistently ignored. Ignored — despite the truth that, from
earliest days till now, the universal consciousness, conscience,
intelligence of mankind, accepted and accept the Supernatural.
Denied — despite the fact that. Christianity, Mohammedanism,
Brahminism, Buddhism, Zoroastrism, and all other Faiths
down to lowest brutal Fetishism, claim Divinity in their origin
and continuance.
The folly of ignoring the miraculous becomes more evident
when we learn — " the relation of savagery to barbarism and
semi-civilisation lies almost wholly in pre-historic or extra-
historic regions. . . . Direct history hardly tells anything of
• the changes of savage culture. . . . Perhaps no account of the
course of culture in its lower stages can satisfy stringent
criticism." x The philosophy of religion, which professes to
account for the origin, nature, development of religion, is
confessedly ignorant of that origin, and can trace only a few
steps of its backward course. Moreover, Mr. Tylor says —
"Separation of intelligence from virtue which accounts for
so much of the wrong-doing of mankind, is continually seen
to happen in the great movements of civilisation." 2 He adds
— "ethnographers consider the rude life of primeval man
under favourable conditions to have been, in its measure, a
good and happy life." 8 Knowing, further, the fact thus ex
pressed by Bishop Butler — " Mankind are for placing the stress
of their religion anywhere rather than in virtue ; " it seems, if
the doctrine or philosophy of a natural evolution of religion
1 " Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 35 : Edward B. Tylor.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 25. J Ibid. p. 27.

474 The Kingdom of God.
be true, that uncultured ancient men devised supernatural
restraints on vice and encouragements to virtue ; but that
cultured men, " in the great movements of civilisation,"
through unbelief discard those supernatural restraints and
separate intelligence from virtue. The conclusion is irresist
ible — Religion, resting .upon faith in the supernatural, far from
being an evolution by advancing intelligence, is that very
thing which culture, through unbelief of the supernatural, sets
itself to destroy.
Banishment of the supernatural, establishing the throne of
reason apart from those high emotional faculties which are the
essence of humanity, has brought to trial the long and intri
cate world-history of right and wrong. Secularism, under
taking accurately to formulate all knowledge, has been forced
to admit the remarkable fact that all natural phenomena rest
on the transcendental — on the unknown. The tools that
opponents of the supernatural perverted into weapons of de
struction are being restored to their real use : to clear, trim,
adjust, appropriate thoughts and facts for that contentment of
religious emotion and satisfaction of intelligence which are the
great want of our day.
Some of the facts and processes of thought lie distant from
us in time, as the stars are distant from us in space, but the
laws of mind, like those of the physical universe, are not
bounded by the unaided experience of our senses. History,
philosophy, science, bring to view factors of natural philosophy
as foundations of positive morality — morality resting on con
sciousness of the Supreme. Scientific thought which, as by
polarising force, separated the natural from the supernatural
to the utmost limits of repulsion, now recognises that — as in
material things, so in spiritual — the ultimate cause is the
Unknown. The end of things and the beginning of things
are hidden in impenetrable mystery. We are incapable of
understanding the nonentity out of which they were drawn,
and unable to comprehend the infinity into which they are
translated. Proceed to the verification of this.
The order in which various stages of doctrine and rite
succeed one another in the history of religion, and the fact

Consciousness of the Supernatural. 475
that most of those doctrines and rites are not products of the
particular systems sanctioning them — but results of previous
systems, carry back religion to that early stage which is pre
historic or extra-historic. Hence, religious feeling springs
from that primitive universal desire of the human race to
establish a relationship between itself and those superhuman
and supernatural powers upon whose will the course of Nature
and the well-being of men were felt to be dependent. This
roots religion in the beginning of the life of our race, in the
deepest recesses and essential elements of our nature, and
clothes it with the highest authority which antiquity, reve
rence, reason, can afford.
The various symbols with which this consciousness clothes
itself, the external practices and forms of words, may change
and die; but under all the superficial differences are a few
certain unchangeable and undying truths. Only three need
to be mentioned : —
1. The conviction of a Divine and Supernatural Power is
always accompanied by an attempted twofold intercourse
with that Power : . prayer, by which the worshipper communes
with Him ; and an asserted revelation from Him to the
creature. In other words — "The religious consciousness
regarded as a sense of the presence of the Divine in the
universe and among mankind, is found in all stages of human
history, and constitutes a primary efficiency in religion, in
social life, and in civilisation." x
2. There exists, it is affirmed, an abode in which men abide
after death. " Looking at the religion of the lower races as
a whole, we shall at least not be ill advised in taking as one
of its general and principal elements the doctrine of the soul's
Future Life." 2
3. The reality of evil is an abiding conviction. Evil, as to
the body, which no industry, no political, arrangement, can
destroy. Evil, as to the soul, in its weakness and passions.
We find it everywhere. It lies in the old Pythagorean
doctrine of the metempsychosis. Of Plato it is said — "A
tolerably complete doctrinal statement might be gathered
1 " God in History," vol. iii. p. 302 : Bunsen.
2 "Primitive Culture," vol. ii. p. 19 = Edward B. Tylor.

476 The Kingdom of God.
from his works of the origin, nature, and effects of sin." x
Polybius would check " the unruly passions and desires of
man, by the fear of the invisible and such like tales of
horror." 2 Cicero says of the sparks of virtue — " They are
quickly extinguished by corrupt habit and thought, so that
the light of Nature nowhere appears." 3
In connection with these universal convictions exist holy
places, persons, things ; to which are added observances,
ceremonies, rites ; the outcome of an undeniable fact that
God was prominent in the minds of primitive men, that they
perceived a Spirit in everything, mysterious ghostliness in
all dark space. No tribe nor people has ever been discovered
in the whole course of human history that has not a religion
of some kind or other. These religions are not indefinitely
variable : the great moral truths are substantially the same.
The aborigines of Australia were said to have no idea of the
Supreme, no object of worship, " nothing whatever of the
character of religion, or of religious observance, to distin
guish them from the beasts that perish;"4 yet in the same
book are statements and traditions concerning supernatural
beings, of the author of mischief in the form of a serpent, of
souls, demons, deities. "No religion of mankind lies in
utter isolation from the rest, and the thoughts and princi
ples of modern Christianity are attached to intellectual
clues which run back through far pre-Christian ages to the
very origin of human civilisation, perhaps even of human
existence." B
This last statement is not perfectly accurate as to Chris
tianity, which possesses essential truths of its own. Accept,
however, as fact, that the similarity found in ancient faiths is
so great that it must arise either from the relics of an ancient
revelation, or from universal convictions interwoven with the
very life of the soul. There is, indeed, sufficient resemblance
in Theologies to show that, for the most part, they rest upon
a common consciousness of the supernatural ; sufficient to
' " Christian Element in Plato : " Dr. C. Ackerman.
2 Neander's "Church History," vol i. p. 8.
3 " Tuscu. Quaist." lib. iii. in protzm. 4 " Queensland : " J. D. Lang.
5 "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 381 : Edward B. Tylor.

Christianity not an Evolution. 477
mark a dim, confused recollection and tradition of a Divine
communication ; but not sufficient to enable us to gather out
of other faiths our Christian Faith. A committee of inquiry
could hot collect Christianity from theologies, nor a repre
sentative council co-ordinate it as the growth of universal
consciousness. Christianity is neither a development nor an
evolution, it is a revelation and realisation. " It is the blessed
disclosure of that mystery which had been sealed in silence
since the foundation of the world. ... It is a bringing home
to every living soul of that which had been the dim and latent
hope of the poor suffering heart of humanity in all ages
and in all times, but Which never became an objective reality
until angel voices on the slopes of Bethlehem sang of peace
and blessedness to mankind." x
There is, consequently, a moral order, a false and a true,
a right and a wrong. Indeed, all intelligent intercourse with
ourselves and with the outer world rests on our faith that the
good is true and the true is good. Not to accept this would
conduct a man to insanity, and a race to stupidity : not even
in the stupidity of savagery is the moral element absent
though scanty. Where formal precept fails, traditional con
sensus and public opinion exist by which actions are held to
be good or bad, right or wrong. Where religion is separated
from morals, as it greatly is in barbarism, and partly in some
low forms of professedly Christian faith, the sense of morality
is never wholly lost from consciousness and life. On this
sense of moral order, of the reality of truth, rests the possi
bility of a Kingdom of God amongst men, the potentiality
of our grand creed that God is our Father, Heaven is our
Home. We now transfer our argument to the advance of art and
science. The similarity of early fishing, hunting, warlike instruments,
indicates that they were contrived almost instinctively by a
sort of natural necessity: these rude beginnings advanced
to the improvements of modern skill. Civilisation, itself a
work of skill, the joint advance of art and science, effects
1 Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, "Modern Unbelief," p. 56.

