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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029188402 
 
CONTINUOUS CREATipN 
 
 AN APPLICATION OF THE EVOLUTIONARY 
 
 PHILOSOPHY TO THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 
 MYRON ADAMS 
 
 tef|^^|fH 
 
 
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 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 (arte RitierjSibE Press, Camfiriftge 
 
 1890 
 
Copyright, 1889, 
 Bx MYRON ADAMS. 
 
 AU rights reserved. 
 
 JTie Rieavide Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electiotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 
 
To 
 PLYMOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 
 
 OF BOCBBSTBB, NEW YORK, 
 
 FROM WHICH, AS MEMEEK AND PASTOB, THE AUTHOR HAS FOB 
 MANY YEARS RECEIVED GBEAT KINDNESS, AND, ABOVE 
 ALL, THE KINDNESS OF A PATIENT AND CAN- 
 DID HEABING FOE THINGS " NEW 
 AND OLD," 
 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 
 
" But evolution, properly considered, not only does not put 
 God at a distance, nor obscure his form behind the order of 
 nature, but draws him nearer, and even goes far towards break- 
 ing down the walls of mystery that shut him out from human 
 vision. In other words, in evolution we see a revelation of God, 
 while in previous theories of creation we had only an assertion 
 of God. In evolution we have the first cause working by con- 
 nected processes in an orderly way ; in former theories we had a 
 first cause creating the universe by one omnipotent flat, ordain- 
 ing its laws, and then leaving it to its courses or merely uphold- 
 ing it by his power. In respect of nearness, we at once see that 
 evolution brings God nearer than do the other theories." 
 
 T. T. McKOBB in Appeal to Life. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 " An inevitable revolution," says Matthew Arnold, 
 " of which we all recognize the beginnings and signs, 
 but which has really spread, perhaps, farther than 
 most of us think, is befalling the religion in which we 
 have been brought up." 
 
 Dr. Theodore T. Munger declares the " showing 
 the possibility of thinking under the principle of evo- 
 lution and also as Christian believers " to be " the 
 most imperative work now pressing upon religious 
 teachers who are able to discern the signs of the 
 times, and who would serve their day and generation." 
 
 The writer of this volume conceives the inevitable 
 revolution to be part of that evolution by which God 
 continues the higher processes of creation. He also 
 conceives not only the possibility of thinking under 
 the principle of evolution, and at the same time as 
 a Christian believer, but he thinks he perceives that 
 before long it will be found impossible to think clearly 
 in any other way. 
 
 Perhaps no apology is needed for the somewhat 
 free use made of the works of Professors LeConte 
 and Fiske ; the occasional use made of the works of 
 
vni PREFACE. 
 
 Professor Tyndall and Edward Clodd, of Buslinell, 
 Beeclier, Munger, Maurice, and others ; and that not 
 always with specific acknowledgment. The acknow- 
 ledgment is made wherever the author is conscious of 
 his debt, and yet the debt is far greater than he could 
 thus indicate, since it is in the writings of such men 
 he traces some lines of that on-going creation by 
 which God more and more reveals Himself. 
 
 OCIOBEB, 1889. 
 
■>I. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 — ♦— 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Evolution 1 
 
 II. The Continuous Creation 10 
 
 III. The Idea or God 21 
 
 IV. The Function of Science as belated to Religion 33 
 V. The Bible a Record of Religion's Gradual 
 
 Growth 45 
 
 The Problem of Evil 58 
 
 VII. The Consummation of Evolution is Immortality 73 
 
 VIII. Resident Forces and the Divine Personality 88 
 IX. The Philosophy and Faith of the Christian 
 
 Church 103 
 
 X. Christianity Included 118 
 
 XI. Prayer 133 
 
 XII. Miracles and Scientific Thought .... 147 
 
 XIII. Divine Inshinings 163 
 
 XIV. Social Development and the Survival of the 
 
 Fittest 180 
 
 XV. Social Consolidation 195 
 
 XVI. Socialism and Individualism 210 
 
 XVII. Faith and Intuition- 226 
 
 XVIII. Conditions attending the Progress of Truth . 243 
 
THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 I. 
 
 evolutionT 
 
 On the 24th of November, 1859, Mr. Charles Dar- 
 win's book on " Origin of Species " issued from the 
 press.^ The edition consisted of 1250 copies, and all 
 the copies were sold the first day. Before the end of 
 the same year a second edition of 3000 copies was 
 published. And it may therefore be said that the 
 new era in philosophy began about the year 1860, 
 or a little more than a quarter of a century ago. 
 
 Two centuries earlier, by the publication of the 
 "Principia," Sir Isaac Newton announced to the world 
 that theory of the relations of things in space known 
 as the law of universal gravitation. The " Principia " 
 was issued in 1687. Three years later the theory was 
 adopted by St. Andrews College, twelve years later by 
 Cambridge, and seventeen years later by Oxford. 
 But the French mathematicians did not fully adopt 
 these views until after half a century. 
 
 It will readily be seen upon reflection that there 
 were grave difficulties in the way of the acceptance 
 of such a theory, because the foundations of philos- 
 ophies, time-honored and all-authoritative, would be 
 1 Darwin's Life and Letters. 
 
2 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 sapped, and the religious teachings of many centuries 
 would have to be in part reconsidered, if not aban- 
 doned. But although the difficulties were enormous, 
 the theory in due time commanded universal assent, 
 and became the basis of all subsequent work in the 
 domain which it covers. 
 
 So far as the theory of universal gravitation is re- 
 lated to our present purpose, we may conceive of men 
 as gazing at the heavens and asking why the moon 
 occupied its station ; why the sun and stars continued 
 in their places. And the observers would answer, 
 each according to his philosophy. One would say 
 that the situation of the heavenly bodies with relation 
 to the earth and each other is determined purely 
 by chance. Another would recoil in horror from 
 such a basis of thought, and declare that the sun, 
 moon, and stars are where they are because God, the 
 Creator, has put them there, and they remain in their 
 places because He so ordains. Newton touched not 
 upon the answers given by such observers, but simply 
 announced a law which governs in all cases. He 
 threw the question, as to why the heavenly bodies are 
 where they are, back of another question which he 
 succeeded in answering. He demonstrated that there 
 is in nature a law. If an apple hanging upon the 
 bough of a tree is dislodged, it will fall to the earth 
 by the shortest path. Every one already knew the 
 fact ; he, however, was the first to give this explana- 
 tion of it, that the descent of the apple is determined 
 by an universal law. By the same law the sun occu- 
 pies his station, and all the stars of the abyss are 
 where they are. 
 
 But it was no part of his function to answer the 
 other question as to why the law existed. Every one 
 
EVOLUTION. 3 
 
 would be compelled to answer that for himself. The 
 one who believed in chance might still continue to be- 
 lieve in chance, and that the law was the operation of 
 chance ; — and the one who believed in the Almighty 
 God would refer the law to His wisdom. Appar- 
 ently, therefore, the discovery of the theory of uni- 
 versal gravitation left the religious opinions of people 
 where it found them. The man who believed in God 
 might continue so to believe, and the atheist might 
 continue to be an atheist. Yet Newton's discovery, 
 or invention, had a profound effect upon all thought, 
 religious and non-religious, because it introduced, as 
 no other and previous discovery had done, the idea 
 of the universal reign of law. No doubt the idea 
 had been growing" before Newton formulated it, but 
 he did formulate it so that the idea, which had been 
 nebulous and ineffective, now took tangible form, and 
 became a great power. 
 
 The old way of thinking may be illustrated by the 
 oldest way of thinking, as shown, for instance, in the 
 Homeric tales and other similar ancient writings. A 
 philosophy underlies all such tales. The ancient man 
 had a most crude and imperfect theory of causation. 
 There was, to be sure, an order, in accordance with 
 which things usually went on, but there was nothing 
 settled or stable about it. If anything out of the 
 ordinary occurred, the ancient man said it was on 
 account of the interference of some superior being. 
 War was somewhat out of the usual course, and 
 therefore it was assumed that it was partly the re- 
 sult of some feeling in the minds of various celes- 
 tial intelligences. There was jealousy, or revenge, or 
 love, or lust in the minds of gods and goddesses to 
 account for wars. Was there a great storm at sea ? 
 
4 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 A goddess is in a bad temper, and wishes to scatter 
 the fleet and drown the followers of some favorite of 
 another goddess. She accordingly repairs to the being 
 who has charge of the winds and induces him to let 
 them out of their ordinary confinement, to have a frolic 
 over the sea. Is there a cessation of the storm ? It 
 is because the god who has control of the sea is aroused 
 by the unusual clamor, and stirs himself up to see what 
 the matter is, and he drives the winds back to their 
 prison. All things considered, that was the easiest 
 philosophy for the ancient man, in his poverty of in- 
 formation of facts and laws. 
 
 With the experience of the race, this philosophy 
 was gradually undermined, leaving traces of its power 
 only in the least intelligent of the inhabitants of the 
 earth. And this experience at last formulated itself 
 in Newton's proclamation of universal law. 
 
 I suppose all men understand the law of gravita- 
 tion, stated as universal in its operation, to be simply 
 a theory, provided to account for the facts which come 
 under our observation. I think I may say that it has 
 been demonstrated, or pointed out to be true, but, 
 strictly speaking, it has not been proved. It cannot 
 be proved, because we have not access to universal 
 facts, but only to a small range of facts. The farther 
 we go in our search for facts, the more we are convinced 
 that the law is universal. But it cannot be proved, 
 in the absolute sense of proof, that an apple dislodged 
 from the bough of a tree in the north star would fall 
 by the shortest path to the ground. If an unbeliever 
 declared that the apple sailed off like a thistle-down, 
 or that it went up like a balloon, or remained station- 
 ary, just as it was before, the only way to convert him 
 from the error of his thinking would be to convince 
 
EVOLUTION. 5 
 
 him of the application of the theory of gravitation to 
 all facts which are in the range of our observation. 
 Then he would feel at liberty, or even forced, to be- 
 lieve that the apple falls in the north star, or any- 
 where else, as it does on the earth. 
 
 Permit me to apprise you of the fact that Sir 
 Isaac Newton made an immense inference, a perfectly 
 prodigious assumption, in his theory of gravitation. 
 And we all cordially assent to it. The assumption 
 was that all bodies attract each other directly as their 
 masses, and inversely as the squares of their distance. 
 Some bodies do. We now have an overwhelming con- 
 viction that all bodies do. But our conviction is per- 
 haps as much the result of faith, i. e., faith in the uni- 
 formity of nature, as of anything. 
 
 To sum up the effects of Newton's announcement 
 in brief : It answers the question as to the relation of 
 things in space, as e. g., the relation of the earth to 
 the sun, to the moon ; the relation of all the bodies of 
 our solar system to each other, as determined by the 
 law of the attraction of gravitation. The apple falls, 
 the earth falls, the sun falls, and the remotest and the 
 greatest globe falls, toward a centre of attraction. 
 
 Perhaps it may be asked what all this has to do 
 with evolution. This. It is the proper and neces^ 
 sary antecedent of evolution. As Professor LeConte 
 has pointed out in his admirable book, "Evolution, 
 and its Relation to Religious Thought," the law of 
 gravitation is the theory of the relation of things in 
 space ; and the law of evolution is the theory of the 
 relation of things in time. Time and space are the 
 two terms connected with all scientific thought. 
 
 It is evident to the student ^who considers the history 
 of evolution that when once the universality of law is 
 
6 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 established concerning the relation of things in space, 
 the next step will be the establishment of the corre- 
 sponding principle concerning the relations of things 
 in time. 
 
 I wish particularly to call your attention to this, — 
 that the doctrine of evolution is no new thing in the 
 world. People have noticed evolution as long as 
 they have noticed anything of an intricate and com- 
 plex nature. The idea is contained in an exceed- 
 ingly ancient Egyptian myth, of a mundane Qgg from 
 which all things successively emerge. Some of the 
 Greek philosophers ^ taught a doctrine akin to evolu- 
 tion, as did Lucretius in his famous poem " Concern- 
 ing the Nature of Things ; " but of course that was the 
 guess-work of speculation, and that the speculation of 
 those who were very ignorant of the facts of nature. 
 
 But more than that. The actual process of evolution 
 has been noted commonly from the earliest times ; 
 noted just as the law of gravity was noted. Those 
 who saw the fall of the apple and pondered upon it 
 saw also the growth of plants, and contemplated the 
 development of the bird from the egg. But appar- 
 ently the universality of the law of gravitation and of 
 the corresponding law of development did not dawn 
 upon the mind of the world until the days of Newton 
 and of Darwin. And permit me to say here that an 
 evolutionist is not the one who believes there is such 
 a process as evolution. All people do believe that, 
 anid always have ; but the one who believes the law of 
 evolution is as universal as the law of gravitation is 
 
 1 All Greek philosophers who treated Cosmology at all held 
 an evolutionary theory of the universe. The idea of flat crea- 
 tion was ahsolutely unknown to them. Lucretius is conspicuous 
 as a materialistic evolutionist. 
 
EVOLUTION. 7 
 
 an evolutionist. And I venture the prediction that 
 within a quarter of a century the theory of evolution 
 will occupy the same place in the material philosophy 
 of the world that the law of gravitation has had for 
 the past century and a half. And it will occupy a 
 place immensely greater, because it takes hold upon 
 all finite life. Sixteen years ago Professor Youmans 
 wrote substantially this : " Darwin, Husdey, Mivart, 
 Haeckel, Cope, Spencer, may be at fault, but in com- 
 mon with a large and increasing body of scientific 
 men they are all agreed as to one thing, that evolution 
 is a great established fact, a wide and valid induction 
 from the observed facts of nature, the complete eluci- 
 dation of which is the grand scientific task of the fu- 
 ture." But in sixteen years great changes have come. 
 And during that period the doctrine of evolution has 
 gained ground every moment. 
 
 Now, what is evolution, and why should it be dis- 
 cussed from a Christian pulpit ? 
 
 The first question is answered briefly, — to be ex- 
 panded later, — and in answering it, I wiU employ the 
 definition of Professor LeConte, as sufficiently accu- 
 rate for our purpose. Evolution is (1) continuous 
 progressive change, (2) according to certain laws, (3) 
 by means of resident forces. In other words, evolu- 
 tion tells us, not who created us and aU things, but 
 how we and all things are created. Or, that the 
 process of creation is not complete, but is continuously 
 in operation ; that creation is according to certain laws, 
 and can be studied only in the light of those laws ; 
 that creation goes on by powers and forces not absent 
 from the thing created, and therefore not by means of 
 a fiat of a Being separate from His works. 
 
 Certainly, if this is true, it must have a profound 
 
8 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 effect upon religious feelings, and will surely bring 
 about a great modification of religious philosophy; 
 and therefore it is something to which the Chris- 
 tian ministry of to-day ought to give the most earnest 
 heed. 
 
 If it is true, it cannot be dismissed easily, as being 
 apart from religion, for it already occupies a promi- 
 nent place in Christian thought ; indeed the feeling is 
 increasing that it is divinely intended to serve as a 
 great illumination upon important matters, heretofore 
 shrouded in mystery. 
 
 But is it true ? The evidence in its favor is already 
 overwhelming. Let me quote from the author, Pro- 
 fessor LeConte, of whom the " Christian Union " 
 says : " He is a devout Christian believer ; he is also 
 a radical evolutionist." He says : " We are confi- 
 dent that evolution .is absolutely certain. Not indeed, 
 evolution as a special theory, — Lamarckian, Darwin- 
 ian, Spencerian, — for these are all more or less suc- 
 cessful modes of explaining evolution ; nor evolution 
 as a school of thought, with its following of disciples, 
 
 — for in this sense it is still in the field of discussion, 
 
 — but evolution as a law of derivation of forms from 
 previous forms ; evolution as a law of continuity, as a 
 universal law of becoming. In this sense it is not 
 only certain, it is axiomatic." 
 
 For my own part, the teachings of the Christ, the 
 life that He lived, the death that He died, are of more 
 profound interest than any theory of creation could 
 be. 
 
 Of more profound interest to all of us are the truths 
 which make for righteousness and moral well-being 
 than the truths of science and scientific philosophy. 
 But the thoughts which have obtained concerning 
 
EVOLUTION. 9 
 
 Christ and His religion are inevitably changing, by 
 reason of the great discoveries of modern times ; 
 and I cannot but conceive that this change is part of 
 the divine creation. While the Christian religion is 
 itself indestructible, the philosophy of it changes as 
 the outlook of men increases. 
 
 In 1850 Carlyle wrote, perhaps not wisely, but sug- 
 gestively : " The Present Time, youngest born of 
 Eternity, child and heir of all the past times, with 
 their good and evil, and parent of all the future, is 
 ever a new era to the thinking man, and comes with 
 new questions and significance, however commonplace 
 it looks. To know it, and what it bids us do, is ever 
 the sum of knowledge for all of us. . . . 
 
 " There must be a new world, if there is to be a 
 world at all ! That human things in our Europe can 
 ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with 
 any steadiness or continuance there, this small hope 
 is not now a tenable one." 
 
 Yes, we are entering a new world of religious 
 thought, and of religious endeavor therefore. The 
 old is passing away — has, in fact, to many passed 
 away. By unmistakable voices we are invited to en- 
 ter the " New Era," from which it is impossible for 
 God to be absent. 
 
 I utter but the commonplace of the thought of a 
 multitude of sincere Christian men when I say that 
 revelation has not been completed in the past ; that 
 it goes on with increase, and multiplies itself; it 
 must multiply itself, according to the law which 
 promises that the knowledge of the Lord shall cover 
 the earth as the waters cover the sea. ' 
 
II. 
 
 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 "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, 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 tUl 
 the ground." — Genesis ii. 4, 5. 
 
 It has been remarked in connection with the present 
 interest in the subject of evolution, that it is not so im- 
 portant for us to consider how we came to be what we 
 are, as to consider what we actually are, and how we 
 may become changed for the better. It is true. There 
 is nothing of which we ought to be so solicitous as our 
 actual condition. We certainly ought to realize that 
 we are responsible beings, that we are bound by every 
 consideration of righteousness to be rid of wrong of 
 all forms and to cleave to that which is good. But 
 the claim of evolution is that it offers a help to us, by 
 showing us how we came to be what we are. It makes 
 more clear to us the process, following which we may 
 the more thoroughly cooperate with our Creator in 
 His design to bring us out of darkness into light, and 
 out of sin into righteousness. 
 
 I therefore invite you to think of the continuous 
 creation. 
 
 The story of creation has been told in various' 
 ways, since first rational beings' were able to put their 
 thoughts upon the subject into language. And it was 
 
THE COSTINUOUS CREATION. 11 
 
 natural that the subject should engage the attention 
 of the more thoughtful of mankind, in every age. Did 
 the earth, our dwelling place, always exist ; or did it 
 come into existence at some period ? And if it did 
 come into being at some definite period, how was it 
 produced? Of course we are all familiar with the 
 theory of creation which has obtained in the Christian 
 world since the earliest age of Christianity, and which 
 was held by the Hebrews from an earlier time. This 
 theory has been understood to be plainly taught in the 
 opening chapter of the Bible. 
 
 It may be stated thus : About six thousand years 
 ago there was no earth. And not only so, but there 
 was no sun and no star. But about six thousand years 
 ago the Almighty God, in the exercise of unlimited 
 power and wisdom, made the earth. At first the earth 
 was without form, a waste place, and was covered with 
 darkness. Then God created light. That was the 
 first day. The next day God created the sky, — the 
 firmament as it was called. The inference would be 
 that there was no sky before the second day, just as 
 there was no earth before the first day. The third 
 day God created the dry ground, or, at least. He 
 separated between the ground and the water ; and 
 He caused grass, herb, and fruit tree to spring up. 
 Fourth day, the sun and moon, for the purpose of giv- 
 ing light upon the earth. Fifth day, water creatures 
 and birds. Sixth day, cattle and all beasts and creep- 
 ing things, and man. There is a process, but such a 
 swift process that it is like magic. All done within 
 six days of the usual length. 
 
 But of late, the geologist, seeking for what infor- 
 mation was possible to him, in the various rocks which 
 make up the surface of the earth, has shown quite 
 
12 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 conclusively that the earth was not made in a day. 
 The relations of the various layers of rocks which over- 
 lie each other, and the fact that they contain shells of 
 once living animals, convince him that the earth was 
 a very long time in formation. Of course Infinite 
 Power could have made fossil trilobites, and shells of 
 a thousand kinds, like some of those we find upon the 
 beach of the sea, and could have embedded them in 
 the rocks, and then could have made different rocks on 
 top of these and put different shells in them, and so 
 on. But we do not now stop to inquire what Infinite 
 Power could do, because we have not the time to spend 
 in such thought, but we inquire what Infinite Power 
 did. Accordingly the geologist has convinced the in- 
 telligent portion of the world, beyond a peradventure, 
 that immense and even incalculable ages were required 
 to bring the earth to its present condition. It is not 
 worth while to follow the details of the formidable 
 proof the geologist offers ; sufiice it to say that it is 
 entirely satisfactory to intelligence. To the criticism 
 that this teaching of geology is contradictory of the 
 teachings of the Biblical story, it is answered that the 
 Genesis account is entirely silent upon the whole sub- 
 ject of the creation of the globe ; that before the his- 
 toric account begins there may have been an eternal 
 process going on for all that the story says to the con- 
 trary. Now, so much of the story of creation as was 
 based upon the notion that the earth is but a few 
 thousands of years old has been entirely abandoned 
 by intelligent persons. Geology has shown the earth 
 in its different periods of construction, — as in the 
 molten state, as in the less heated stage, as in the fro- 
 zen stage. It has pointed out that plants must have 
 existed millions upon millions of years ago, because 
 
THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 13 
 
 it finds their shape embedded in the rocks which were 
 upon the surface of the earth far back in antiquity. 
 Geology is the record which the Creator made of His 
 work as He went along with it. 
 
 Wherefore, the old story of creation, as it was told 
 for many centuries, can be told no longer. At least, 
 so far as the antiquity of our globe is concerned. The 
 old knowledge has been displaced by the new and more 
 perfect knowledge. 
 
 But some one might say; "This is all very good 
 and true ; we are convinced that the earth (minus ani- 
 mal and vegetable life) was a long time in process of 
 construction ; but can we not believe that God took 
 the earth in hand some few thousands of years ago 
 and fitted it up for the residence of man, making first 
 the vegetation, then the animals, and then man ? " It 
 is obvious, from the discoveries of geology, already 
 spoken of, that vegetation was on the earth countless 
 ages ago. Also that animals were the inhabitants of 
 the earth, not only a few thousands of years ago, but 
 perhaps millions of centuries ago. Moreover, we be- 
 hold a thing well worthy our attention in this old 
 earth. As we approach the beginning of life on the 
 planet, we meet comparatively simple forms of life. 
 There was a period when no life existed. Beginning 
 from that, and marching upward through the staircase 
 of recorded facts, we discover, first, the simplest forms, 
 such as the cdgce, among the plants, and the monera 
 among animals. The age which has left such record 
 of itself we call the Eozoic. That is the dawn-life. 
 Then come ferns and fishes. Then the pine-tree and 
 the reptile. Then the tree with a true leaf, and the 
 mammal. Then the sort of vegetation and animal 
 life which now exists. All this is an advance, — it 
 
14 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 shows an upward movement of life. It is a process of 
 change from the simple to the complex. And this of 
 itself would show that the process of creation has been 
 an exceedingly slow process ; that since it has pro- 
 ceeded from the simple to the complex, therefore there 
 has been a method or law controlling it. In other 
 words, — we do most indubitably find by the aid of 
 geology, that certainly up to a few thousands of years 
 ago creation, has been a continuous process. It was 
 all the time a process of change. And the change was 
 from the lower to the higher. So much I suppose is 
 not doubtful to any one who has had the intelligence 
 to examine the matter at all.-' 
 
 Now according to the old story of creation, — the 
 story which was told some of us in our childhood, — 
 God appeared upon the scene six or seven thousand 
 years ago, and proceeded to make plants and animals 
 and man, each plant and animal according to a defi- 
 nite species, complete and perfect, and in each species 
 was lodged the power to perpetuate itself to the end of 
 the world. Perhaps it would be a caricature of the 
 notion to say that God selected certain clay, or such 
 material, and out of some of it made horses and 
 dogs and camels, and the like, and set them going. 
 And that He made each complete of its kind. Yet 
 that is substantially the idea of the old story. And 
 after all that was done, God took dust of the ground, 
 and by fiat, or something like it, formed man. If that 
 is what was done, all the preceding process lasting for 
 ages, and proceeding in an orderly manner, upon an 
 ascending scale of life, is suddenly interrupted, and 
 becomes, in fact, of no account whatever. 
 
 But there is absolutely no proof that such a thing 
 occurred. 
 
 ^ Edward Clodd, Story of Creation. 
 
THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 15 
 
 I am perfectly aware that I will be asked by some 
 one if I, as a believer in the Christian religion, have 
 ever taken the trouble to read the first and second 
 chapters of the Bible, which is understood to be the 
 standard of truth to be believed by the Christian. 
 
 Well, yes, I have read that account, and with se- 
 rious attention, and I fail to find in it any warrant for 
 the story which has occupied the ground so long. 
 As Professor Maurice has pointed out, the refutation 
 of the old story of creation lies on the very surface 
 of the first two chapters of Genesis. For after every- 
 thing has been made, and all well made, so that it is 
 pronounced good, and after man has been placed at 
 the summit of all, we are told in so many words that 
 we are reading the book of the generation of heaven 
 and earth, when they were made, in the day in which 
 the Lord God made them, and every herb of the field 
 before it was in the earth, and all the grass of the 
 field before it sprang up, for God had not rained on 
 the earth, and there was not a man to cultivate it. 
 That is to say, after the creation was finished, and 
 pronounced very good, there was neither grass, herb, 
 nor man. We are therefore forced to the conclusion 
 that in the mind of the writer of this wonderful pas- 
 sage, the first chapter of Genesis gives us the creation 
 in its fullness, as it was in the mind of its Creator, per- 
 fect and complete.^ 
 
 And then we begin upon the concrete, actual crea- 
 tion in its process. The perfect, as it lies in the In- 
 finite Mind, is to be reached, not at once, as has been 
 assumed, but by a long course of ascending work. 
 Like a palace which, before it is builded, before a 
 shovelful of earth had been thrown out for its foun- 
 ^ Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament. 
 
16 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 dation, is nevertheless shown upon the elevation of the 
 architect, a beautiful and perfect structure; so the 
 sacred writer conceives of the creation as complete in 
 the mind of its Architect and Builder, before it is 
 begun (in Genesis i.). And after the work is begun, 
 also like the work of the construction of a palace, 
 there ensues the confusion and the disorder, and the 
 rubbish of the process (in subsequent chapters). 
 
 According to the old story of creation, which was 
 based upon no facts, but only upon a misinterpreta- 
 tion of revelation, God made man at one stroke, not 
 as a sculptor makes a statue, not as an inventor 
 makes a machine, but as the magician makes his pro- 
 digy. Accordingly, God is no constant and necessary 
 factor of creation, but is a being who may be dis- 
 pensed with, except for occasional irruptions into our 
 region of space, to perform wonders. Now, in place 
 of such a conception, evolution offers a far nobler 
 one ; and produces an array of facts, ever increasing 
 in bulk and significance, to substantiate it. The 
 process of change which goes on generation after gen- 
 eration, and age upon age, is creation. The Creator 
 does not act as a magician, suddenly, as by mere im- 
 pulse, but as the steady Eternal Energy, and ever ac- 
 cording to that purpose which we begin to consider. 
 If we start at some low stage of life, as e. g., the mol- 
 lusk, in which there is little differentiation of organ, 
 because about the only function of the creature is to 
 absorb nutriment, we pass on to the vertebrate, the 
 creature with a bony structure within its body (in 
 distinction from the crustacean and the insect, 
 with the chitine shell enclosing and supporting the 
 soft parts of the body) ; we pass on from the verte- 
 brate, whose home is the water, to the reptile, whose 
 
THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 17 
 
 home is the water and the land ; to the bird, whose 
 home is the water, the land, and the air ; to the mam- 
 mal, whose home is exclusively the land, and whose 
 locomotion is provided for by the possession of four 
 legs ; to the mammal so modified that the function of 
 the anterior legs is changed, by being more and more 
 used as arms ; to the erection of the structure, bent 
 parallel to the surface of the earth, so that it becomes 
 vertical to the surface of the earth, and so we at last 
 meet man, the structure of whose body is the result 
 of a series of modifications extending from the hazy, 
 infinite past, and in whom creation finds its crown and 
 glory. This is the story of creation, which is being 
 told to-day, a story supported by so many facts, that 
 books are hardly numerous enough to chronicle them. 
 And it supplants a story which is like a mist in the 
 morning, as unsubstantial as a dream. 
 
 Compare the creation of the horse by orderly pro- 
 cess of development, with the same creature perfect at 
 the first. That is, the horse historical with the horse 
 magical. Among the most remarkable of the discov- 
 eries on our continent, is that of the fossil ancestor 
 of the horse, as we now see it. The Eocene seas have 
 given up their fossil dead, to be considered by our 
 expert biologists. In the deposit of those seas we 
 are confronted by the spectacle of a creature, about 
 the size of a fox, with four hoofed toes on each foot, 
 and in one form with the rudiments of a fifth toe. 
 These toes indicate the number of digits in the five- 
 fingered hands of mammals. 
 
 In the upper Eocene is found the creature with 
 three toes, hoofed, the central one the largest. In the 
 upper Miocene, the two side toes have still farther 
 dwindled. In later forms we find the toes modified 
 
18 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 into mere side splints, such as are now found in the 
 anatomy of the leg of the horse. We do not see all 
 the steps of the progress from the fox-like Eocene 
 creature to the splendid animal of to-day, but the 
 links in the chain are being more and more discov- 
 ered and put together to form the succession of crea- 
 tion. Or, if we take the human hand and trace it 
 back to its earlier stages, we discover it in the for- 
 ward fin of the fish ; in the forward foot and leg of 
 the reptile, which is modified from the fin to suit the 
 conditions of land life ; in the wing of the bird ; in 
 the forward foot of the five-toed mammal ; in the 
 more extended fingers of the anthropoid ape. And 
 there are in various cabinets and museums skeleton 
 forms exhibiting the life series from the fin, with its 
 one simple function, to the hand of man, so complex 
 and perfect in its structure. The most incredulous 
 have been startled by such pictures of creation, 
 painted by the hand of the Creator Himself. 
 
 To tell the story of the continuous creation would 
 be a task of practically infinite proportions. One can 
 undertake to do no more than to turn a page or two of 
 the huge book, to note the print thereon, and to read 
 its plain doctrine. And we have now the light of the 
 great hypothesis of evolution, whereby to decipher the 
 otherwise obscure, enigmatic, and long misunderstood 
 handwriting of the Creator. 
 
 To some minds, the idea of a process in creation 
 does away with the necessity of a creator. If a tree 
 grows, it grows of itself. If, in the substance of an 
 egg, the speck of life develops from one stage to an- 
 other, until at the proper time the fully organized 
 bird breaks from the shell, and flies the air, that is 
 not a creative process, but a mere growth, and does 
 
THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 19 
 
 not necessitate the presence of the Eternal Energy. 
 But if any egg were to develop itself, apart from that 
 Energy, then there would be an independent power in 
 the universe ; a power lodged in the egg ; and that 
 power would of itself be ajieity. From such a con- 
 clusion the mind recoils, and yet it is the sole alterna- 
 tive. Evolution offers, in the place of such confusion,, 
 the theory of a creation which ceases not for a mo- 
 ment, a creation which involves the lowest forms of 
 life as well as the highest. And certainly to the Chris- 
 tian believer his great hypothesis of the omnipresence 
 of God renders it unnecessary for him to doubt but 
 that the creative process is as much now as ever the 
 play of a Power infinite and wise, in all departments.^ 
 
 Then there are those who are repelled by the notion 
 of a low origin. To come from the dust of the earth 
 by a swift and magical stroke seems to them more 
 dignified than to have come from the dust of the 
 ground by the slow process. Yet the conception of 
 a Creator who is always a Creator, upon whom all life 
 depends, from whom we derive our power, and who 
 goes on from one stage to another of the manifesta- 
 tion of Himself, just as rational minds are prepared 
 to bear it, is so superior to the other conception, that 
 it is difficult to see why the theory of a magic crea- 
 tion should be chosen by any intelligent person. 
 
 Man, in his physical structure, has for a long time 
 been at the summit of the process of modification. He 
 is, as a physical being, complete, though not perfect. 
 But the creative process does not stop with the phys- 
 ical : it goes on, with a greater and higher manifesta- 
 tion of energy, in the mind and soul and spirit of man. 
 