478 The Kingdom of God.
a general improvement of mankind ; promotes human power
and happiness by higher organisation of the individual and of
society ; but the advance is not, necessarily, a growth of moral
order. Some developments of science are positively evil,
abound in debasing arts, sensuous godless literature, utterly
corrupt. We try to make distinctions in favour of civilisation,
to prove that the street arab is a specimen of broken-down
civilisation — who never was civilised ; and is, to the Hottentot,
as a ruined house to a builder's yard ; and we gloss over
the hideous depravity and appalling misery of the dangerous
classes in our, large cities; but all in vain. Civilisation does
not, of itself, destroy either impurity or superstition. The
ancient Etruscans, like the modern Chinese, are examples of
skill and delicacy in goldsmith's work and ivory carving. We
have not surpassed the Greek in oratory, or in sculpture ;
nor exceeded Rome in policy and law. Arts of skill and
elegance flourished, and still flourish, in connection with
abounding cruelty, profligacy, impurity. Far from . religion,
or moral order, growing, as by evolution, with the growth
of civilisation — all the great advances of civilisation were
marred by a separation of secularity from piety, by divorce of
purity from manners.
Nor is that all : when we survey the flights and quaint
fancies of primitive tribes, and try to trace them into a higher
morality, no example of a forward path is presented ; nor do
existing savages advance as men pressing forward to the light,
they grope and stumble in darkness.
Yet further, the holiest life ever looked on by the world,
and the purest code of morals, which have so marvellously
influenced the world for righteousness, and of which we are
looking for some new manifestation of spirit and power, are
not found in the luxurious and refined cities of Athens, or
Corinth, or Rome, but amongst the Jews — a nation not greatly
eminent for skill in art or science, but remarkable for purity of
culture. If it be said — Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius were also
moral heroes ; and may, in some respects, be compared with
Jewish saints ; we reply — These great men furnish the strongest
evidence that their virtues were rather by intuition and inde-

Myths and Poetic Fancy. 479
structible consciousness residing in human nature, certainly
not the product of civilisation ; for civilisation in the age of
the Antoniues could not evolve any except a low type of
morality. History proves that piety was not invented by savagery, is
not established by civilisation ; but of nobler place, and at war
with the evil of both.
Piety, or yearning for a better life and immortality, was
not created by primitive poetic fancy, as may be proved by
existing myths. Myths do not merely contain a rudimentary
cosmic philosophy : an uncivilised race must possess consider
able latent philosophy ere a rich mythology can be constructed.
Arranging these myths in large assorted groups of ancient
imaginative process, the originating thoughts may be traced
in different lands — they appear with the regularity of mental
law. The inner truth is always stronger and stranger than
the fictitious surface ; and these myths, as proving the well-
marked and consistent structure of the human mind in all
ages, are the very best history. They reveal ancestral heir
looms of thought ; the texture of ancient minds ; and, while
placing on record arts and manners, tell of philosophy and
religion in times wholly lost from formal history.
The child-like and poetical fancy of early men recognised
every natural event as the pictured or representative operation
of personal life and will. The Caucasian mind carved out
shapes of Nature for itself; and, with hues well pleasing,
designed silent faces of the Great and Wise — figures of the
Immortal. It was Jove who stretched the rainbow doWn
from heaven, a purple sign of war and tempest ; or, sent it, as
Iris, a messenger between gods and men. Analogies, which
to us are mere fancies, were realities to the ancients. Orientals
were not the sole possessors of power in imagery : the Death-
goddess, stern, livid, grim ; with strong-barred house and nine
worlds of departed souls ; Hunger — her dish, Famine — her
knife, Care — her bed, Misery — her curtain, was a powerful
being to the old Norseman. Whatever was seen gave birth
to fancies ; and fully to understand old-world myths needs not
evidence nor argument, but deep poetic feeling — the faculty

480 The Kingdom of God.
of transporting our spirit into the atmosphere and romance of
former life.
The thoughtful man traces in these myths a consciousness
and picture-history of the work of God. Sometimes crude,
narrow, repulsive ; yet, modern poets' fictions, however deli
cately shaped, want that reality of power wherewith archaic
forms acted with an immense effect on life and faith which
the world has not even yet outgrown. Even if every myth
were nought but wild lawlessness of imagination, having no
pattern whether in heaven or earth, what a wonderful land
of genius did those early men win and occupy \ These births
from the imagination of the poet, the tale-teller, the seer,
disclose so rich a fancy, such creative power and mystic
mazes of thought, that modern inventive poetic powers are
put to the blush. Milton's Sin and Death sitting within the
gates of hell, and their bridge across the deep abyss to earth,
powerfully done, are true antiques. The modern fictions of
artistic beauty and highly wrought fancies, with which civilised
man delights himself, possess not the reality nor freshness
of the phantasms which brightened ancient imagination
and deepened devotion. We have lost the key of mythic-
cypher ; but could we translate the complex shifting terms
into reality, and read off the meaning in worship, love, ad
venture, war ; their life and beauty would go far to prove that
the masterpieces of imagination belong rather to the past than
to the present.
Unconsciously often, and despite themselves, the shapers of
poetic myth and legend in their lives of gods, goddesses, and
superhuman heroes, displayed the structure and operation of
their own minds, the philosophy and religion of their own
times, as if the earliest and highest fountain of thought issued
from consciousness of Deity.
Amongst lowest races the gods of legend and worship are
of mixed personality. Man is the type of deity, human
society and government are models of Divine society. There
are chiefs and kings among men, and on high great gods
among little gods, the difference being rather of rank than of
nature. In after-times, culture does not invent, but develops
amongst Aryan nations, and descends to lowest form in

Ancient Truth — One God. 481
Fetishism. Sir William Jones writes—" We must not be sur
prised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters
of all the Pagan deities, male and female, melt into each other,
and at last into one or two ; for it seems a well-founded
opinion that the crowds of gods and goddesses in ancient
Rome, and modern Varanes (Benares), mean only the powers
of Nature, and principally those of the sun, expressed in a
variety of ways and by a multitude of fanciful names." x
The statement of Sir William Jones evidences that theology,
even amongst rude races, rested not on the error — that there
are many gods ; but on the truth — there is one God, the Divine
ancestor of men, Shaper, Animator, Ruler, Spirit, holding up
heaven, shining in the sun, smiting with the thunder. Nature
was the high priestess, not goddess ; but a symbol of Him,
the Giver of Wisdom ; of Him who is Good as True. It is
clear that a conviction of the Being of one God, is not an
evolution from highly cultured world-consciousness acting on
appropriate facts, but a primitive faith. This is further shown
by the fact that some highly cultured races have low doctrines
and rites ; while others, not so intellectually gifted, form
exalted conceptions of the Supreme. There is also among
existing genuine savage faiths not only a rudimentary form
of idea as to the deep problem of good and evil, but an
effort to solve the mystery by realisation of the good and by
victory over evil. The good, the valiant, all who excel, are
heroes, divine men ; symbols, though not understood, of Him
who became Incarnate.

Doctrine of Souls.
There are two beliefs : 1. Every creature has a soul
capable of continued existence; therefore, the dead chiefs
horse is slain at the tomb for use of the human spirit. 2.
There are souls and spirits ranging from low degree to the
high rank of powerful deities.
1. " The theory of the soul is one principal part of a system
of religious philosophy, which unites in an unbroken line of
mental connection, the savage Fetish-worshipper and the
1 The First Anniversary Discourse before the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
2 I

482 The Kingdom of God.
civilised Christian."1 This unbroken line of mental con
nection, this universal and imperishable conviction, is found
in the soul-depths of every human creature ; and reminds us,
though sometimes in rudest quaintest symbols, of a Spiritual
Kingdom. In lowest levels of culture the notion of a ghost-soul occa
sionally inhabiting the dead body, and in vision and dream
appearing out of the body, is deeply ingrained. This
faith inevitably leads to acts of reverence and propitiation.
Part of the old culture of souls and spirits survives in modern
spiritualism. It is believed that phantasms are ghosts ; that, being dis
embodied, they can enter the sleeper's mind and excite
perception apart from any external or objective figure. As
to persons awake, spirits are said to be visible to some, to
others invisible, according to the will of the spirits. It is also
taken for granted, both in rudest and most advanced culture,
that spirits recognise one another by a likeness of the body
retained in the disembodied state. Man's spirit, after death,
lives in complete and abiding human shape :
" Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside ;
And I shall know him when we meet." In Memoriam.
2. In Zulu theology, not only do souls exist after the death
of the body, but are spirits and deities worshipped by the
living. In modern thought, the soul furnishes a more intel
lectual side to the religious doctrine of the future life ; but,
in all faiths, however unintellectual, it is an essential. The
most formal denial of future life, found amongst an uncultured
race, is in a poem of the Dinka tribe concerning Dendrid the
Creator : ' ' He made man :
And man comes forth, goes down into the ground, and comes no more."
There is, nevertheless, even in this tribe, testimony to belief
in another life. Indeed, the continued existence of the soul,
l" Primitive Culture : " Edward B. Tylor.

Regions of the Dead. 483
after the death of the body, may be counted part of the
universal faith.
Two forms of doctrine are found : —
1. The Transmigration of souls, which, ascending from
lower stages, has established itself amongst the huge commu
nities of Asia.
2. The separate personal Existence of the Soul, found not
only amongst rude and primitive men, but in the heart of
Christianity — where it is at once an inducement to goodness,
a sustainer of hope, and a solution to the problem presented
by the mixed state of our present life.
The savage mind is generally incapable of a large and clear
view of immortality ; all dull and careless natures are wont
to regard the world to come as far off; but conviction of its
reality finds expression in every definition of faith. Some
times continuance of life is the main fact, sometimes retribu
tion is the chief feature.
Four great regions are assigned to the dead : hell, earth,
hades, heaven, and the conception of them does not sink into
dreaminess, but is characterised rather by ghostliness. The
low creeds have little moral element in connection with the
state and place of the departed. It was reserved for our
Christian Faith to implant righteousness and holiness, to give
the inspiration of duty and love, and to constitute them chief
verities in the Kingdom of God.
Future Retribution.
The idea of future retribution and different grades of
condition is not universal : some savage races are in an inter
mediate condition between the continuance theory and the
retribution theory. This confirms the New Testament state
ment that the revelation of a pure and glorious immortality is
by Jesus Christ.
All races have idea of the soul outliving the body in a
¦country of ghosts ; and all carnal men, whether of low or high
culture, count a corner in this world the better place. In all
faiths, except the Christian Faith, whether the spirit dwells
with the body in the grave, or is secluded in a subterranean
void, or abides in the dark classic realm of hades, or occupies

484 The Kingdo/n of God.
the Roman Orcus of pallid souls, or roams the ghostly prairie
of the savage hunter, the life is shadowy and dismal. The
Sheol of ancient Jewish dead was, to common conception, but
little better — a place where the dead met the dead. Never
theless, we can trace amongst many barbarous nations germs
of that holy comforting doctrine which lies at the very heart
of Christianity; but the roads by which a happy land is
attained are so strangely different that the path of life to one
race seems to another a very descent into the pit. The chiet
idea in low culture is — what gives prosperity or renown here
will give it hereafter ; present contrasts have reality in future
existence ; " the good are good warriors and hunters," said
the Pawnee chief ; but as the good, whatever it may mean,
is a qualification for reward, the theory, even among lowest
races, belongs to morality.
The crude primitive faith pictures a spectral abode. The
higher faiths more and more spiritualise the definite regions
of heaven and hell into states rather than localities of happi
ness and misery. In the last hours of earthly dwelling godly
men say of the coming change — " It is not death, but life."
Mourners, setting aside the evidence of their physical senses,
exclaim — " Life is not severed by fatal shears, only the bands
of earth, the consummation is in eternal glory." The Chris
tian Faith reveals a state of perfect purity ; and to aid our
conception of it brings to view a building of God, a house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
The Power and Doctrine of Holy Scripture.
The attempts which have been made to discredit the Divine
Inspiration of Holy Scripture, and to disprove Prophecy, faith
in a Personal God, in moral order, in spiritual existence, in
judgment to come, have led to searching investigation.
A certain predictive power seems to be possessed by peculiar
states of human consciousness, and prophecy of some kind
has been found to exist among all nations. Apart from any
sacred purpose, considered as a mere faculty in the human
mind, it is something distinct from intelligent thought and
consciousness, but not inconsistent with them : it is a part of
the relation of the psyche to the inner and outer world. In

Predictive Power. 485
Hellas, the office of the Pythia, with the rational prophet or
virofyfiTTiQ to stand beside her ; and amongst Jews, the school
of the Prophets ; are historical proofs.
The power, in its lowest form, is a morbid condition of
consciousness, or a sickly brooding enthusiasm ; but, though
uncertain in the degree and accuracy of prophetic enuncia
tion, it has, through the whole course of history, obtained and
kept power over stoutest minds. In high states, or the
spiritual grade — we speak not of the sacred and Divine as
found in Holy Scripture — the inward vision is allied with the
faculty of recollection ; is related to, but is not, demoniacal
possession. It is an error to assume that it belongs wholly to lower
culture, and will be destroyed by higher medical knowledge.
Higher medical knowledge will do well to investigate it as
psychic power. In British India, moving, writhing, tearing
men, are entered by a psychic power and oracles are uttered.
This kind of prophecy, or prevision, or delusion, or disease, or
whatever it may be, arose in times of so-called barbarism ;
continued in full vigour throughout the classic world, and
exists now scarcely altered. Men, who naturally have neither
ability nor eloquence, will, in the possessed state, pour forth
earnest lofty declamation in well-knit harangue of metaphor
and poetic figure.
We are not prepared with any explanation, and only use
the fact as one of the many links by which human conscious-1
ness is united to a world of occult influences ; and as example,
whether good or bad, of the verity of that higher and holier
power which is manifested in Scripture. The relation seems
to be somewhat like that of the divining damsel, at Philippi,
to St. Paul and the preached gospel (Acts xvi. 16-18).
These investigations, carried into fields of thought, worked,
for the most part, by those who refuse Holy Scripture, show
that the attempt of physicists to limit the universe to material
existences is in opposition to universal consciousness and
experience. Matter is but one small piece of furniture in
the many-chambered House of God. There is world within
world, as there are stars beyond stars ; and space, where we
see nothing, teems with a more manifold existence than that

486 Th6 Kingdom of God.
exhibited in material forms. It is the high attribute of true
Art and Science to suggest infinitely more than they express ;
suggestions that all material things are not carcases of the dead,
but rather germs of life. We all, at times, have the shuddering
impression, embodied by Coleridge in dark and fearful verse,
that something not of earth is behind us ; and he is less than
man who does not weave wild contrasts of heights and depths,
of solemn mysteries, of possible loss, of holy and eternal
triumph,

' A spirit moves within us, and impels
The passion of a prophet to our lips."

Inner powers are ready to be quickened into the life of
manifold senses : senses by which we see — not with the eye ;
and hear — not by the ear ; faculties enabling the soul to dis
criminate between spirit and spirit, evoking forms now coiled
as in chrysalis web, that we may stand perfect in vital
organisation. Take example, a cultivator of positive science, endowed
with healthiest of human brains, Sir Humphry Davy. By
inhalation of nitrous oxide, he was abstracted from all ex
ternal things, losing perception of them. Trains of visible
images, strangely linked with words, passed rapidly through
his mind ; so that he " existed in a world of newly connected
and newly modified ideas." On awaking he resolved that
the universe had its chief reality in the mind. If so slight
a cause, till then unknown, gave exhilaration, elasticity,
vigour, refreshing and doubling the grandeur and might of
intellectual man ; it is certain that many occult influences
run through all creation ; and our present faculties, duly
heightened, might establish communication wherever beings
live and think. Man already obtains favours that are mar
vellous ; yet, he does but touch the infinite ; can only meditate
a little on evils that perplex — not disable and disarm them ;
can but desire the exquisite and perfectly good — not
possess it.
The consideration of these mental phenomena and poten
tialities enables us to make a profitable definite examination
of Holy Scripture.

Unity, Variety, Grandeur of Scripture. 487
The examination aims at showing that the Infinite Spirit
has entered finite Nature ; that the Voice which past genera
tions believed to be the Voice of God revealing deep mysteries,
is a true Voice ; that Christianity consists of a definite posi
tive body of truths admitting neither addition nor diminution
except by Divine Authority ; and that the Bible is not such
a book as man would make, if he could ; or could make, if he
would. The indications of unity in the Bible, despite being the
work of many writers who were separated by wide intervals
in time and space, are proof of a plan running through the
whole, and render it impossible for the Book to be a work
either of chance or of human contrivance.
More varied in its contents, in its writers, in its ages, than
any other book ; it raises unwearied testimony against the
universal tendency to polytheism ; and, as if to disprove the
possibility of it being the product or evolution of human con
sciousness, it everywhere maintains a sublime doctrine of
monotheism. This Book, alone of all books, resisted and
overcame the tendency to worship many gods ; and declared
of the one God — " His the greatness, and the power, and
the glory, and the victory, and the majesty : for all that is in
the heaven and in the earth is His ; and He reigneth over
all." With the unique spiritual sublimity, is an inversion of the
seeming relative importance of events. The rise and fall of
empires, changes and revolutions which fill nations with terror
or triumph, sure to be recorded on human page, have here
little or no mention. A small people, domestic scenes, family
trials, traits of personal character, are invested with peculiar
greatness, some mysterious connection with moral govern
ment by the Supreme Ruler. The world rings with the fame
of great captains, the earth shakes beneath the tread of in
numerable legions, and the writers of this strange Book are
not deaf ; nevertheless, the Bible is silent and unconcerned as
sun and stars : only those events are regarded as great which
bear on the development and issues of that spiritual empire,
or Kingdom of God, which the Book asserts is being founded
and builded in the world.

488 The Kingdom of God.
While crowns and sceptres lie about as neglected things,
the foundations of earthly morality are established on the fact
of our intimate connection with heaven. Human laws derive
their sanction and authority from Divine Will : Will, deter
mined by supreme rectitude, wisdom, power, enjoining what
is good and claiming supremacy by right. This dominant
idea subordinates everything to the ultimate triumph of a
spiritual empire.
Other systems form two different spheres of duty — religion
and morality. Religion, separated from its chief root, fails
even to maintain the soul's consciousness of God ; and morality,
apart from Divinity, becomes utterly corrupt. The Bible
alone co-ordinates morality with religion ; not in analogy
with any merely human system, nor in accord with the
universal tendency of sensuous civilisation to fall into mate
rialism. History shows that human nature, left to itself, would never
have devised the moral code of Scripture ; any more than the
worm that crawls could claim the attributes of an eagle that
flies. Patience, humility, meekness, spiritual purity, reliance
on God, forgiveness of injury, are not, in the world's estimate,
constituents of heroic character, nor most worthy of applause.
These chief features of Bible morality are not. the native
lineaments of human nature ; and secularists doubt whether
they really are virtues. Refined selfishness, systematic shrewd
culture and indulgence of the natural appetites, self-assertion,
are the worldly graces. Nevertheless, the wise adaptation
and comprehensiveness of Bible religion are so great, that
millions declare " every mood and necessity of our moral and
spiritual life are therein exhaustively expressed." The morality
and doctrine propounded are so exquisitely adapted to the
circumstances of the nature which it guides, sustains, exalts ;
yet, so out of the range of all that unassisted Nature would
suggest ; that men, emulous of good, find their hearts filled
with joy in realisation of the good ; and no more doubt con
cerning the Divinity of its definite and positive body of truth
than they doubt the evidence of their senses.
As to the Old Testament, it may and does honour the
Jews ; but, so far from glorifying that nation, it constitutes, if

Bible not Invented nor Evolved. 489
false, one long libel ; telling them that they are a " perverse
and stiff-necked generation," refusing alike warning and re
formation till they become a " hissing and a by-word among
the nations ; " nevertheless, as Pascal says, " they preserve it
at the expense of their life." x It is certain that they could
not have invented it ; not in barbarian, nor Jewish, nor Greek,
nor Roman nature, do we discover elements out of which the
Bible Religion could have been spontaneously evolved as a
growth of national genius and culture ; or as an ideally con
ceived deliberate fiction ; or as an aggregation of myth and
legend. What we do discover is a plain statement that
human nature, far from being able of itself to erect a kingdom
of immortal glory, is ever going down to mouldering rubbish,
to utter and perpetual desolation, forgetting to take God into
account at all ; but that God, by patient endurance of human
folly, by merciful forgiveness of sin, by propounding a holy
law to work beautiful humility and desire after holiness, pre
pares men for a reign of righteousness. We hear as it were
a sound, not from halls of philosophy, not from prince's palace,
not from intrigues of statesmen ; the sound as of ocean on
distant shore, and a sweet strange melody of men and angels
concerning issues of an invisible spiritual empire.
As to Christianity, far from being a natural growth of
Jewish nature, it has roused, for nineteen hundred years, the
undying animosity of that race. The Messiah, though, as
Christians think, plainly prophesied of, shocked their national
prejudices, wrecked their hope of martial dominion, and so
evoked fierce indignation that they crucified Him. The few,
however, who knew Him best, accepted Him, made Him
known to the nations, and were the faithful, wise expositors
of His will. They painted no fancy portrait, but a true
likeness, showed how the man, Christ, transcended manhood
and in Himself antedated and realised beforehand the ultimate
perfection of our race. Christ, in personal character and in
the essence of His teaching, is perfection : clearly beyond the
plane of unaided human nature — a phenomenon to be ex
pected, if evolution be true, in the future, not one who has
1 "Cependant, ce livre qui les deshonore en tant de facons, ils le conserve aux
depens de leur vie." — Pensees, torn. ii. p. 189.