 1 Professor LeConte. Evolution and its Relation to Religious 
 Thought. 
 
20 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 And the conclusion to which the student of evolution 
 comes is, that this work goes on according to the law 
 of development. Nothing comes into being full-grown. 
 In all departments, from grasses to worlds, and systems 
 of worlds, there is the reign of the one law. And the 
 kingdom of heaven, or the highest ethical and spirit- 
 ual condition of rational being, cometh not otherwise, 
 for He who announced the coming of the kingdom of 
 heaven said : " First the blade, then the ear, then the 
 full corn in the ear." 
 
 " That the widening of our conceptions of time, as 
 of space," writes Professor Proctor, " and thence the 
 widening of our ideas as to the domain of law, and 
 consequently the recognition of the infinitely perfect 
 nature of the laws of the universe (for only very ex- 
 cellent laws can work for long, and only perfect laws 
 can work forever) should have been regarded as antag- 
 onistic to religion, in its wider and nobler sense, can 
 only be regarded as resulting from the blindness or 
 perversity of the ignorant. But that religion in which 
 all men may (in which all reasoning men must) agree 
 has been rendered infinitely grander, infinitely more 
 impressive by our new knowledge. It has also been 
 rendered infinitely more reasonable. Men had spoken 
 of God as omnipresent and almighty, but they had as- 
 signed a mere point in space as His domain : they had 
 described Him as eternal, but they had recognized His 
 influence as existing for the merest second of time ; 
 and, finally, they had in words attributed all wisdom to 
 Him, while, in fact, they had limited His wisdom to 
 the provision of laws capable of operating but imper- 
 fectly, and for a brief period. Science now shows the 
 infinite domain of the omnipresent, its inconceivably 
 vast duration, the perfection of the laws which so rule 
 it that they operate throughout all space and all time." 
 
III. 
 
 "THE IDEA OF GOD." 
 
 I DO not attempt to prove the doctrine of evolution. 
 Those who are sufficiently interested to investigate the 
 specific grounds of its adoption by the scientific world, 
 will in any event be compelled to study the works of 
 those who are expert ia the matter. The vast major- 
 ity of those who accept the doctrine do so, not upon 
 careful examination of it in detail, but because the 
 actual investigators inform them that the hypothesis 
 works, as far as it is followed. 
 
 In 1820 Banvard, an astronomer, attempted to con- 
 struct tables of the motion and orbit of Uranus, then the 
 outermost known planet of our system ; but he found 
 that he could not account for the motion of Uranus by 
 the attraction of other planets and the attraction of the 
 sun. Either here was an exception to the great uni- 
 versal law of Newton, — or some cause existed for the 
 divergence, entirely unknown. Several astronomers 
 studied the case, without arriving at a conclusion, until 
 in 1846 a young Frenchman wrote to Galle, astrono- 
 mer at Berlin, asking him to look for another planet, 
 at a certain place in the heavens. This was on the 
 23d of September. That night Galle pointed his tele- 
 scope to the place indicated, — and found the planet, 
 and the next night his discovery was made certain. 
 The young Frenchman, Leverrier, had a profound 
 faith in the hypothesis of Newton, and made his com- 
 
22 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 putations in accordance with it, — and added to our 
 system a new and magnificent world. It will be seen 
 that the very thing which appeared to be an exception 
 to the universal law, in due time became the most con- 
 vincing proof of it. Of a true hypothesis, it may be 
 said that it does not shine on the world all at once in 
 its full glory. It gets itself stated, brought thus be- 
 fore the eye of intelligence, and then goes on increas- 
 ing until its glory fills the earth. Even a hypothesis 
 is no exception to the general law of development. It 
 begins germinaUy in the mind of some Newton or 
 Spencer, and proceeds to grow. 
 
 When it is little in proportion it is laughed at, made 
 the butt of all the shafts of ridicule ; then it is viewed 
 in a more serious light, attacked with bitterness, called 
 the enemy of true philosophy and religion ; then it is 
 adopted and it proceeds to shine benignly on an un- 
 grateful world. Those who have reached the period 
 of middle life will remember how Darwin's theory was 
 laughed to scorn, and hooted and jeered a quarter of 
 a century ago. And how gradually the laugh was 
 changed to lament and rage. Well, we now come to 
 the last stages of the lament period. The ultra-con- 
 servative still declares that evolution undermines true 
 religion ; and is the foster mother of all the infidelities. 
 That it promises to abolish God, and utterly consume 
 the Bible in its wasteful criticism. That is the recep- 
 tion usually accorded to new truth, and the reader of 
 the Bible ought not to be astonished at it, for if the 
 Bible shows anything, it shows us that.^ 
 
 But how about the lament that evolution abolishes 
 God ? To the Christian evolutionist there is perhaps 
 nothing so absurd as that lament. 
 
 1 Isaiah liii. 1 ; Luke xi. 62 ; John iii. 19 ; Acts vii. 51, etc. 
 
"THE IDEA OF GOD." 23 
 
 If a man were living in a room without windows, a 
 den in the ground, or in a stout enclosure of stone 
 walls, getting all the light he could from a tallow dip ; 
 and if some one should come and knock out the stones 
 of the wall, and should insert ample windows in the 
 proper places, then if he were to blow out the candle, 
 the inmate might complain, " You have taken away 
 my light ! You are cruel to me ! " But it certainly is 
 no piece of cruelty to do that. The invader makes 
 a substitution for the feeble light, the perishable light, 
 which has been useful, of the bright and universal 
 light which shall be a thousand times more useful. 
 The sense of damage and loss will soon be lost in the 
 increasing sense of benefit and blessing. 
 
 See how the idea of a universe has grown. The 
 ancients knew nothing of it. They knew of the earth 
 almost nothing, and of the sky less. The earth, a 
 small, flat surface, bounded by unknown boundaries ; 
 the sun, as Lucretius declared, the size it appeared to 
 be ; and Olympus (as Greeks thought) a camp or 
 settlement of beings somewhat superior in power (but 
 not in character) to men and women. 
 
 The Beyond was hardly a field of conjecture. The 
 total was a small affair, with the earth for the centre 
 of it. The sun was made to shine for man, and the 
 stars to twinkle for him, just as the fruits of the 
 ground were made to feed him, and the flowers to 
 charm him. 
 
 The small earth, the smaller sun, the small total, 
 necessarily engendered in the average mind the notion 
 of small deities, whose acts were determined by small 
 and even contemptible motives. 
 
 But the accumulating materials of information, and 
 the faith of the few, who stood alone in the world, 
 
2i THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 gradually broadened the field of thought. Men began 
 to drift away from their deities and their worship. 
 The poets and dramatists began to amuse the popu- 
 lace with lampoons upon the gods. Jupiter was a 
 petty despot and Mercury was his errand boy. The 
 old ideas would not hold, and the new ideas did not 
 furnish ground for a positive reconstruction. At 
 length the idea of a universe began to dawn. The 
 sun receded into space millions of leagues, and swelled 
 into vast bulk. The earth, while it also increased in 
 size to the apprehension of men, sank into a relative 
 insignificance. The sun was seen to spread its beams 
 over other worlds than ours. Men began to think of 
 themselves in a new way, a more humble, and at the 
 same time a more grand way. And then began to 
 emerge new thoughts of God. I would not imply 
 that men had not continued to worship and serve 
 God before ; I am merely speaking of man, as philos- 
 ophizing. One great universal law, governing the 
 fall of a pebble, or the flight of a galaxy of suns, sug- 
 gested one vast Intelligence, one unspeakable and un- 
 searchable Power. The advance was in philosophy, 
 or the speculative thought of mankind, from the sim- 
 ple, the small, the crude, to the infinitely complicated, 
 the infinitely great, and the infinitely perfect. The 
 rushlight of scanty and dusky ray was stolen away. 
 But the sunlight made it Unnecessary. 
 
 Thus our human ideas of God have been changing ; 
 they have been enlarging ; becoming less definite in 
 some ways, but vastly more profound. I suppose 
 you are all familiar with the outline of Paley's cele- 
 brated argument, with the illustration of the watch. 
 
 Let us now take Paley's watch and the savage per- 
 son that finds it. The savage pei'son is a thinker, ao- 
 
" THE IDEA OF GOD:' 25 
 
 cording to the full measure of his cireumstances. He 
 discovers the watch and contemplates the cover of it. 
 He notes that it is of regular shape — he hears 
 the regular tick of it. It also has a shining cover 
 which is likely to attract the attention of a savage 
 person. Well, the first thought of the savage we will 
 assume to be as to the skill of the maker of the 
 thing. Possibly that is a violent assumption, but it 
 is for our present purpose only it is made. He per- 
 ceives the evidence of something of skill in the man 
 who could patiently make such a shape, and carve the 
 chasing on the covers. He would recognize it as 
 being beyond anything possible in his tribe. But 
 there is the singular noise which the thing makes, — 
 singular because so perfectly regular. That is a mys- 
 tery. After a while the savage person happens to 
 press his finger on the spring of the cover and it flies 
 open, and discloses the white face, with the figures. 
 Second-hand revolves on its axis, minute hand goes on 
 its axis, more slowly. Hour hand, the astonished 
 savage perceives, has its motion also. Then presently 
 he finds that there is a correspondence between the 
 movements of the hands, and the course of nights and 
 days. By that time he ceases to refer the construc- 
 tion of the watch to any being like a member of his 
 own tribe. He must be a being of marvelous pow- 
 ers, powers which are somehow in concert and agree- 
 ment with the powers of nature. And in the course 
 of time the curiosity of our savage begets a sort of 
 skill in him, and he contrives to pry open another 
 cover, and with amazement he beholds the complicated 
 arrangement of wheels and other machinery inside. 
 Now he feels that he does n't have much of an idea of 
 the being who could construct such a marvelous thing. 
 
26 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 Here are little wheels which mark the pace of that 
 great wheel, the sun, as it rolls over the sky. The 
 savage, who first thought that some person of another 
 tribe had made this large and shining bead, gradually 
 comes to the conclusion, as he pursues his investiga- 
 tion, that no person of another tribe could have done 
 such a thing. And as to what wonderful being actu- 
 ally did it, he becomes more and more an agnostic. 
 As knowledge increases, the sense of ignorance also 
 increases. Now we have seen a wonderful opening of 
 the universe during the past two or three centuries. 
 The universe was observed before, but it was all cased- 
 in to the ancient mind. The boundaries have receded 
 and receded, — have, in fact, entirely disappeared. 
 The firmament which bounded the sky_ has been rent 
 asunder and has gone. And now we behold the oper- 
 ations of a Being whose proceedings are (some of 
 them) according to now ascertainable methods. We 
 study these methods, and as we do so, the sense of 
 the unspeakable and unthinkable greatness of the 
 Being by whom aU things consist grows upon us. It 
 becomes impossible longer to think the thoughts of 
 the ancient man. And as knowledge has increased in 
 our own time, thousands have confessed an ignorance 
 which, perhaps, they did not so much as suspect at 
 first. With an intense meaning and emphasis the 
 old words are uttered, " His ways are past finding 
 out.'V" 
 
 The little earth, the little sun and moon, the little 
 sky, the little time consumed in the making of this lit- 
 tle cosmos ; its very recent beginning ; the prospect of 
 its early ending, have all corresponded with a little 
 theology or science of God, and with feeble, super- 
 ficial, definite ideas of God. Is it not true that the old 
 
" THE IDEA OF GOD." 27 
 
 earth, the little earth, and the old heavens, the little 
 heavens, have passed away, as inspired men predicted 
 that they would? And nothing has so facilitated 
 their departure as the doctrine of evolution. For 
 evolution presents to the mind a mighty process : a 
 process of which we cannot say that it had a begin- 
 ning. This process evidences intelligence and power. 
 The intelligence and power may remain unnamed to 
 the materialist, — that is, the person who assumes, 
 without warrant, the non-existence of God ; but to the 
 theist, or the person who does assume the existence of 
 God, as he has warrant for doing, there need be no 
 hesitation in applying to this infinite power and intel- 
 ligence the sacred name. And what does evolution 
 show the theist ? God at work, in the diffused dust of 
 matter, gathering nebulae into fit shape, organizing 
 worlds and systems of, worlds, introducing life at its 
 lowest stage, carrying it on by infinitely patient prog- 
 ress up to the highest perfection ; never faltering, 
 never changing in purpose, but proceeding through 
 all ages, as the Life of all lives, and Sustainer, Up- 
 lifter of all being. 
 
 As has been said, the process of evolution is one of 
 change from the lower to the higher, — from the sim- 
 ple to the complex. It may well be that the idea of 
 God working in the lower forms of life, as in the ge- 
 ologic periods, is comparatively easy. But when we 
 reach man, we have come to. a very complex and subtle 
 form of life. 
 
 The fern has a law, or mode of existence, evidently 
 not self-determined. The fish, the reptile, the bird, 
 have all their modes of existence, quite simple as com- 
 pared with man. These modes of existence belong to 
 the domain of natural law. But man undertakes to 
 
28 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 make his own laws. He is a self-determining being. 
 That is to say, he is free within limits. Of course 
 there are many who deny human freedom. Suffice it 
 to say that if all the facts in the universe were con- 
 trary to the notion of human freedom, there would 
 still remain within the mind of the man the conviction 
 that he has a freedom of choice. He cannot explain 
 it, he cannot defend it, perhaps, but he knows it, and 
 that is enough. Now it may be that there is a feeling 
 among men, that if God has wrought and ruled in all 
 the rest of the domain of nature, — when man begins 
 God leaves off. Given a being who can say : " I 
 will do this, or I will do the contrary," and what room 
 have you for God ? My friends, you have more room 
 than ever before ! Imagine a musician whose purpose 
 it is to produce music. He begins with a hollow reed 
 and sounds forth a note of music. He gets a hole 
 drilled in his reed and produces two notes. He gets six 
 holes and has the octave. He introduces key after key 
 and gets the half tones. Every step that is taken is an 
 advance. He contrives this and that, for his purpose, 
 and at last gets to the human voice. But with the 
 human voice is associated volition. Does he leave off 
 at that point, being blocked by the freedom of the use 
 of the voice ? Does he say : " I had some sort of op- 
 portunity with my simple reed, or with my reed with 
 the holes in it, or with my other contrivances, but here 
 I have no opportunity at all." On the contrary, he 
 declares that at last he has reached his great oppor- 
 tunity, compared with which all that preceded was as 
 nothing. Here is training to be done. Here at last 
 is the place for the crowning success of his purpose. 
 Ah, but the voice will be discordant, it will be per- 
 verse : yes. It will have to be disciplined, educated. 
 
" THE IDEA OF GOD.'' 29 
 
 redeemed from the evil of a will opposed to music. 
 That is the supreme labor of the musician. There 
 are the magnificent possibilities. And if your musi- 
 cian is great enough, he will at last succeed. 
 
 So far as we have any knowledge, the one medium 
 for the perfect operation of God's will is man's will. 
 And there the jirocess of education, or, if you please, 
 redemption, begins. 
 
 Man undertakes to make his laws. He becomes a 
 society, and proceeds as best he may to legislate. Is 
 he a God-forsaken creature when he does that ? Has 
 God become an absentee, because the man has very 
 poor success ? Why, my friends, wherever man has 
 undertaken anything, for benefit, for rise, for ad- 
 vance, God has moved upon him to do it, as God 
 moved upon and in lower forms. God has ever moved 
 upon all His continuous creation for just those pur- 
 poses. Your savage makes his crude regulations, the 
 result of his experience. He endeavors after more 
 and better order, and it must be the one ordainer, the 
 one author and inspirer of all order who works in 
 the man's work. 
 
 But you will say that man has made imperfect laws, 
 wrong laws, and are they to be attributed to God, of 
 whom we affirm that all His works are perfect? Well, 
 God's works are perfect, when He com/pletes them. 
 But, as we have seen, and as the hypothesis of evolu- 
 tion shows, God has been working ever in the incom- 
 plete. Human laws grow only out of human experi- 
 ence, and human experience is at best only partial and 
 constantly changing. Moses made laws for Israel. 
 He had the deep insight to declare that they were 
 indeed the laws of God. They grew out of the best 
 of human experience, the experience in which God 
 
30 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 had the largest place, therefore. Were they perfect 
 laws ? 
 
 They had in them the germ and potentiality of per- 
 fect laws, but were manifestly imperfect, and have 
 long been superseded, as a body of legislation. Abra- 
 ham was a polygamist. Human experience had not 
 advanced far enough for him to be able to know or 
 appreciate the law of monogamy. And so all along 
 there were adjustments of the laws to the actual being 
 then being educated and trained. 
 
 Men have to find out the evil things, the things 
 which make for hurt, and then they declare against 
 tbem, as well as they know how. 
 
 Individuals are perverse, willful, unteachable ; but 
 society — the very society of which they are a part — 
 reaches up toward the best things it can do. It ex- 
 ercises its will and so declares the will of God. We 
 find fault, as well we may, with the inefficiencj'^ and 
 insufficiency of our laws. We are not satisfied. God 
 forbid that we should be satisfied. It will be time for 
 that when the best has been reached, not before. 
 But in all outreachings for the better, in all new striv- 
 ings growing out of dissatisfaction, we do verily be- 
 hold the pathway of God. 
 
 Now, when we are told that evolution abolishes 
 God, or renders Him superfluous, we see, on the con- 
 trary, that evolution cannot proceed one step without 
 God. The materialists may declare that evolution 
 proceeds by material energy or force. The agnostic 
 may say that we do not know and cannot know. The 
 theist identifies the Universal Power and Intelligence, 
 proceeding by universal laws, as the Being of whom 
 men have had imperfect intuitions, of whom men have 
 had inspirations. 
 
" THE IDEA OF GOD." 31 
 
 And to the Christian theist I cannot see how the 
 theory of evolution (when he once begins fairly to ap- 
 prehend it) can be other than a constant and increas- 
 ing delight. It certifies him in a new and impressive 
 way of the presence of the Eternal Spirit, rendering 
 all existence essentially sacred. It certifies him that 
 there is nothing of trivial importance, nothing common 
 or unclean, in which there is possibility of betterment. 
 It invests life with the greatest possible meaning, and 
 all the relations of life with the greatest possible dig- 
 nity. 
 
 " When," writes Professor John Fiske, " from the 
 dawn of life we see all things working together to- 
 ward the evolution of the highest spiritual attributes 
 of man, we know, however the words may stumble in 
 which we try to say it, that God is, in the deepest 
 sen^e, a moral being." 
 
 Some one has written of a cluster of grapes, and 
 what was required for its composition. The soil in 
 which it grew represents untold ages in its formation ; 
 the light and heat, which produce the recombination 
 of the elements of matter, in its substance, represent 
 forces which we cannot compute; apd the intelligence 
 displayed in its organization, the delicacy of its bloom 
 and flower, is great beyond our utmost limit of think- 
 ing. In other words, the infinite protrudes itself 
 upon the attention of the observer, ^s he contemplates 
 the fruit of the vine. 
 
 But in the contemplation of a reasoning being, the 
 man who can think such thoughts of a grape cluster, 
 we reach the culmination of creation. 
 
 Here is the being who sees reason in the universe, 
 who sees righteousness in its provisions and adjust- 
 ments, who may proceed (and in time must proceed) 
 
i'l THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 to the conclusion that he is peculiarly akin, and in the 
 deepest sense, to the Eternal Righteous Being. To 
 him it becomes part of the Divine purpose, from the 
 first, that after much speech of mankind, there should 
 come at last the speech of the Son of God, to apprise 
 men of the Eternal Father, to lead on man to the high 
 destiny of the Sons of God. 
 
 In these critical days the doctrine of evolution has 
 been brought close to the thought of men to help them 
 tread the path of the Son of Man, and to live as never 
 before the life of faith and truth. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF SCIENCE AS RELATED TO RELIGION. 
 " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow." 
 
 It is the office of science to consider. Indeed to 
 consider wisely and carefully is science ; and such con- 
 sideration, according to the idea of Jesus Christ, must 
 lead to certain results. These results sum up in one, 
 — an increased apprehension of the presence and be- 
 neficent goodness of God. 
 
 Two hundred and eighty years ago Kepler pub- 
 lished at Prague a book on the motion of the planet 
 Mars, in which he announced a discovery of his own, 
 substantiated by an almost incredible labor of compu- 
 tation. It was this. The planet moves in an ellipse, 
 with the sun at one focus of it. He concluded that 
 the same must be true of every planet. At the same 
 time he declared that a line from the planet to the 
 sun always describes equal areas in equal times. 
 
 Nine years later he published another book, in 
 which he set forth the relation between the distances 
 of planets and their periodic times. These are the 
 three celebrated " Kepler's Laws." Of the book 
 which promulgated the last of these laws he said: 
 " It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has 
 waited six thousand years for an observer." Up to the 
 time of this famous discovery, the facts of the heavens 
 had been abundantly observed. There was indeed a 
 copious fund of facts, but there was no science of as- 
 
34 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 tronomy worthy the name. And the reason is that a 
 law governing the movements of the heavenly bodies 
 was unknown. Some one has likened the case to this : 
 Materials for a building are gathered together from 
 all parts — stone, wood, iron, glass, everything. But 
 the skill to put them together is lacking. Presently 
 a man comes along who knows the laws which prop- 
 erly govern the construction of a building, and then 
 (but not before) the building rises. With Kepler, 
 the " legislator of the heavens," as he has been called, 
 the facts began to be builded together into the fair 
 temple of astronomy. 
 
 The motion of the planet Mars is readily ascer- 
 tainable after the law of planetary motion is made out. 
 And so of all the members of the planetary system. 
 
 In all departments of thought and research we may 
 observe this : that there may be great accumulation of 
 facts and phenomena ; very interesting facts and in 
 many ways practically useful to mankind ; yet until 
 some one arises who finds the law of the relation of 
 the facts there is no orderly and beautiful construc- 
 tion of them in harmony. 
 
 Nature embraces seven full sounds, as also seven 
 colors, with the semitones and the connecting tints. 
 These sounds exist and men know of them. But it is 
 only after the relation of sounds in chords, such as the 
 first, third, fifth, and eighth of the octave, is discovered 
 that music becomes an available science. Then in 
 time Mozart and Beethoven come to delight the soul 
 of mankind with their art. Men see things, and do 
 not see the law of their relation. The things are 
 more or less helter-skelter in their minds. How the 
 things came to be is unknown, and indeed is consid- 
 ered unknowable. 
 
SCIENCE AS RELATED TO RELIGION. 35 
 
 Then arises some one whose office it is to discover 
 and to publish the law of relation. And thus comes, 
 at length, science, or the application of the law of 
 relation. Mr. Darwin spent a laborious life in bio- 
 logical research, seeking, as did Kepler in the depart- 
 ment of astronomy, for the law of relation in the 
 department of biology. His labors were so successful 
 in this department that he was able to announce the 
 law of relation, in time, between the different forms of 
 life. Mr. Spencer, whose office is of an entirely differ- 
 ent character from that of Mr. Darwin, went on to 
 the generalization of that which had been so ably 
 demonstrated in the department of biology. He felt 
 convinced that the same law of relation was appli- 
 cable throughout the whole domain of thought. He 
 formulated the law of evolution, as the universal 
 mode of becoming. And the abundant array of facts, 
 gathered from all time, from the geologic eras, from 
 the history of mankind, from the different grades of 
 animal and human life, began to be builded, for the 
 first time, into an enduring structure of philosophy. 
 It is a philosophy builded upon observation. The law 
 of evolution is applied at every point. It already 
 proves itself to many careful thinkers the most legiti- 
 mate philosophy ever conceived in the minds of men. 
 
 And why should not this philosophy be cordially 
 adopted by all thoughtful persons? In many cases 
 it is not adopted, probably, from the fear that it will 
 overthrow religion. It undoubtedly will overthrow 
 some religion, the religion which has no foundation, 
 but it will destroy no worthy religion. That it will 
 bring out, enhance, develop, and throw light upon. 
 Evolution is, as we have seen, the law of relation in 
 time. It is the law of succession or continuity. And 
 
30 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 if we think of it carefully we shall see that it has been 
 believed in, for many centuries, partially ; perhaps as 
 long as men have been capable of painstaking obser- 
 vation, the law of evolution has been, as applied to a 
 considerable part of creation, accepted. 
 
 The type of all evolution is said to be the egg, and 
 all persons of intelligence are supposed to be familiar 
 with the main facts in the history of an egg. Chil- 
 dren know that birds come out of eggs ; they also know 
 that there was a time in the history of the egg when 
 the bird was not in it, because they have broken open 
 an egg and satisfied themselves that there was no bird 
 in it. Permit me to condense a little biology such as 
 you will find in many books. If we take an egg and 
 examine it on the outside, it is of a certain shape, color, 
 and weight. But that is of the least importance to the 
 careful observer. He breaks it open and discovers a 
 mass of albuminous matter, and a yolk. He analyzes 
 this mass, and finds that it is an aggregation of cells, 
 and these cells are similar. He can detect no differ- 
 ence between them. But in due time and under proper 
 conditions there begins a process of differentiation. 
 While at first the cells are alike, and each one per- 
 forms all the functions of life, afterward the aggregate 
 separates into three distinct layers ; and these three 
 layers, by further process, are found to contain, or 
 form, three groups of functions and organs : the nerve 
 system, the nutrition system, and the blood system.^ 
 
 The nerve system has to do with the exchange of 
 force and influence between the outside world and the 
 organism, and between different parts of the organism. 
 The nutrition system has to do with the exchange of 
 matter between the outside world and the organism. 
 
 ' See LeConte's Evolution, etc., for fuller exposition. 
 
SCIENCE AS RELATED TO RELIGION. 37 
 
 The blood system, has to do with the exchange of 
 matter between the different parts of the organism. 
 And thus that which at first was a mass of units of 
 life (cells), each being as it were bound up in itself, 
 becomes itself a unity, an organism, in which there 
 is a division of labor. Some cells take on a certain 
 form, and become a tissue we call muscle, which tissue 
 performs a certain definite office and can perform no 
 other. Another group of cells becomes nerve tissue, 
 which carries influence back and forth between the 
 great world without and the world of consciousness 
 within. Now all this is a process of which we know, 
 and of which we have known a long time. What- 
 ever inference we may derive from it, however much 
 it may affect our philosophy or our religion, we know 
 that it exists, and not only so, but that all animal life 
 (animal life, of the higher grades, let us say) devel- 
 ops individually from an egg. So that this process 
 of evolution is the most universal process of which we 
 have any conception. It belongs necessarily to the 
 history of every individual ; and it was known that 
 this was the fact, long before the evolution hypothesis 
 dawned. 
 
 One of the earliest things taught the child in Chris- 
 tian families has been that God made him, and this has 
 been, I have no doubt, a perfectly true teaching ; only 
 God made the child in a process such as the evolution- 
 ist recognizes as the universal process. And to the 
 Christian teacher, knowing that human life is always 
 developed from an exceedingly low and simple stage, 
 to the fully organized body, with all its beautiful sym- 
 metry ; to the mind, with its various and subtle powers, 
 to the soul, or moral nature, — it was all true and 
 right to declare that God made not only the race, but 
 
38 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 the individual. Well, the child grows on to manhood 
 (that is part of the evolution of life), and it seems 
 never to occur to the Christian teacher to deny that 
 God is the maker of the man, — at any point. 
 
 And yet there are those vcho still maintain that if 
 this evolution is extended, then it takes the place of 
 God, becomes a substitute for God. Why has it not 
 become a substitute for God long ago ? There is no 
 more reason for that now than centuries ago. 
 
 Take anything that is seen alive on earth. Take a 
 tree. Ask how it came to be. From the Christian 
 standpoint you are answered that God made it. How 
 did He make it ? By growth, that is by evolution. 
 Or take a moth of gorgeous wing. A child of a ques- 
 tioning disposition sees it, and asks how it came to be. 
 Who made it? God made it. Well, the child gets a 
 pair of scissors and some tissue paper, and tries his 
 little hand at making a moth, like the one he has seen. 
 His idea is that God makes moths very much as a 
 child would — with a pair of shears. In the autumn 
 the child wanders about, under trees, and finds a co- 
 coon. Brings it home. In the springtime he looks at 
 his cocoon, which he has carefully laid aside in a good 
 place, and he perceives something going on in it. The 
 side or end of it is broken open and some kind of a 
 creature comes out of it. This creature takes its sta- 
 tion where it can hang downward, and presently before 
 the eyes of the astonished child there are spread out 
 the very wings he has admired so much. Ah, here is 
 one kind or species of thing coming out of another. 
 He runs to his mother and tells her that she was wrong 
 in telling him that God made the moth, because he has 
 seen a moth precisely like the other come out of the 
 cocoon. Then his mother tells him that God made the 
 
SCIENCE AS RELATED TO RELIGION. 89 
 
 cocoon and all its contents. He wanders out again in 
 the genial springtime and sees a worm feeding on a 
 certain kind of plant, and, after watching for a while, 
 bethinks himself that he will take the worm home and 
 feed it on the kind of leaves it likes, and keep it in 
 a secure place, and see what comes of it. And pres- 
 ently he sees the worm make a cocoon precisely like 
 the one he had found before. Here, then, is another 
 new and troublesome idea. He goes to his mother 
 and says, in a tone of skepticism, which is all the time 
 getting confirmed : " You told me that God made the 
 moth, and after I found out .that He did n't, but that 
 it came out of the cocoon, you said that God made the 
 cocoon. And I have found that he did n't make the 
 cocoon, for I saw the worm make it."' 
 
 The mother says quietly : " My dear, God made 
 the worm." The child ponders that. He takes an- 
 other ramble, and comes upon a little group of cream- 
 colored objects, like beads fastened to a leaf or twig, or 
 something, and takes them home, determined to watch 
 them. 
 
 In due time he sees the little bead-like thing broken, 
 and a little worm emerges. He feeds the little worm 
 upon some leaves, and it grows to be such a worm as 
 he saw make the cocoon. This shakes the little in- 
 vestigator's confidence in the theory of his niother 
 more than ever. " You told me that God made the 
 worm ; I know He did n't, for I saw the worm come 
 out of an egg and it grew." "Ah, yes," says the 
 mother, " I told you the truth about it all the while. 
 God made the egg, and He made it in such a way 
 as to produce the worm, and He made the worm in 
 such a way as to weave the cocoon, and the cocoon in 
 such a way as that the winged moth should come out 
 of it." 
 
40 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 In process of time the child finds that the egg is 
 laid by the gorgeous winged creature he has admired. 
 His mother must be all wrong about it. " You told 
 me that God made the egg. I tell you that the moth 
 laid the egg. And I can see how it is. The whole 
 thing goes on in a circle. Egg, worm, cocoon, moth, 
 egg. God did n't have anything to do with it." And 
 the mother says, " God does not make things in the 
 way you do. He makes things in His way. Some 
 day I hope you will learn to admire His way, a little 
 of which you have seen." The child grows, and pon- 
 ders upon the mysteries of life. 
 
 He sees everywhere a process. He can refer these 
 processes to an infinitely wise Being, as his mother 
 does, to God ; or he can refer them to nothing. There 
 is no reason why he should not refer them to God. 
 Certainly no reason why he should hesitate to refer a 
 process to God, that would not prevent his referring 
 anything whatever to God. There may be plenty of 
 reason why he should change his ideas of God. In- 
 deed it has become impossible for him to think of 
 God as he did, as a great man, using a pair of shears, 
 to cut out wings, and the like ; but it becomes possi- 
 ble for him to grow into deeper and grander thoughts 
 of a Being who works by laws and processes to mani- 
 fest His ways to the children of men. 
 
 There is a feeling that evolution is dangerous. The 
 exaggeration of that feeling is that evolutionary philos- 
 ophy comes as a whirlwind to destroy religion ; on the 
 contrary it comes to restore and revive it. People are 
 warned to beware of it. My friends, evolution will 
 prove itself dangerous to the kind of religion which 
 treats it in that way. The religion that seeks to stand 
 on the ground of opposition to light, on the ground of 
 
SCIENCE AS RELATED TO RELIGION. 41 
 
 resistance, will find itself more and more threatened 
 and undermined by it. Suppose the mother should 
 warn her child, after he has found the cocoon, i. e., 
 after he has begun to be an evolutionist, that he must 
 let cocoons alone, that he must take it to be true that 
 God made the moth, and that cocoons are snares of 
 the devil, to entrap unfaithful children to their hurt 
 and ruin. Suppose she tells him that if he finds the 
 cocoon he will be likely to find something still back of 
 that, which will shake his faith in God. She has 
 taken the proper course to land her child in perma- 
 nent and increasing doubt of anything that she can 
 teach. 
 
 Now science, genuine science, has not a word to say 
 about God. It never did have anything to say about 
 God. That is not its office. It deals with things 
 which it can see ; it traces them to their causes, but 
 never to their Final Cause. There is another departs 
 ment of thought which has to do with the Final Cause. 
 The child who traced the life-history of a moth was 
 a scientist. He was doing in his simple and childlike 
 way what all the scientific people are doing in their 
 more elaborate way. He was right in his science, but 
 wrong in his philosophy. He was right in saying that 
 God did not make the moth, because he connoted 
 with the verb " make " a kind of shears operation, 
 a manufacture. His mother was perfectly right when 
 she declared that God did make the moth, because she 
 had dispensed with the crude idea of a shears opera- 
 tion. Science shows us how things were made. But 
 no scientific person has a right to tell me who or what 
 I am to refer the making to. If the scientific person 
 tells me that God did not make the things which I see, 
 and gives his statement as a direct teaching of his 
 
42 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 science, it is for me to remind him that science offers 
 no such teaching. He has gone out of the domain of 
 science into philosophy. 
 
 But what then has science done for us ? How does 
 it aid us ? Is it so great a thing to know how lilies of 
 the field grow ? How rocks disintegrate into sand and 
 soil for them to grow in ? What the cosmic periods 
 have been? No. The chief need of man is not met 
 and fulfilled by such knowledge. There is more in a 
 man than nerves and gray brain-matter. Man has 
 ever been seeking after God. Feeling after God, if 
 haply he may find Him. Why ? Because he has need 
 of God, to satisfy his highest and best faculties. 
 
 But in seeking after God men have found, not God, 
 but very crude, very imperfect, and very untrue con- 
 cepts. They looked at trees, and imagined ethereal 
 tree-builders as explanatory of them. They looked 
 at fountains, and imagined ethereal fountain makers. 
 They found not God — the One Eternal Source and 
 Centre — but many gods. 
 
 Science — the faulty science of the past — gradu- 
 ally cleared away those crudities and idolatries. 
 
 But has there been nothing in modern times corre- 
 sponding to that, and which it was necessary to clear 
 away ? Let us see. Have not men, almost inevitably, 
 thought of God as non-resident, as it were, an ab- 
 .sentee landlord ? Here is the world upon which we 
 dwell ; it is to be held in its station, and there are all 
 the spheres likewise to be maintained in position : 
 that is sublet to gravity. The world and all worlds 
 are to be kept compact in form : that is sublet to cohe- 
 sion. The generations of animals and mankind are 
 to be continued : that is sublet to the law or group of 
 laws which govern in that department. The lilies are 
 
SCIENCE AS RELATED TO RELIGION. 43 
 
 to grow, that is sublet to vital force. In other words, 
 God has been conceived, not as a living present Being, 
 in whom and by whom all things consist, but as a 
 chief marshal of other gods, known as natural laws. 
 That has been the modern form of a polytheism which 
 has held its ground in Christendom. And that is now 
 being superseded. Why ? Because the scientific find- 
 ing of men cannot be contained in that sort of philos- 
 ophy. The boy who sees the gaudy moth, starts with 
 a philosophy. According to his philosophy, moths are 
 manufactured, out of hand, as with scissors. But 
 when his findings include the cocoon, the worm, and 
 the egg, he is compelled to reconstruct his philosophy. 
 
 Men find things ; they find those modes of nature 
 they call natural laws. There must be a philosophy 
 ample enough to inhold these modes. That philoso- 
 phy will utterly discard the notion of polytheism ; it is 
 bound to declare that all these laws are but separate 
 manifestations of the one Eternal Energy. 
 
 And that is what evolutionary philosophy is doing 
 — what, to a certain extent, it has done. As Profes- 
 sor LeConte has pointed out, it has forced us to an 
 alternative : " Either God is far more closely related 
 with nature, and operates it in a more direct way than 
 we have recently been accustomed to think, or else 
 nature operates itself and needs no God at all. There 
 is no middle ground tenable." That is to say, modern 
 science, or the recent findings of men, have forced a 
 philosophy which shows us to be in immediate and con- 
 tinual contact with God, or else renders the existence 
 of God unnecessary. 
 
 The egg, worm, cocoon, moth series or cycle involves 
 the constant creative act of God, or the cycle is self- 
 created ; and that latter is simply unthinkable. The 
 
44 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 lily, considered as evolution leads us to consider it, 
 with its seed, its root going downward and laterally, its 
 stalk going up, and unfolding leaf, bud, flower, is a 
 history, and it is, as Jesus saw and said, a history of 
 a divine cycle. God, not some intermediate potency, 
 clothes the grass of the. field. He does it in a cer- 
 tain way, according to certain modes, but He does it. 
 The highest function of science, or science as related 
 to religion, is to cause men to find themselves directly 
 related to God. If one is driven by considering, to 
 refer the plant series, the insect series, all of the series 
 of inferior life, to God, as a resident power, how much 
 more shall he refer the human series to One who 
 stands in the closest relation with it ; or to recur to the 
 words of Christ, " If God so clothe the grass of the 
 field . . . shall He not much more clothe you, O ye 
 of little faith ? " 
 
V. 
 
 THE BIBLE A RECORD OF RELIGION'S GRADUAL 
 GROWTH. 
 
 " Men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit." 
 
 No book in the world has had so important and so 
 high a nse as the Bible. It is the book which has 
 shined in the minds of past generations, to guide the 
 way of men and women ; to make them strong for 
 duty, patient in suffering, upright in life, and resigned 
 in death. It is the one book in which righteousness 
 sounds its admonitions, from beginning to end. It is 
 a book in which the divine character is set forth as 
 pure, free from human passion, and centred in love 
 and benevolence. The best thoughts of men are ex- 
 pressed in the Bible, — and the best thoughts, best 
 actions, best motives and feelings of men have been 
 made possible by the Bible.^ 
 
 Since the Reformation, theories in regard to the 
 nature of the Bible have sprung up. Before the 
 Reformation the church loomed up portentously, the 
 supreme arbiter of men's thoughts and beliefs; 
 the vicegerent of God, having in her hands the keys, 
 and closing or opening the doors of heaven to men. 
 That was the great authority. 
 
 The reformers disallowed that authority, or trans- 
 ferred it. They declared the Bible to be the supreme 
 arbiter of men's beliefs and actions. And naturally 
 1 H. W. Beecher, Inspiration of the Bible. 
 
40 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 there grew up theories as to the constitution of the 
 book. The old claim of the church that she was in- 
 spired, — that in her dwelt the Spirit of the Highest, 
 — and that therefore her decisions were to be held 
 final in all matters coming under her supervision, was 
 contradicted. The Bible was the infallible rule of 
 faith and practice. It was inspired as a whole, and 
 inspired in all its parts. The various books of it, — 
 the chapters of the books, the verses, the words, were 
 inspired and infallibly true. This notion grew up to 
 meet the exigencies of the case. If we will soberly 
 think of it we shall readily see how this theory was 
 bound to work confusion in the minds of all its adher- 
 ents. How it would compel them to believe, or to 
 suppose that they believed, mutually irreconcilable 
 statements. It would compel them to adopt the early, 
 the crude and infantile experiences of the race, as of 
 equal value with the later and mature. The result of 
 such a theory of inspiration has necessarily been to 
 make people reverent of the book in such a degree as 
 to be in fact superstition and idolatry. When men say 
 of a book that it is perfect, faultless, or infallible, they 
 make it represent God to them ; they are compelled to 
 render it the kind of close adherence, homage, which 
 we call worship. And on the other hand, one who 
 discovers actual fallibility in the book, who has been 
 taught that its worth lies in its infallibility, will turn 
 away from it. He will say of it as the reformers said 
 of the church : " If it claims to be the infallible reve- 
 lation of God, it claims that which is not true ; it is 
 an imposition." So that the result of such a theory 
 of inspiration, on the one hand, is idolatry, and on the 
 other, infidelity. 
 
 This theory of an infallible book is more destructive 
 
THE BIBLE A RECORD OF GROWTH. 47 
 
 of the book itself than any other which could be de- 
 vised. It blots out the two thousand years of human 
 experience which intervene between the completion of 
 the book and our time as of no value. It reduces God 
 to silence now ; and in His place sets up the book, to 
 do all the speaking for God which is done. 
 
 What is the Bible ? It makes its appearance before 
 us as a book. Let us examine it as we would examine 
 any fact or phenomenon. As we examine it, we dis- 
 cover that it is unlike any other book of which we have 
 knowledge in several respects. Generally a book is 
 the work of a single mind, or a group of contempo- 
 rary minds. Our books of poetry, of philosophy, of 
 science, of story, represent the time, and society, in 
 which they were written. Our books of history are 
 prepared bj' some one who has some kind of philos- 
 ophy of history. We have no book whose author- 
 ship stretches over a period of ten or fifteen hundred 
 years, except the one. Taking up ancient books, in 
 Homer you will find one method ; in the Koran there 
 is one molding hand. The Bible is not a book, there- 
 fore, in the ordinary acceptance of the term ; it is a 
 library. It is the product of many minds ; and these 
 minds range from the primitive, the immature, to the 
 matured. This library which we call the Bible in- 
 cludes many different kinds of literature, poetry, phi- 
 losophy, legend, tradition, parable, biography, history ; 
 but, above all, and as the centre of all, religion. It 
 is a record of the lives and thoughts of people of a 
 remote time, and of a remote place. But that which 
 is chiefly remarkable about it is, that it chronicles 
 the growth and advance of mind and moral character 
 from one stage and age to another. 
 
 It is, above any other collection of writings, the 
 
48 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 record of the evolution of the highest religion of 
 mankind. 
 
 A conception of the library (by the Jews called the 
 Scriptures or writings, and by us the Scriptures or the 
 Bible) was held by those who were among the writers 
 of the later portion of it, and notably by the Apostle 
 Paul, who probably contributed as much as any one to 
 the New Testament portion. This conception differs 
 radically from that announced by the theorists since the 
 Reformation. Were the question asked, " How came 
 the Scriptures into existence ? " some Jews would pos- 
 sibly answer, " They were dictated to selected men, who 
 acted as the amanuenses or clerks of God. The Scrip- 
 tures are of a purely miraculous character. The eter- 
 nal God spoke to men, as men speak to each other, 
 and they wrote down what He said." That also seems 
 to have been the notion of some Christians, and to be 
 the notion of some Christian people now. Paul spoke 
 of the sacred writings, meaning the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 as profitable for several purposes ; he was glad that 
 the young man Timothy was familiar with them. He 
 went on to say that all writing inspired of God (God- 
 inbreathed) was of profit for discipline in righteous- 
 ness and the like. This has been read as if the 
 apostle said that all Scripture was inspired. 
 
 He does not say that. He simply speaks of God- 
 inbreathed writing as profitable. That is a statement 
 that commends itself to the candid mind. The other 
 does not. For there are things written in the Bible 
 which by common consent are not profitable for disci- 
 pline in righteousness. Thus is furnished a test. That 
 which is profitable for discipline in righteousness is 
 God-inbreathed. For all of our practical purposes, 
 that is all that is necessary. I never heai-d of any one 
 
THE BIBLE A RECORD OF GROWTH. -49 
 
 who desired encouragement and stimulation in the 
 Christian virtues, in the righteousness of patience, 
 benevolence, and justice, who felt drawn to the 109th 
 Psalm. I conceive that one desirous of proceeding in 
 the path of Jesus must recoil from a writing which 
 expresses — as that does — the vindictive feelings of a 
 man toward his neighbor, and even toward the inno- 
 cent wife and children of that neighbor. On the other 
 hand, it might be read with a degree of satisfaction 
 by one who wished some justification for his own un- 
 holy feelings of hatred and revenge. For my part, I 
 look upon the Scriptures as the source of great light, 
 but there are spots on the sun. 
 
 Or take the conception of the Apostle Peter. I 
 suppose that the question must ha'fe occurred to many 
 at different times, " Why did the men of old write 
 the things which we find recorded ? How were these 
 truths communicated to them?" Peter answers that 
 holy men of old spake as they were moved by the 
 Holy Spirit. I beg you to recur to certain funda- 
 mental principles of the evolutionary philosophy. As 
 we have seen, science takes the facts and phenomena 
 of nature, and refers them to ascertainable causes, but 
 back of these ascertainable causes it does not and can- 
 not go. Philosophy refers these facts and phenomena 
 to the Eternal Energy, without which nothing is pos- 
 sible. Is an egg developed from being a mass of sim- 
 ilar cells to a complex living organism ? Philosophy 
 declares that the resident energy working to such ends 
 is a manifestation of the Eternal Energy. There is 
 no process separate from that Energy. But we are in 
 the habit of distinguishing between different kinds of 
 energy. There is physical energy, intellectual energy, 
 moral energy. In creation, we see along lines of geo- 
 
50 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 logical development the impress of that which, for 
 distinction, we may call physical energy. We see this 
 physical energy rising in scope and complexity. Of 
 the plant, or fish, or the lower mammal, we do not say 
 that we discover in them a manifestation of moral en- 
 ergy. But when the period arrives for the appearance 
 of a being acting by volition, then has come the time 
 for moral distinctions. Does the Eternal Energy, which 
 was at no point absent before, become absent from this 
 highest form of life ? On the contrary, is there not 
 now a manifestation of the Eternal Energy on a new 
 plane? It makes little difference what words you em- 
 ploy, if you succeed in conveying your idea. I speak 
 of the Eternal Energy, because the term properly 
 belongs to philosophy. After ages of the outplay of 
 Eternal Energy, in the physical mode, there comes 
 into being Man, to be carried on in a new order of 
 development. Here at last is the creature in whom 
 -the structural, physical change is not to be prosecuted 
 farther. The change is of an intellectual, moral char- 
 acter. He has inherited the gross animal nature ; it 
 is needful that he be moved on, in the exercise of moral 
 freedom, to the expansion and growth of a spiritual 
 nature. Then comes in the manifestation of the 
 Eternal Energy (to use the j)hrase of philosophy) in 
 moral and spiritual discipline, development, and illumi- 
 nation. Individuals, families, tribes, races, best fitted 
 for this moral discipline, now begin to manifest in a 
 higher way the power of the Being who creates all 
 things, and without whom nothing is made that is 
 made. Or, transfer the idea into the language of 
 Peter : " Men spoke from God, being moved by the 
 Holy Spirit." The very reptile, endeavoring after a 
 more extensive existence, and putting forth motion 
 
THE BIBLE A RECORD OF GROWTH. 51 
 
 thereto, did so, in the far past, as moved, borne along, 
 not by its own separate energy, but by the Eternal 
 Energy. Holy men, men most apposite to the purpose, 
 the most fit men, spake. Did they speak because they 
 were commanded to speak by a Being altogether sep- 
 arate from themselves ? Did they act as a kind of 
 vocal mechanism ? Nay, but because the same Being 
 who had moved upon all orders of creation, in a way 
 fit for those orders, now moved upon them in a way 
 fit for them. The word employed by Peter, " moved," 
 suggests a current, bearing along the mental and moral 
 life of men. You may call it what you please ; you 
 may call it a " stream of tendency," if you like ; what- 
 ever you call it, it is the movement of the Eternal 
 Energy. And it is an ascending movement. It goes 
 from the inorganic to the organic ; from the lower 
 physical to the higher physical; from the higher 
 physical and the more intelligent to the moral and 
 spiritual. It takes man in his initial brutehood, and 
 carries him along through savagery, barbarism, civili- 
 zation, to the highest thinkable spiritual and intellec- 
 tual attainment, or to the kingdom of heaven. There 
 is no interruption of the order, there need be none, 
 for the order itself is one of ascension and expansion. 
 Revelation, as I look at it, is no abnormal thing ; it is 
 involved in the very constitution of man and nature. 
 God is involved, if I may so speak, in every movement 
 of life, but is chiefly manifested in the highest move- 
 ments of life. The power of thought is of God, the 
 faculty of speech is of God. The fittest men will 
 speak forth the most fit thoughts of their time. They 
 will thus speak forth what God is doing, creating in 
 their time. The least fit men will speak little or 
 nothing to the purpose. Ard so if examination is 
 
52 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 made, so far as it can be made, it will be seen that from 
 of old men have spoken in a more or less crude and 
 infantile way of God. Some men in each nation will 
 prove the most fit. Some race, or nation, among other 
 races and nations will prove the most fit. But that 
 any man or nation should perfectly speak forth the 
 truth, the whole truth, without admixture of human 
 frailty and mistake, necessarily implies that the man 
 or nation so speaking is perfect. I have the right to 
 hold, indeed it is required of me that I should hold, 
 that the most fit nation for speech of God was of 
 Semitic origin ; that the branch of the Semitic root 
 most fit for the purpose was the Abrahamic ; that of 
 the seed of Abraham the most fit was the Israelitish, 
 etc. The logic of events has made the conclusion all but 
 inevitable. I do not say, neither do I think, that God's 
 Spirit did not move upon other races, and branches of 
 them. I do not say, neither do I think, that at any 
 point other races and nations were abandoned of that 
 Power by which all creation is carried on. But the 
 most fit was without doubt the house of Jacob. It 
 has proved itself true that in the seed of Abraham all 
 the families of the earth have been blessed, directly or 
 indirectly, because it is out of that root has come the 
 civilization which is by all of us acknowledged to be 
 the best so far. 
 
 But this Abrahamic race would have been utterly 
 unfit for its work if it had had nothing in common 
 with the other races ; if it had been raised to such 
 superiority over all others that it shared nothing of 
 their modes of thought. Do the records show us any- 
 thing more clearly than this : that Israel was often per- 
 verse, unteachable ? That it was often sunk in the very 
 vices and idolatries against which it was raised up to 
 
THE BIBLE A RECORD OF GROWTH. 53 
 
 protest ? Does it show us anything more clearly than 
 that the most fit men in it were men of intermittent 
 devotion to truth and righteousness ? That a perfect 
 and infallible revelation of truth should have come 
 through such a channel seems a baseless supersti- 
 tion. Let us be careful to observe that in the ancient 
 times the existence of an exact science was impossible. 
 Men had npt sufficiently observed the processes of na- 
 ture to enable them to speak discriminatingly of its 
 laws. Their imagination was not yet trained in the 
 school of experience, and therefore they do not make 
 distinction between fancy and fact. We find that true 
 of all primitive nations. If we take the story of the 
 garden, in which the race had its beginning, the idea 
 of it is not peculiar to Israel ; it seems to have been 
 the co-inheritor with other nations of that beautiful 
 legend. The story is told of a woman formed of the 
 rib of a man ; this story must have descended from 
 a very remote antiquity, by tradition. If Israel had 
 failed to record in its sacred literature the story which 
 it inherited from the past, it would have failed to give 
 record of the belief which it shared with others. The 
 story is told of the woman and the serpent, the ser- 
 pent being a beast of the field, endowed with speech, 
 and tempting the woman. The idea of it is a truth, 
 not altogether unlike that conveyed in the Laocoon 
 group, of man tempted by that which is most earthy 
 and subtle, to be himself earthy and subtle, and there- 
 fore to die. The form of the story is so manifestly \ 
 legendary that no student would mistake it for any- 1 
 thing but legend if found in any other collection of 
 ancient writings. The truth came in that form, but 
 the form, when subjected to the threshing of criticism, 
 becomes a sort of chafP, not necessary to maintain as 
 
54 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 of sacred character. As well declare that a divine 
 revelation will have no poetry in it, no parable, as that 
 it must be destitute of legend and myth. As well say 
 that human language is the perfect channel of ideas 
 which have not yet been formed in the human mind, as 
 to claim that a divine revelation has no imperfection in 
 it. Men are all the time moved upon by the Spirit of 
 God, and in all departments. But they .do not do 
 their work perfectly, neither do they speak words of 
 perfect wisdom. 
 
 What is the use of a revelation ? To tell us of God, 
 and His universal, unsearchable greatness and purpose ? 
 To disclose the blazing Infinite to the trembling finite? 
 No, but to disclose the work and purpose of God in 
 time, in our own world, in the movements and devel- 
 opment of human beings. That is the revelation we 
 need. But there are many who declare that we must 
 haye an infallible standard ; that, or we have nothing. 
 For the things which we think, and the feelings we 
 feel, especially the deepest of our thoughts and feel- 
 ings, we require infallible statements. Well, a great 
 many people have held that the Bible was altogether 
 a book of infallible statements. Anything found in 
 the Bible is true even if it is n't true. But have be- 
 lievers in the Bible, in this sense, come all to sweet 
 concord and unison ? They must have done so, upon 
 the theory of an infallible standard. On the contrary, 
 since the idea of an infallible standard came, how very 
 divided Christendom has become. There has been less 
 of certainty than of almost anything, since certainty 
 was supposed to be furnished. 
 
 The Protestant church has gone to fragments upon 
 
 the doctrine of an infallible standard. The Calvinist 
 
 ' takes the standard in his hand and belabors the Ar- 
 
THE BIBLE A RECORD OF GROWTH. 55 
 
 minian, who has the same infallible standard in his 
 hand. The churchman is against the dissenter; the 
 immerser against the sprinkler ; the pre-millenniaiist 
 against the post-millennialist ; the ritualist against the 
 non-ritualist. All have the same standard. The no- 
 tion does not appear to work well. 
 
 The philosophy of evolution suggests a very differ- 
 ent conception of revelation. It is also the philoso-i 
 phy of common sense, as applied to the case. It sees 1 
 that out of the crude and simple ideas of people with f 
 respect to God arise greater and greater ideas as time , 
 and experience go on. It says that the infant can- 
 not talk so wisely as the same person grown to matu- \ 
 rity. It says that the Mosaic must needs give place 
 to the Christian. And it shows us how to look at the 
 earlier feelings and philosophies of mankind. It 
 teaches us to exercise discrimination. It leads on to 
 the feeling that the revelations of the past, in the nature 
 of the case, must be contributory to fuller revelations 
 in the present. Why is it that preachers preach? 
 Why not read the Bible to the people ? Is it not be- 
 cause preachers instinctively feel the necessity for bhe 
 expansion of the testimonies of holy men of old, and 
 their interpretation in terms of present life ? Is it 
 not because the light and development of recent times 
 must add their contributions to all written words, or 
 the words become dead and ineffective ? 
 
 The word of the Lord came to Isaiah, to Hosea, to 
 Amos. They so declare, and I believe them. That 
 word did not come to them independently of other 
 words which had come to their predecessors, but partly 
 as a farther development of those other words, and 
 many words which had been spoken they did away 
 with. See how very particular in detail the old law of 
 
56 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 sacrifice was. There was a tabernacle and temple eti- 
 quette of the most rigid character. Nothing was per- 
 mitted to be spontaneous and off-hand. There were to 
 be sacrifices, plenty of them, and every reader of the 
 Bible has noticed with what precision they were con- 
 ducted. There were particular sacrifices for particu- 
 lar days, and particular persons were to do the work. 
 There were sin offerings, peace offerings, freewill of- 
 ferings. Everything was prescribed, even as to how 
 the sacrificed animal should be anatomically divided, 
 and where the parts should be put ; what parts burned, 
 and what parts not. The flour and oil were accurately 
 measured. And there were hosts of things which peo- 
 ple do not find time and patience to read. In the 
 midst of these prescriptions were inserted directions 
 about leaving the gleanings of field and vineyard 
 to the needy ; and against stealing, cheating, and 
 lying. There was the ethical part, small, and the cere- 
 monial part, large. Now hear one of the later proph- 
 ets speak. He first asks the question : " What doth 
 the Lord require of thee ? " An unwise man would 
 answer, " Sacrifices ; and all done by the old regula- 
 tions." He would forget the directions about glean- 
 ing, cheating, and lying. But the prophet boldly says : 
 " No, the Lord requires of you nothing of the kind. 
 He requires of you just those ethical things which you 
 have made no account of, namely, to do justly, to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." The 
 prophet of Israel looked upon the great mass of that 
 Levitical matter as so much chaff, in which grains of 
 wheat had grown. He rubs off the chaff and casts it 
 to the winds, and brings out the wheat grains. 
 
 The word of the Lord is the food of the soul of 
 man. But in all departments food comes to us by 
 
THE BIBLE A RECORD OF GROWTH. 57 
 
 growth, and with the growth there is always a great 
 deal of stuff not good for food. The farmer harvests 
 his wheat ; he brings it into his barn. After a time 
 you see a huge stack of straw rise beside the barn. 
 That straw has served its purpose in the growth of the 
 food, but now it is put aside. That which is extra- 
 neous, light, temporary, goes. The wheat, disengaged 
 from its envelopments, becomes bread. The thoughts 
 of men, the ability to have thoughts, come from God. 
 But the thoughts of holy men partake of the age in 
 which they live ; which age, indeed, God creates, but 
 as a step toward a greater and better age to follow. 
 And so the thoughts of holy men of old, who were 
 moved by the Holy Spirit, are to be harvested, the 
 straw and chaff left, the grain cherished, and put into 
 the thoughts of the next age. It was thus the Christ 
 began His great mission, with His fan in His hand, to 
 separate between the truth and its old-time covering. 
 
 To reconcile the old concepts of truth with the new 
 has been attempted time and time again, but without 
 success. To reconcile the truth of the past with the 
 truth of to-day is not difficult. If we consider that 
 the Bible is a growth, an evolution, and is to be stud- 
 ied in the light of that fact, it will cease to be a stum- 
 bling block to thinking men ; its letter will be less 
 regarded, and its spirit will shine upon the world as a 
 light to aU who seek righteousness. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 " For I delight in the law of God after the inward man ; but I see 
 a different law in my members warring against the law of my mind." 
 — Rom. Tii. 22, 23. 
 
 The philosophy of evolution renders necessary a 
 reconstruction of many opinions which have com- 
 manded the assent of the religious portion of Chris- 
 tendom, and among other opinions, those which re- 
 late to the subject of sin. It doubtless appears to 
 many that a modification of the old ideas of sin will 
 cause a weakening, if not a breaking down, of the 
 sense of moral responsibility. And it is to be ad- 
 mitted that a reduction of the sense of responsibility 
 is not a thing in any wise to be desired. To increase 
 that sense, and make it more mandatory than it is, or 
 has been, would seem to be desirable. At the same 
 time it must be confessed that the notions which have 
 prevailed on the subject of sin have not proved satis- 
 factory to the mind of thoughtful persons. Perhaps 
 nothing has been so troublesome to thinkers as the 
 problem of evil. Why should there be evil ? If God 
 is the perfectly wise Being, the infinitely powerful Be- 
 ing, and the infinitely good Being, having the welfare 
 of His creatures at heart — why was evil permitted ? 
 The Epicurean objection to the existence of God (cited 
 by Lactantius) was that an infinitely powerful and 
 good Being would not have permitted evil. And since 
 there is evil, very manifestly, there is no infinitely 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 59 
 
 powerful and good Being. That is a very trouble- 
 some proposition. It has proved troublesome to mul- 
 titudes who have felt the force of evil, and have vainly- 
 sought some explication of it. 
 
 Take the old standard theory of creation : God 
 made man a short time ago, and made him all at once, 
 a full-grown being. This full-grown being was en- 
 dowed with all the faculties which we know him to 
 possess. The first thing this highly endowed being 
 does is to do wrcng. The very first opportunity he 
 has of making a moral choice he improves by making 
 a wrong choice. Now the question arises : " While 
 God was creating man in this summary manner, why 
 did He not do the work so well that the man would not 
 prove a failure at the very first attempt to do any- 
 thing?" I am aware that such questions have been 
 looked upon as irreverent ; but no question is irrever- 
 ent which is honest and expresses a genuine feeling of 
 difficulty. If a clock-maker makes a clock he may 
 produce a very poor timepiece ; but if he does we as- 
 sume that he is not sufficiently skillful. If he makes 
 a clock which, when wound up and set going, does not 
 strike the right hour and does not point its hands to 
 the right figures on the dial, we arrive at unfavorable 
 conclusions respecting his ability to make clocks. Or 
 suppose a magician can cause a palace to come into 
 existence by some immediate and magical stroke. It 
 will be reasonable to expect the palace to be a suc- 
 cess, as not being surrounded with the rubbish which 
 environs a building put up by the ordinary process. 
 It ought not to fall down at the first wind that blows. 
 Otherwise we shall think that magic is not desirable. 
 If God created man at a stroke or by a fiat, as has 
 been dreamed, it makes the existence of evil a far 
 
60 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 harder thing to account for than if we conceive that 
 God works and creates through growth, through devel- 
 opment and education. 
 
 Contrast the old theory of the origin of evil with 
 that furnished or made necessary by the doctrine of 
 evolution. According to the former man was a com- 
 plete being when he started upon his career. Not only 
 was he endowed with all needful physical and mental 
 faculties, but he was fully endowed morally. He was 
 a free being, and his Maker placed him in the garden 
 of Eden to proceed as he should choose. His Maker 
 arbitrarily decided that if the man did well, all the 
 race descending from him should likewise do well, and 
 be a happy and blessed race ; but if he should do ill, 
 then his descendants should at once fall, in him, to be 
 an unhappy and accursed race. That was the dire 
 alternative. All was left dependent upon the deci- 
 sions of the one man. God lets the condition of mil- 
 lions of moral beings, uncounted throngs of them, 
 depend upon the one act of one finite being. If any 
 one objects to that, he is guilty of objecting to that 
 which God in His infinite wisdom chose to do. If 
 any one protests that it was a great risk, he is told 
 that he must not criticise the Most High. 
 
 But such an idea gives an unfavorable notion of the 
 divine government, whether one asks questions or not. 
 It suggests that if God made man so perfectly, to be- 
 gin with, He would exercise His power still farther in 
 guarding this perfect creation from any temptation 
 which would ruin it. The protection of such a being, 
 against the guile of the serpent, was certainly neces- 
 sary, at least until such time as the man had become 
 so confirmed in righteousness as to be able to refuse 
 the solicitations of the tempter. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 61 
 
 When you think of the sins and sufferings of man- 
 kind ; when you consider the vices and crimes, the' 
 groans and tears, tlie blood shed on ten thousand bat- 
 tlefields, to say nothing of the miseries which people 
 have inflicted upon each other in particular, at every 
 moment of time ; when you see the slaveries, the hard 
 and helpless labors and poverties, and all the bulk and 
 intensity of evil in the history of the race, it is hard 
 to think that all this arose out of the yielding of one 
 man, and that man not a trained and disciplined man, 
 but an inexperienced man, to the first temptation which 
 came in his way. When there is added to this, that 
 God foresaw it all, knowing that the man would fall, 
 and that he would bring hideous ruin upon a world, 
 you have the problem of evil reduced to its most diffi- 
 cult form. 
 
 As substantiating this terrible theory, we have the 
 teachings of a theology purporting to be derived from 
 revelation. The basis of that theology is the fall of 
 man from the state of innocence in which he was cre- 
 ated, involving the ruin of the race springing from 
 him. " By Adam's act of disobedience he incurred for 
 himself and all his posterity the penalty of spiritual 
 death, to be followed in due course by physical death, 
 and afterward by eternal death, which latter has been 
 understood to mean endless existence in torment." ^ 
 
 As a partial remedy for the evil caused by the fall, 
 the complex plan of salvation, known as Christianity, 
 was introduced. This remedy does not offset the fail- 
 ure to creation occasioned by the fall, being sufficient 
 only for a limited portion of the race. And all this is 
 supposed to be founded on revelation. 
 
 A clergyman of the Church of England ^ has been 
 ^ Prebendary Row. 
 
62 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 at pains to examine revelation with reference to this 
 matter, and has found what an exceedingly slender 
 foundation it affords to such a stupendous super- 
 structure. After the account of the garden and the 
 temptation is given, in~lEe^ third chapter of Genesis, 
 the subject is not so much as hinted at in any por- 
 tion of the Old Testament. The illuminated men who 
 were moved by the Holy Spirit to speak from GoH 
 do not speak "one word upon that important subject 
 which has been held to be the foundation of Christian 
 
 theology. That is a mo st sin gular omission, if the 
 doctrine is a true one, and especially if it is an im- 
 portant ahe. Then, after the lapse of centuries, arose 
 One who came as the Supreme Witness, to speak to 
 men of sin and salvation. "And He fails to affirm 
 the doctrine of the fall to be the foundation of His 
 own mission, not only, but_He does not directly refer 
 to it in the whole course_of His teaching. Not one of 
 the men who followed Him in- His work and mission 
 ever speaks of the falTT It may be asserted that all 
 of these take the fall for granted ; but it is incredi- 
 ble that they should fail to give even an indirect ref- 
 erence to that which was the foundation of all their 
 teachings. And we have nothing to do with their 
 assumptions, in any case. The Apostle Paul makes 
 four allusions to the third chapter of Genesis ; one in 
 the Epistle to the Romans, two in the Epistle to the 
 Corinthians, and one in a letter to Timothy. The 
 allusion in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (" As 
 in the Adam all die, even so in the Christ shall all be 
 made alive ") does not bear upon the doctrine of the 
 fall in any way. The one in the Second Epistle to 
 the Corinthians proves nothing. The one in the letter 
 to Timothy says nothing of the fall. The one in the 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 63 
 
 Epistle to the Romans is the famous passage (v. 12-21) 
 which has been suoh a ground of debate among theo- 
 logiaus, that persons not theologians have mostly let 
 it alone. Of this passage Prebendary Row remarks, 
 " It bears a far closer resemblance to the theory desig- 
 nated universalism than to the popularly accepted doc- 
 trine respecting the consequences of the fall." And 
 the conclusion to which this very careful writer comes 
 is this : " The affirmation that Christianity is based on 
 what is commonly designated the doctrine of the fall 
 is destitute of all support in those Scriptures which 
 constitute our only records of revelation. It requires 
 to be read into them before it can be found therein." 
 