490 The Kingdom of God.
already for two thousand years fixed the admiring gaze of
mankind. Scripture, as a whole, far from being an outgrowth of human
reason and philosophy, is well-nigh for ever in opposition to
the wisdom of the world. Moreover, the antiquity of the
writings places them at an earlier age than any in which such
an evolution was possible. If the writings are not ancient and
genuine, but modern and forgeries, how and when were they
palmed on the nation as true ? It must have been so cleverly
done that not a murmur of complaint has come down to us ;
not only so, the conception of such a Messiah as Christ was
antagonistic to the Jews' deepest prejudices and principles.
The spontaneous and natural projection by Jewish mind of a
Messiah, whose humble origin and condition, character, teach
ing, and ignominious death, have ever made Him an object of
hatred to the race, is incredible and impossible. The only
allegiance, moreover, which this Messiah accepts is a voluntary
one, founded on the love of truth, the practice of piety, the
exhibition of holiness ; yet, He claims universal empire ; and
predicts His own supreme rule over heart and mind and will
throughout the world. In connection with, and a means of
winning, such wide domain, is an intense spirit of proselytism :
the gospel must be proclaimed " to all nations under heaven,"
and preached " to every creature : " nevertheless, no sword
must smite, no violence compel, no persecution hurt opponents ;
every victory must be gained by truth, graced by purity,
illumined by love. The rights of conscience are held sacred,
and the principle of toleration is consecrated. Such a system,
to the Jews, a paradox ; to the Gentiles, contemptible ; to the
natural tendencies of our race, contrary; could neither
originate nor continue unless by superhuman illumination
and power. The genius of man, the wisdom of man, the
civilisation of man, whenever departing from this Faith —
whether for esoteric mysteries, or rationalistic interpretations
— have overshadowed and blighted doctrine and morality.
Investigation confirms the affirmation — " the Bible is not such
a book as man would make, if he could ; or could make, if he
would." There are other peculiarities in Holy Scripture, of a remark-

Peculiarities of Holy Scripture. 491
able and practical character, in which men, for the most part,
go astray.
The way of understanding the Book, is — " He that doeth
the will of God shall know of the doctrine whether it be of
God." This one simple rule is the surest methodjof advancing
in the knowledge of Divine Truth ; and, indeed, the only way
of learning things of a sacred and practical nature. It leads
to, and keeps in the right path, true-hearted men, like the
Apostles, though to worldly wise men the path is hard to
find and harder to keep. The soul, possessing this rectifying
instrument of obedience, detects where a fallacy lies ; and, as
by a touch, discerns between the living and the dead.
A second peculiarity is, that while an unspiritual man
works that he may justify himself and win merit ; Scripture
requires that utter abnegation of self which leads a man to
rely wholly on God for power whether to think or do — from
this death of self, the believer goes forth, in the power of new
life, to obtain higher life.
The third peculiarity is that union of opposites — wisdom
and zeal, moderation and wonderfully comprehensive morality,
which, though free from minute rules, actually governs heart
and mind, word and deed. A few striking, and some think
absurd, precepts — "pluck out even a right eye . . . give to
him that asketh . . . love your enemies ... do to others as
ye would that they should do unto you "—bring more riches
out of the Treasury of God than do the cases, judgments,
casuistical tomes, of a thousand secular writers. Go to , the
Scriptures with robust good sense, moderation, charity; or
go in a child-like spirit ; and you have light to walk by,
and strength to walk. As to "becoming all things to all
men ; " the manifestation of liberty and comprehensiveness of
charity for "the weak brother," yet maintenance of that
" unity of spirit " which produces highest uniformity ; these
directions assign the crown and glory of religion to Love, yet
exalt Faith.
The fourth peculiarity is the skill with which social and
political rocks are avoided. Principles are laid down which
purify society, and ultimately ensure upright government;
being first efficacious for the individual, afterwards for the

49 2 The Kingdom of God.
mass ; but the fanaticism of the Jews, the hatred of heretics,
the passions of men inflammable as tinder concerning vicious
social customs and political institutions, are not kindled into
a flame ; while social rights are vindicated, and limitations
set to political power, by the gradual formation of enlightened
opinion. Whence had unlearned men this wisdom, avoiding the
fanaticism of the Jews, the excesses of the Greeks, the violence
of the Romans, yet possessed with burning enthusiasm ?
Enthusiasm, effecting a greater revolution in the world than
ever before had been effected ; and with such moderation,
sagacious control, sober firmness, that the precepts are ever
more a terror to evil-doers, a wonder to the wise, the praise
of them that do well ? There is but one answer — from the
Almighty by Inspiration.
The New Testament was not written in Attic, but common
Greek. There are quaint idioms ; scholars detect Syriac,
Hebrew, and Chaldee ruggedness ; but, despite these, a purity
and grace all its own, have won a name and place in the
forefront of the world's literature. Argued against, when
carried into Greece, by an intellectual power which has never
been surpassed ; opposed, when preached in the Roman
Empire, by an organised worldly policy the like of which has
never since been seen ; refused by the very people on whom,
in reality, it conferred the greatest honour ; it is now the
greatest moral power in the world, and the only source whence
we derive definite knowledge of the Divine Person, of the
resurrection, of judgment to come, of immortality. We un
flinchingly, therefore, adopt these words — " The Scriptures do
not depend for their existence, or their obligation, on the con
tingency of human belief, but on the infallibility of a Divine
revelation. They do not exist because they are believed, but
because of the eternal truth of that which they reveal." x
The truths are objective — true before they are believed,
and true even after faith in them is lost. They are subjective
also — their influence being the result of immediate operation
by the Holy Ghost on the human heart and conscience. This
must be remembered in dealing" with opponents of Scripture :
1 " The Bible and its Critics," p. 13 : Rev. Edward Garbett.

Jewish Prophets. 493
we shall not prevail with them, unless we win our way into the
conviction of their intellect, and into the affection of their
will. We are also to bear in mind a fearful truth— "When
with the Bible in her hand, and Jesus as her archetype, the
Rational Conscience is seated on the throne, there will be
also revealed worse and worse abominations of superstition
and scepticism." x The two poles of man's nature, belief and
unbelief, are acted upon ; and, as he wills, there is negation
unto utter destruction ; or acceptance of that positive truth
which gives light and saves life. We all have need to pray —
" Let Evil die away in night,
And Truth walk forth in joyous light."
View the matter somewhat otherwise.
Holy Scripture had origin amongst a people who were
separated from mankind : to whom, nevertheless, it gave a
sense of the unity of men. In themselves, anything rather
than representative of collective humanity — even now they may
be said to dwell alone, their Book explains the tangled aimless
movements of nations, and brings into harmony the jarring
discords of varied destinies. From Moses to Malachi is a
succession of men manifesting spiritual and prophetic power
during 1000 years, which has nothing like it in the world's
history. They proclaim a Divine life in man, and that the
Redeemer was to come of Jewish flesh to make all flesh akin.
They had inward perception of Divine things, high spiritual
endowment from God, were heroes of moral effort, were
gifted with Inspired speech. They illuminate the past with
the true doctrine of creation, sanctify and beautify the present
with the fact of everlasting Redemption, reveal the future by
declaring the establishment of a Divine universal kingdom.
Then Christ and the apostles appear—" Not in a barbarous
age, but in the most instructed and enlightened age that the
world had ever before seen, and perhaps in many respects
has since seen;"2 but, as if to show that the gospel was
not an evolution wrought by the world's wisdom, Peter,
James, John, not philosophers, but fishermen, went forth
' " God in History," vol. i. p. 14 : Bunsen.
2 " Foundations of Religion : " Sir John Barnard Byles.