 In many directions men have sought deliverance 
 from the profound difficulties connected with the prob- 
 lem of evil. The d octrin e of the fall of man has 
 added indefinitely to those difficulties. It certainly 
 will be a gain if that doctrine is eliminated from the 
 ChristiMi„religion. The stains which have gathered 
 on human conceptions of the divine government will 
 vanish if it can be seen that God did not deliver over 
 the destinies of the vast multitudes of earth's popula- 
 tions to the feeble hands of one man, and that man an 
 infant in experience and wisdom. 
 
 To an evolutionist, who sees in evolution the one 
 method of the divine creation, any such doctrine as 
 the fall of the human race from a preceding state of 
 moral excellence is like the vision of a dreamer, whose 
 mind is all confused and his thoughts incoherent. 
 That a man and a woman, placed in a garden of de- 
 light, should be tempted to yield to the solicitations of 
 evil, that such yielding would be sin, that it would 
 have the effect of degrading those who yielded to sin, 
 that it would produce ill both for the persons them- 
 
6i THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 selves and for their descendants, the evolutionist would 
 not think of denying. He knows that men do contin- 
 ually yield to the demands of imperious and subble 
 earthliness ; that whenever men consent to this temp- 
 tation of that which they recognize as beneath them, 
 they go down to a lower level. He knows that the evil 
 effects of conduct are not confined to the perpetrators 
 of the wrong, but go also to others, and become part 
 of the heritage of their children. But that the human 
 race started at a summit of moral excellence, and im- 
 mediately proceeded to go down hill, or that in the 
 person of the head of the race did immediately fall 
 down from the summit of excellence to the bottom of 
 depravity, he does not for a moment credit. On the 
 contrary, he thoroughly knows that the huraan_ race 
 has been_following an ascen3ing~patEway from tj^e 
 first. Not all of the race, but that portion of it which 
 shows forth chiefly the creative work of God. He 
 declines, as a conscientious man must decline, to ad- 
 mit for a moment that savagery or barbarism is the 
 equal of civilization. Pursuing his investigations in 
 the antiquities of human society, he finds a time when 
 men were without a literature, and with the most lim- 
 ited language. The language consisted of a few 
 sounds and signs, or gestures. Ideas were correspond- 
 ing:. Like the beast of the field man was necessitated to 
 procure food, and the main channel of his energy was 
 in the direction of finding food. A being of that 
 order has but the simplest rudiments of moral ideas. 
 Such a being yields to the same impulses which gov- 
 ern in the animal creation. In process of time he 
 acquires a perception of moral distinctions,-! very 
 
 ^ How a man acquires perception of moral distinctions we are 
 not at present concerned to show. AVhether it is tliat the painful 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 65 
 
 faint indeed, but of exceedingly high value. For it 
 is this perception of moral distinction which is to 
 deepen and widen, and grow more and more distinct, 
 until it shall contain and govern the whole field of 
 man's energy. And therefore every step taken is a 
 step in advance. It may well be that the steps are 
 very small, and very slowly taken, but as we glance 
 over the pages of history, if we are unable to perceive 
 the advance, we must be very destitute of optical fac- 
 ulty. The plow of Abraham may have been a sharp 
 stick, and his travels may have been pi-osecuted by the 
 aid of the camel. From that to the steel gang-plow 
 of the Abraham of our West, cutting its smooth swath 
 of furrows, and to the great trains of steam wagons 
 which carry his harvests to the markets of the world, 
 there is a vast change for the better. It unmistakably 
 indicates an advance. And not only an advance in 
 facilities for the production of food, but a moral ad- 
 vance. 
 
 That this moral advance has kept pace with material 
 progress let our great systems of charity, our abun- 
 dance of literature of the higher class, our feeling of 
 opposition to ambitious wars, our endeavors to provide 
 wholesome laws, our growing intolerance of vice and 
 crime and of various forms of corruption testify. In 
 
 is avoided, and the causes which produce it are felt in some sense 
 as wrong, and the pleasurable is sought, and the causes which jjro- 
 duce it are felt to be in some sense right ; and whether it is thus 
 the perceptions of moral distinction arise ; or whether they arise 
 in some other manner, does not really affect the proposition of the 
 opponent of the evolutionary philosophy, that God is the creator 
 of the moral sense. In that proposition the.theistie evolutionist 
 is at one with the conservative. The question is not " Who cre- 
 ated the moral sense ? " but " Was it by fiat, or by process ? " 
 The evolutionist of course holds that it was by process. 
 
66 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 the nations where there is the most skill in the pro- 
 duction and use of machineries, and the greatest power 
 of invention, where there is the most social and polit- 
 ical liberty, there is the greatest moral and religious 
 advancement. It is true that in all communities there 
 is corruption, both private and social, and political, 
 but it does not exist unrebuked ; it is subjected to the 
 keen censure of the worthiest of mankind, and that 
 continually. 
 
 It is said that the most interesting and instructive 
 department of biology is that of embryology. It is 
 found that the embryo repeats the biological history 
 of the species to which it belongs. That fact is now 
 accepted as one of the general laws of evolution. The 
 young of the frog is not a reptile, but is of the fish 
 kind. It is essentially a fish. It is a tail-swimming 
 creature, and breathes by gills instead of by lungs. 
 If it did not pass on in development it would be recog- 
 nized as a fish. But it does pass on, forming first one 
 pair of legs, and then another, and it begins to breathe 
 partly by lungs and partly by gills. The lower forms 
 of amphibians remain permanently in this condition. 
 But the young of the frog passes on. Its gills grad- 
 ually dry up as the lungs develop, but it still retains 
 the tail. Finally the tail is absorbed, and the perfect 
 or adult frog presents itself. This frog has in a short 
 time repeated the history of ages in itself. It has 
 risen, swiftly risen, stage by stage to its final place in 
 the series. The biologist sees in this condensed pro- 
 cess the life-history of races. In the Devonian and 
 Upper Silurian of the geological eras fishes appear of 
 an amphibian form. In the Carboniferous the am- 
 phibian proper, represented by the second form of the 
 young frog. In the Permian and Triassic the caduci- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 67 
 
 branch, the third form of the young frog. In the 
 Tertiary, the anoura, or the frog like. Thus the race 
 history is put in this form of abridgment. In every 
 species the track of development which it has followed 
 through ages is marked with more or less distinctness 
 in the path followed by the embryo and the youag of 
 the species. The human embryo is thus found to dis- 
 cover our kinship with lower races. But the newly 
 born child is at a low stage of physical power, at a 
 still lower stage of intellectual power, and shows no 
 signs of moral perceptions. A helpless little bundle 
 of life, it starts along its pathway of experience. It 
 begins to show to the keen-eyed parents signs of intel- 
 lectual activity. At first its language is akin to that of 
 the young of animals, inarticulate. It slowly comes to 
 articulation, gets together its little vocabulary, and has 
 a language peculiarly its own. And as time goes on 
 it begins its course of volition. It ascends to the won- 
 drous point of distinguishing between good and evil. 
 At that point it stands preeminent above all unmoral 
 creation. It wishes to eat of the fruit of the tree of 
 the knowledge of good and evil. It is' tempted so to 
 do, drawn on by irresistible impulse. Does it ever 
 resist this temptation ? Is the child ever content to do 
 that which it knows to be right, and to follow on to 
 refuse that which it knows to be wrong ? Such a child 
 is foreign to our experience. If there is a child who 
 approaches such a standard, the sad parents expect its 
 early translation to a higher world. Now the child 
 repeats in small the history of its race. The race 
 began unenlightened, unmoral, and therefore without 
 moral responsibility. Little by little it came on to- 
 ward enlightenment, toward the appreciation of the 
 distinction between right and wrong, and therefore 
 
68 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 toward responsibility. Were the old theory, founded 
 upon the fall of man, to be carried to its logical con- 
 
 , elusion, it would absolve man from responsibility. On 
 the contrary evolution sees the constant increase of 
 responsibility coming with the increase of light. It 
 does not attach moral responsibility to the little child, 
 
 i but it knows that responsibility will begin ; that it will 
 progress with the advance of the child, just as it has 
 begun and progressed with the advance of the race. 
 
 Our race began high, as compared with that which 
 had preceded it ; it began low as compared with what 
 it is now. That is the commanding position which 
 evolutionary philosophy occupies with respect to the 
 problem of evil. But it follows, then, does it not, that 
 evil, or sin, has a necessary place in the history of the 
 human race ? That it is not incidental, and could not 
 have been avoided ? Yes, that follows. But that does 
 in no wise absolve any moral being from responsi- 
 bility, as we have seen. In a way, evil may be traced 
 back to its roots, in the earlier stages of creation. 
 Self-preservation is a law of existence. By reason of 
 the power of that law the animal seeks to escape from 
 something. From what? From that which threatens 
 its existence. It finds the food-supply cut off in the 
 locality which it occupies, and undertakes a migration 
 to a more favorable locality. The condition which 
 reduces or withdraws its food-supply is an evil. Of 
 course the word is depleted of all moral significance 
 in such a use of it. There is an evil against which 
 an individual or a species must struggle. It is along 
 the line of this strugole creation proceeds on its 
 ascending pathway. When man appears upon the 
 stage, a moral being, the evil assumes a moral charac- 
 ter. And in fact, from that point on the creation is 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 69 
 
 of a moral sort. It proceeds by the struggle of man 
 with the evil he finds in his environment. Had the 
 Creator of the Cosmos purposed a race of innocent 
 beings, they might perhaps have been created at once, 
 without any preparation. There would have been no 
 necessity of pain and evil ; but the beings so made 
 would be animals, or perhaps vital mechanisms. If 
 immortal they would be perpetual-motion machines, as 
 destitute of the quality we call virtue as so many white 
 pigeons. Even more destitute, for white pigeons do 
 make something of a struggle. But the evidence of 
 such a purpose is lacking. On the contrary, the 
 Divine purpose, so far as we can trace it, has wrought 
 steadily toward the being who in the struggle against 
 evil would acquire virtue. And here is the prime 
 glory of the creation. 
 
 Man struggles against the disorder incident to his 
 creation. He learns to believe that to achieve charac- 
 ter must be worth all the struggle involved, — as the 
 housebuilder believes that the completed structure will 
 amply compensate for the litter and rubbish of the 
 process by which it came into existence. 
 
 The earth upon which we dwell is beautiful in spots. 
 "Were the conditions favorable it would all be beauti- 
 ful. The beauty and fertility of the earth depend upon 
 the soil, in which are the roots of trees and plants. 
 There are those who seem to despise the ground and 
 call it dirt. Very well, let it be taken away ; then 
 where are we ? The verdure and glory of the earth 
 have departed. The man of science does not talk 
 about dirt, he has no disparaging reflections to cast 
 upon that which is so essential to our welfare. He 
 knows that the energies of the ground are taken up 
 into forms of loveliness and usefulness. Our nature 
 
70 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 is not simple, it is composite, — as it were, stratified. 
 There is that of us which is earthy, animal ; th^re is 
 that of us which is moral, spiritual. And we have 
 been told for fifteen or more centuries that our nature 
 is essentially corrupt, sinful. That notion has driven 
 multitudes into seclusion from the world, to whip and 
 persecute and destroy their bodies. They practiced a 
 slow suicide. AVhy should our natures be deemed cor- 
 rupt? I suppose because it was seen that sin was 
 universal. But our nature is the sublime work of 
 God's creation. God made our bodies by a process, 
 the magnitude and delicacy of which we cannot imag- 
 ine. That of material organization which was most 
 fit to survive has in them survived. By what right 
 do we assume to despise them or speak ill of them? 
 Our intellectual powers are of such an order that the 
 weakest of them might occupy our admiring contem- 
 plation forever. Our moral nature, including the con- 
 science, is something before which the very stars of 
 heaven grow pale and lustreless. It is a mistake to 
 call this magnificent product of Infinite Wisdom, this 
 combination of physical, mental, and moral powers, a 
 corrupt thing. There is no ground for it. Whence 
 then comes the sin of mankind ? From this : from the 
 lack of control of our higher over our lower faculties. 
 Suppose you imagine one man divided into three 
 men : the animal man, the intelligent man, the moral 
 man. They are now three separate beings instead of 
 one. They occupy a place abundantly furnished with 
 all things necessary for life, happiness, and well being. 
 But everything depends upon which one of these 
 three is in control. If the animal man is at the head 
 of the community, the place will be one of utter con- 
 fusion and lack ; if the intelligent man is supreme, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 71 
 
 there will be a reign of cunning and treachery ; but if 
 the moral man is in command, peace, happiness, and 
 well-being are assured. Now the youngest and the 
 weakest of the three, in the order of evolution, is the 
 moral man. Beginning an infant, the moral man 
 struggles with the animal man, a giant. But the 
 growth of the moral man is rapid. He acquires 
 strength by reason of the struggle ; and it is along 
 the line of that struggle you can trace the sin of the 
 world. The animal man is innocent of moral wrong ; 
 the intelligent man is not sinful ; the moral man cen- 
 tred upon conscience is as God made him ; but it is 
 in the ill-adjustment of the three the sin of mankind 
 demonstrates itself. Men' are tempted to be controlled 
 by the faculties and forces of their animal natures. 
 To yield to such control is sin and disaster. They are 
 tempted by their intelligence to be cunning and subtle 
 in their relations with each other. To yield to such 
 control is sin and disorder. They are commanded by 
 their moral nature, in which God speaks to them, to 
 order their conduct by the law of right ; to yield to 
 that control is life and peace. 
 
 It is the strengthening and development of this 
 highest element which constitutes the present history 
 of creation. It becomes the high and continuing duty 
 of every one to refuse the solicitations of his lower 
 nature to command ; it is by such refusal he grows in 
 strength, and goes on as a co-worker with God in cre- 
 ation. He is, like Paul, a follower of the Christ, in 
 the regeneration of the earth ; he diminishes in a 
 degree the sin and pain of a creation which groans 
 until men learn to live divine lives of love and purity, 
 or as the sons of God.^ 
 
 1 Professor LeConte concludes his argument upon evolution 
 
72 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 and the problem of evil, thus : " All evil consists in the domi- 
 nance of the lower over the higher ; all good in the rational use 
 of the lower by the higher. True virtue consists, not in extirpa- 
 tion of the lower, but in its subjection to the higher. The 
 stronger the lower is the better, if only it be held in subjection. 
 For the higher is nourished and strengthened by its connection 
 with the more robust lower, and the lower is purified, refined, and 
 glorified by its connection with the diviner higher, and by this 
 mutual action the whole plane of being is elevated. It is only 
 by action and reaction of all parts of our complex nature that 
 true virtue is attained." 
 
VII. 
 
 THE CONSUMMATION OF EVOLUTION IS IMMORTALITY. 
 
 The subject of immortality is one of the most diffi- 
 cult that has ever engaged the human mind. Its dis- 
 cussion, upon philosophical grounds, has always been 
 approached with misgivings by those who have ap- 
 preciated the gravity of it and the profound myste- 
 ries which necessarily surround it. 
 
 It may be assumed that the Christian religion 
 teaches immortality. And if one proceeds simply 
 upon that ground, he has a comparatively easy task. 
 All he has to do is to show that Christ or His apostles 
 taught it, and then if persons are believers in the 
 authority of the Christian religion, they are bound to 
 accept it. 
 
 If a man believed that Cicero was a competent 
 authority on the subject, he would base his belief in 
 immortality upon the teachings of the great Roman. 
 Socrates had convictions upon the matter. Philosophy 
 seeks for the ground of those convictions. 
 
 If the Bible teaches immortality we would like to 
 know why ? Little, if anything, is directly taught in 
 the Old Testament concerning it. And as to the New 
 Testament, the proof of immortality is so connected 
 with things which altogether transcend our experience 
 that the man of science and of philosophy has been 
 inclined to reject the testimony. 
 
 It appears to me there are reasonable grounds for a 
 
74 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 belief in immortality, apart from the specific teach- 
 ings of the Christian religion, and that evolution has 
 made, or is making these grounds more plain. 
 
 If I proceed somewhat in a circle it will be because 
 the subject evades the ordinary logical process. 1 
 have but two thoughts to present, — the evolution of 
 religion, and the purpose of all evolution. 
 
 In the absence of anything authoritative to the con- 
 trary, the average man would be profoundly affected 
 by the multitude of things which appear to go to the 
 disproof of immortality. When the body dies the 
 organism has ceased to exist. There is simply a re- 
 siduum of so much matter, which is to undergo a pro- 
 cess of dissolution. That matter may be left to the 
 slower action of chemical changes, or it may be sub- 
 jected to the swift combustion of a furnace. In either 
 case the organism has gone, and finally gone, so far as 
 the average man can discover. And the life, with which 
 were connected intellectual power, and feelings, and 
 will, and all other faculties and qualities which go to 
 make up our complex being, have gone also. What 
 has become of them ? The average man — i. e., the 
 man who has only the ordinary or universal means of 
 information — does not know. The universal means 
 of information furnish no clue. Speak of life as a 
 force, of human life as a combination of will-force, 
 thought-force, and emotion- force, and all that can be 
 discovered is that this force has taken its departure 
 from the organism. 
 
 If you look upon a prairie covered with grass and 
 flowers you will see exuberant life — life in manifold 
 form and variegated color. 
 
 But the cold blasts of the north will wither and 
 destroy the forms and the colors. There will be a 
 
IMMORTALITY THE CONSUMMATION. 75 
 
 residuum, but as to the force involved in the individ- 
 ual organisms, that has gone somevifhere. There will 
 be a reappearance of like forms and colors in the 
 next season ; the individual organisms have gone 
 beyond recall. It is the type that persists. Here, 
 then, is an analogy which has been noted and made 
 use of by a certain class of minds. Men of this class 
 speak of a kind of survival which can reasonably be 
 anticipated by all worthy human beings. This sur- 
 vival is in influence, and corresponds with the persis- 
 tence of force. A man lives and endeavors after truth 
 and right. His body dies. His personal conscious- 
 ness is gone, and gone forever. He, as a conscious 
 moral being, may be said to have gone into eternal 
 repose, which is the equivalent of eternal nothingness ; 
 but whatever of influence he exerted in one way or 
 another, persists. I think that we may confidently 
 say that such a materialistic conception is not peculiar 
 to our times. Evolution has given no ground for it, 
 additional to the -ground furnished by the older philos- 
 ophies. But evolution does furnish ground for widely 
 different conceptions. Let us be careful to remember 
 the limitations of science ; and that in respect to the 
 survival of individual consciousness after the death of 
 the body, science is silent. 
 
 All the direct evidence science could afford would 
 be contrary to the supposition. At the point of death 
 we enter the domain with which religion or a religious 
 philosophy has to do. Science confessesJhaLJt can- 
 not intrude. But sciencedoesTiofoccupy the entire 
 ground of human interests. Science, in its modern 
 sense, is of course recent ; but science, in some sense, 
 is as old as thought. Persons saw things and events, 
 and thought about them as well as they were able ; 
 
76 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 they even tried to get at the relations between one 
 thing or event and another. They succeeded in find- 
 ing many relations as time went on; And out of all 
 these attempts came in due time, modern science. 
 Keligion, too, is very old. And religion, although 
 among all peoples and at all times it has been more or 
 less closely allied with superstition, and though it has 
 very imperfectly taught men, yet it has had a genuine 
 and high office in the world. We may be compelled to 
 reject many specific teachings of many or indeed of 
 all religions of the past, but to reject religion itself, 
 as having no real place and function iuthis world, is 
 unreasonable. Here is the phenomenon of the rise 
 and growth of religion ; as distinctly marked as any 
 other phenomenon, and to be as carefully studied as 
 any other phenomenon. Granted that the religions of 
 a remote antiquity partake of the crudities and intel- 
 lectual infancy of their time, surely they must suggest 
 to us that they all of them have a real oJBfice in the 
 world, and may be expected to furnish the ground out 
 of which shall grow a better and truer teaching. It 
 is reasonable to suppose that the development of the 
 religious feelings of men is as real as any other devel- 
 opment. Now, in a way, religion has always either 
 given to men a doctrine of immortality or it has been 
 preparing the way for such a doctrine. 
 
 The evolution of religion and of the idea of im- 
 piortality is of the very highest importance, for it 
 
 /shows the consummation of the works of creation. 
 To neglect that is to act like the thirsty man who 
 
 ^ liaboriously hunts for a spring of water, and when he 
 ireaches it declines to refresh himself at it. We are 
 now able to trace, imperfectly, the genesis of man 
 through the various orders and ranks of life on the 
 
IMMORTALITY THE CONSUMMATION. 77 
 
 earth. In following the line of ascent we note a pro- 
 cess which for convenience may be called " cephali- 
 zation." That is the tendency of nature to locate the 
 more delicate and subtle energies of advancing species 
 in the head. The worm, for example, has its structure 
 parallel to the surface of the ground, and its nerve 
 force is distributed about equally among the differ- 
 ent segments of its body. There is a minute ganglion, 
 or bunch of nerves, in each portion. As you ascend the 
 scale you discover the lifting of the head, in relation 
 to the rest of the body, and the centring of the nerve 
 force in it. And nature is very solicitous about this 
 centre of energy, and protects it by means of a case 
 of hard substance. So soon as man, the being of vo- 
 lition, is reached, the process of creation, so far as it 
 relates to change of structure, is stopped. All atten- 
 tion, so to speak, is thenceforward given to the crea- 
 tion of that wonderful organ known as the brain. In 
 the fish the brain consists of four or five swellings, or 
 ganglia, strung along, one beyond the other. In the 
 bird there is seen the enlargement of that portion 
 of the brain known as the cerebrum, which is the 
 seat of reason a,nd volition. In man this cerebrum 
 has grown so great that it covers every other part ; 
 so that, looked at from above, nothing is to be seen 
 but this large ganglion. And not only so, but an- 
 other change is noted. Not only has the brain of man 
 grown enormously, as compared with his predecessors, 
 but it has become creased, or convoluted, so as to in- 
 crease the surface of gray brain matter. The cere- 
 brums of fishes, reptiles, birds, and the lower mam- 
 mals are smooth. As we reach the middle of the 
 mammal series the process of convolution begins, and 
 keeps on, reaching its highest in man. And it is de- 
 
78 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 clared by competent biologists that the only structural 
 change which is going on in man, as a species, is sim- 
 ply in the convolution of the brain. All this shows 
 the tendency of nature to put the chief energy in the 
 highest forms of life. The cerebrum is the seat of 
 the reason and of volition. The enlargement and 
 increase of complexity in that shows the increasing 
 dominance of the higher over the lower. It shows how 
 the portion of the brain structure which has to do 
 with freedom of action is developed beyond all other 
 portions. That is to say, to the evolutionist the track 
 of advance, from the first, is seen to be toward the 
 development of a moral being, who shall subordinate 
 the other parts of creation to the highest moral pur- 
 pose. 
 
 It is an appalling fact that ever since life began a 
 wholesale destruction of life-forms has characterized 
 evolution. The universal struggle for existence, " hav- 
 ing succeeded in bringing forth that consummate pro- 
 duct of creative energy, the human soul, has done its 
 work, and will presently cease. In the lower regions 
 of organic life it must go on, but as a determining fac- 
 tor in the highest work of evolution it will disappear." 
 (Professor Fiske.) 
 
 It is very evident from the standpoint of evolution 
 that the Creative Energy has ever been working toward 
 a goal, or what we may call an ultimate achievement. 
 The creation and perfecting of man is that goal. In 
 reaching that, God has spared nothing. Kaces have 
 risen, been carried along the path of development, 
 and have disappeared. For millions upon millions of 
 years the earth has been the theatre of violence and 
 slaughter. The struggle for existence has filled the 
 earth with pain. Or, as the Apostle Paul puts it : 
 
IMMORTALITY THE CONSUMMATION. 79 
 
 " The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
 together until now." To what purpose is all this pain ? 
 If there is no purpose, we exist but in a troubled 
 dream. As human beings we have the power of 
 thought, which only serves to bring us into a more- 
 acnte realization of the universal pain. As human 
 beings we have the power of feeling and of sympathy, 
 which serves but to increase our participation in the 
 groaning of a groaning creation. The increase of our 
 life, its headward tendency, its delicacy and complexity 
 must inevitably lead on to our growing distress and our 
 intellectual confusion. If on the other hand we dis- 
 cern the convincing evidence of a purpose, how vastly 
 is the significance of human life enlarged to us ! We 
 see man as the supernatural being, i. e., with all na- 
 ture below him. He is a birth of nature and of the 
 Eternal Energy ; he stands in a kingly relation with 
 all that is below him. One trouble with the older 
 kind of human thought has been that it immensely 
 undervalued man and human nature. It simply saw 
 the human being as a sinful being. It spoke of him 
 as a corrupt thing and a worm of the dust. He has 
 been a corrupt thing, a sinful being. He has degraded 
 himself to crawl, worm-like, in the very dust of degra- 
 dation. But that is not his place, and his putting 
 himself in that place is the very root of his corrup- 
 tion. 
 
 Let us suppose the old question of the Hebrew seer 
 were authoritatively asked now : " What is man ? " 
 There would be two classes of answers : One from the 
 standpoint of scientific research, applied to the body 
 of man. Man is a vertebrate, a mammal, a primate. 
 From the structural point of view he stands in the 
 most intimate relation with all lower creation. " Bone 
 
80 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 for bone, muscle for muscle, ganglion for ganglion, 
 almost nerve -fibre for nerve -fibre, his body corre- 
 sponds with that of the higher animals. Whether 
 he was derived from lower animals or not, certain it is 
 that his structure even in the minutest details is pre- 
 cisely such as it would be if he were thus derived by 
 successive slight modifications." (Professor LeConte). 
 But from the other point of view, also attained by sci- 
 entific research, it is impossible to exaggerate the width 
 of the chasm between man and the highest animals. If 
 therefore in conduct, in purpose, in thought, man makes 
 himself resemble the lower animals, he descends as it 
 were into an abj'ss. He is the one being capable of 
 such degradation, and therefore by his degradation 
 proclaims his greatness. Evolution brings to view a 
 great Divine purpose, of which Tuani sThe consumnia- 
 tion. When ihan is reached in the ascending scale 
 there ensues the education and moral development of 
 the being toward which all previous movement pointed. 
 Why should this being be educated and further devel- 
 oped ? Why should the faculties derived from pre- 
 vious pain and struggle, and developed by further pain 
 and struggle, go on in development? If we regard 
 humanity " as merely a local incident in an endless 
 and aimless series of cosmical changes," then we 
 shall have to answer that we do not know why there 
 is such a being as man. But if we regard man as the 
 " consummate fruition of creative energy, and the 
 chief object of Divine care," we come to the conclu- 
 sion that the career of the soul is not completed with 
 the present life. Such a belief cannot of course be 
 demonstrated ; at least according to methods of demon- 
 stration with which we are familiar, neither can such 
 a belief be refuted by any known demonstration. 
 
IMMORTALITY THE CONSUMMATION. 81 
 
 Dr. Cabanis, an eminent French physician who died 
 in the early part of this century, made the famous 
 statement that the brain secretes thought as the liver 
 secretes bile. It is edifying to know that he lived long 
 enough to disbelieve that statement. But if he did 
 not, it is now by scientific men characterized as grossly 
 unscientific. Cerebral physiology tells us that while 
 thought and feeling are always manifested, during our 
 present life, in connection with the organ known as 
 the brain, yet by no possibility can thought and feel- 
 ing be in any sense the products of matter. Profes- 
 sor LeConte supposes that if the brain of a living 
 man were exposed to view, and our senses were of the 
 utmost acuteness so as to enable us to observe every 
 change which occurs, we should see nothing but molec- 
 ular changes, physical and chemical ; there is nothing 
 else to see, to the outside observer. But the man 
 whose brain is exposed to us sees nothing of this. His 
 experiences are of emotions, thoughts, consciousness, 
 etc. On the outside, motions ; on the inside, thoughts, 
 etc. The connection between the outside and the in- 
 side, the nature of the relation, is entirely unknown 
 to us. The soul is invisible, and to our senses we are 
 sure that it wiU always remain so. It is immaterial, 
 spiritual. 
 
 Evolutionary philosophy has concentrated a great 
 force of thought upon the phenomena of nature in 
 order to penetrate its mysteries. A few of these mys- 
 teries it has explored, so that they are no longer mys- 
 terious ; bat our life and all phenomena stand against 
 a background of insoluble mystery. At the same 
 time we are related to' this background of mystery 
 most intimately. There is a sphere with which we have 
 to do, — we are so constituted as to partly belong to it, 
 
82 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 — which is not to be explored by our scientific meth- 
 ods. To meet the need of our natures, there has 
 arisen among men the office of religion, the rise of 
 which can be scientifically traced, in a measure. That 
 it should take its beginning in a very feeble way, and 
 should make its progress and growth in connection 
 with much that is local, transient, and untrue, need 
 surprise no intelligent student. But that it should 
 gradually clear itself of the institutional chaff of earlier 
 periods, that it should increase in power and dignity, 
 is to be expected. To cast away religion because it 
 has developed gradually, would be as foolish as to cast 
 away science because in its earlier stages, and until 
 a quite recent time, it was feeble and oftentimes 
 absurd. Now religion enters us into the realm of 
 mystery by which we are encompassed. It leads us to 
 make inductions from the things which we see, in 
 regard to the things which we do not see. I recognize 
 as a religious philosophy the conviction of men that we 
 are not here as the sport and playthings of giant forces 
 of which we can know nothing. The materialistic 
 thinker bids us be careful lest we assume something. 
 But Newton assumed something, and Darwin assumed 
 something. Each of these great men saw something 
 which was altogether unproved, but which he believed 
 to be true. With each of these men a great hypothe- 
 sis had its birth. Now the hypothesis of religion we 
 call faith. By faith certain principles and realities in 
 the mysterious and invisible realm, the realm which 
 lies beyond the demonstrations of science, become ap- 
 prehended. By faith we apprehend God. We make 
 induction from the phenomena of nature, including 
 our own varied powers of reflection and our ability to 
 will, of an Eternal Being who thinks, whose works. 
 
IMMORTALITY THE CONSUMMATION. 83 
 
 including our own natures, manifest thought, will, and 
 purpose. Science can place its finger upon its lips 
 in presence of such august proceedings of the human 
 mind. Science can make little or nothing of that 
 which religion chiefly values. It is not because the 
 two are in opposition, but because their respective 
 provinces are widely distinct. Science tells us that 
 nature is lavish in her vast abundance of forms, which 
 come and go as in waves and tides of succession. 
 Religion says : " Yes, forms come and go, but there is 
 that which abides, which is only temporarily allied to 
 form. It is of the abiding I speak." 
 
 Behold the works of God in material. The heavens 
 declare the glory of God, the majesty of His might ; 
 but the heavenljr bodies are not enduring. The latest 
 and perhaps the clearest thought is that the move- 
 ments of heavenly bodies are in tremendous cycles of 
 change. Matter diffused as in thin mist of mole- 
 cules, becoming clouds of more coherent matter, con- 
 densing into heated suns, cooling gradually into planets 
 for habitation, — freezing into death, expanding again 
 into a nebulous cloud, that the same process may be 
 gone over again. All this vast process is meaningless 
 from the purely scientific point of view. It is simply 
 going up a hill and coming down again, and repeating 
 the journey forever.^ But religion seizes upon man as 
 the goal of this mighty evolution. The exalted being 
 who can think, feel, will ; who is therefore the reflex 
 of the Almighty Being who thinks, feels, wills ; he 
 becomes the explanation of the otherwise meaningless 
 series of cosmical events. But his body returns to 
 the elements of which it was organized ; his dwelling- 
 place returns to its elemental condition. Nature does 
 1 See Professor Fiske, Destiny of Man. 
 
84 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 not care for forms. It is the postulate of religion tliat 
 the Creator does care for the being who is the supreme 
 product of all. 
 
 I gladly admit that the chief office of religion is to 
 teach man ethically, to train him in the way of right- 
 eousness and truth, so that the earth shall not be the 
 habitation of cruelty and treachery, but the abode of 
 mercy, justice, and truth. For the purpose of the 
 development of the human spirit it is exceedingly 
 needful that the emphasis shall not be drawn from this 
 great work of religion, and placed upon the prospec- 
 tive benefits and pleasures of a future state of exist- 
 ence. For in respect to that state religion has nothing 
 to teach except symbolically. Religion can only afiirm 
 it, and urge men to so live that they shall not tremble 
 at the idea of a transfer out of the limits of the present 
 corporeal existence into the revelations of the world 
 to come. Religion can and must condemn a life of sin 
 aud wrong, and point out the truth that such a course 
 involves results of the gravest import, not only as to 
 immediate consequences, but as to remote consequences. 
 It can and must approve every effort of man to live a 
 pure life. It has done what it could, often unwisely, 
 to deter men from wrong and to encourage them in 
 right. But all has reference, near or remote, to the fit- 
 ness of the spirit of man for immortality. 
 
 In a case of great importance before the courts it 
 is most desirable to hear all the witnesses. The case 
 cannot be adjudicated properly upon a merely partial 
 testimony. I take it that all the phenomena in nature 
 ought to be called to the witness stand in so grave an 
 issue as that of the immortality of the soul. If reli- 
 gion is to be dismissed, or its testimony thrown out, I 
 am sure the decision will not be wise or according to 
 the actual facts. 
 
IMMORTALITY THE CONSUMMATION. 85 
 
 Religions differ, and some of them are silent upon 
 the great question ; but their tendency, in those com- 
 munities which have made the greatest progress, has 
 been to teach the immortality of the soul. 
 
 And the highest religion of all assumes the capacity 
 of men for immortality as it assumes the being of God, 
 For the Christian religion begins with the affirmation 
 that man stands in a filial relation to the Eternal 
 Spirit. 
 
 It seeks to raise men up to the realization of that 
 fact. It sets before men the one goal of effort — to 
 be, in conditions of time, and finite powers, like the 
 Eternal. 
 
 In other words, the movements of creation from 
 the beginning of recorded time, in geological eras, and 
 since the advent of man, point to a purpose and a goal. 
 This purpose, what is it ? Shall rational beings, ever 
 inquiring, always inquire in vain? Has not an an- 
 swer been growing up right alongside of the inquiry ? 
 The development of religion, with its postulate of im- 
 mortality, is, must be, the answer. 
 
 The development of spirit, the invisible thinker, 
 using the brain as the player uses the organ ; the in- 
 visible will, employing the cerebrum as the mechanic 
 employs his machine, — this is the consummation. 
 
 And is this consummation of ages to pass into ob- 
 livion, or be involved again in the endless whirl of 
 atoms? Science cannot say anything about it, pro 
 or con. But it seems to me philosophy, taking the 
 results of science, can and must press on to find the 
 answer, — or to take the answer which has grown up 
 in the Intuitions of men, we know not how. Says 
 Professor LeConte : " Is there any possible meaning 
 in nature without this consummation ? All evolution 
 
«6 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 ' has its beginning, its course, its end. "Without spirit- 
 immortality this beautiful cosmos which has been de- 
 veloping into increasing beauty for so many million of 
 years, when its evolution has run its course, and all is 
 over, would be precisely as if it had never been ; an 
 idle dream, an idiot tale, signifying nothing." 
 
 Paul the apostle declares that the earnest expecta- 
 tion of the creation waits for the revealing of the sons 
 of God ; or translate it into the language of philosophy : 
 The evolution of the cosmos is not a purposeless pro- 
 cession of events, from lower to higher ; it reaches the 
 highest as it started from the lowest, and the high- 
 est is not an arrangement of atoms in a globe or an 
 assembly of worlds. It is not a plant ; it is not an 
 animal ; it is not a thinking animal ; it is a spirit, act- 
 ing in freedom. Such a spirit must be most closely 
 related to the Eternal Spirit ; it must be a son of God. 
 
 Or look at it in this way. We may speak of all 
 the forces of nature as manifestations in general of 
 the Eternal Power. That Power had its sweep along 
 the field of atoms, combining them. It individuates 
 itself (as LeConte suggests) in the plant ; still more 
 in the animal ; but most in the highest range of life, in 
 the human spirit. Man is the supreme birth of nature ; 
 is it- reasonable-to suppose that when this climax is 
 reached, it is as if nothilig^bad-feeeBr^eaebed^? IF so, 
 then I am sure we are pirtr to "permanent intellectual 
 confusion." And the intelligence we have achieved 
 thus far enters us into a chaos from which we might 
 pray to be delivered, even at the expense of intelli- 
 gence itself. 
 
 Some one might ask : " Can you conceive how a con- 
 scious spirit can exist without a cerebrum ? " No, I 
 cannot explain such an existence ; but I suffer very 
 
IMMORTALITY THE CONSUMMATION. 87 
 
 nearly as great a trouble, if not quite as great, in 
 trying to explain the conjunction of a conscious spirit 
 with a cerebrum. If He, of whom philosophy speaks 
 as Eternal Energy ; of whom the religion of Christ 
 speaks as the Father of spirits, exists, I do not try to 
 fathom the mode of His Being. Neither can I tell 
 the mode of the immortality of the human spirit. , 
 
 I do not affirm the necessary immortality of human 
 souls. It seems to me that here, as well as elsewhere, 
 the great law of the survival of the fit will prevail. 
 I look upon immortality as mainly qualitative, and it 
 is to be sadly observed that many souls do not choose 
 the qualities of truth and righteousness, which are 
 essential to a divine, and, therefore, an immortal life. 
 
 But despite the difficulties, which are great, the 
 reasonableness of the idea of immortality will grow, 
 as the grand philosophy of evolution grows, until the 
 revealing of the sons of God is complete, and men 
 shall gladly and gloriously recognize in themselves 
 and others the presence of an immortal conscious 
 spirit. 
 
VIII. 
 
 RESIDENT FORCES AND THE DIVINE PERSONALITY. 
 
 " But will God indeed dwell on the earth ? Behold heaven and the 
 heaven of heavens cannot contain thee ; how much less this house 
 that I have builded." — I Kings viii., 27. 
 
 During the past twenty-five years a large number 
 of intelligent religious persons have rejected the doc- 
 trine of evolution because convinced that the hypoth- 
 esis displaced God. They have reasoned that if you 
 have evolution you have no need of God ; in fact 
 you have no place for God. Creation implies a Crea- 
 tor ; but if in place of creation you substitute evolu- 
 tion, the Creator is gone.' Take up the idea that here 
 were atoms and here was force to begin with. The 
 coming together of force and atoms produced worlds. 
 Here was matter, inorganic, and here was life (i. e., 
 a higher kind of force) ; the two come together and 
 there is organic structure. Here is organic structure 
 going on by resident energy to develop itself in new 
 form, — increasing in complexity and scope until man 
 is reached. What need of a Creator is there if all 
 this is true ? That is in substance the way many have 
 felt and talked. But of these objectors many have 
 clearly seen that they talked and felt in a very unwise 
 way. 
 
 Time was when tables were made by hand. The 
 maker would take a stick, and by careful manipulation 
 make it into a leg for a table. Perhaps he would 
 
RESIDENT FORCES. 89 
 
 carve it. Then he would proceed in the same way 
 with another leg. Then he would get out the pieces 
 wherewith to connect these legs together. He would 
 dig out mortise holes with bit and chisel. He would 
 saw out the boards for the top and plane them and 
 smooth them. He would put all the pieces together, 
 and in due time the table would be made. Let this 
 kind of a table creator go into a factory now. He 
 would see a stick fed into a machine, and it would 
 emerge a table leg. Mortices are cut by machines. 
 The covering boards are sawed and smoothed by 
 machinery. The man comes out of the factory and 
 says that men do not make tables any more ; tables 
 get into existence by some kind of performance. As 
 for men, they are not required. 
 
 Perhaps, he bitterly remarks, there are no men 
 any more. With these new-fangled contrivances table 
 creators have gone. " For my part, I believe the 
 whole thing is bad. I will not accept any such state 
 of things." Further reflection will be likely to con- 
 vince the man that he was unwise in his bitter feelings 
 on this subject. And if after a time he becomes can- 
 did, he will come to a change of mind in respect to 
 men. He will consider what a wonderful being a 
 man is, and what a wonderful brain he has, to be 
 able to make such contrivances. So that instead of 
 coming to the conclusion, as he at first wished to do, 
 that table-creators are of no account, he will say that 
 they are of much more account than he dreamed. 
 
 In a previous chapter evolution was defined as pro- 
 gressive change, according to certain laws, by rea- 
 son of resident forces. " Yes," some one Says, " it is 
 the definition itself which shows the character of the 
 whole scheme ; for it does away with God ; all that 
 
90 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 you require is resident forces. Your theory, on the 
 face of it, is atheistic." I need hardly remind you 
 that every proposition appears atheistic which neces- 
 sitates a reformation of our thoughts of God. The 
 apostles of Christ were condemned at Ephesus as 
 atheists, because they could not think of God as being 
 the Diana of the Ephesians. They could not think of 
 God as the Ephesians did. But we do not call them 
 atheists now. The change of conception regarding 
 the nature or being of God has come to be of exceed- 
 ing interest, and it is constantly growing in interest. 
 It is to be admitted that this phrase, " resident forces," 
 must become better understood, or it will prove an 
 insurmountable obstacle to the progress of the evolu- 
 tionary philosophy among many who hold faith in God 
 to be the highest operation of the human soul. It is 
 the highest act of the soul. Were it not that I am 
 convinced that evolution will vastly increase the faith 
 of men in an ever-living and ever-present God, my 
 personal interest in it would not be large. 
 
 Resident forces appear to be very insignificant 
 things to many or perhaps all careless thinkers. 
 There is of course a resident force in a thistle. A 
 thistle is a weed, to be pulled up, or stricken down, 
 and destroyed. But man with all his intellectual sub- 
 tlety, and all of his powers, is absolutely nothing, as 
 compared with the resident force in a thistle, — i. e., 
 for specific ends. It would at first thought seem as if 
 man were more able than resident forces in a vegeta- 
 ble. I do not consent to discredit man, and his most 
 wonderful abilities, but I wish to call your attention 
 to the fact that resident forces in vegetation, the low- 
 est form of organic life, are greatly more able than 
 man is for definite ends. I will even say infinitely 
 
RESIDENT FORCES. 91 
 
 more able. For example, among the other accom- 
 plishments of man is his chemist faculty. He is a 
 most expert chemist when he gives his mind to it. 
 But there is a resident force in a maple-tree which dis- 
 counts all of his chemistrj', accomplishing that which 
 he is incompetent to do. He has his crucibles, and 
 retorts, and other appliances, in his laboratory. The 
 resident force in a maple -tree has no tools or cru- 
 cibles. Now let U3 see how the man-chemist and the 
 resident-force chemist in the maple will compete with 
 each other.i Sugar is constituted by the union of 
 carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Any human chemist 
 of average skill can, I suppose, decompose sugar and 
 show the three elements of it. But no human chem- 
 ist can unite these three elements and produce sugar. 
 But the resident force in a maple, or a beet, or a sugar- 
 cane has sufficient skill to accomplish this union, and 
 that continually. There is nothing in the hydrogen, 
 oxygen, and carbon to cause them to unite of them- 
 selves, and form sugar, but the resident force in the 
 vegetable, taking the matter in hand, consummates the 
 union, and gives us freely of the product. Then 
 there is another fact which adds greatly to the signifi- 
 cance of these resident forces. Hydrogen, oxygen, 
 and carbon are taken in precisely the same proportion 
 by the resident force in some other vegetable organ- 
 ism, and united to form starch, which is quite differ- 
 ent in taste and other properties from sugar. How 
 does this mysterious chemistry proceed ? Certainly 
 every one would acknowledge that it proceeds from 
 within the plant, and by virtue of the life, or moving 
 force in the plant. 
 
 Take a grain of corn, and make a thin transverse 
 1 See Dr. Horace Bushnell's Life or the Lives. 
 
92 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 section of it, and place it under your microscope. It 
 is vegetable fibre, arranged symmetrically. And that 
 is all you see. Take another seed of the same kind 
 and put it in the soil. You have not discovered any 
 resident force in the section under your microscope, 
 but you know it is there ; and it begins to act when 
 placed in suitable conditions. It acts as chemist, 
 making nicest choice of fit substance for its purpose ; 
 it acts as master builder, marshaling its multitude of 
 servants ; it acts as architect, giving proportion and 
 form to the uprising structure; it acts as engineer, 
 pumping water to every part ; it is a whole municipal 
 board, attending to a million of details, from the sub- 
 ways where its roots are pushed to reach their sup- 
 plies, up t,o the tassels and spires which rise like 
 minarets over the whole corporate structure. I may 
 seem to the reader to be talking in a strain of extrav- 
 agant diction, trying to spread a web of words over 
 a very small thing, namely, a grain of corn; but I 
 assure you it is so far out of my power to do any frac- 
 tion of justice to the subject that I feel discouraged at 
 the start. The resident force in a grain of corn is of 
 so intricate, so subtle, so skillful, so altogether won- 
 derful a character, that it can be spoken of only in a 
 way of feeble comparison with our own chemical, 
 architectural, and other procedures, which it throws 
 far into the shade. 
 
 When we gaze upon bulky objects, such as the sun, 
 or one of the larger planets, we are filled with a feeling 
 of awe, because we seem to be certified of a mighty 
 power, and a supreme skill exerted in the creation 
 and maintenance of so vast a structure. But the 
 skill, at least, located in the resident force of a grain 
 of corn, is quite as effectively certified to when it is 
 
RESIDENT FORCES. 93 
 
 looked at with as careful a gaze. Then when we 
 multiply our oue coru-grain, with all the product of its 
 resident force, up into the incommensurable numbers 
 of similar structures, and all going on in growth by 
 resident force, perhaps we begin to see that the phrase 
 holds more significance than we at first supposed. 
 The very infinitesimals which seemed so small as to 
 afford no room for an appreciable resident force, tes- 
 tify to the thoughtful mind of a skill which, being 
 brought so near a mere point in display, is yet infinite 
 in quality. 
 
 As you float past Coblentz on the Rhine, the for- 
 tress of Ehrenbreitstein frowns down upon you, wit- 
 nessing there, silently, grimly, the power of dead and 
 living monarchies. As you float over the warm waves 
 of tropic seasj you will behold the works of little crea- 
 tures, so small as to present no visibility, but whose 
 fortifications are so huge as to dwindle your Rhine 
 castle to a mere nothing. Resident force, an assembly 
 of resident forces so numerous as to baffle any attempt 
 at a census, populating the reef, building coopera- 
 tively, each with its little grain of matter, the islands 
 of the sea. What is this resident force ? If I am 
 told that it is nothing but the power of the organism, 
 operating independently, but under a law imposed 
 upon it, I am not enlightened. 
 
 I suppose all will agree that the adult human be- 
 ing is the most freely active being on earth. Such 
 a being lives the most independent life of any organ- 
 ism. A man consults his own will, and the laws of 
 well being, as no other organism is capable of doing. 
 He can deliberately briefen his existence, or lengthen 
 it, by exercise of will. But what can he do in respect 
 to the beating of his own heart? The beat of the 
 
yi THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 heart is the contraction of the cardiac muscles. What 
 causes this alternate expansion and contraction ? Cer- 
 tainly not any voluntary action on the part of the man. 
 Awake or asleep, the heart beats on, half a century, or 
 even a century, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, 
 but without stoppage, and independently of the being 
 who has more self-direction than any other. What 
 causes it ? You will perhaps say it is the law of the 
 organism. But law is not in any such sense causative. 
 The laws of the State of New York are sometimes 
 spoken of as if they did something, as when we say 
 that the law lays its heavy hand upon a transgressor; 
 but the law of the State has no hand and does nothing. 
 It is well to understand this thoroughly. The law of 
 the State of New York is simply the mode of the social 
 and political activity of the people of New York, com- 
 bined in a body politic. So we sometimes heedlessly 
 talk of the law of gravity, as if it held the earth in its 
 place, relatively to other bodies ; and of the law of 
 cohesion, as though it held the particles of matter of 
 which the earth is composed, together. 
 
 Now, there is no truth in such a notion. If we 
 think of a natural law, or of any kind of a law as do- 
 ing something, the very smallest conceivable thing, we 
 think unskillfully. A law is merely the way in which 
 a force or energy is exerted. The people of the State 
 of New York hang the sentenced criminal, only they 
 proceed to do it in a certain definite and orderly man- 
 ner. That manner is called the law. When you mis- 
 take a mode for a power, it is like mistaking a rail- 
 way track, stationary, for a railway train, movable. 
 Well, then, if it is not the law of the organism 
 which causes the beat of the heart, perhaps it is the 
 life of the organism. Let us say that the life of the 
 
RESIDENT FORCES. 95 
 
 man causes his heart to beat. This life is a force, 
 since it induces motion. Is it a self-originating force ? 
 Then it is the uncaused. Is it an independent and 
 self-sustaining force? Then it is deity. But the force 
 which impels the heart-beat is a limited force, and it 
 is local. It is also not self-sustaining, because the 
 expenditure of the force must be compensated for by- 
 nutrition. What then can we say of it but that the 
 Eternal Energy is the source of the transient and local 
 energy, or, to take the thought up into the language 
 of religion, every life of every grade is immediately 
 dependent upon God, and is in fact the finite expres- 
 sion of God's life ? And it is just here the line between 
 pantheism and the Christian doctrine o^ the Divine 
 omnipresence fades into a very faint line apparently. 
 The mystery is at best very profound, and we may not 
 hope to explore it to its depths, but we can feel our 
 way into it with somewhat more of light than was 
 possible a quarter of a century ago. 
 
 Over a century and three quarters ago. Bishop 
 Berkeley denied the independent existence of matter 
 and the causal efficiency of natural forces. He af- 
 firmed the direct activity of God in all natural phe- 
 nomena ; which was a return to the ancient view, so 
 often expressed in the Hebrew Scriptures. The com- 
 mon view had been, and is largely now, that in the 
 main nature is sufficient to itself ; that God made the 
 various kinds of organisms to start with, and endowed 
 them so that they could go on by a kind of independent 
 force lodged in themselves, reproducing their kinds, 
 so keeping the species alive ; and that then He retired 
 to a sublime transcendency, only interfering now and 
 then, as some exigency might arise. Darwin has 
 shown that species were not made in that way ; that 
 
96 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 they came to be by progressive change, brought about 
 by resident forces. Now what has Darwin done ? Has 
 he pushed God still farther away than did the older 
 philosophy, into a still higher transcendency, — into 
 perpetual absence and non-interference ? Or has the 
 philosophy which dates with his work brought God 
 closer than was conceived possible? At first it ap- 
 peared that evolution dismissed God, by showing that 
 He did not make species off-hand. It now, however, 
 appears that the absence of God from His works at 
 any point would be the withdrawal of the Eternal 
 Energy, and would put a stop to everything. The 
 resident force is not an independent force, — it is the 
 manifestatioti of the infinite Power. The Christian 
 theist is supposed to cordially accept the teaching of 
 Christ, in respect to the Divine government, as not 
 being afar off, but as being near. With the Son of 
 Man he leans over the flower of the field to consider 
 it, and note the method of its growth. He may be 
 expected to believe that God makes the clothing of the 
 flower. The scientific man now tells him that the un- 
 folding of petal, and leaf, and the color, and the fly- 
 ing odors, are all due to changes produced by resident 
 forces. Ought that to appall him ? Should he not 
 be glad to know that all these resident forces, of what- 
 ever nature, are immediately connected with, and are 
 manifestations of. the Eternal Power. Shall he not 
 better understand now what was meant by those words, 
 " If God so clothe the grass of the field " ? 
 
 Yes, except for a certain apprehension which 
 troubles the thoughtful mind, and that is the dread of 
 pantheism. But the same dread may well be aroused 
 by such sayings as those of Solomon when he dedicated 
 the first temple : " Will God indeed dwell on the 
 
RESIDENT FORCES. 97 
 
 earth ? behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens 
 cannot contain Thee ; how much less this house that 
 I have builded." Or by such words as those of Paul 
 when he stood in the midst of the Areopagus at 
 Athens and said respecting the unknown God : 
 " He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we 
 live and move and have our being." In the history 
 of human thought there never was a time when such 
 words could mean so much as to-day. For it is the 
 great scientific discovery of our day, that aU change, 
 all modification of form, that is to say, all creation, 
 goes on by means of resident forces. But these resi- 
 dent forces are not separate, or separable in thought, 
 from the Eternal Energy whom in religion we name 
 God. 
 
 What then shall we say of the Divine personality ? 
 Are we now to be driven to think of God as diffused 
 force ? As a mere element, unconscious, in which we 
 live and move, as the globes move in ether? You will 
 remember how strenuous was the law of Moses in 
 regard to representations of Deity. God must not 
 be objectified. That was the distinction of Israel 
 among the nations of the earth. There were every- 
 where tendencies to put concepts of God into some 
 form outside of consciousness. About the first efPort 
 of the Mosaic legislation is to prevent this. The 
 thunder peal of Sinai rolls always in the highest con- 
 sciousness of man — God is not an object. If not, 
 then is God a person ? 
 
 Before we answer, note that we have sometimes had 
 very feeble and foolish notions of personality. To 
 the most unskillful in thought, a person is a being 
 wearing clothes, having a voice, piping soprano, gruff 
 bass, or something between the two. Well, that cor- 
 
98 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 responds with the original meaning of the word person. 
 But it does not correspond with the meaning which it 
 now bears. A person is a self-conscious being who 
 wills, who thinks, who loves. As I take it, therefore, 
 an invisible being. How such a being can be infinite 
 — how such a being is to be thought of as not contain- 
 able in the heaven of all heavens combined, as the 
 being in whom we live and move and are, as the Energy 
 of all energies and the Life of all lives, is beyond my 
 power of explanation. But then I do not at all com- 
 prehend a finite personality. I see the evidence of it 
 on all hands, — I see the works and manifestations of 
 it ; I am sure that it exists, though invisible to me. I 
 am equally sure of the infinite personality, witnessing 
 itself to me through plentiful evidences of will, thought, 
 and love. Science helps me to a systematic knowledge 
 of the ways and thoughts of a Being invisible to me. 
 
 We have all the time been more or less heedless of 
 the deep old law, and have imaged God, in our image- 
 making faculty, the imagination. 
 
 We have conceived God as bodied in some form. 
 A venerable face like that of Abraham, in the pictures 
 of the children's books ; a localized Being, seated in 
 highest state. And we are distressed at any philosophy 
 which drives such images out of our minds ; we cry 
 out that it is pantheism. But such images do not be- 
 long to us ; they ought to be banished. We need to 
 be rid of the idea of a localized, non-resident God, 
 who is merely a kind of infinite overseer, doing noth- 
 ing Himself, but keeping a distant watch over the 
 deficiencies of those who do something. And we have 
 come to that new dispensation in philosophy when that 
 idea becomes impossible. The opposition which ever 
 meets new dispensations is encountered, but the issue 
 
RESIDENT FORCES. 99 
 
 is not doubtful to any one acquainted with the evolu- 
 tionary doctrine. 
 
 The human personality has been spoken of as in- 
 comprehensible and essentially invisible. It is brief 
 and convenient for us to say, in common speech, that 
 we see our fellow-men. What we do see is some man- 
 ifestations of the force and personality of our fellow- 
 men. You do see a human form, and you infer a 
 somewhat back of its visibility. You know there is 
 a brain ; and associated with that, as well as with 
 other portions of the form, a something not physical, 
 but spiritual, self-conscious ; a will, a thinker. This 
 wholly spiritual being reports itself constantly to your 
 observation in a thousand ways ; you cannot under- 
 stand the connection between it and the phenomena. 
 There is a will, acting in some profoundly mysterious 
 way upon the nerves and muscles, and causing certain 
 activities. From your window you will see a crowd 
 of human forms moving this way and that. Eadi one 
 is impelled by an invisible will. What you look 
 upon, therefore, is the manifestation of a procession 
 of will powers. Now there are two distinct orders of 
 activity, the physical and the spiritual, or psychical. 
 The first is dependent on the last. Nature is a vast 
 composite, or body of motion, force, matter. Shall we 
 not infer, back of all visibility, the consciousness, will, 
 and thought which combine in one word, personality ? 
 We could not do it under the old philosophy ; we 
 could infer only secondary causes, rather than the 
 immediate energy of the First Cause. 
 
 If there is any demand which it is natural for us to 
 make, it is for adequate causation. We all affirm as 
 necessary an infinite cause, because no causation less 
 than infinite will satisfv our minds. We also now 
 
100 THE CONTINUOUS CREATIOir. 
 
 affirm the unity of nature. Here are powers ; we 
 refer them to the one infinite Power. But here, 
 among other powers, is intelligence. Can we think of 
 the intelligent as coming ultimately from the unintel- 
 ligent ? Can we think of volition as springing ulti- 
 mately from the absence of volition? I doubt not 
 there are those who assume that we can thus think. 
 And others decline to try to think on such a subject 
 as being altogether beyond our scope. But it seems 
 to me that the very skiU we possess in doing things, in 
 thinking, witnesses a skill that is greater than ours. 
 But can you imagine a skiU as belonging to an uncon- 
 scious being? Is the Eternal Energy displaying itself 
 in such a manifold and boundless way to be thought 
 of as possessing no intelligence, while its operations 
 are so many constant proofs of intelligence ? The bee 
 builds its cell hexagonal, the most compact form for 
 the purpose. Is the bee an independent engineer? 
 The dBral creatures make their fortifications in the 
 tropic seas : have they an independent skill in island 
 building ? The heart of a man beats rhythmically ; 
 has it a skill in contraction and expansion ? Does our 
 earth have a skill in following the track of the ecliptic ? 
 Or has the gravity law a skill in compelling it so to do ? 
 Nay, back of all, upholding all, energizing all, is the 
 skill, the will of One who must be the source of all 
 skill and will. And this One must be a person. But 
 if any one says that personality is limitation ; that it 
 is local ; that it is necessarily connected with and con- 
 ditioned by a finite organism, then I affirm that God 
 is not a person in that sense.^ I reaffirm the doctrine 
 
 1 Finite personality is of necessity limited, and an infinite per- 
 sonality must differ from the finite in this : that it is necessarily 
 unlimited. 
 
RESIDENT FORCES. 101 
 
 of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of Christ and Paul, 
 that God is not a person to be imaged in human or 
 any other form ; that He is not limited and not local. 
 Perhaps we can think of nature itself as the composite 
 organism of God, related in a way somewhat analo- 
 gous to the relation of the spirit and body of man. 
 But, however we can or cannot think upon that, it 
 seems to me that it is easier for men of science and 
 philosophy to think of the Eternal Power as a person, 
 a Being of skill and will, in the truest and deepest 
 sense, therefore, a moral Being, than to think in any 
 other way, or to decline to think in any way. 
 
 Given creation, going on by means of resident 
 forces, and according to (not by means of) certain 
 laws — which is our definition of evolution, — and the 
 human mind is brought to an immediate view of the 
 actual and immediate power of the Creator ; and since 
 the resident forces, as well as the laws in which they 
 proceed, constantly indicate order, prevision, and wis- 
 dom, we are brought very close to the Being in whom 
 we really live (though we know it not), and move, and 
 have our being ; and we recognize this Being as in the 
 deepest (not the shallowest) sense a person. 
 
 It is the hopeful prophecy of some of the Hebrew 
 seers, taken up and incorporated in Christian thought, 
 that the knowledge of the Lord shall fill the earth as 
 the waters cover the sea. That such knowledge could 
 come during the prevalence of the philosophies which 
 have placed God at an infinite remove from His crea- 
 tion, would appear impossible. The incoming of the 
 new philosophy removes, as I think, an obstacle of the 
 gravest character. To prepare the way for a better 
 and truer philosophy, — not a complete and perfect 
 philosophy, — such men as Spinoza and Schleier- 
 
102 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 macher, Berkeley and Swedenborg, Coleridge and 
 Spencer, have been raised up. That these men and 
 others were divinely raised up I dare not doubt; 
 and their truest, highest office must be to bring men 
 to the contemplation of the present and living God. 
 
 I look along the line of centuries to come, and see 
 the travail of the soul of Christ, in the redemption of 
 the world, complete ; and an innumerable host shall 
 witness with glad acclaim the presence of Him of 
 whom and by whom are all things. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 CHURCH. 
 
 " And this word, Yet once more, sig'nifieth the removing of those 
 things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those 
 things which are not shaken may remain.'' — Hebbbws xii. 27. 
 
 The attitude of the Christian church toward the 
 new philosophy is a most serious matter, not only as 
 respects the church itself, but as respects the welfare 
 of society. For the church has a very prominent and 
 important place relative to the welfare of society. 
 
 It seems to me that two mistakes are made about 
 the mission of the church : one by those who are in 
 it, and support it and love it ; and the other by 
 those who are outside of it, and do not love it. The 
 mistake made by the insider is that the Christian 
 church is in this world to be a standing protest against 
 the world, and that this is, if not its chief business, at 
 least secoud to the chief business. The mistake of the 
 outsider is in taking this view of the insider to be an 
 authorized one, made necessary by the constitution of 
 the body. If the church is an elect company of per- 
 sons chosen out of the populations of the world, to be 
 saved, to be righteous and good, while all the balance 
 of the world's people is left to wend its dark and evil 
 way to destruction, the case is clear enough. Then 
 the church is compelled in the nature of things to be 
 hostile to the world. It will be like a ship bound for 
 
104 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 some port on the other side, which pursues its way, 
 unheedful of multitudes of persons who surround it 
 in little craft, unseaworChy, and doomed to be sunk by 
 the next storm that flies. The ship might offer accom- 
 modations to a limited number, to those who should 
 accept its rigorous conditions, but the great multitude 
 would be left behind to perish. I think the church 
 has never entertained such an opinion of itself for 
 any length of time, and in any great proportion of its 
 membership. It has often, and especially of late, en- 
 deavored to get as many people within its boundaries 
 and benefits as possible. It has imposed conditions, 
 and not infrequently conditions which it had no right 
 to impose ; and it has often suffered itself to be 
 diverted from its true and high purpose. Yet has it 
 always had this truth more or less acknowledged 
 among its membership, that it is here in the world to 
 be a light and a blessing to the world. Whether or 
 not that truth is acknowledged, it must be evident to 
 any candid person who will look into it, that the true 
 mission of any institution growing up among us as the 
 church has done, must be to live and strive and suffer 
 for the welfare of men, and of all men, so far as possi- 
 ble. If it is not of that character, it is nothing but an 
 obstruction, to be swept out of the way in due time. 
 If the church exists for its own benefit solely, or even 
 chiefly, it has sadly departed from the spirit and con- 
 duct of the Founder, who lived for men, and died for 
 men. It has in that case become an apostate church, 
 and the world — proceeding along its course of ad- 
 vancing enlightenment — will leave it far behind, and 
 will contrive to get along without it. But I do not 
 believe that the Christian church will make such ship- 
 wreck of its faith. While it has done many wrong 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH. 105 
 
 things in the past, and will probably do wrong and 
 absurd things in the future, the probabilities are 
 strong that it will rectify its errors of judgment and 
 feeling, though not without friction and contention. 
 
 I am sure that the criticisms of those outside the 
 church are often more harsh and sweeping than the 
 facts warrant. Outsiders are tempted to do scanty 
 justice to the work the church has accomplished. 
 They do not seem to see those elements within the 
 church which are ever at work for its reformation. 
 The same institution which produced a Leo X. and the 
 abominations of the papal hierarchy, also produced a 
 Luther and a Zwingle to denounce them. The same 
 institution which developed the grossly ignorant fat 
 friar of the fifteenth century also developed the learned 
 Erasmus to bewilder the fat friar, and to apply the 
 lash of caustic criticism to the whole bad business. 
 Two classes of people are in the church, as in every 
 similar body : those who promote and those who re- 
 sist incoming truth. Now, since these last are the 
 most numerous, they are mistakenly supposed to rep- 
 resent the institution in the main. They do not repre- 
 sent it. He who should attempt to write a history, 
 and to form an historical estimate of the Christian 
 church in America, altogether from the work of such 
 men as Edwards, and Emmons, and Hodge, excluding 
 men like Channing, and Parker, and Beecher, and 
 Phillips Brooks, and Heber Newton, and David 
 Swing, would be like one describing a lot of bones, 
 bound together by joints and ligaments, as a human 
 being, forgetting to mention the life power, the heart 
 and brain power, in connection with the bones. The 
 intellectual life of the church has been in its light- 
 seekers and light - spreaders ; and this real life has 
 
106 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 always encountered the inertia, or the more active 
 resistance, of conservatism. But that is the universal 
 law which governs progress. The church ought not 
 to be condemned because its progress has been like 
 every other progress, halting, hindered, and slow. 
 