494 The Kingdom of God.
to teach the world. Not endued with the wisdom of the time,
not experienced in the ways of the world, not acquainted
with scientific, physical, theological, moral, or social theories,
they had been taught by one, Jesus.
Pass from the men to the Books.
The Books, whether old or new, not always chronological
in canonical arrangement, are coherent with the circumstances
of their date, and as to matter, congruous. Everything has
due place in the successive steps of one indivisible yet ex
ceedingly variable history ; and in every part are symbols,
allusions, prophecies, showing that the whole was seen from
the beginning, and linked with knitted purport.
The predictions concerning our Lord's nature and work
and suffering, are not fewer than one hundred and nine,1 taken
from nine and twenty books. There is no merely human de
velopment of doctrine, for — notwithstanding a progressive
unfolding of the Divine scheme — the unity of a personal God,
the creation and preservation of the world by His power,
a particular Providence, the corruption of man, atonement
through sacrifice, efficacy of prayer, human responsibility, the
necessity of personal holiness, were as plainly stated at first
as last. The whole being — not a human science, but a system
of objective truth revealed by God, with subjective counter
part in man.
Verification may be obtained by any candid intelligent
mind who reverently searches Scripture to discover those
continuous lines of thought, of prophecy, of doctrine, of
morals, which run through the whole, making it one piece.
One line of prophecy, the Messianic, may be taken as
example of the wonderful accuracy, yet complexity of the
prophetic portion. So soon as man falls by means of woman,
restoration is promised even through that weak one (Gen. iii.
15). After the Flood, lest men think the ancient blessing has
departed, the kingdom of God is re-established in Shem ; and
Japheth, received into holy community, is to dwell in the tents
of Shem (Gen. ix. 26, 27). Abraham and the patriarchs are
told that through them will come the Benediction of Nations
' Classified in " Simpson's Plea for Religion."

Messianic Prophecies. 495
(Gen. xii. 1-3, xlix. 8-10). Balaam's prophecy (Numb.
xxiv. 17-19) 'is of a Star— the symbol of splendour in
Divine Rule, and of a Sceptre — symbol of dominion. Against
his will, the man said concerning his enemies — " the Lord is
amongst them." Moses' prophecy, of a Prophet like unto
himself, gave yet greater definiteness of view (Deut. xviii.
15-19). Afterwards, we learn that this Messiah is not only
to be of Judah's tribe, but of David's family (2 Sam. vii. 12-
16). The predictions in the Psalms are too numerous to
mention ; these may be profitably studied — ii., viii., xvi.,
xxii., xxiv., xl., xii., xiv., Iv., Ixviii., lxxii., lxxxvii., lxxxix.,
xc, ex., cxviii. Passing on, we find the Man of sorrows
(Isai. liii.), the Lord our Righteousness (Jer. xxiii. 6), the
Shepherd of Ezekiel (xxxiv. 23, 24), Messiah the Prince
(Dan. ix. 24-27), the Lord and His Goodness (Hosea iii. 4, 5),
the Builder of David's Tabernacle (Amos ix. 11, 12), the
Saviours of Obadiah (ver. 21), the Salvation and Resurrection
typified by Jonah, the Ruler in Israel (Micah v. 2), the Giver
of Peace (Hag. ii. 9), the Fellow of the Lord of Hosts (Zech.
xiii. 7), and the Messenger of the Covenant (Mai. iii. 1).
These are a few out of many predictions which critical inves
tigation, application and fulfilment in the New Testament,
manifest as a light shining in dark places and ancient times
to testify of the Lord's Dominion.
This one line of investigation, well continued, will bring
conviction to any, possessed of acuteness and learning, who
may wish to understand the reality of prophecy, the Inspira
tion of Scripture, the establishment of God's kingdom. The
truth will be found to deepen in meaning with the profundity
of a student's capacity. Sacred, like physical science, en
larges with the growth of human intelligence ; and prophecy
is a continual abiding revelation, the speaking of God afresh
to us in every fulfilment ; and, with reference to Jesus, pre
dictions in the Psalms and the Prophets as to His character
and work, translate themselves by the peculiar power of
Scripture into the believer's heart and mind, to renew his
nature, and make him, Christ-like, live resolutely in the whole,
the beautiful, the good.
Nor is that all— the " curiosa felicitas " of the Book is sur-

496 The Kingdom of God.
prising even in its feeblest translations. It fits almost naturally
into every language ; it is easiest of all books to translate
without great loss of energy, of beauty, of specific character ;
yet let any one who thinks that he can cast it in any mould
but its own, endeavour to submit David's Psalms to our metre
or rhyme ; his words will be as notes of a whistle to the
majestic roll of an organ, or as the trickling of a rill in com
parison with the "voice of many waters."
The Book has become universal : evoked more literature
than all other books in the world. Every book, that works
any good, seems connected with this — either for or against ;
and, in the more than two hundred languages into which it
has been translated, it reigns as king. Children love it, the
¦ dullest of our race delight in it ; the feminine mind becomes
more graceful and womanly by it ; the masculine, more manly ;
and the troubled find by means of it a " peace which passeth
all understanding." Men, in the front of science, learning,
civilisation, everlastingly pore over it, illustrate, interpret,
translate, defend, or attack. No pains are too great to make
plain even its insignificant parts ; and the greatest of wicked
men, the Lucifers of ungodliness, shout and roar if they find
a mote in the light, or a spot on the face of this Sun. It
is quoted more than any other book, lives a manifold life
in every school of thought, is the delight of painters, and
suggests to poets their most gorgeous conceptions. "There
never was any book like the Bible, and there never will be
such another." It is the Book for all men and for all time :
as a phenomenon it is unique. Like an old oak, in its days
and under its branches, the harvest of thousands of years
spring, ripen, fall beneath the sickle of Time.
It is of no avail to say — " Many sacred books have received
admiration and reverence, there are always ignorant people,
and nations in a low stage of civilisation." We reply — No
book is like this : so full of variety as to events, so inimitable
in style, so rich in mysterious endowment of the writers. No
other book has been received, by power of moral persuasion,
to rule life and morals amongst nations and races of every
conceivable variety as to origin, position, tradition, belief,
language, and that in days when men of loftiest minds guided

The Book and the People. 497
public opinion. No 'other book has been so sifted, as to
evidence; so tested, as to power; so tried, as to purity.
Errors, if any exist, are not consecrated by law ; doctrines,
when opposed, are not fenced in against hostile criticism ; its
principles, even enemies declare, can never be uprooted from
our nature ; it alone seems capable of raising a succession of
men heroically bent on making it universal. No other book
so vividly sets forth the doom of guilt; yet the guilty are
wont to read, admire, and obey. Men weary and heavy laden,
the sick and those about to die, find rest — healing — life.
The Book is one, yet the product of many men in many
ages ; by writers — for the most part, neither conscious nor
capable of co-operating ; a portion now, and a part then ;
dreams, centuries separating, strangely finding realisation ;
disclosures made piecemeal, so adjusted that grandest results
are obtained from minutest beginnings. The cylinder of the
world's history — as it unrolls, art and science — as they advance,
are found inscribed with hieroglyphics : the Bible reveals their
meaning.
Marvellous Work wrought by the Jews.
The Hebrews have embalmed the spirit, thought, laws,
history, all that constitutes the life of a nation ; but the
Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, whom the world account
greater and cleverer, left far inferior memorials — and we
discover the records, and bring them from out the tomb of
centuries, through a spirit of investigation excited by the
Bible. By means of Miracles, by power of the Bible, this race
has done more for literature and science, both as to God and
man, than did the Greeks — celebrated for genius, than the
Romans — renowned for government. The paradox is not
diminished by their alleged insignificance and obscurity, but
explained when viewed as part of a Divine Plan. No for
tuitous collection of tracts — written by men of unaided
powers, could so win the homage of mankind and extort the
passionate love of ten thousand times ten thousand.
They did not hold the world in amazement by means of
Jewish genius— the Jew holds little place, apart from Scripture, 2 K

498 The Kingdom of God.
in the world's mental history ; yet the Jew had the sublimest
system of spiritual truth, the purest morality, the clearest
knowledge of God. He brought a new life into the heart of
the world. Deeper and deeper the truth struck its roots in
all lands, wider and wider became its influence among the
nations. The science of Babylonia, Egypt, Arabia ; the
subtle genius in philosophy, speculative intellect, vividness
and vigour of thought amongst the Greeks ; the wisdom of all
other races in the world ; failed. Where they fell, the Jew
rose ; soared with a flight true and lofty to the knowledge of
God. He declared that to be wrong which heathendom
declared to be right, and that right which heathendom pro
nounced wrong. Centuries of thought had not advanced one
step nearer to the solution of problems with which, child-like,
it began — began with child-like question, ended with aged
doubt. Jesus, the Jew, solved those problems. In what
school had the Jew been taught highest wisdom and purest
faith ? In the school of the Almighty. The greatest minds
have seen no further, nor added one truth to religion,
since John, taught by Jesus, wrote of Love to God and
man. Those mysterious themes — Sin, Ruin, Redemption,
Sanctification, Eternal Life, do now and will for ever form
the great matters on which profound minds meditate : all
that we know of these things has been learned from the
Jews. We look at human science, and trace its hesitating
course through ages of uncertainty and imperfection ; but,
turning to the Bible, we find it plainly stated that man is
connected with the Infinite by place and authority ; is related
to the Eternal in origin ; if he falls, it is to rise higher ; if he
dies, it is that he may live again. Brought down to the depths
of humiliation, tried and tempted, the servant of God is, never
theless, destined to highest glory. In his spirit, in the depths
of his heart, a Divine voice proclaims the final overthrow
of evil, the lasting triumph of goodness, the reign of righteous
ness among men.
The great and wise of the world stood amazed, while
prophets and fishermen did a work which they confessed was
not their own — but by power of the Spirit of God. They
appealed to signs and wonders, marvels and miracles, in proof