 If I am asked what the church will do with the 
 new philosophy, I answer unhesitatingly that it will 
 accept it. It is already beginning to accept it. As 
 the evolutionary philosophy advances in its demon- 
 strations, the church takes them into consideration, 
 and to take them into intelligent consideration is to 
 accept them. But the church does not make haste 
 in the acceptance of new philosophies. 
 
 Why should it ? If it were a scientific society it 
 would be busy with fossils and theories upon the cross 
 fertilization of plants, and would be making discov- 
 eries in a great many interesting departments. It 
 would be developing electrical appliances, and would 
 have laboratories, and observatories, and eyery con- 
 ceivable thing for the advancement of science. But it 
 is not a scientific society. Neither is it an association 
 of philosophers. If it were it might reasonably be 
 expected to verify, or disprove at once, or so soon as 
 possible, the theories of Descartes, Kant, Comte, and 
 Spencer. It would have its hands full of that em- 
 ploy, and little leisure for anything else. The church 
 is neither a school of science nor of philosophy. It 
 has its specific work to do in the world — the most 
 noble work of any institution — and that must not 
 be neglected for other work which can be done - by 
 other agencies. Science must go on, and philosophy 
 must go on, and do their work. All the help they can 
 afford, the church is entitled to. 
 
 There are those who appear to think that all that 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH. 107 
 
 God does He does in and through the church. Tliat 
 is part of the old delusion which built up the notion 
 of a divine absentee, and gave priestcraft its oppor- 
 tunity. It is the kind of delusion which the evolu- 
 tionary philosophy is consuming to-day. God has His 
 prophets and seers not only in religion, but in every 
 kingdom of thought and interest. He has His Coper- 
 nicus and His Kepler, His Faraday and Huxley, His 
 Agassiz and Dana. The religious Bible is not the 
 only Bible which has been written or is being written. 
 These other bibles must also be given forth by those 
 men whom God carries forward in the current of His 
 vast purpose. Religion is the highest interest, but all of 
 these other things are necessary and valuable. There- 
 fore the prophets of chemistry, of geology, of biology, 
 of political economy, and the seers who see and sing, 
 have each their divine function here among us. The 
 church is the one institution which above every other 
 has its proper sphere in seeking to develop the moral 
 and spiritual nature of mankind. And it will call to 
 its aid, in the prosecution of its noble office, whatso- 
 ever philosophy and science can afford. But it will 
 not be hasty. Judging from its past we are sure that 
 it will be prudent, even to hard obstinacy. And there 
 is a reason for that which ought not to be overlooked 
 by critics. In its early constitution the church v/as a 
 body of associates who sought eagerly to bear a mes- 
 sage of joy and hope to mankind. It was the mes- 
 sage of Christ : God the Father of us all ; men the 
 partakers of a Divine nature ; not to be slaves, there- 
 fore, of the animal nature ; not to be the haters, but 
 lovers one of another ; not to be oppressors, but help- 
 ers and saviors ; not to be self-seekers, but the seekers 
 of the welfare of others. A noble message, inspiring 
 
108 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 men with courage, and kindling their souls with love. 
 Jew, Samaritan, Roman, Greek, Asiatic, heard the 
 message and believed it, and were knit together in 
 associations of love and purity. The associations 
 were the churches. In process of time arose orderly 
 methods of thinking, or philosophies. 
 
 It would be impossible, we conclude, for such a body 
 of people, continuing to increase, not to arrive at the 
 period of philosophizing. They divided into parties, 
 each accentuating some special mode of thinking re- 
 specting the Divine nature, and the world, and sin. 
 We may find fault with them if we choose, but 
 what else could happen, so long as people think? 
 Councils or consultations were held. The churches 
 selected their wisest men, or presumably so, to dis- 
 cuss the great topics upon which divisions of opinion 
 were threatening the unity of the body. And so 
 grew up that form of philosophy technically called 
 theology. We say perhaps it would have been better 
 if this had been avoided, and if the churches could 
 have kept on with the promulgation of their simple 
 message, and in the doing of the various works of 
 love. But a thinking creature is bound to think, 
 and especially under the stimulus of a great religious 
 impulse. 
 
 The general consent, after much heat of debate, was 
 obtained to a form of philosophy advocated by Atha- 
 nasius. The other forms, such as those of Arius, etc., 
 were put aside or became modes of dissent from the 
 general consensus. Thus grew up the religious philos- 
 ophy of the church. The mode of Christian thought 
 of the speculative sort was settled practically in the 
 first half of the fourth century. It was expanded and 
 put in application by the genius of Augustine at the 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH. 109 
 
 beginning of the fifth century, from which time philo- 
 sophical thought appears to have been at a standstill. 
 If a thing is settled there is no use in troubling one's 
 brains about it farther. But it is to be noted that the 
 church early confused its philosophy (which was a 
 body of opinions) with its faith (which was a follow- 
 ing of Jesus Christ). And the general result is that 
 the church has a philosophy inherited from the far 
 past, which she strives to maintain, under the mistaken 
 feeling that to abandon the philosophy is to abandon 
 the faith. 
 
 Now the evolutionary philosophy negatives the 
 church's theology. 
 
 The two cannot coexist in the same mind. Conse- 
 quently, of course, the new philosophy threatens the 
 existence of the philosophy which is so venerable, and 
 to many seems so sacred. But neither the church it- 
 self nor the faith of the church is threatened by evolu- 
 tion in any degree. To illustrate. The faith of the 
 church was early developed to assert that man occu- 
 pies the chief place in the regard of God. This grew 
 very naturally out of the teachings of Christ respect- 
 ing the fatherhood of God. The philosophy of the 
 case was to this effect, that man occupied a central 
 and an immovable place in the stellar system. The 
 dwelling-place of mankind, i. e., the earth, was the 
 greatest of all the heavenly bodies ; it was the centre 
 around which other and smaller bodies had their 
 motion. And this was so confused with the faith of 
 the church, that when Galileo and Giordano Bruno 
 announced their discoveries, that the earth was not a 
 central place, the church at once condemned the dis- 
 covery as contrary to the faith. It was not in any de- 
 gree contrary to the faith, but certainly was contrary 
 
110 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 to the philosophy which had been confounded with the 
 faith. And the new and better philosophy grew into 
 universal acceptance ; but this acceptance did not de- 
 stroy the church ; it did not destroy the faith ; but it 
 did destroy a great deal of confidence in the ancient 
 philosophy. 
 
 The faith of the church may be likened to a precious 
 stone of purest water, and which emits a light from its 
 lustrous bosom ; the philosophy of the church is like 
 the setting of this jewel. Now three things may hap- 
 pen : (1.) The jewel may stand by itself alone, with- 
 out a setting; or, (2.) It may be set in glittering 
 unsubstantial foil, and people may come to have so 
 great conceit of the setting as to be oblivious of the 
 jewel itself ; or, (3.) The jewel may be fitly embraced 
 in a true golden setting, substantial and excellent. It 
 appears to me that with respect to the faith of the 
 church two of these things have already happened, 
 and the third is in process of happening. The faith 
 of the church in its earliest period was simple. It 
 commanded the assent of mankind because to see it 
 was to admire it, and finally to accept it. It had no 
 philosophical setting. Then came the time of philos- 
 ophizing; it had to come, since it is in accordance 
 with our human constitution that we shall philoso- 
 phize. But philosophy springs out of the actual find- 
 ings of men in nature. 
 
 Here are facts, phenomena, and all the things we 
 now group under the head of data ; we must put them 
 in order, systematize them ; we must arrange them so 
 as to satisfy our logical demands. That is right, and 
 necessary. For my part I do not presume to find 
 fault with the early church for making a philosophy 
 for its faith. I doubt not it did as well as it could do. 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH, 111 
 
 And it is not to the discredit of the church that its 
 philosophy was faulty, and to a degree superficial. 
 How could it have been otherwise? The sun appears 
 to move around the earth and it appears to be a very 
 small body in comparison with the earth. These 
 apparent facts were taken to be real facts, and a phi- 
 losophy was constructed on the basis of them. Was 
 anybody to blame for supposing that these superficial 
 appearances represented the truth of the case ? Cei- 
 tainly not. The philosophy was not true, it was su- 
 perficial ; we have been compelled to cast it aside. 
 That is to say, we remove the old, thin, and unsub- 
 stantial setting from the jewel of the faith, in ordei' 
 to put it in a newer and better setting. And it is 
 just as righteous for us to do that, as it was for the 
 fathers of the church to have any philosophy at all. 
 It is not only righteous, it is imperative. 
 
 The early church had its teachings respecting siu 
 and the forgiveness of sin. These teachings belonged 
 to its faith. It was entirely natural that men should 
 then have sought for some systematic method of think- 
 ing on these great subjects. People had speculated 
 upon the problem of evil ; Christian people had now 
 to speculate upon the problem of forgiveness. The 
 question " Why is there sin in the world ? " stares us 
 in the face. It stared them in the face. 
 
 They undertook to answer it. There was the story 
 of the garden of Eden, and the disobedience of our 
 first parents. There was the short passage in the 
 writings of the Apostle Paul bearing upon that mat- 
 ter. Here are the materials, the data, and the phi- 
 losophy begins to get itself made. They reasoned 
 that man began his course here on earth as a morally 
 perfect being, or at least a sinless being ; he fell from 
 
112 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 that high estate wherein he was created. From being a 
 success he suddenly became a ruin. The basis of the 
 philosophy of sin was found in a story which no expe- 
 rienced and intelligent person of our day accepts in its 
 literalness. But there was no reason why they ahould 
 not accept it unreservedly. Accepting the story of the 
 paradise as a basis of fact, the doctrine of sin became a 
 sort of centre of the whole system of philosophy. Next 
 came the question of forgiveness of sin. Christ had 
 taught forgiveness, and so had Moses. " How and why 
 can sin be forgiven ? " was therefore the topic of spec- 
 ulation. The whole business began to assume a trans- 
 actional shape. Go back to the Eden story : Satan by 
 his cunning and conquest of man had become man's 
 proprietor. He had a right and title in man ; a right 
 not to be disputed. If man is to be redeemed from his 
 dreadful condition of sin and consequent pain, a price 
 must be paid to this proprietor, who is such by con- 
 quest. God cannot forgive the sins of the subjects of 
 the Satanic potentate until some kind of equivalent has 
 been rendered. This equivalent is rendered in the 
 sacrifice of the Son of God upon the cross. Payment 
 having thus been duly made the sinner can be forgiven 
 his sins. That is substantially, though, of course, not 
 in terms, the Augustinian philosophy respecting for- 
 giveness. Not proving satisfactory — as one might 
 well imagine, — seven centuries later the Christian 
 philosophy of sin and forgiveness was in part recon- 
 structed by Anselm. He dismisses Satan from being 
 a partner in the transaction. For Satan he substitutes 
 the Divine justice. God's ipajesty and justice are in 
 a state of perpetual offense, by reason of the sin of 
 mankind. By this fallen nature man is obnoxious to 
 God's justice, and by his practice of evil he puts th^t 
 
PHILOSOPHY AXD FAITH. 113 
 
 justice continually more and more in opposition to 
 him. He incurs an ever-increasing debt. This debt 
 must be paid. This debt is finally paid by the sacri- 
 fice of the Son of God. In virtue of that payment, it 
 becomes right and possible for God to forgive sins. 
 
 Note that there were two terms in the faith of the 
 church : sin and forgiveness ; and these were philos- 
 ophized about until they were put in the setting of 
 philosophy. And not only so, but the philosophy be- 
 came of far more importance and value than the faith. 
 Men were required to believe in it, as though it were 
 an article of faith. But it is not an article of faith, 
 it is an article of philosophy ; and therefore it must 
 stand upon the merit of its argument. That is the 
 only way any philosophy can stand. If we find the 
 argument defective, the philosophy is gone. That the 
 argument is defective can be shown, both negatively 
 and positively. The philosophy is to the effect that 
 the justice of God the Father must be satisfied ; the 
 coequal Son of God proceeds to satisfy this justice of 
 the Father. But if the Son of God is of the same 
 nature and quality as the Father, then it becomes 
 equally necessary to satisfy the justice of the Son. If 
 anything, there is a greater breach of justice toward 
 Him than toward the Father. The philosophy is 
 entirely silent with respect to that. Moreover, an 
 entirely different philosophy has come into existence. 
 It has come slowly, the result of the work of centuries ; 
 and of the most careful work that men have ever done. 
 It rests on a science so strenuously exact, so cautiously 
 true to ascertained facts, and so sustained at every 
 point by unassailable proofs, that no trained investi- 
 gator can doubt its deliverances. This new philos- 
 ophy does not attack the faith of the church, but it 
 
114 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 furnishes a better setting, a substantial golden setting, 
 for that faith. 
 
 Human sin : Divine forgiveness. Human sin is inci- 
 dent to the struggle upward of our race ; a struggle 
 with our brute inheritance, and not the result of a 
 primal fall, involving all souls. Divine forgiveness is 
 in the very nature of God ; it does not rest upon any 
 satisfaction to justice, as was assumed by the old 
 Christian philosophy. For when we see the facts, 
 now being more and more revealed, indicating the 
 presence here of a Being working constructively, ever 
 improving all that is improvable ; upholding all things 
 by the out-play of His power, demonstrating thus an 
 infinite graciousness, we are driven from a philosophy 
 which taught that His love and grace were in some 
 way purchasable. 
 
 The evolutionary philosophy means the revolution 
 of the old philosophy. There can be no question in 
 regard to that. The old philosophy regarded redemp- 
 tion as a " remedy applied for a fatal undoing " ; the 
 new philosophy, as applied to religion, holds it to be a 
 steady process by which God accomplishes the uplift 
 of the race. The old philosophy took our nature to 
 be in a state of ruin, from which God rebuilds it ; the 
 new philosophy beholds God as building our nature 
 from the first, not as rebuilding it. 
 
 It is impossible and unnecessary now to specify the 
 ways in which the new undermines the old. But it 
 is a philosophy which is being undermined, not a 
 faith. A philosophy is something explanatory, giving 
 reasons why, or attempting to do so. It is the most 
 natural thing imaginable that the fathers of the church 
 should have attempted this explanation ; it is equally 
 natural and commendable that their explanation should 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH. 115 
 
 be put aside when it is found to be inadequate, and 
 when another explanation is found which is adequate. 
 
 It appears to me most probable, as I said before, 
 that the new philosophy will be accepted by the Chris- 
 tian church. But it will not be suddenly nor prema- 
 turely. Such a philosophy is not to be swallowed at 
 a gulp by such a composite organization as the church. 
 Already it is gaining ground in the various churches. 
 It is approving itself to all students of it. The hot 
 prejudice of twenty -five years ago has cooled very 
 greatly in temperature. It is almost amusing to see 
 how the very able and elaborate arguments of the 
 assailants of the new philosophy, the pamphlets, 
 octavo books, review articles and all, have become 
 forever obsolete during the past decade. Not a few 
 of these assailants regret the haste in which they iden- 
 tified evolution with atheism. Thus the work goes 
 on. Alongside of the constructive march of evolution 
 we behold the signs of the dissolution of the old 
 philosophies, which having served their purpose pass 
 away. Its old setting is crumbling away from the 
 faith of the church ; but the faith does not and can- 
 not crumble. It is a radiant truth, shining by its own 
 liofht. It is of the nature of an axiom. 
 
 When it was asserted that a whole was greater than 
 any of its parts, there was no argument, or at any rate 
 the statement was its own sufficient argument. Then 
 when men went on with their mathematics up into the 
 higher region of analysis and calculation, some timid 
 soul might have felt an anxiety lest the axiom should 
 be disproved or displaced. But it never has been and 
 it never will be. It is the unshakable element upon 
 which much depends. I think it is so with the faith 
 of the church. The philosophy of the past was a 
 
IIG THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 magnificent structure. The subtlety, the intellectual 
 keenness and shrewdness and skill, the logical hair- 
 splitting, the moral earnestness and greatness of pur- 
 pose which wrought it out, are all admirable almost 
 beyond our power of speech. So was the work of 
 skill and art upon the temple at Jerusalem — beauti- 
 ful and grand, indicative of a patient and capacious 
 wisdom. Sturdy vines of beaten gold embraced and 
 beautified the two pillars at the main entrance, form- 
 ing a mass of golden foliage and fruitage overhead 
 the incoming worshiper ; and the goodly stones of the 
 temple were like the treasures of kings. Yet, said 
 Jesus to his disciples, " There shalt not be left here 
 one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown 
 down." So fall the skillful works of men. The past 
 testifies to us of itself and its greatness by the ruins 
 and wrecks which survive. But the faith of the past is 
 constant, and it is this : God is love ; man His child ; 
 the pure in heart shall see Him ; the sinner is for- 
 given ; blessed are they that make peace, and hunger 
 for righteousness, and are humble of spirit ; blessed 
 are they who follow the steps of Jesus. Around these 
 glittering light-points the best philosophy of the past 
 was gathered ; a concretion of the best that men could 
 think in explanation of the partially disclosed facts of 
 nature and history. But the greater disclosure of 
 facts and principles now makes the old concretion 
 obsolete. 
 
 A philosophy of religion which denies reasonable- 
 ness is not the philosophy which can stay with us. 
 A philosophy satisfactory to the highest intelligence 
 of the fourth, the twelfth, the sixteenth centuries is 
 not satisfactory to intelligence now. If the church 
 shall now continue to impose that philosophy upon 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH. 117 
 
 men, it ■will divorce itself from intelligence, and bury 
 its faith under superstition. It will force itself out 
 of practical relation with the lives of the men who do 
 the world's work, and so carry on the redemption-work 
 of God. I do not believe that the church will so 
 demit its sacred ministry. At the cost of struggle 
 and debate, and perhaps of hot contention, it will 
 come to recognize the work of God, in bringing in a 
 philosophy which both befits the faith of the church 
 and satisfies the reason of mankind. 
 
X. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY INCLUDED. 
 
 " But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, 
 horn of a woman, born under the law." — Galatians iv. 4. 
 
 It is surprising, in one view of the case, to find that 
 among people of intelligence and candor, and espe- 
 cially among religious persons, who ought to be intel- 
 ligent and candid, there is a great deal of doubt of, 
 not to say hostility to, the evolutionary philosophy. 
 
 This doubt and hostility arise from a variety of 
 causes, but chiefly, I think, from a lack of attention, 
 or even from a persistent determination not to investi- 
 gate. Now, while it is true that the great majority of 
 religious people have neither leisure nor the means for 
 thorough investigation, and are compelled to depend 
 upon others, it is a sad thing, involving many sad 
 results, that the light which comes from the labors 
 of others should be refused. It is a bad thing that 
 Christian people should consent to be infidels. 
 
 The Christian church has presented its word of 
 God to men, and has encountered a great amount 
 of unbelief among men. It has therefore raised its 
 complaint against the infidelity which declines the 
 Divine word. It has a right to raise such a com- 
 plaint. If the word of God is a light (and such it 
 has proven to be to men and to nations), the rejection 
 of it is a rejection of light. And a complaint ought 
 to be raised against such rejection. But when the 
 
CHRISTIANITY INCLUDED. 119 
 
 advocates of the written record of revelation refuse 
 the light that streams out to them from the unwritten 
 revelation, there is a perfectly just complaint to be 
 raised on the other side. That is as really infidelity 
 as the other. If any one holds that God made the 
 world, and the Cosmos, it would seem as if he must 
 feel sure that the method of construction would come 
 to be revealed, whenever men should have come to the 
 ability to read the record. And this record, when 
 read, would be free from all human imagination or 
 misconception. No man put his thought into the 
 stone of the lower geologic periods. Those records 
 were all written by the finger of God. But when man 
 began his course he put his feelings and ideas into 
 the best form open to him. Both the feelings and 
 the ideas and the form were necessarily imperfect, be- 
 cause he is a limited and imperfect being. God is not 
 an imperfect being. What He has written is infal- 
 libly written. And this infallible writing we find in 
 the great book of creation, whose pages begin to turn 
 now for the inspection of man. Ought we not to 
 have confidence in these inscriptions ? Is it not a 
 kind of infidelity in us which prompts us to decline 
 to read what God has written ? 
 
 There are those who live in a chronic suspicion of 
 science. They seem to think that in the nature of 
 the case a scientific man must be an infidel. Nothing 
 farther from the truth could be well imagined. The 
 scientific man, in his own department, would at once 
 fail to be scientific if he were an infidel. He must 
 believe the revelation as he reads it. When he turns 
 a page of the record he does not think of doubting 
 it. If his preconceived opinions are dashed in frag- 
 ments by his discoveries, he sacrifices them. Were 
 
120 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 he to maintain them, as against his findings, he would 
 be compelled to leave the ranks of science, and give 
 his attention to something else. He does indeed doubt 
 the sayings of men as to those matters upon which 
 they had insufficient information. But your scientific 
 man is cautious, and exact, and true to the revelation 
 he finds in God's book of nature. It is very evident, 
 therefore, that very great weight ought to be given to 
 the work of such men. They are entitled to a credit 
 which comparatively few of the religious world are 
 willing to accord them. , * 
 
 But it is objected by religious men that science is 
 not yet mature ; it is in a state of transition. The 
 older science has been put to shame and discredit ; 
 how do we know but that the new science will likewise 
 prove itself altogether fallible and unworthy of con- 
 fidence? "After you have got everything settled and 
 beyond dispute, then we will give some heed to what 
 you have to say." Well, the new science does cast the 
 old into the shade. In fact the old is as good as non- 
 existent. There has been a state of transition, but 
 that is passing. Confusion and lack of agreement 
 have characterized the march of science. But that 
 . too is passing. "When you can all come to agree- 
 ment," cries the religious unbeliever, " then we will 
 think it worth our while to consider what you have 
 to tell us, but not before ! " 
 
 Is the religious world in agreement ? Is it not in as 
 great a disagreement as ever? Here is the word of 
 God, wonderfully preserved through the changes and 
 convulsions of centuries. It is translated into all mod- 
 ern tongues. It is studied with a minute attention, 
 microscopically. Do all religious people agree with 
 respect to it ? If there is anything in which religious 
 
CHRISTIANITY INCLUDED. 121 
 
 people do not agree it is in their religion. They all 
 derive it from the same book, and they differ as widely 
 as scientific men have ever differed. But I would have 
 you note one thing, most worthy of your considera- 
 tion ; the scientific people have come to practical con- 
 cord upon the subject of evolution. About ninety- 
 nine one hundredths of them, as is now estimated, are 
 evolutionists. After persons reach an advanced age 
 it is rare for them to change their opinions. Their 
 minds are no longer flexible but fixed. You can safely 
 locate most of the one hundredth portion of the scien- 
 tific men who do not accept evolution among the aged. 
 But their work days are over. So that the very thing 
 religious men have declared they would wait for has 
 come to pass ; namely, the substantial agreement of 
 scientific men in regard to the general outcome of 
 their science. 
 
 Moreover, the hypothesis of evolution is the only 
 working hypothesis for physical science. Take away 
 the theory and you set back medical science a long 
 way ; you set back biology all the way, so that there 
 is nothing of it left. Take away evolution from any 
 of the progressive researches of men, and you have 
 withered or frozen those researches. No such incal- 
 culable mischief could befall your student of to-day 
 as to compel him to prosecute his studies without 
 the aid and light of evolution. He might translate 
 Homer as well, or demonstrate his geometry prop- 
 ositions ; but these things have little to do with the 
 outsearchings of the present time. You are power- 
 less to understand history, it is a mere collection of 
 facts, without coherence, except as you view it as a 
 continuous unfolding of the higher from the lower. 
 You have broken the links, and destroyed the conti- 
 
122 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 nuity, unless history is an unfolding. A mere collec- 
 tion of facts is nothing, or next to nothing, so far as 
 science or actual knowledge is concerned. 
 
 You are aware that students of manuscripts can 
 determine the dates of manuscript copies of the New 
 Testament, approximately, by the kind of letters made 
 by the scribe. They can thus tell you which is the 
 older of two manuscripts. If you go into a geolo- 
 gist's workshop you may see there a box of stones. 
 The stones have been thrown into a box promiscu- 
 ously. To your eyes, merely a box of stones. Ask 
 your geologist about them. He picks up one and 
 reads its date. It belongs to such a period. He 
 picks up another and gives the date of that : — long 
 periods between the two. One is above the other, 
 higher in the scale. That is to say, the man of sci- 
 ence reads the revelation of these things to you. So 
 that the box of stones is after all a book of revela- 
 tion. Now then, take away all idea of relation out of 
 your geologist's mind ; erase the law of the relation 
 of things in time (which is the law of evolution), and 
 the significant record is reduced to a box of stones. 
 Wooden box, pieces of rock, and your geologist gone 
 out of existence. A person is left who goes around 
 in a foolish manner and picks up stones and puts them 
 in a box. 
 
 Religion is looked upon by many, has been looked 
 upon for ages, as a something given forth from heaven, 
 full, perfect, complete. No growth or development of 
 It possible. If you will think of it, such a view of 
 religion is flatly contradicted by experience, by history 
 (which is experience classified), and by common sense. 
 Say that there is no evolution of religion, and try 
 to comprehend the teaching of Christ with respect to 
 
CHRISTIANITY INCLUDED. 123 
 
 Judaism or with respect to later times. Christ begins 
 and finishes His mission of revelation. Does He cast 
 discredit upon the essentials of the precedent religion? 
 Does He undertake to clear that religion away ? On 
 the contrary, He honors it. He not only proposes to 
 let it stand, but asserts its Divine authority. A cer- 
 tain law of equal justice had obtained, expressed in 
 these words, " An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a 
 tooth." It was a high law of retaliation, forcing the 
 retaliation to take the form of an equivalent injury. 
 It was fit for the regulation of such society as then 
 existed. Christ proposed a higher and better society, 
 ,the time then being ripe for it. There must be a bet- 
 ter law of relation in this new society. And so He 
 developed the law of equal justice into the law of 
 patience and love. But the law of justice is not 
 repealed. When a blossom smiles from the branch 
 of a tree, the branch is not repealed; the tree and 
 the root remain. 
 
 The sentiment of justice comes gradually into ex- 
 istence among men. It does not come suddenly, but 
 gradually, and as the result of many causes and ex- 
 periences. God brings it to be, as we find He brings 
 other sentiments and feelings to be. This sentiment 
 of justice becomes the seed or root out of which grows 
 a law of conduct, more and more answering the real 
 purpose of justice ; that is, more and more developing 
 toward equal justice or equitable retaliation. And 
 then finally comes the outgrowth of the law of Christ. 
 But if you subtract the law of justice from the law 
 of Christ, nothing substantial is left. A love regard- 
 less of justice is a degenerate and ever-degenerating 
 sentiment. So the prime teachings of the elder reli- 
 gion were not set aside, they were drawn out into 
 
124 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 farther development. The old law was, " Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy." The new 
 law extended the province of love. In its earlier 
 
 development love is not strong, but weak. Its radius 
 of activity is small. The new law dissolves its circum- 
 ference. And so all the way through the teachings 
 of Christ you will discover His work to be that of 
 enlarging the old. Not the exterior things of the old, 
 to which He was indifferent, but the interior princi- 
 ples of the old are made the basis of the new. I sup- 
 pose that all will admit so much as that. That is to 
 say, the doctrine of evolution, as applied to the foun- 
 dation of the Christian religion, is found to be a real, 
 working hypothesis. 
 
 The march of evolution from the foundation of the 
 Christian religion is discovered to be a Niagara stream 
 — impossible to put a stop to. It is in the constitu- 
 tion of our minds, as it is in all natural constitution, 
 to develop and grow. Witness the history of the 
 church. The energy of the church, ever increasing, 
 put itself at once in certain directions of evolution. 
 We have already, in a previous chapter, marked the 
 development of the philosophy of the church. Let 
 us now note the development of the outward form, or 
 organization of it. Jesus, in the prosecution of His 
 work, did not undertake to do it alone ; He called 
 others to take their part in the great mission for the 
 salvation of the world. He seems not to have antici- 
 pated any personal success in the doing of His work. 
 On the other hand. He expected defeat. But the work 
 would go on. That it might go on, He called to His 
 side the fisherman and the tax-gatherer. The Head of 
 the church, with His twelve apostles, walked abroad 
 in Galilee, in Samaria, in the borders of Tyre, and in 
 
CHRISTIANITY INCLUDED. 125 
 
 Judea. Rome was the centre of the world ; this resrion 
 was one of the outlying parishes of the great empire. 
 Christ did not seek the aid or encouragement of the 
 learned, nor the rich, nor the powerful. All He sought 
 was to finish His work, His teaching, His doing good, 
 His suffering. This was to be the root of a farther 
 development. I think it is safe to say that iu no 
 teacher of religion has there ever been witnessed so 
 sublime a faith in that great law which has but so 
 recently been brought into prominence, — the law of 
 development. He recognized Himself as a seed, to 
 fall into the ground of the moral life of the world, 
 and die. Except for this death, the life of the seed 
 is not set free to grow on and on. He confidently ex- 
 pected this growth. And His expectation has been 
 amply justified by the event. 
 
 But the development of the church has been largely 
 along lines of externality. It was in philosophy. It 
 came to be in organization. The twelve fisher people, 
 animated at length by a Christly purpose, had their 
 petty ambitions, — growing less, while their Chiistly 
 purpose grew greater. They went abroad out of the 
 old narrow boundaries of Palestine. Went westward, 
 to Rpme, perhaps as far as Spain. Tradition has it 
 that one of them went eastward as far as the Indus. 
 They bore their great message to populations of which 
 as simple fishermen they had been ignorant. So the 
 growth or development went on? Efforts were made 
 to stop this new progress. Persecutions arose. But it 
 was a Niagara stream, overleaping obstructions and 
 gaining power day by day. Then came the sense of 
 the need of organization meeting the requirements of 
 so vast a body. Our twelve have their successors. 
 Out of the simple apostleship came the more elaborate 
 
126 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 bishopric. During the early days at Jerusalem, seven 
 had been appointed deacons to take charge of a por- 
 tion of the work for which the apostles had not leisure. 
 And so, from these two orders came other orders and 
 a greater elaboration of these orders themselves. In 
 three centuries heathenism finds itself in a minority, 
 or at least in an inefficient and unpromising majority 
 in the empire. It surrenders the eagles to the cross. 
 And now behold how the evolution of organization 
 goes on. With what rapid strides, — with what as- 
 tounding transformations. Foot -sore pedestrians, in 
 fishers' coats, are succeeded by throned magnates in 
 fine apparel. Those who had stood before kings, 
 sometimes with chains upon them, giving their brave 
 testimony to their Master, are succeeded by bishop 
 courtiers, who take their station behind kings and gov- 
 ernors, and pull the strings of government. The petty 
 ambitions of the twelve apostles, suppressed in them, 
 begin to be developed in the towering ambitions of 
 prelates. The desire to be first, or chief, develops in 
 the creation of a bishopric above the equal grade: 
 the chair of St. Peter is set up, and the occupant as- 
 sumes the function of a father of the Christian world. 
 Out of so small and lowly a root had grown so lofty a 
 tree ! The father-bishop at Rome grasps at the scep- 
 tre of universal authority. He proposes that his seat 
 shall be the throne of supremacy. The development 
 goes on, branching #nd rebranching. The church as 
 an institution develops mainly in body. Its energy 
 appears to tend mostly in that direction. Accordingly 
 there is a decreasing growth of its inner life and spir- 
 itual power; yet the law of evolution holds good. Out 
 of the seed grows the blade, the ear, the full corn in 
 the ear, and embellished with tiara and other insignia. 
 
CHRISTIANITY INCLUDED. 127 
 
 The Roman chief bishop, in whom all this body-growth 
 beads itself, with all his prerogatives, powers, honors, 
 reaches the point of full growth, as all things ulti- 
 mately do, and is not to be borne with longer without 
 rebuke and limitation. So begins a protestation against 
 him and his belongings. Sharp investigation of all 
 this highly organized body, leads to discovery of fatal 
 deficiencies in it ; of a lack of anything like a vital 
 soul in it. The successor of St. Peter is found to be a 
 successor to the office of St. Peter, or say some for- 
 mula of St. Peter, and not of the apostolic spirit. It 
 has become high time to take up this neglected, unde- 
 veloped soul of the Christian body, to try what may 
 be done for that. A new start is given to the idea 
 of righteousness. It had been made in some sort a 
 bodily interest. That is, the duty of man was to do 
 things of a ceremonial order, to confess sins to a 
 priest, and get words of absolution from him, to give 
 due heed to masses, and prayer repetitions. But there 
 arises a reformation of all that. The soul of man is 
 in direct relation with the soul of the universe, with 
 God ; and therefore requires, more than all else, faith. 
 In place of the outward, the inward. I do not say 
 that the reformers gave the world 3, true or perfect 
 conception of faith; they simply restored this word of 
 inward power to prominence. If you look well to it, 
 yon will not fail to discover that the tendency of moral 
 beings, as we know them, is to develop the outward at 
 the expense of the inward. But the inward, the spir- 
 itual, the moral, as we have found, is the goal toward 
 which creation ever moves. There may be interrup- 
 tion, — as indeed there has been, — or rather evolu- 
 tion may run for a time mainly in other directions. 
 But in some direction it goes on with resistless cur- 
 
128 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 rent. Christianity developed to grand proportions 
 outwardly, as we have seen. The outward ever pre- 
 cedes the inward. 
 