The Founder, Exemplar, King. 499
of their Supernatural authority ; that powers of the world to
come accompanied them, that the continual presence of God,
the all-pervading wisdom of the Holy Ghost, gave them the
victory. During many later ages we have not seen public manifest
ations of outer material miracles ; but the ancient marvels
may now be evidenced and tested by inner and spiritual
operations. In the prophets' days, in the time of Christ's
manhood, in the times of those who had seen Him, visible
signs were given ; but signs having been given, and the world
having received manifestation of the Divine Nature by Per
sonal Presence, the further proof was that of holy influence.
Miracles have never ceased, their sphere of action has been
almost wholly changed ; they are now wrought within, seldom
without, the man. Every regeneration, every conversion
from unfaith to faith, is a miracle : it is Creation in a new
form (Gal. ii. 20).
The Character of Christ.
He is the Founder, Exemplar, King of our Faith ; the
Messiah, now refused, but to be accepted, of the Jews ; His
originality and power of character raised Him above the plane
of human nature — yet, how human is He ! Not in Roman,
Greek, or Jew, can we discover the elements of so rare a
creation. The Holy Personality was not the slow combined
product of a world spirit stirring, with high culture, a greatly
gifted race ; nor a moral development — equipped in the school
and cultured in the palace. Jesus, the Child of poor parents,
educated as a carpenter's son, nurtured in Nazareth, of almost
homeless poverty, was it possible for such a child, if but a
child, to become that God-man of work so mighty ? Contrast
His humility with Jewish pride, His charity with their fana
ticism, His expansiveness and their narrowness ; you will say
that He is one whom they could neither produce nor invent.
The prophesied of, yet Secret One — ever hidden from their
eyes ; their honour and their shame ; inextricably woven into
their history, yet always nationally refused. For nineteen
hundred years He has been the centre and cause of all moral
and spiritual development amongst the wisest nations ; outside

500 The Kingdom of God.
of these nations exists little knowledge. Around His life,
work, death, the world gathers. His profound acquaintance
with the human heart, His grand morality, His wonderful
knowledge, yet — except in early childhood — He never stepped
beyond the confines of Palestine, render Him the greatest of
men. He declared that the world should bow down to Him, the
nations worship Him, that He would judge quick and dead.
Are they pretensions of a straw-crowned Bedlam monarch ?
are they declarations of impious ambition, or midsummer
madness ? No, beautiful in humility, a little child is symbol
of those who enter His kingdom : bitterest enemies could not
convict Him of pride or sin. Around the Nazarene of ob
scurity, of poverty, of suffering, gathers a halo of glory to
which no hero, nor history, nor romance, can pretend. He
lived in holiness that knew no frailty, yet conciliated human
infirmity with heavenly sympathy. With courage that no
fear could daunt, no death dismay, He endured all horrors.
His gentleness bound up the broken heart, poured consolation
for every mourner — "If the life and death of Socrates are
those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a
God." At no other time, by no other man, was so supreme a start
from such low degree to manifestation of higher life ; no other
man has done so much for men ; none but Jesus could be
Jesus. Some thousand workers come up in this century to be
forgotten in the next ; but the silver cord of Christ is not
loosed, nor the golden bowl of doctrine broken. Time sits as
a refiner, the dross is cast away and the pure gold preserved ;
Time chronicles centuries, myriads die ; Jesus, imperishable as
gold, lives for ever ; binds the heart of the world to Himself
with electric chain ; tells how the soul, weak and wandering
like a storm-driven bird, may nestle in the bosom of our Holy
Father. In the spirits of men, where sin has opened an un
fathomable depth of anguish, He causes streams of consola
tion to flow and fill that depth. He makes our eye to sparkle
with light, and our cheek to glow with the strangely sweet
aspect of those who look into far-off worlds and gladly
hasten thither.

Ever-growing Power. 501
We have not fully realised our mental conception of the
wonderful manner in which science reveals the truth, beauty,
and power of Holy Scripture ; but we take courage in the
thought that Eternal Truths do not rest solely for support on
human championship ; they are God Himself speaking to the
minds and hearts and consciences of men. Generation after
generation passes away, but Revealed Truth shines with ever-
brightening flame as the atmosphere of reason becomes more
clear and pure. Philosophers, many shallow, some profound,
follow one upon another ; every one in turn puzzles men for a
moment, and then departs in the long procession of dead men,
of dead creeds, to a common grave. Christ alone has the power
of endless life, and He gives this life to the thoughtful mind, the
susceptible heart, the poetic genius, with strength for duty and
comfort in sorrow. In revelation of immortality, by His supreme
wisdom and truth, He carries the beauty of holiness and the
ardour of love to elevate the humblest, enrich the poorest, make
wise the least instructed, and to take away fear of all that lies
beyond the grave. At those moments in history, when un
believing men predicted the end of Christianity, its youth has
been renewed ; and at this time, when dissolution is confidently
foretold, it arms itself for new victories, and goes forth to con
quer the world. The kingdom of God contains in itself the
evidence that it is the kingdom of God. Verbum domini
manet in ceternum. Blessed are all who know it to be the
Word of the Lord. They may be weary and stricken in the
fight against the Powers of Darkness ; but, in full sincerity
baring their spirit before the Immensity and Eternity, they
are conscious of a Divine Presence in their own personality ;
that their life will not be wrecked by failure and disappoint
ment, but be safe for ever against all storms— a new life;
reincarnate by Divine generation of the great God Man,
Jesus, our Lord.
Those whom we have been refuting may not join in our
prayer, but will believe in its sincerity : we implore the Infinite
Unseen Power to reveal to them also undying truths, lead
them into the Peace of God, make them brilliant, heart-
elevating, fruitful in good works for Divine honour and human
welfare ! SOLI DEO GLORIA.

INDEX

Actinia, 410
Actinism, 159, 160, 162
'Adam the first man, 289, 311
Atthalium septicum, 410
./Ether, 161 ; waves, 178
^Etiology, 361
Affinity, chemical, 83
Age of the earth, 88 ; no Divine record
of. 443
Ailments, bodily, 361
Alcyone, 231
Allotropic forms, 83
Amia, the grunting fish, 408
Ancients, their knowledge, 169 ; their
poetic fancy, 479
Angels, 300 ; fall of, 300, 301
Animal magnetism, 388
Animals, their forms cannot be mechani
cally explained, 62 ; types of animal
structure, 240-2 ; an advance on
plants, 265 ; natural origin ofspecies,
270 ; plant-like, 410
Anomalies, physical, 411 ; chemical,
420 ; indicate the existence of an un
known and higher law, 420
Ants, 414 ; some use aphidae as cows,
415 ; make slaves, 415
Aphidae, 415
Arius Boakei, how hatched, 413
Arts and sciences, incapable of regener
ating mankind, 27 ; no substitutes for
religion, 28 ; not incompatible with
moral degradation, 478
Ascidian, the, blood circulation of, 407
Astronomy, 86-9 ; Babylonian, 1 50 ;
wonders of, 423-6
Atavism, 412
Atheism, incapable of proof, 35 ; modern
but not new, 432
Atmosphere, 86; pressure, 170; power
of, to suspend water, 170, 172; prim
eval, 172, 186 ; uniform constitution
of, 175 ; sun's, 224

Atomic theory no explanation of the
creative mystery, 82
Atoms, size, 78 ; movements of, 78, 79 ;
types of the book of Nature, 82 ;
affinities of, 83
Attacus cecropia, the changing cater
pillar, 416
Automatism, 351, 387

B

Babbage's calculating machine, 399
Bamboo rice, 404
Bees, 414
Beetles, viviparous, 417
Beginning, the, 58 ; meaning of, 70 ;
" In the beginning," 120 ; all sciences
point to a, 459
Bible, contains the highest and best
ethical ideal, 10 ; marvellous com
pleteness and power of, 19, 20 ; con
tains its own evidence, 22 ; written
for all time, 48; its account of
creation misrepresented, 49, 50, yet
scientifically correct, 50, 138 ; ex
hibits the connection of the natural
with the supernatural, 138 ; contains
hidden truths, 164, 165 ; of great
literary merit, 170; not to be re
garded as a scientific book, 432 ;
popular language of, 432, explains
many difficulties, 437-9 ; verities
regarded as myths, 444, 445 ; a.
spiritual organism, 464 ; unity and
variety of, 487 ; monotheistic teaching
of, 487 ; co-ordinates morality with
religion, 488 ; religion of, not in
vented or evolved, 489 ; peculiarities
of, 491 ; prophecies concerning Mes
siah, 494, 495 ; excellences of, 496
Birds, 251 ; scientific classification of,
251; of passage, 408

504

Index.

Blood, human, 261 ; circulation, an ex
ceptional case of, 407
Brain, the weight of, 331 ; action, 359,
360

Cain, 310
Calculating machine (Babbage's), 399
Carbonic acid gas, the food of plants,
179, 199
Caterpillars, 417
Causation implies a first cause, 35, 45 ;
hence a Creator, 45
Chaldean chronology, 150
Chance, Cicero on, 84
Chinese, their educational system, 332
Christianity, the religion of the world's
greatest men, 15 ; will be verified by
science, 15 ; a revelation, not an
evolution, 477 ; not the product of
civilisation, 478 ; not the natural
growth of Judaism, 489 ; continual
and ever-growing power of, 501
Chromosphere, sun's, 226
Chronology, comparison of Biblical
and Chaldean, 150; Archbishop
Ussher's, too restricted, 442
Civilisation, failure of, to regenerate
mankind, 27 ; ancient, 304, 342, 343 ;
not always progressive, 305, 306 ;
modern, 343 ; future, 344 ; not in
compatible with impurity and super
stition, 478 ; does not foster religion,
478
Clairvoyance, 385
Climate, 91-3
Clouds, 174
Clover, red, 410
Colour, 159, 177
Coloured stars, 424, 425
Comet-matter, 178
Coming man, the, 17
Consciousness, 100, 411 ; theory of,
422 ; embraces the past and future as
well as the present, 459
Conservation of energy, the law mis
applied, 31 ; favours the immortality
of the soul, 322 ; new direction by
creation, 371
Continuity, doctrine of, involves reality
of the supernatural, 30, 372, 376 ;
break of, by creation of the visible
universe, 37 1
Coral, 200, 407
Creation, Biblical account of, not a
myth, 15 ; misrepresented, 49, 329 ;
scientifically correct, 50, 138 ; a

scientific summary, 51 ; if true, must
be inspired, 51, 52 ; narrow and me
chanical views of, 5 7, 58 ; meaning of
word, 121 ; days of, 1 28, 140; their
order rhythmical, 133 ; process of,
182, 183 ; Biblical account of, Divine,
217 ; not instantaneous but continuous
and progressive, 134, 141, 257-9 ;
comparison of Bible statements of,
with those of the philosophers, 252 ;
the two Divine accounts of, examined,
282-90 ; Chaldean account of, 291-4 ;
symbolical character of the Scripture
narratives, 296 ; spiritual meaning of,
295, 296 ; Mosaic account of, written
in poetical and popular language, 437 ;
contains no revelation as to time, 443
Crime, hereditary, example of, 363
Crowberry, the, 402
Crystallisation the result of a mysterious
agency, 62, working by law, 84