 So, too, when Protestantism began, it grew into a 
 manifold Protestantism. The solidarity of the one 
 church being broken, the development is toward in- 
 dividualism and freedom of faith. The evolution of 
 Christianity is as marked as the evolution of any other 
 history, physical, intellectual, or moral, if one will be 
 at pains to trace it. Of course it is more difficult 
 to trace, because it is more complex than other devel- 
 opments ; but the history of Christianity furnishes 
 no ground to doubt the universality of the law. I am 
 aware that to many minds the origin of Christianity 
 appears to be a most critical point, at which either the 
 evolutionist will cease to be an evolutionist, or the 
 Christian will cease to be a Christian in order to be 
 an evolutionist instead. We are told that there is 
 ground which cannot be occupied by an evolutionist 
 and a Christian. Well, in the growth of the evolu- 
 tionary philosophy we observe a similar critical point, 
 located at the creation of man. 
 
 When the proofs had been unfolded from the geo- 
 logical records, and were found to be overwhelming, 
 then the reluctant Christian philosopher made an ad- 
 mission. Evolution granted in all that precedes man 
 upon the earth, but denied at that point. Man is a 
 special creation. That was the battle field of some 
 years ago. But when it came to be seen by the theis- 
 tic evolutionist who had come thus far, that the cre- 
 ation of man is in any case the work of God, whether 
 by rapid special process, or by the evolution of ages, 
 the point was yielded. It was seen that the hypothesis 
 of evolution must regard man as the creature of God. 
 
CHRISTIANITY INCLUDED. 129 
 
 Now the battle field locates itself at the person of 
 Christ. To refer the Christ in any sense to evolu- 
 tion ; to account for Him on evolutionary ground, it 
 has over and over again been asserted, is to surrender 
 the citadel of the Christian religion, and consequently 
 to abandon Christianity. But this assertion, in which 
 the enemies of Christianity unite with some of its 
 friends, has been hastily made, and I am sure without 
 due and deep consideration. 
 
 If evolution were a blind force, operating through 
 time and space, if it were not the direct and continu- 
 ous work of God at all points, and if it did not indi- 
 cate a supreme purpose and a goal, then it would have 
 nothing to tell us about the Christ. But the mode of 
 God in doing things, in causing things to come to pass, 
 we call evolution. However obscure the method may 
 be, or however little we may be able, with our present 
 light to understand it, the evolutionist believes, as an 
 article of faith, that all events are in accord with that 
 universal law. He cannot see how, in many cases, 
 but he is still confident. The birth of all living beings 
 is accordant with the law of evolution ; but the higher 
 we ascend in the scale of being the more wonderful 
 becomes the birth, the more wonderful becomes the 
 progress after the birth. And therefore the more rea- 
 son is there to ascribe the birth and the after progress 
 to God. He who realized God, as none others have 
 done, He who hesitated not to speak of Himself as the 
 Son of God, and who declared that He and His Father 
 were one, upon what ground did He thus speak ? Was 
 it upon the ground of His own consciousness, or ujjon 
 some sfround exterior to His consciousness ? It must 
 have been upon the gi'ound of His own consciousness, 
 since He seems never to have spoken upon any other. 
 
130 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 But was there nothing before Him to explain that 
 consciousness ? Had it no root in any previous con- 
 sciousness of men ? Look back in the Hebrew annals 
 and see. The great and good men of the nation had 
 it, and by it predicted the coming of One who should 
 realize it completely. Then consider, for it is well 
 worth consideration, the evolution of Jesus from in- 
 fancy to manhood. How He grew in stature, in age, 
 and in the Divine consciousness. How His mind must 
 have been nourished upon the sacred wisdom of the 
 past is sufficiently evidenced by the narrative. How 
 He had His education, that He might become the edu- 
 cator of mankind ; how He partook of the common 
 temptations and sorrows of men, that He might be 
 their faithful priest, we gather from the sacred writ- 
 ings. But a feeling has prevailed that in order duly 
 to honor God the Creator, you must imagine Him 
 remote from His works, in a lofty transcendency. So 
 too it has been felt necessary to make an exception in 
 favor of the Son of God, as if He were not in the 
 realm and order of Nature, as if a certain verbal 
 statement of His Absolute Divine Roj'alty ought to 
 be made, and reiterated, as an article of faith. It has 
 been felt necessary to declare His equality with God, 
 in terms of quantity, a declaration which He Himself 
 does not make?- Now, as a matter of fact and of phi- 
 losophy, we know nothing, except in a negative way, 
 of Divine quantity. We simply affirm of God that He 
 is the absolute, the not finite, and there we leave the 
 subject, unable to penetrate into it. Divinity in terms 
 of quantity utterly baffles us ; in terms of quality it 
 meets us at every step of reverent thought. It blesses 
 
 ^ The declaration Jesus made (John xiv, 28) is quantitative : 
 "My Father is greater than I." 
 
CHRISTIANITY INCLUDED. 131 
 
 US with the blessings of a spiritual experience: it 
 teaches us to know the Son of God, by being ourselves 
 led by the Spirit of God, and therefore the sons of 
 God (Romans viii. 14). 
 
 The philosophies of the past have been compelled 
 to present to the faith of men an impossible Christ ; 
 impossible, not because He did wonderful works, but 
 because the whole of the infinite was compressed within 
 the limits of the finite. That is impossible to thought. 
 The words which say it are meaningless words. 
 
 On the other hand, the new philosophy applied to 
 religion attempts nothing of the kind. It presents us 
 with the idea of a vast purpose, of which we can 
 think, because we are led to it gradually, by orderly 
 steps. This purpose may be expressed in words ; — 
 the Incarnation of God. The flower, the fruit-bear- 
 ing tree, the fish, the bird of the air, the mammalian 
 animal, each in its own way, and according to its ca- 
 pacity, individuates the Eternal Energy. In man the 
 beginning of the incarnation takes place, so that the 
 Evangelist Luke does not hesitate to speak of Adam 
 as the son of God. In Christ Jesus the incarnation 
 finds its fulfillment, but not, as we learn from the lips 
 of His Apostles, its completion. All the highest and 
 best of the past came to consciousness in Him, else 
 He had no use for the past. 
 
 And is that all? Was not God in Him? "Why, 
 you see the evolutionary philosophy cannot get along 
 at all without God, or the Eternal Energy (these two 
 terms, God, or Eternal Energy, being employed accord- 
 ing to the theistic or the materialistic bias of the par- 
 ticular philosopher). Seeing what Jesus was, what 
 things He said, and what things He did, and what 
 death He died, the evolutionary philosophy helps us 
 
132 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 more clearly to apprehend that " God was in Christ 
 reconciling the world unto Himself." For here is a 
 moral race to be brought from the perverseness of its 
 self-will to the will of God, and this is the great work 
 of the incarnation. It is not the forcing process from 
 without ; it is the inducing and educating process 
 from within, which the new philosophy and the gos- 
 pel recognize as the sublime purpose of creation. 
 
 Christ and Christianity were not bolted into the 
 world, arbitrarily ; they were born, and that in a full- 
 ness of time. In other words, they came according to 
 that law which comprehends all knowable laws, the 
 law of evolution. They were born to, testify, not God's 
 power, but His presence. The Divine gospel of to-day, 
 more than ever before, is the Emanuel gospel, the God- 
 with-us gospel. And since the law of life is one of 
 increase, we may well be thrilled with the hope that 
 the spirit of Christ shall become more and more in- 
 carnate, until all shall acknowledge and confess it, to 
 the glory of God the Father. 
 
XI. 
 
 PKAYEK. 
 
 " Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek and ye stall find ; knock and 
 it shall be opened unto you." — Matthew vii. 7, 8. 
 
 The direction to ask, or seek, or knock, you will 
 observe, is baaed upon a principle. This principle 
 appears at first to be a mere repetition of the direc- 
 tion. But upon further consideration it will be seen 
 that the principle is general. In every department of 
 intelligent energy the asker is answered, the seeker 
 finds. If, therefore, we discover that the principle is 
 universal, we shall be compelled to assent to the par- 
 ticular application of it made in Christ's words. I 
 shall merely attempt to show how prominently the 
 human will intrudes itself in the affairs of our part 
 of the universe, and how necessary this intrusion is. 
 Reference is made, but incidentally, to the evolution- 
 ary philosophy. 
 
 Thinkers of a certain class appear to be on the 
 lookout for the disappearance of religion. Every step 
 which science takes in advance is to them so much 
 progress toward the dissolution of faith. To them, 
 evidently, science is daylight, and religion is darkness : 
 as day comes night goes. It is an unfortunate, not 
 to say unreasonable, state of mind. Why, science it- 
 self is greatly dependent upon classification. It is the 
 function of science to separate things which are sepa- 
 rable ; to analyze. Our human nature is a unity, but 
 
134 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 it is a unity of various distinct departments. Our 
 nature is not one story high ; it is more than a base- 
 ment. The whole of life does not belong to the 
 kitchen ; it extends upward, into regions of art and 
 imagination ; into regions of ethics and j)hilosophy ; 
 into regions of spirituality and religion. These supe- 
 rior developments are our distinctively human ele- 
 ments ; they distinguish us from animals. If they 
 are to be cut off, or to become extirpated by disuse, 
 there will be an end of science as well ; since in that 
 case there will be nothing left of us capable or desirous 
 of looking into the meaning of things. We have the 
 religious department of our nature ; it has developed 
 along lines of unspeakable trouble and pain and con- 
 quest. To ignore this department, to think that it 
 will disappear, or in fact to consent to be ourselves 
 irreligious or unreligious, is, to my mind, to be fatally 
 unreasonable. 
 
 I should count that man near lunacy who should 
 welcome some new invention, such as the application 
 of hydrogen gas in the lighting of dwellings, as prom- 
 ising to drive out music ! Or if any one were to say 
 that the office of prose is to abolish poetry. Or that 
 the precise thinking of the mathematician were des- 
 tined to banish the imagination. I venture to sup- 
 pose that as prose extends itself, and embodies more 
 and more ideas, and enriches language, it will in due 
 time give an immense impetus to poetry. 
 
 Now in regard to prayer, which belongs to religion 
 as the multiplication table belongs to mathematics, it 
 has been asserted time and again that it will go out of 
 use, in proportion as reasonable and scientific ideas of 
 nature prevail. To many, I have no doubt, prayer is 
 but a superstition, and quite as baseless as any other 
 
PRAYER. 135 
 
 superstition. A great deal can be said against it. 
 The earth revolves on its axis, giving us the alterna- 
 tions of day and night. It passes on its track around 
 the sun, giving us the regular alternations of the sea- 
 sons. This orderly sequence of day and night — this 
 procession of seasons — may seem to some person not 
 of the highest intelligence to be in some manner harm- 
 ful to him. He would prefer for some personal rea- 
 son to have the winter last all the year, in this zone. 
 That will be favorable to him in his peculiar kind of 
 employment. Or for the same reason he would like to 
 have no night for a month at a stretch. Now if the 
 theory of prayer be a true one, why cannot this man 
 appeal to the Creator and Upholder of all things, the 
 Lord of all, to change things for his benefit ? If it 
 be urged that one has a perfect right to make such a 
 prayer as that, but that it is quite another thing to 
 get it answered, then we are compelled to declare that 
 if prayer is anything more than a mere form, if it has 
 any reality whatever, it must include the idea of an 
 answer. In other words, if prayer has come to us as 
 one of the teachings of religion, we ought not to abate 
 or lessen its significance. 
 
 The simplest idea is the one which will enlighten 
 us. The child asks the parent for something ; the 
 subject asks the king for something. The parent or 
 the monarch hears the request and responds to it, in 
 one way or another. Men ask the omnipotent God 
 for that which they desire, and He heeds their request, 
 and responds to it. Certainly that is the way in which 
 we think most naturally of prayer. The heathen of- 
 fers his gifts and prefers his wish to his idol, and he 
 does it under the hope of getting what he desires. 
 In the lowest kind of worship, among the savage 
 
136 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 tribes, something is done to procure favorable influ- 
 ence from the fetish, or the object of worsliip. How- 
 ever the notion came, it has come, and it is fitting 
 that we should study into it. No doubt many intelli- 
 gent people have learned to look upon prayer as a su- 
 perstition, akin to the belief in ghosts and the like. 
 There are reasons why intelligent persons should look 
 at the matter in that way. An examination of those 
 reasons may lead us to see that there are reasons which 
 bear the other way, and which deserve consideration. 
 
 We will then assume that there is over all a per- 
 fectly wise Governor of the universe, — a Being in 
 whom there is no imperfection of purpose nor lack of 
 knowledge. This Being has been creating our world 
 by a process whose very slowness seems to us all but 
 infinite. Uncountable generations of species have 
 come and gone, and all obedient to the one will. No 
 human will has intervened. Or look out at the sky. 
 A bewildering host of stars and worlds and suns are 
 there, so nicely balanced, so accurately adjusted, that 
 a finite being can only wonder, and determine that 
 he for his, part will not in any wise interfere. It is 
 said that when the preliminary arrangements were all 
 completed for the blasting of the obstructions at Hell 
 Gate in the East River, a child's finger completed the 
 electric circuit which produced the enormous explo- 
 sion. This was all very well, under competent super- 
 vision, — but to give a child the opportunity to cause 
 such explosions at its own good will and pleasure, 
 would seem to be hazardous in the extreme. So would 
 it seem a most unwise arrangement that finite beings, 
 and especially very immature, inexperienced, and mis- 
 taken human beings, should be given any place, even 
 the smallest, in the conduct of the universe. Then 
 
PRAYER. 137 
 
 too it would be asked why any right-minded finite 
 being should desire to have a hand in the conduct of 
 the universe. If a man really has faith in God, a 
 faith worth calling such, believing that God is abso- 
 lutely wise and perfect in power, will he not say, " I 
 have no wish to intrude my little petty and most im- 
 perfect notions upon such a being. I can be content 
 in nothing less than this ; that God shall manage and 
 govern all the heavens not only, but all the earth, my 
 part of it as well as every other part. I have nothing 
 of any sort to ask of God. I would not have Him 
 change anything in the fraction of a grain for me." 
 Is not that a humble and beautiful state of mind? It 
 would appear so. The only trouble of it is that it is 
 not a genuine and consistent state of mind. It does 
 not correspond with the facts. 
 
 We will conceive our humble-minded man who does 
 not at all desire to intrude his bit of a will upon the 
 general universe, of which he is such an insignificant 
 part, to have got himself into a great forest, he with 
 his axe and gun and ammunition and other things. 
 We will not even ask how he got there, — but simply 
 what he will do now that he has found himself there. 
 Now God made the great forest, and it abides in 
 silence by His will. This man has his own will, and 
 proceeds to set his powers in operation by direction of 
 that will. He breaks the primeval silence, and finding 
 trees growing vertically, standing there strong-rooted, 
 he plies his axe and brings them down. He builds a 
 dwelling-place for himself. He hunts abroad for the 
 beasts, roaming in their freedom, and so gets his food. 
 He vigorously sets in train his various operations, and 
 in due time changes that forest ; clears away the wood, 
 pulls out the stumps, prepares the ground, puts in 
 
138 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 seed, reaps his harvests, and so altogether changes the 
 condition of things. But he is the man who declared 
 that for his part he did not wish to intrude his will at 
 aU in the conduct of the universe or of any part of it. 
 What has he been doing all the time? From the 
 moment when he entered the forest, from the moment 
 when he started to go to the forest, to say nothing of 
 any previous time, he has been doing nothing but 
 intruding his will in the conduct of the universe. 
 He gets other persons to come to his aid. He and 
 they continue their operations on an increasing scale. 
 They find wet places in the soil, and drain off the 
 water. They find dry places and irrigate them. Find- 
 ing no houses, they make them. After a time, in 
 place of the silent forest, there will come to be a city, 
 with its markets, its newspapers, its courts of law, its 
 paved streets, its noise. A perpetual intrusion of the 
 will of the finite being in the conduct of the universe. 
 And every rational being must needs admit that the 
 intrusion is not without beneficent results. Man looks 
 abroad over the fields of the earth and discovers, 
 among other things, clay. An inert subsoil. He says 
 to himself that he will make a use of the clay differ- 
 ing from the common uses of nature. He takes it, 
 and moulds it into fit form, and bakes it in a form 
 of bricks, and builds it up into the sky. He pro- 
 cures silicates and other substances, and makes glass 
 for windows, fashions the wood of the forest into 
 proper casings, gets iron and hammers it into nails, 
 or casts it into hinges or locks and other fixtures. 
 He takes these substances out of the conditions where 
 the will of God has apparently left them, and pro- 
 ceeds to refashion them. He takes simples and makes 
 composites. He takes the coal out of the bed of it, 
 
PRA YES. 139 
 
 and burns it in his furnaces. And from beginning to 
 end be is doing one thing, — intruding his intent into 
 the affairs of the universe. And it is visible that the 
 more he intrudes, the more he accomplishes for the 
 benefit of his race. 
 
 And not only so. This feeble creature, named man, 
 undertakes to lay his hand upon the great forces of 
 nature. There are certain ascertainable facts concern- 
 ing the sun which would be impressive if we could 
 only image their massive meaning in our imagination. 
 Each second the radiation of heat from the sun is suffi- 
 cient to melt a piece of ice, say three hundred millions 
 of cubic miles big.^ This would indicate something 
 of the immensity of the mass of the sun if we only 
 had even a faint conception of what a million of 
 cubic miles might be. So, too, when we say of the sun 
 that its diameter is more than a hundred times as 
 great as that of our earth, that would be quite a piece 
 of information if we could frame in our imagination 
 what the diameter of our earth is. But because we 
 have so very unreal an idea of the size of our earth 
 we must have a much more unreal image of the size 
 of the sun, in our mind. A ship of six or seven thou- 
 sand tons is a monster. But what shall we say of the 
 tons of the sun ? There is just about nothing to say, 
 and very little to think. Well, these vast weights, of 
 which we try to think, and fail, since we cannot imag- 
 ine them in our minds, are held, if we may so speak, 
 by a force ; and this force is so enormous that it holds 
 a sun, or a thousand suns, as a child holds the string 
 of a little kite. Can the little man-creature put his 
 finger on this giant and say, " Obey me " ? It is pre- 
 cisely what he does. Gravity holds the heavy things 
 
 1 Professor Tyndall, Fragments of Science. 
 
140 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 to the earth. Man says, " I will put forth my power 
 now," and he pulls against the illimitable, and suc- 
 ceeds in pulling away from it. He raises these tons 
 upon tons of ponderable material, puts his prop under 
 them, and then says to Gravity, — " Hold that for me, 
 will you ? " and Gravity does it. Then the fire goes 
 flashing and crashing through the sky, or runs its race 
 through the bush of space with a speed which is not a 
 speed, but a presence, and man runs the risk of burn- 
 ing his fingers meddling with this fire energy, but 
 finally fastens his string upon it, and says, " Carry 
 my greetings to my friend over the ocean," or, " Light 
 my street for me," or, " Speak my words for me where 
 I bid you." Daring creature is this, — who, however, 
 says, when you ask him, that he will not venture to 
 intrude his poor feelings and his feeble wisdom on the 
 notice of the Most High. He wiU not venture to 
 intrude, he meekly says ; and it appears that he does 
 almost nothing of worth or of help, certainly nothing 
 of progress, which Is not in fact the intrusion of his 
 finite will into the conduct of the universe. This 
 intrusion has become a pretty general thing, and is 
 growing both more general and more particular, as 
 the time goes on. What is all this doing of things 
 called for to be done, this change of the face and sub- 
 stance of nature in manifold fashions, but our continu- 
 ing and increasing intrusion of our will ? It may be 
 more than that, but certainly it is that. 
 
 Mirabeau said : " Nothing is impossible to the man 
 who can will." 
 
 An extravagant manner of speech, but not without 
 its true meaning to us, if we are able to take it. 
 
 But was not man made to be under the laws of na- 
 ture ? Well, when you talk of the laws of nature you 
 
PRA YER. 141 
 
 are broaching a large subject. Laws of nature are 
 the methods of the Eternal Energy exercising itself, 
 the materialistic philosopher wiU tell you. And he is 
 right so far as he goes. The laws of nature are the 
 ■ways in which God does things, is what the theistic 
 philosopher says. But God's ways of doing things 
 are adaptive. There is a law for water ; it seeks a 
 level ; there is quite a different law for a rational be- 
 ing, in virtue of which he considers. He has his law 
 of thinking, as the water has its law of flowing. Fol- 
 lowing this law he is able to make the law of water 
 serviceable to himself. For while the water is obeying 
 its law of getting to its level, he puts his wheel in it, 
 and the water turns it ; and he puts his bands and 
 wheels in such places and relations as that the water 
 shall grind his corn, or move his spindles. The law 
 of the man is that he shall govern the water. God 
 set it flowing in rivers, or ebbing and flooding in the 
 tides. Man takes advantage of these motions ; he is 
 by his nature imperial, a commander ; the winds and 
 the waves obey him. 
 
 From of old there has been a doctrine of Divine 
 Providence. How did it come ? It must have come in 
 some way out of our human experience. It has been 
 honestly said that God will not override His own laws 
 of nature ; that He certainly will respect them as He 
 commands men to do. That is a truth unto which we 
 do well that we take heed, as unto a light shining in a 
 dark place. God will not override His own laws. If 
 we human creatures attempt revolt against the laws of 
 nature, we get into trouble. It is for us to find out 
 what the laws of nature are, and act according to 
 them. I do not mean that we are to be enslaved by 
 them ; the very contrary of that. Let any one try to 
 
142 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 deal with a wild bear as lie would with a domestic 
 sheep, and serious results will be sure to follow. The 
 law of nature in a grizzly bear is not the same as the 
 law of nature in a tame sheep, and the wise person will 
 pay particular attention to the wild-bear-law when he 
 has something to do with a wild bear. There is a 
 certain law of projectiles which he will bring into re- 
 quisition. It is by a proper respect for the law of the 
 grizzly bear's actions a man rises superior to the bear. 
 
 We find the laws of nature to be laws of advan- 
 tage after we begin to dream how comprehensive they 
 are. But at first laws of nature were dreaded and 
 feared. If a hunter tumbled off a ledge of rocks and 
 was crushed, his friends felt bitterly about it. They 
 said, " That is a bad law which breaks the bones of 
 your friends." But in due time that feeling changes. 
 Foresight is required — providence — to use all these 
 laws advantageously. The laws are good, but some 
 are higher and some are lower. Every law is whole- 
 some and good if employed according to its quality 
 and intention. 
 
 Now as men go on to impose their will more and 
 more upon the laws of nature, they acquire a habit of 
 providing. They learn human providence, and gradu- 
 ally learn to infer a Divine Providence. By the right 
 use of our will we go on to develop the higher laws of 
 life. Things which appeared impossible become pos- 
 sible. There are inventors ; we call them such because 
 they find principles, laws, relations. Nature is full of 
 powers, as it were, concealed or latent, waiting for some 
 one to find them and bring them into applicability. 
 Go back a hundred years and the world of possibili- 
 ties was small. Inventors have arisen who have been 
 finding a great number of possibilities. They have 
 
PRAYER. 143 
 
 gone into the range of impossibilities and taken many 
 things out of it. There has been a mighty develop- 
 ment. Men looked at things and said, " They are of 
 no value " — but out of these things have come im- 
 mense values. All of which, and much more to the 
 same purpose, suggests vast resources in nature, or an 
 infinitely comprehensive providence. 
 
 Christ said, " Ask and ye shall receive ; seek and ye 
 shall find;" and modern scionce yields more abundant 
 proof that it is true than anciently could have been 
 afforded. Men have asked, asserting thus their finite 
 will, and they have been answered ; — they have sought, 
 and found much more than they sought. I am sure 
 that prayer, therefore, is not only not unreasonable, 
 but that properly regarded it is in the highest degree 
 reasonable. 
 
 But prayer has been objected to by men of science ; 
 it has been proposed, notably by Professor Tyndall, to 
 subject the matter to a scientific test. Certainly it is 
 right that all things of so great importance should be 
 tested, but I think the test proposed by Professor Tyn- 
 dall insufficient. It is easy even for scientific persons 
 to make this mistake of recognizing a man as a priest 
 because he habitually wears the coat and hat of a 
 priest, and of failing to recognize a real priest as such 
 because he has not the priestly garb and does not ap- 
 pear to exercise a priestly function. 
 
 Prayer, too, is difficult to identify, except by its 
 fruits. There is probably a great amount of human 
 utterance, purporting to be prayer, and named of men 
 prayer, which has little or nothing of prayer in it 
 All that goes by rote or habit, and really engages 
 nothing of the utterer's will, and does not signify the 
 desire of the worshiper to have a share in the conduct 
 
144 THE CONTINUOUS CRE AT/OX. 
 
 of the universe, is not prayer. I do not deny that 
 such service may have a use, — ritual, educational, and 
 for the purposes of orderly worship. I simply affirm 
 it not to be prayer. AH human prayer at best is im- 
 perfect, but whether less imperfect or more, it is a 
 wish, deepening into a will, to have certain results ac- 
 complished. These results may not be accomplished ; 
 it may be of the highest importance that they should 
 not be accomplished ; but the wish, or the will, consti- 
 tutes the prayer a real prayer. A true parent will 
 respond to the wish of a child when it is wise so to 
 do, not otherwise. If men ask God for that which is 
 not best, their prayer will not be answered, but it is 
 prayer nevertheless. 
 
 Now, could we uncover prayer of all its verbal ex- 
 pression, we would find it to be the wish or will of men 
 pressing on to get itself realized. Christ alluded to 
 those who thought they would be heard for their much 
 speaking. Really one is not heard for much speaking 
 or little. It is the will that counts. And we have 
 already seen that the will of man, finite, imperfect 
 being that he is, does count for much. 
 
 According to the evolutionary philosophy the human 
 will must have its roots or genesis in certain animal 
 instincts ; and a wonderful thing it is even in these 
 roots. The beaver has its civil engineering ; the bee 
 its architecture ; the spider its geometric tracery ; the 
 ant military, civic, and industrial society ; all crowded 
 into one term in our language, — instinct ; and all most 
 surprising to us when carefully considered. I suppose 
 we will all consent that back of this instinct and its 
 wondrous productions lies the Eternal Energy, or let 
 us say the Divine Power, Intelligence, and Will, so far 
 manifesting themselves. When we rise from these 
 
PRA YER. 145 
 
 miracles of instinct through eons of development to 
 the will of man, what shall we say of that ? Does not 
 the Divine will most individuate itself in this alto- 
 gether wonderful human will? Then for this human 
 will to be educated or developed to freely express and 
 do the Divine will, is any consummation greater than 
 that ? Our will asserts itself in myriads of ways, mys- 
 teriously. My will acts upon matter : I raise my 
 arm ; I know not how. From that on to the felling 
 of forests, and the creation of the complex civilized 
 state, is the manifold operation of human will. No 
 doubt all this is the- operation too of the Divine will, 
 but then it is through the channel of the human will ; 
 so and not otherwise. That the human will should 
 correspond with the Divine will ; that it should get 
 itself into such correspondence, is therefore the one 
 thing needful. And precisely that is what prayer is 
 for. There are those who claim that it is as impossi- 
 ble for a human will to go counter to the Divine will 
 as for a beaver or a bee to do so. I simply revert to 
 our common experience of ability to choose as a refu- 
 tation of that. 
 
 The eternal righteousness above us, and we seeking 
 to do righteously ! Whether we realize it or not, our 
 seeking to do righteously is itself prayer. And if the 
 religious world be full of affectations of prayers, for- 
 mulas of prayer, postures and inflections of prayer ; 
 and if the prevalence of such outwardness has ren- 
 dered many oblivious of the inwardness of prayer ; yet 
 it remains true that at the bottom prayer is a seeking 
 to use our will in the affairs of life, the affairs of the 
 universe, therefore; and right prayer is the seeking 
 to use our wills righteously. If there are thousands 
 who think they pray, and pray not at all, but merely 
 
146 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 have some formula of prayer, there may be other 
 thousands who do not know that they pray, disowning 
 all formulas, who do nevertheless pray, because they 
 seek the reform or betterment of society — do them- 
 selves seek to act righteously. They are praying the 
 greatest of all prayers : " Thy kingdom come : thy 
 will be done on earth as in heaven." 
 
XII. 
 
 MIRACLES AKD SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 
 
 "And when the multitudes were gathering together unto him, he 
 began to say, This generation is an evil generation ; it seeketh after 
 a sign." — Luke xi. 29. 
 
 Our generation demands reasonableness in religion, 
 and not a sign. While there are multitudes of reli- 
 gious persons who do not at all feel the stress of the 
 demand, there are other multitudes who do feel it most 
 acutely. And they are on the increase. The more 
 generally the reasoning faculties are developed, the 
 more value will be given them. The greater will be 
 the revulsion against unreasonableness. If the choice 
 is given a person, of well-developed reasoning faculties, 
 of accepting an unreasonable religion, or of going with- 
 out religion, he is very likely to go without a religion. 
 And he does so upon conscientious grounds. If you 
 tell a man that he must accept some dogma of religion, 
 and that man knows, or seems to himself to know, that 
 the dogma is not true, then of course in all good con- 
 science he is compelled to reject your dogma. He 
 must do that or else play false. If he plays false, and 
 accepts your dogma, the religion is vitiated. On the 
 other hand, a person whose reasoning faculties are less 
 developed can in good conscience accept your dogma. 
 It is right for him to accept it, and wrong for the other 
 man. 
 
 Imagine, if you please, such a case as this. We 
 
148 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 will suppose that some body of religious people has 
 come to the conclusion that it is necessary to believe 
 that the earth ceased to revolve upon its axis for a 
 number of hours, at the command of a military leader, 
 some centuries ago. They have made up their minds, 
 upon grounds amply sufficient to them, that a reli- 
 gious person must believe that story, or he cannot be 
 truly religious. They proceed to examine some one 
 who desires to connect himself with them in a life of 
 religious faith and activity. "Do you believe in Jesus 
 Christ?" "Yes." " Do you devote yourself with sin- 
 cerity and a full consecration of yourself to living the 
 life which He taught and lived ? " " Yes, by the help 
 of God, I have consecrated myself to the purpose of 
 living that life, in the spirit of it." " Do you believe 
 that the earth once stopped revolving on its axis, so as 
 to permit Joshua to conquer heathen enemies ? '' " Yes, 
 I believe that." But the candidate does in no meas- 
 ure appreciate the enormous difficulties of believing 
 such a thing as that. To him it is perfectly simple. 
 God is infinite in power and resources, he says, and 
 He can make a day forty hours long, as well as twelve. 
 The man's reason has not grappled at all with the 
 great principles involved ; he sees no difficulty, and he 
 accepts the religion loaded with such a burden. 
 
 We will suppose Professor Tyndall to appear before 
 the commission for examination. " Mr. Tyndall, do 
 you approve the life and character of Jesus Christ ? " 
 " Yes." " Is it your purpose to govern your life by the 
 principles He taught ? Do you wish to farther those 
 principles? And will you devote your life to that?" 
 " As I understand the teachings of Jesus Christ, — 
 the real intent of them I do most thoroughly believe 
 in, and I endeavor to live them, and to influence others 
 
MIRACLES AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 149 
 
 toward them, and into them." " You are a man of 
 science?" "Yes." "Do you believe the earth stood 
 still upon its axis, in the days of Joshua, the Israel- 
 ite ? " Mr. Tyndall answers in these words (they are 
 in fact his words) : " There is a scientific as well as 
 a historic imagination ; and when, by the exercise of 
 the former, the stoppage of the earth's rotation is 
 clearly realized, the event assumes proportions so vast, 
 in comparison with the result to be attained by it, that 
 belief reels under the reflection. The energy here in- 
 volved is equal to that of six trillions of horses work- 
 ing for the whole of the time employed by Joshua in 
 the destruction of his foes. The amount of power 
 thus expended would be sufficient to supply every in- 
 dividual of an army a thousand times the strength of 
 that of Joshua, with a thousand times the fighting 
 power of each of Joshua's soldiers, not for the few 
 hours necessary to the extinction of a handful of 
 Amorites, but for millions of years." For the reason 
 that a vast lavish expenditure of force was wasted, and 
 for other reasons, Mr. Tyndall is unable to believe that 
 story. Now, Mr. Tyndall has in an exceptional degree 
 developed those faculties of judgment and of reason 
 with which he is gifted. He is therefore compelled to 
 eliminate the palpably unreasonable from his think- 
 ing. And if the issue is to be that he must accept an 
 unreasonable (to him) dogma, — - or be deprived of 
 religion altogether, he will in all honesty be forced to 
 forego religion. It is noticeable that Mr. Tyndall ex- 
 plicitly denies having a wish to limit the outgoings 
 of Almighty power ; but he is compelled to conduct 
 his thinking in the light of reason. Now were such 
 a process as I have indicated to be carried on, to 
 the exclusion of men of developed reason from the 
 
J50 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 benefits of religion, more and more, it is obvious that 
 the time would soon come when intelligence or reason 
 would be regarded with positive hostility by religious 
 persons, and religious society would gradually sink 
 into ignorance, if not mental imbecility. And inas- 
 much as it appears to be the purpose of Almighty God 
 that knowledge shall be increased, the intelligence of 
 the world would become an irreligious power alto- 
 gether ; and it would be but a question of brief time 
 when religion should be blotted from the earth. 
 