D

Days, of creation, not common days,
129, 144 ; interpretation of, 140
et seq. ; the seventh day, 145, 149 ;
various uses of the word " day," 146 ;
duration of, unknown, 147, 206, 442 ;
symbolical, 150
Deity, the, acknowledged in science as
the "inscrutable power," 36; a
person as well as a power, 37, 53 ;
not unknowable, 39, 53, 54 ; more
than the universe, 39 ; pantheistic
views of, 470; 'personality of, 471 ;
one God, a primitive faith, 481
Design in Nature, 13
Development, animal, 109, 262 ; em
bryonic, 275 ; social, 342
Dew point, 172
Diabolical arts, 391 ; revival of, 392
Diamonds, artificial, 422
Diseases in men and animals, 36 1
Divination by magicians of Egypt, 391 ;
not to be explained, 485
Doubt, a hinderer of progress, 20 ; not
a mark of knowledge, 21 ; discom
fort of, 21; honest, 29; dishonest,
29
Dreams, 381 ; mechanical theory of,
387
Drosera plant, 410
Dysteology, 277

Index.

505

Earth, the, rudimentary, 80 ; form of,
87 ; age of, 88 ; progressive formation
of, 88, 134 ; eccentricity of orbit of,
91, its influence on climate, 91 ;
crust of, 92, 187 ; antiquity of, 140 ;
primeval condition of, 184; specific
gravity of, 187 ; geologic epochs of,
189 ; life-history of, 191 ; changes
in, 427
Electricity, experiments with, 157, 163,
177
Elements, the, number of, 75, 398 ;
probably not homogeneous, 75, 398 ;
Nature's sparing use of, 79, 398
Embryos apparently alike, 239 ; de
velopment of, 275 ; really different,
409
Entozoa, eccentricities of, 413
Epochs, geological, 189 et seq.
Ethical ideal, necessity of, 10, 26 ;
highest and best found in the Bible,
10
Ethics of the philosophers, failure of, 28
Evil, existence of, 115; physical, an
element of progress, 117; a conse
quence of man's freedom, 313 ; cure
of, 3*5
Evolution theory, 107, 267 ; no explana
tion of the origin of things, 107 ; not
inconsistent with the Mosaic cosmo
gony, 134, 436 ; not incompatible
will Divine rule, 307, 308 ; no explana
tion of essential differences, 455
Experiment with vapour, 67 ; with
electricity, 157 ; with electric light,
163, 177 ; with sulphurous acid gas,
177 ; producing vortex-rings (Pro
fessor Tait), 457 ; Mr. Crookes's, 398
Eye, an instance of design, 13 ; limited
in power, 161 ; of insects, 161 ; the
blinJ spot in, 411 ; defects of, 448,
449 ; excellences of, 450, 451

Firmament, the, 129, 168 ; waterin, 175
First cause, necessity of, 35 ; infinite
and independent, therefore super
natural, 35, 36
Fish, ancient types of, 247 ; affinities of
to higher creatures, 249 ; a climbing,
249 3 .
Fission a mode of reproduction, 245
Food, of plants, 179, 199 J of man>
assimilation of, 360
Frog, peculiarities of, 410

Gases, molecular theory of, 400
Gemmation a mode of reproduction,
244
Genealogies of Christ, 141 ; deal with
epochs, 153, 155
Genius of unbelief (Coleridge), 47
Geological eras, 189-91
Geology, scientific, 184 ; chemical, 185
Germs, 194 ; specific nature of, 239,
244. 325
Glacial epochs, 91, 92
Good and evil, doctrine of, 40 ; ground
of our consciousness of, 41
Grasshoppers, peculiarities of, 416
Gravity not an essential of matter, 85
Greeks, ancient, the ablest people, 28 ;
becoming impure they degenerated, 28
Growth, 102; of plants, 198

H
Hare, 276
Heat, solar, 9 1 ; effects of, on animal and
vegetable life, 92 ; connection of, with
light, 157 ; effects of, on inorganic
matter, 421 ; tends to equalisation,
428
Heaven, a vision of, 73 ; heavens,
creation of, 125
Hebrew language, power of the letter D,
132 ; destitute of scientific terms, 144
Hebrews, their conviction of the exist
ence and presence of God, 25, the
cause of their greatness, 25 ; prophets
of, 493
Heredity, 267, 268, 406 ; does not ex
clude variety, 269, 405 ; criminal,
3^3. 364
Hermaphrodites, 244
Heterogenesis, 245
Hippocampus, peculiarities of, 413
Homogenesis, 245
Hydatids, how caused, 413
Hymenoptera, 417
Hypotheses as to origin of things, 44,
127 ; as to origin of life, 211
Hyrax (coney), 409
Holy Ghost, work of, 126

Ice, 421, 422
Image of God, 135
Immortality of the soul a part of the
universal faith, 482
Induction balance (Professor Hughes),
411

5°6

Index.

Infidels not whole or comprehensive
men, 30
Infusoria, 107
Insects, 264; transformations, 416

Jelly-fish, 412
Jesus Christ, His teaching the highest
morality, 1 1 ; His perfect humanity a
miracle, 19 ; His life, a real life, 19 ;
affirms supematuralism, 26 ; His rule
inspires the highest virtue, 29 ;
genealogies of, 141, 153, 154 ; incar
nation of, 213 ; made immortality
glorious, 483 ; prophecies concerning,
494. 495 5 character of, 499
Jews, their conviction of the existence
and presence of God, 25, the cause
of their greatness, 25 ; did not invent
Christianity, 489 ; marvellous work
wrought by, 497
Jupiter (planet), 173 ; in the same
state as was our earth, 173, 227

Lambert family, the, 409
Lamech's family, 27
Language, origin of, 333 ; peculiar to
man, 334, 336 ; theories of, 339 ; an
cient .languages, 341
Law, providence in action, 18 ; with
out providence there can be no law,
18 ; does not preclude miracles, 394 ;
conformity of law and will, 395 ;
natural invariability of, confined to
our own experience, 397 ; deviations
from, illustrated by Babbage's calcu
lating machine, 399 ; the rule of, a
miracle if wrought by chance, 426
Leaf structure, 402
Life, theories, 98 ; physical accompani
ments of, 100 ; advent of, 101, 102 ;
origin of, 326 ; a mystery, 102, 103,
105 ; physical basis of, 103 ; vital
substance, 105 ; commencement of,
denied, 107 ; not a functional pro
duct, 192 ; in other worlds, 196 ;
scientific hypothesis of, 211 ; specific
nature of, 239 ; general characteristics
of, 240 ; process of, 243 ; reproduc
tion of, 244 ; succession of, 246 ;
progress of, 247, 327 ; transitions of,
248 ; unity of power, 261 , of form,
261, of substance, 263 ; historical
succession of, 265-8 ; natural selec

tion, 270 ; origin of species, 270 ;
human, 348 ; definitions of, 349 ; the
cause of organism, 349 ; personality,
351 ; automatism, 351 ; individuality,
353; body, soul, and spirit, 353, 354;
man's idiosyncrasies, 355 ; speciality
of human, 358 ; a. physician's view
of, 361, 362
Light, 128 ; without the sun, 128, 157 ;
lights in the firmament, 131 ; nature
of, 156 ; connection of light and
heat, 156; vibrations, 158, 159;
actinic rays, 159 ; waves, 161 ;
medium, 161 ; sensation of, 163 ;
sun's, occasional diminution of, 426
Lizard, the oldest reptile, 249 ; a link
between fish and bird, 250

M

Magnetism, animal, 388
Mamba (fish), 408
Mammals, 268
Man, origin of, 134, 136; in "the
image of God," 135 ; antiquity of,
141 ; possibly surpassed in other
spheres, 192 ; threefold nature of,
289; descent of, 302; pre-Adamite,
302 ; more than a material organism,
320 ; not an improved beast, 323, 324
Manasseh a sorcerer, 392
Marsupials, 267 ; peculiarities, 410
Materialism, does not account for man's
spiritual nature, 16, 17, 30 ; material
ists not whole or comprehensive men,
30; incapable of explaining natural
phenomena, 31 ; the idolatry of
matter, 52 ; does not account for the
origin of things, 60, 63 ; fails to
account for human progress, 461
Matter, forms of accidents not essentials,
6 ; worshipped as God, 52 > the
origin of all that exists an assertion
of presumptuous ignorance, 57, 260 ;
known only by mind, 63, 456 ;
creation of, 65 ; mutation of, a help
to a belief in the supernatural, 67;
primal, 75 ; the elements possibly not
ultimate, 75 ; nature and constitu
tion of, 76 ; structure of, 77 ; always
moving, 81 ; not self-motive, 85 ;
known only by its manifestations of
energy, 85 ; union of mind with, III;
sky-matter, 177 ; does not develop
mind, 237 ; a fourth-dimension form.
°f> 39^ > radiant, 398 ; living, 405 ;
inorganic, changes of, 420 ; scientific
conception of, 456

Index.

507

Memory, theory of, 387
Messiah, prophecies concerning, 494,
Metamorphosis, 417
Militarism, its degrading tendency, 345
Mill, John Stuart, on the recklessness
of the cosmic forces, 394
Mind, its union with matter, 60, 61,
in ; its existence equally certain as
the existence of matter, 64 ; not a
development of matter, 237; the
master of matter, 260
Miracles, not the only marvels, 42 ; ac
cepted by scientific thinkers, 43 ; pos
sibly the result of an unknown law,
279 ; two classes of, 376 ; credible,
377 ; not incompatible with the reign
of law, 395 ; stupendous power used
in, 440 ; associated with the highest
wisdom and purity, 441 ; attest man's
redemption and immortality, 441 ;
man's existence the greatest miracle,
443 ; the record of, how discredited,
445 ; not a priori improbable, 459 ;
demonstrated, 469
Molecular energy, 80, 85-7
Molecules, 78 ; movement of, 79
Monkeys, 276; why they never can
speak, 454
Morality, based on divinity, 13 ; needs
Divine sanction, 26 ; an all-pervading
sense, 477 ; ofthe Bible, 488
Moses, of a scientific spirit, 132 ; reared
amidst idols, restores the knowledge
of the one true God, 217 ; his account
of creation inspired, 254 ; regarded as
a deceiver, 444
Myriapods, 418
Mythology, ancient, embodies the philo
sophy and religion of prehistoric
times, 479; the key to, lost, 480;
symbolical history of the manifesta
tions of one God, 481

N

Natural powers, man's, probable expan
sion of, 10 ; but without religion will
not yield increased happiness, 10 ;
not the only powers, 43
Natural selection, the doctrine, 270 ;
rudimentary organs a difficulty, 277 ;
purposeless structures in animals in
compatible with, 419
Nature, only one of the manifestations
of Divine power, 43 ; includes the
supernatural, 62, 279 ; variety in,
obtained with few materials, 79, 398 ;

variety in, not self-produced, 81 ; ever
changing, 81 ; wearing out, 89, 427 ;
laws of, uncompromising, 114, 394;
a splendid miracle, 258 ; progress in,
308; the result of preternatural
energy, 374; uniformity of, a plat
form for infinite variety, 394 ; never
at rest, 400 ; left to herself, would
soon come to a standstill, 427 ; lives
by dying, 447
Negro race, 311
New Jerusalem, 393
Nitrous oxide, its effect on the brain,
486 O
Occult sciences, 389
Ovum, development of, 109

Pantheism, 470
Paradise, 285
Parasites, 116
Parthenogenesis, 416
Penguin, 410
Perca scandens, the climbing fish, 408
Perfume vapours, power of intercepting
calorific rays, 178
Personal God, a logical necessity, 37 ;
objections answered, 37-9; the author
of creation, 51
Philosophers, ancient, 98 ; account of
creation, 252-4.
Philosophy, ancient, failure of, to
regenerate mankind, 27
Phosphorus, allotropic forms of, 83
Physician's view of life, a, 361 et seq.
Planetary system, 88, 95
Plants, 131; creation of, 198; food of,
199; classification of, 202; order of
creation of, 204, 205 ; protoplasm of,
209, 403 ; plant life affords glimpses
ofthe transcendental, 212 ; action of
light on, 403
Pole of earth, change of inclination, 193
Porcupine men, 409
Prawn metamorphosis, 416
Pre-Adamite world, 302 ; pre-Adamite
men possible, 302
Prediction, a condition of consciousness,
484 ; a mysterious power, 485
Principles, two, of creation, a personal
intelligence and an impersonal power,
18 ; two, of government, providence,
and law, 18 ; these two unite in one
process, 18

5o8

Index.

Prophecy, a natural gift, 380, 397 ;
found to exist among all nations, 484 ;
prophecies, Messianic, 494, 495
Prophets, Jewish, 493
Protein, 104
Protoplasm, 101, 105 ; formed by
plants, 209 ; of plants, 403

Quartz, 185

R
Rabbit, 276
Rain, 175 ; in primeval times, 285
. Red clover, 410
Religion, not obsolete as regarded by
some, 8 ; the externals of, only change,
8 ; not opposed to reason, 8, 22 ; the
summit and crown of science, 16 ;
both practical and experimental, 22 ;
its power to raise the whole man, 24 ;
based on the supernatural, 26 ; ac
cepted by the best thinkers, 32 ; all
religions more or less claim revela
tion, 54 ; not a product of human
culture, 472 ; based upon (1) a convic
tion of a Divine and supernatural
power, 473, 475, (2) a belief in the
future life, 475, and (3) the reality of
evil, 475 ; Christian, not a human
invention, 488 ; Bible co-ordinates
morality with, 488
Reptiles, 191, 248
Revelation, the only infallible guide to
religious truth, 4 ; a special message
to our intelligence, 19; claimed more
or less by all religions, 54 ; both ex
ternal and internal, 40 ; includes the
discoveries of science, 280, 460 ; in
structs when science fails, 46 ; objects
of, 218
Richter's dream, 31 ; vision of heaven,
73
Rocks, the, 189-91
Rotifera, the, 409
Rudimentary organs, 277, 419 ; no ex
planation of, 277

Sabbath day, 145, 149, 443
Salpo3, peculiarities of, 412
Saturn (planet), 227
Scepticism, paves the way to sensualism
and superstition, II ; held to be for
the scientific student the highest of

duties, 20 ; impedes intellectual pro
gress, 20 ; when based on ignorance
is irrational, 35
Science, separated from Religion, un
happy effects of, 2 ; tending to agree
ment with Scripture, 4 ; men of, the
priests ofthe material universe, 16, 55 ;
inability of, to connect physical and
mental phenomena, 57 ; inadequate
to explain the origin of things, 60 ;
throws light on Scripture, 69 ; growth
of, 215 ; discoveries of, a revelation,
280, 460 ; occult, 389 ; does not clear
up the mystery of the universe, 408 ;
its opposition to Scripture constantly
being removed, 432 ; not to be looked
for in the Bible, 436 ; specialism in,
tends to narrowness, 446 ; agrees with
true doctrine, 453 ; at fault, 454
Scientific men, narrowness of some, I,
30, 446 ; the priests of the physical
universe, 16, 55
Sea, level, changes of, 92 ; composition,
398
Seven a mystic and symbolic number,
145, 146
Sight, human, rudimentary, 161
Silence from a conflict of sounds, 411
Silent members, 277, 418, 419
Sin, origin of, 312 ; liberty to, 313, 314 ;
original, doctrine of, 364
Sky, colour of, 176 ; artificially pro
duced, 176, 177 ; matter, 177
Sleep, magnetic, 385
Solar system, 88, 89, 426
Somnambulism, 384
Sophists, the, 27
Soul, the, 288, 321 ; not to be materi
ally explained, 321 ; the immortality
of, a scientific doctrine, 322 ; of the
beast, 354 ; beliefs as to, 481 ; im.
mortality of, a universal faith, 482 ;
transmigration of, 483
Sound, 159, 409 ; producing silence,
411
Space, elements of, 59 ; dimensions of,
59 ; a fourth dimension possible, 59
Specialism, narrowing effect of, I, 30,
446
Species, origin of, 239, 270 ; variations
of a single primitive type, 271
Spectral illusions, 379
Spectrum, 160
Spectrum analysis, 159
Spiritualism, modern, 390 ; ancient,
391
Spontaneous generation a myth, 105
Stars, coloured, 424 ; variable, 425
Sulphur, various forms of, 186

Index.

509

Sun, the, 89 ; heat of, 89-91, 222 ;
origin of, 219 ; age of, 221 ; physical
constitution of, 223 ; size of, 223 ;
spots, 225 ; composition of, 224, 226 ;
surroundings of, 226 ; power of, 228,
229 ; path of, through space, 230 ;
influence of, on vegetable life, 403 ;
light of, subject to occasional diminu
tion, 426
Supernatural, the, involves our highest
interests, 3 ; not unacceptable to
common sense, 12, 13 ; the denial of,
is denial of the Deity, 12, and with
draws from morality its Divine sanc
tion, 13 ; the essence of true religion,
26 ; rashly denied, 34 ; acknowledged
in the existence of an inscrutable
power, 36 ; a universal belief, 42 ;
necessary to explain Nature, 62 ;
Nature interpenetrated by, 279 ; not
unnatural, 375 ; a universal convic
tion, 475
Swedenborg, on the connection of the
natural and spiritual worlds, 371
Synthetic types, 408

Table-turning, 391
Tapeworm, 412
Temperature, influence of, on distribu
tion of plants and animals, 92, 93,
141 ; on matter, 421
Theology, a part of science, 46 ; suffers
from the narrowness of scientists and
scholars, 446
Theories, physical, ancient, 98
Thought, the mechanism of, 387
Time, 58 ; coeval with creation, 71
Touch, the sense of, 278
Trinity, Holy, doctrine of, 40, 123

Types, persistency of, 262, 267, 268 ;
synthetic, 408

U

Universe, too vast for our comprehen
sion, 58; beneficently ruled, 118;
the work of intelligence, 396 ; a
splendid miracle, 468

Venus fly-trap, 410
Vision, a peculiarity of, 411 ; defects,
448
Vision of heaven, a (Richter), 73
Visions, 383, 389
Vital substance, 101 ; defies analysis,
405
Vortex-motion, 457 ; does not account
for the origin of the world, 458

W
Wasps, peculiarities of, 417
Water, particles, 78 ; however formed,
the same substance, 83 ; suspended
in the atmosphere, 176, 178 ; use of,
in the atmosphere, 178
Water-flea, peculiarities of, 412
Waters, the, bring forth, 132 ; primeval,
171
Witch of Endor a "medium," 392
Word of God, 124

Zulu theology, 482

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