 This is a most grave matter — the gravest that now 
 confronts us in connection with religion. As know- 
 ledge increases it is inevitable that views will modify. 
 No matter how stout the opposition ; no matter how 
 much danger may be apprehended by religious people 
 from the modification of opinions, we have come to the 
 time when we face the most fundamental of changes 
 in opinion. To the Christian evolutionist this change, 
 amounting to a thorough reconstruction of theology, 
 is simply the work of God continuing. To him it is 
 more wonderful, because more thinkable, than any 
 miracle. 
 
 It is on account of the great increase of intelligence, 
 and of the growing conception of the reign of law in the 
 universe, that our age has actually become intolerant of 
 miracles. Long ago a miracle was as reasonable al- 
 most as anything else. And even in quite recent times, 
 enlightened people, like the English, were believers in 
 witchcraft. The weight of testimony, two centuries 
 ago, was in favor of such a belief. And those whose 
 opinions are of actual worth do form them according 
 to the weight of testimony. The eminent and en- 
 lightened Sir Matthew Hale sentenced two women to 
 be hung, because guilty of witchcraft. He held, in 
 
MIRACLES AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 151 
 
 determining the case, that Scripture affirmed the real- 
 ity of witchcraft, and that the wisdom of nations had 
 provided laws against witches. Sir Thomas Browne, 
 the distinguished physician and author, testified in the 
 case that he believed the persons complaining were 
 bewitched.^ Could you find courts in Christendom 
 now holding such opinions, and executing unfortu- 
 nate persons under the sanctions of them ? The ground 
 has been cleared of such opinions by the develop- 
 ment of intelligence. We have been putting Nature 
 into the vitness-box ; we have more testimony to 
 judge by than Hale or Browne had. 
 
 In respect to miracles science has this very positive 
 testimony to give : that it cannot so much as consider 
 a miracle. All the evidences that could be gathered 
 from the past would fail to override the conviction 
 of a scientist that he must judge things and decide 
 questions according to the laws of science. He does 
 not deny the absolute power of Deity ; but he is forced 
 to conduct his investigations according to natural laws. 
 Moreover, the practical thought of our day rejects mir- 
 acles as having any place now in the general economy 
 of things. Even those who most stoutly affirm that 
 miracles did happen in the elder times are quite sure 
 that none of them happen now. 
 
 But let us look at a miracle to see what it is, — or 
 what is claimed for it. We are told that it is " such 
 an overruling, resisting, or suspending of the known 
 and stable laws of nature as marks the immediate and 
 extraordinary power of God." What will the theis- 
 tic evolutionary philosopher have to say to that ? He 
 will say that there is one very grave objection to it, 
 viz., that the known and stable laws of nature are the 
 
 ^ Lecky, Hist. Eational., Vol, i., cited by Tyndall. 
 
152 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 modes of the immediate working of God continually. 
 If we are to think that nature's laws run themselves, 
 that God is not immediately concerned in them, that 
 would be the most astonishing miracle. Here is a 
 steam locomotive pulling a heavy train upon an up 
 grade. It is a very wonderful thing that the engine 
 can pull those heavy cars up the grade ; but if you 
 were to take the steam out, and if then the locomotive 
 should take its train on, that would be evidently the 
 most enormous wonder possible. Whenever nature 
 operates itself, apart from the eternal pow^r of God, 
 there wonld be a parallel case. If a tree were to grow 
 in any field ; if it were in the spring to put forth blos- 
 soms and leaves apart from the immediate power of 
 God, that would be like the steam locomotive pulling 
 a load, and that without steam. Now when the phi- 
 losophy of the world was such that people thought in 
 that way, having some notion that nature did operate 
 itself, then if at any point there came to be evidence 
 that God was working nature, at that particular time 
 and place, people were so deeply impressed by it that 
 they called it a breaking-in of divine power. 
 
 That there could be a breaking-in upon nature of 
 a before absent God, we cannot entertain the idea of 
 after we have found that an absent God means an abol- 
 ished nature. If an apple were to grow on a tree, 
 and not by the immediate power of God, that apple 
 would be a self - made and a self - sustaining power ; 
 and no event recorded in myth or legend would be so 
 altogether beyond credit to a modern thinker as that 
 apple. It would be indeed the fruit of a forbidden 
 tree, a tree forbidden by all laws. 
 
 A miracle according to the old definition has no 
 place in the thinking of an evolutionist. It is safe to 
 
MIRACLES AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 153 
 
 say that. But not so a miracle according to a more 
 rational definition. To a man of low development, 
 a savage, a miracle would be some sudden invasion of 
 a power which he would call preternatural — if he 
 could use such a word. He would be frightened by it. 
 He would try to get ajvay from the presence of such a 
 power, and yet he would blindly worship it. To a 
 man of high development a miracle might be a com- 
 mon thing. A fruit tree bare, and skeleton-like, all 
 at once begins to cover itself with beautiful forms 
 and colors. And a fragrance too rises upon the air. 
 It is wonderful, if the man has the capacity to look at 
 it and' see the wonder in it. Why do the blossoms get 
 themselves there ? Visible cause there is none. The 
 sun shines and the rains have fallen ; but they do not 
 put such gorgeous clothing upon other trees. Well, 
 the observer observes. And while he thinks about it 
 there grows in him a wonder, an adoring wonder, at 
 the whole performance. That is to say, the common 
 thing becomes to him a most surprising thing. And 
 not only so, but he sees that God is there present, 
 doing this wonderful thing. If we had never seen a 
 tree in blossom we should all call it a miracle. Or 
 if, having seen it, we should begin to consider it and 
 look into the mystery of it, then we should speak of 
 it as a miracle. For a miracle is simply a surprise.-* 
 It is not a breaking-in of God's power, because God 
 does not have to break in. If your friend sits at 
 your hearth and is engaged in delighting you with his 
 presence and his wisdom you are not on the lookout 
 for him to break in at the window like a burglar. 
 
 The movement of all history, as we have before 
 seen, is an ascent. From primitive life-germs to high 
 ' Sears, The Fourth Gospel. 
 
154' THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 organisms ; from primitive moral feelings and mental 
 activity to educated society. An advance. The whole 
 of God's work and ways did not burst in dazzling rev- 
 elation upon the vision of man as he was just coming 
 to moral consciousness. You might as well suppose 
 your infant child to have the knowledge of a Bacon 
 or a Goethe as to suppose that. God's power was ex- 
 erted all the time, as really as now ; but men caught 
 only faint glimpses of it. When they did catch a 
 glimpse of it, that was the miracle of their time. 
 And so they stumbled on, slowly picking up, one gen- 
 eration after another, a little increment of knowledge. 
 Through various periods of religious speculation and 
 thinking the race passed, and not without the words 
 of a few who saw more clearly than others the power 
 of God. 
 
 What now has all this course been, but a gradual 
 lifting of the veil from human understanding so as 
 to disclose more and more the presence and power 
 of God ? A theatre, with audience of blind people, 
 might have its curtain rolled up, and the performance 
 going on in due order, but upon each man's eyes 
 there would be a curtain not roUed up. If, however, 
 a process is going on by which this blindness is being 
 removed, then each night the play would become more 
 and more visible to the people present. Some would 
 see earlier than others, — and some more than others, 
 according to the degree of sight possessed by each. 
 So the world has been acquiring these many genera- 
 tions, among other things, sight. God's power all the 
 time performing its part, in ample disclosure ; but men 
 not seeing at all at first, — then very faintly, very im- 
 perfectly, as the sight-faculty develops. There come 
 to be miracle-glimpses, which seem like breakings-in 
 
MIRACLES AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 155 
 
 of God ; but in due time the wholesome, reverential 
 and clear insight comes, and then men see what has 
 been true all the time. May we not reasonably ex- 
 pect that a time wiU come when men will realize the 
 constant energy upon which all finite life depends ? 
 
 I suppose that the famous argument of David 
 Hume, the historian, is as strong as any argument 
 formulated since his time. It is this : " Invariable 
 experience is in favor of the uniformity of nature, 
 while it is not in favor of the infallibility of human, 
 testimony ; hence there is in all cases a greater prob-S 
 ability of the falsity of the testimony as to the occur- j 
 rence of a miracle, than of the violation of a law off 
 nature thereby implied." I think we must all con- 
 cede the strength of this argument. We commonly 
 act upon the theory of it, and are in the habit of 
 rejecting those stories which imply a violation of the 
 stable and known laws of nature. But Mr. Hume 
 appears to have proceeded upon the supposition that 
 for practical purposes all the laws of nature are known. 
 The invariable experience of men does not compre- 
 hend all that is to be known. For instance, the expe- 
 rience of those who had lived up to the time of Hume 
 did not include the knowledge of the great compre- 
 hensive law of evolution. 
 
 No age knows what powers are concealed in itself. 
 The primitive man gets a suitable tree, and digs out 
 the centre of the wood, and keeps on digging out until 
 he has made the outside thin. He points the ends of 
 the log, and it is no longer a log, but a boat. He fash- 
 ions rude paddles, and by such contrivance he paddles 
 against the current of a river, or the force of a tide. 
 He assumes, perhaps, that he has struck upon the only 
 mode of conveyance by water. But in time some one 
 
166 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 spreads a light fabric over the canoe, aiid the wind 
 drives it. The wind was there at first, but the primi- 
 tive man did not note the possible relation of it to his 
 needs. Moreover, a still gi-eater force was lying con- 
 cealed there. Alongside of the dugout is the very ele- 
 ment in which it moves — the water, — and there is the 
 lire on shore, by which the primitive man cooks his 
 food. The getting of these two into proper relation, 
 according to laws of nature then unsuspected, will pro- 
 pel navies. But experience does not conta,in any such 
 wonder as that in the time of the primitive man. The 
 power is there, the law is there, not yet exhibited, be- 
 cause the man has not got his eyes sufficiently open. 
 Imagine a man of to-day going down to the primitive 
 man and telling him what is perfectly true, and be sure 
 he will encounter a derisive unbelief. " What ! Cook 
 the water, and my boat will go without a paddle ? It 
 is absurd ! The fire and the water wiU not come to- 
 gether. The water puts out the fire, and the fire 
 dries away the water. I am not so foolish as to 
 believe such great stories ! " 
 
 Much depends upon a date. The human experi- 
 ences of to-day, all told, are not so great as will be the 
 experience of to-morrow. The evolution of experience 
 is an important factor in the argument, and seems not 
 to have been regarded by Huqae. The thing that was 
 surprising yesterday, — and scoffed at, perchance, is 
 commonplace and not surprising to-day. Mii'a-cles, 
 therefore, disappear as time goes on. To a man who 
 thoroughly realized the imnjanence of God in nature 
 there would be little of surprise in any divipe work. 
 A miracle, as an infraction of the stable laws of na- 
 1 ture, or as a breaking into nature of a Divine Being 
 ' who is usually absent from nature, will undoubtedly 
 
MIRACLES AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 157 
 
 be ruled out of intelligent thought by the philosophy 
 which assumes the most intimate relation between God 
 and the material universe. But a miracle, that is a 
 wonder, or a subject of surprise, no doubt will become 
 more familiar as the laws and forces of nature more 
 and more come into our knowledge and service. And 
 in a very little time the wonder will vanish. 
 
 It appears that a very great interest is felt in the 
 matter of the miracles recorded in the New Testament. 
 Probably this interest has been greatly stimulated by 
 such books as those of Renan ; and it is witnessed in 
 a marked manner by the eager attention at present 
 given to a novel which reviewers review from many 
 standpoints, and which the clergy appear to love to 
 preach about. I refer to " Robert Elsmere." Such 
 interest will testify to different minds different things. 
 To some, no doubt, it will indicate a wide-spread ten- 
 dency toward infidelity. The book has probably been 
 read by multitudes, and that I take to be the one im- 
 portant feature of its appearance among us. It has 
 been characterized as a dangerous book. But its popu- 
 larity suggests a great deal more than its pages contain. 
 
 The thermometer is not a dangerous instrument, 
 even though it should indicate a tempera,ture thirty 
 degrees below zero. The trouble is not with the ther- 
 mometer, but with the state of the atmosphere. And 
 this story book, in its reception by the public, marks 
 the temperature of the public mind. Very cold toward 
 the miracles, very much below any enthusiastic warmth, 
 at least, respecting the belief of them. It appears to 
 me that the book marks strongly that we have come to, 
 and are in, a transition period. And while many have 
 feared that faith would be eliminated, blotted out of 
 the very earth in which we live, it may be that faith 
 
158 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 itself will have a transfer from things outward and 
 ostensible, things marvelous, not to say impossible, to 
 another ground. In other worSs, instead of losing 
 faith, it may be well that we shall find it, by finding a 
 true object for it to rest upon. The principle of the 
 case may be partially illustrated in this way. One 
 goes to you and tells a story, and by telling this story 
 he proposes to get a considerable sum of money from 
 you. You are credulous of the story, and give the 
 applicant the money. The applicant is a stranger to 
 you, and all your faith rests upon the story told you. 
 And such things do not ordinarily turn out well. But 
 another person, whom you have long known, in whom 
 you have learned to believe, asks for your money and 
 says nothing, except that he wants it. In the one 
 case you feel that the issue is doubtful, because there 
 is nothing to rest upon but a story told by an unknown 
 person ; in the other case you feel that the issue is not 
 doubtful, because there is a character known, respected, 
 admired, loved, to rest upon. In each case you exer- 
 cise faith, but in one it is placed upon a tale that- is 
 told, — in the other upon a character. 
 
 Now I would call your careful attention to the im- 
 portance of this distinction, — in its application to the 
 New Testament and the tales that are told in it. In 
 the New Testament you are made acquainted with a 
 character ; you grow to believe in that character. It 
 is to you human, and it is divine. There are words 
 spoken by this person to which you are bound to give 
 assent. And altogether you are brought to an ac- 
 quaintance and a thorough faith in this being. By 
 whatever means you are brought to this acquaintance 
 and faith, you have reached the place where j^ou for- 
 get the means and remember the fact. But some one 
 
MIRACLES AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 159 
 
 will tell you that this man said things which were not 
 true, that He deceived the people; that He is there- 
 fore unworthy of confidence. Such aspersions roll off 
 His character so soon as they are uttered to you. You 
 know that the character is a true one. Now having 
 become acquainted with the life, you listen to tales that 
 are told concerning that life. These tales are told by 
 persons of whom you know, and can know, nothing. 
 In one story which has come down to us, detailed ac- 
 counts of the childhood of Jesus are given. The trees 
 bow to Him as He walks — He fashions sparrows out 
 of the dirt and bids them fly, and they do fly. And 
 numerous other things of the same sort. These tales 
 are told, but they are rejected by the readers of them. 
 They were rejected by those who established the canon 
 of the Bible as we now have it. Suppose they had 
 not been thus rejected. Suppose we should open 
 our New Testament and should read that the child 
 Jesus once laid hold of a piece of furniture made by 
 the carpenter Joseph, and because it did not prove 
 to be large enough for the place it was to occupy, 
 stretched it out to the desired dimensions. Suppose 
 we should read that the child also kQled his playmates 
 by a word or a look if they displeased him. Would 
 we be compelled to sacrifice our faith by disbelieving 
 those stories? 
 
 A great amount of critical study has been expended 
 upon the text of the four gospels, as well as upon 
 other portions of the Bible. A certain amount of 
 critical study was expended upon the determination 
 as to what should be admitted to the sacred canon and 
 what should be rejected. It was by reason of such 
 study, books like the one I have alluded to were ex- 
 cluded from the canon. Critical study has expunged 
 
160 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. v 
 
 a few passages from our New Testament, in the revised 
 version. The question might be asked if other ele- 
 ments would not have been excluded, had there been 
 a more developed standard of criticism in force when 
 the canon was fixed. 
 
 If there is a person who has come to be absolutely 
 convinced of the invariable reign of law and the or- 
 derly methods of nature, who has yet learned to love 
 and follow the teachings of Christ, and at the same 
 time finds himself obliged to discredit certain things 
 which are told about Christ, such as that He turned 
 water into wine, is that person to be held an unbe- 
 liever? Nay more. If he has come to a very abun- 
 dant belief, so that he conceives of God as continu- 
 ally changing water into wine, of multiplying loaves 
 and fishes, and the like, is he to be reckoned a disbe- 
 liever ? And if so, what does he disbelieve ? Not 
 God, and not Christ, but certain tales which he is 
 unable to verify. Is a man blamable for being a be- 
 liever in the order of nature ? Certainly we all do 
 believe in that order. One man believes in it more 
 than another. Is he to blame for that ? It has been 
 held by some that the harder it is to believe in certain 
 things the more merit there is in believing them ; 
 whereas it is plainly apparent that such belief is no 
 belief. If the Christian religion is of universal appli- 
 cation, it cannot demand of any one that he shall be- 
 lieve that which to him is an impossibility ! On the 
 contrary Christianity demands of every man that he 
 shall believe and be loyal to the thing that he per- 
 ceives to be true. Tens of thousands of people have 
 no difficulty in believing that the sun stood still in the 
 sky at the command of Joshua. They have no dif- 
 ficulty because their imagination has not been trained 
 
MIRACLES AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 161 
 
 to deal with such a problem. But if it were trained 
 and if they became accustomed to the use of scien- 
 tific methods, they would cease to believe that such 
 an event occurred. Would they therefore cease to be 
 Christians ? It cannot be too strongly insisted upon 
 that a Christian faith is not a faith in what a book 
 contains, but in God manifest in the flesh; in the 
 Divine character, in the Divine human life. 
 
 If a man were at the last stages of exhaustion, and 
 some one moved by compassion were to bring a glass 
 of pure wine to drink, and were afterward to break 
 the glass to fragments against the rocks, would the 
 revived man care for that ? Christ came in an age of 
 wonders and signs ; and if the wonders are now dis- 
 credited. He is not. I am very sure that whosoever 
 drinks at the fountain of His life is so inspired by it 
 that he cares little if the cup by which the healing 
 draught was lifted to his lips be broken. 
 
 And yet, speaking for myself, and perhaps for 
 many, all the miracles recorded in the New Testa- 
 ment are as real to me almost as though I had seen 
 them. I can see the thousands feeding upon the five 
 little loaves and the two small fishes, and the twelve 
 baskets of fragments. I can see Lazarus come forth 
 bound hand and foot from the tomb. I can see the 
 Son of Man walking upon the water. Every such 
 scene is depicted in my imagination as if it were an 
 object of memory. Not only so, but every such tale is 
 dear to me, from association, as well as from a feeling 
 that every miracle is a crystal casket containing some 
 precious truth. But when the cool reasoning process! 
 is started, I find myself unable to defend my accept- 1 
 ance of these things, even to myself. Is it not be- 
 cause the imagination has been educated, not in lines 
 
162 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 of scientific procedure, but in the lines of religious 
 emotion ? 
 
 Let there be another person whose imagination has 
 been strictly trained in the observance of the laws of 
 nature and of science, and to him all those miracles 
 have no existence. Is he incapacitated to have faith 
 and be a follower of the Christ? If so, then the 
 Christian faith wiU not long have a hold upon the 
 nations and communities which foster science. The 
 time may come when the miracles of the New Testa- 
 ment will be seen to belong to the order of nature. 
 The immense authority of the Son of God over the 
 laws and forces of nature may be understood. In 
 any event Christianity simply asks men to believe in 
 the Son of God, to become themselves the sons of 
 God, and to live the life of faith in an ever-present 
 and ever-working God. 
 
 If miracles substantiated anything nineteen centu- 
 ries ago, they substantiate nothing now. We have no 
 call to impose a belief in them upon any one. We 
 must recall the words of Christ : " An evil generation 
 seeketh after a sign." God is the object of faith, 
 and if faith is placed in signs and wonders it becomes 
 degenerate, sinking at last into darkness and night. 
 
XIII. 
 
 DIVINE INSHININGS. 
 
 "And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness appre- 
 hended it not." — JoHH i. 5. 
 
 " An Indian apologue tells us," says Dr. Cunning- 
 ham Geikie in his "Life of Christ," "that a Brah- 
 min, one of whose disciples had been perplexed re- 
 specting miracles, ordered a flower-pot filled with 
 earth to be brought to him, and having put a seed 
 into it before the doubter, caused it to spring up, 
 blossom, and bear fruit, while he stood by. 
 
 " ' A miracle ! ' cried the young man. ' Son,' replied 
 the Brahmin, ' what else do you see done here in an 
 hour than nature does more slowly round the year ? ' " 
 Dr. Geikie goes on : "A miracle is only an exercise in 
 a new way of the Almighty power we see daily pro- 
 ducing perhaps the same results in nature. Infinitely 
 varied forces are at work around us every moment. 
 Trom the sun to the atom, from the stone to the think- 
 ing brain and beating heart, they circulate sleeplessly, 
 through all things forever. As they act and react on 
 each other, the amazing result is produced which we 
 know as nature, but how many mysterious inter-rela- 
 tions, of which we know nothing, may offer endlessly 
 varied means for producing specific ends at the com- 
 mand of God ? Nor is there anything more amazing 
 in the works of Christ than in the daily phenomena 
 of nature. The vast universe, embracing heavens 
 
164 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 above heavens, stretching out into the injBnite, — with 
 constellations anchored on the vast expanse like tiny- 
 islet clusters on the boundless ocean, is one great mir- 
 acle. It was wonderful to create, but to sustain crea- 
 tion is itself to create anew each moment. Suns and 
 planets, living creatures in their endless races, aU that 
 the round sky of each planet covers, seas, air, sweep- 
 ing valleys, lofty mountains, and the million wonders 
 of the brain and heart and life of their innumerable 
 populations, have no security, each moment, that they 
 shall commence another, except in the continued ex- 
 penditure of fresh creative energy." 
 
 I will venture to present two propositions which 
 are contradictory to each other, and both of which 
 we may probably admit to be true. The first is this : 
 The age of miracles is past. Among highly civilized 
 people, in almost all churches of the Protestant faith, 
 among aU. schools of thought and philosophy, the senti- 
 ment prevails that miracles belong to the past. There 
 are some persons here and there, highly civilized, and 
 perhaps connected with our churches, who believe that 
 miracles continue, but such persons are comparatively 
 few in number. We do not believe that any one can 
 now walk iipon the surface of water, unless it is frozen, 
 nor that people who require money wherewith to pay 
 their taxes can find it in the mouth of a fish caught 
 for the purpose. That is one proposition. The other 
 is that the age of miracles has now begun, and lies 
 future to us, also, teeming with unspeakable wonders. 
 We are accustomed to a form of speech which indi- 
 cates a belief in this proposition. How can the two 
 be held in common ? They are held in common. And 
 we can see how that is possible, when we consider 
 how contradictory our common thought is in respect 
 
DIVINE INSHININGS. 165 
 
 to miracles. The very ones who deride the miracles 
 of the olden times are fond of referring to the won- 
 ders of the present. 
 
 Now, if a man were to go through a street in the 
 middle of a dark night he would see at intervals small 
 yellow lights, stationed there for the purpose of aiding 
 such night wanderers as he, and thus serving a most 
 useful purpose. Darkness prevailing all around, but 
 these mere points of light set in place to be at least so 
 much of light. Let him continue his walk. Back 
 and forth he goes, until light begins to come in a gen- 
 eral volume. Dawn renders the lights less and less 
 observable, until when the full daylight is come the 
 yellow lights do, in fact, afford no aid whatever to him. 
 Unless his attention were called to them he would not 
 notice them at all, or only accidentally. For lighting 
 purposes they would have no use. The apostle John 
 represents God as light. Let us adopt this represen- 
 tation. This light shineth in the darkness and the 
 darkness apprehendeth it not. When light shines in 
 darkness it shines in detached places here and there. 
 It does not shine all abroad, universally, or else surely 
 it would not be shining in darkness. Look at the 
 moral and mental development of men and commu- 
 nities, and it will be evident that light comes slowly, 
 and in particular places. God's power does, in sober 
 fact, sustain the universe. We can say that now with 
 perfect confidence. Long ago it could not have been 
 said so confidently. God's power did not emerge to 
 visibility except in rare intervals and to rare men. 
 The reason was not that God's power was not exerted, 
 but that men did not know how to recognize it. 
 When anything unusual occurred, out of the range of 
 ordinary experience, that was attributed to some mys- 
 
166 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 terious power, which men learned in a slow fashion to 
 call divine. In such unusual occurrences men saw a 
 little gleam of the uncreated light. But not all men 
 saw this light, — onlj^ a few, such as were awake. 
 
 It is related in the Scriptures that when Jacob, the 
 patriarch, fled from the presence of his brother Esau, 
 he lighted upon a certain place and rested there for 
 the night. And in the night he dreamed. A ladder 
 stood there, as he perceived in his dream, from earth 
 to heaven, and upon this ladder the angels were as- 
 cending and descending. When he awoke it was with 
 a new thought kindled in his mind. He said, " God 
 is in this place and I knew it not." This awful convic- 
 tion came to him in that process of mind which we 
 call the most unreal of all, a dream. As he raised his 
 head from his stone pillow, he may have turned his 
 eyes in every direction to see the ladder, and the an- 
 gels going up and down it. But nothing of the kind 
 was visible. If you will think of it, the notion of a 
 ladder, with rounds, for angels to travel on, like fire- 
 men, is grotesque and absurd. An angel who would 
 require a ladder would manifestly be a feeble and for- 
 lorn being. It may be that Jacob came to feel that 
 his dream was, so far as its scenery was concerned, a 
 most unreal thing. But that mattered little. The 
 great fact was that a gleam of light had entered his 
 soul from the before invisible. It appears that he, 
 in common with most of his fellow-men, had never 
 supposed that God was in the place where they were. 
 If they thought of God, it would be as a majesty 
 reigning in some other place. But now Jacob was 
 convinced that God was not absent from the place in 
 which he had slept. That was the thought which was 
 destined to grow in him, and in the nation of which 
 
DIVINE INSHININGS. 167 
 
 he was founder. From it would result the conviction 
 in others that God was in the places where they were. 
 And so Jacob made a monument there, in rough sort, 
 testifying that the place was a dreadful one — a place 
 of awful solemnities — because he had found that the 
 Invisible One, of whom he had heard from his father 
 Isaac, was there. And it may be said that out of this 
 conviction grew the Israelitish nation. They had their 
 tabernacle, and offered their morning and evening- 
 sacrifices. They afterward built their temple upon a 
 hill of that region, calling it the house of God, so 
 witnessing to all nations that they had found the pres- 
 ence of the invisible Power. Nothing is more unreal 
 than a dream. That a dream, and a grotesque, absurd 
 dream of a ladder scaled by angels, should become 
 the foundation of a national polity and religion, must 
 be a very disturbing fact to those who maintain that if 
 water was not turned into wine at the marriage feast 
 in Cana of Galilee, then the Christian religion is all 
 an imposition from beginning to end. It may never- 
 theless be true that the dream of Jacob, of which so 
 careful an account is given in the sacred Scriptures, 
 was of more importance to Israel's future than almost 
 any other one thing. For the impression was made, 
 and it became deepened with the passing of time, that 
 God was there, the actual sovereign of Jacob and of 
 those who should proceed from him. It was an in 
 shining of God, the light, in the general darkness of 
 the world, not apprehended by the darkness, but pre- 
 paratory to a more general inshining in the future. 
 
 Let us go on from Jacob to later times, and we be- 
 hold an increase of the conviction which had become 
 rooted in Jacob's being. In Moses it has enlarged. 
 He finds God's presence in the wilderness of Sinai. 
 
168 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 He sees a bush that is burning, but not consumed. 
 This may have been as unreal in physics as the ladder- 
 dream of Jacob. The unreal often covers the real as 
 the husk covers the corn. The real of the case was 
 the conviction in the mind of Moses that the ground 
 whereon he stood was holy ground, because God was 
 there present. And the voice, if not a vibration of 
 the waves of air, which is usually the outward phe- 
 nomenon of a voice, was a most real voice telling him 
 the great truth that God was in that place, as well as 
 in Hebron, The voice goes on to tell the shepherd 
 the great truth, which he had been slow to apprehend, 
 that God was the witness of' the bondage and suffer- 
 ings of the people in Egypt. And that the time had 
 come for their deliverance. Now will any one be bold 
 enough to say that if there were no vibrations of the 
 air at that place and time there was nothing whatever? 
 Without attempting to follow the steps of the devel- 
 opment of Jacob's conviction, or of the greater convic- 
 tion of Moses, let us pass over centuries, and halt with 
 Jesus and His disciples as they bend in reverent con- 
 sideration over the flower which bloomed by the road- 
 side. At last the conviction of Jacob has attained its 
 completion. And the profound feeling of Moses, that 
 the ground whereon he stood was indeed holy ground, 
 is enlarged to infinity. Had the disciples ever looked 
 at a flower before ? Yes. Thousands of times they 
 had seen the humble thing by the path as they walked. 
 But they had never thought the ground holy where the 
 flower grew. Now, however, the flower was changed 
 into a burning flower, just as to Moses the bush was 
 turned into a burning bush ; it burned with the light 
 that does not consume. They too, turned aside to see 
 that wonderful thing, and if then they did not hear all 
 
DIVINE INSHININGS. 169 
 
 that tlie voice said, the time did come when they 
 must have realized in some little degree that the 
 ground in which not only that particular flower grew, 
 but the ground in which all flowers are growing, is 
 holy ground, because God is there. Awe-struck by 
 his vision, Jacob had felt that the place where he had 
 been sleeping was a dreadful place ; and the Israelite 
 afterward felt that the temple, God's house, into whose 
 outward courts he might come, was in its innermost 
 sanctuary a dreadful place, a place not to be looked 
 upon, except by the highest of the nation, and then 
 but once in a year. 
 
 But Christ had shown His disciples that while all 
 places are holy places, they are not dreadful places. 
 They are indeed sacred, so soon as one learns the 
 presence in all places of One not to be dreaded, but 
 to be trusted and obeyed. 
 
 If we are told that there was no ladder between the 
 earth and sky, that there were no angels going up 
 and down the rounds of it, and that therefore the 
 very foundation of the Israelitish polity and religion 
 is gone, we can surely afford to smile at such a state- 
 ment. 
 
 It is with the conviction of Jacob we have to do ; 
 and that it should have come by way of a dream is of 
 no account. It got here, lodged itself in the man's 
 mind, began to outgrow his mind and other minds, 
 went on growing. If we are told that never did a 
 bush burn but that it consumed (unless the fire were 
 extinguished), and that therefore the whole of the 
 work of Moses, his legislation and leadership, are 
 nothing but so much imposition upon the credulity of 
 silly people, we can also afford to smile at that. For 
 the great fact remains, however it may be accounted 
 
170 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 for, that such things have been introduced into the 
 world by dream of Jacob, by vision of Moses, have 
 been of great use and purpose in the world, have 
 brought to pass farther developments of the know- 
 ledge of God. 
 
 At the present time we are more or less familiar 
 with statements such as this : viz., If Christianity 
 was not introduced into the world by miracles, if the 
 tales which are related by the evangelists of the three 
 synoptic gospels — to say nothing of the fourth gospel 
 — are not literally true, then Christianity falls to the 
 ground as a baseless system, and not only valueless, 
 but as a great fraud practised upon the credulity of 
 nineteen centuries. Such a statement is made by fair- 
 minded and earnest men, who fear the issue of the 
 criticism of our day. Let us glance at the implica- 
 tions of this kind of feeling. It is related by one of 
 the evangelists that as Christ approached the village 
 of Nain, He met a funeral procession, and that He 
 restored the dead man to life. This tale is related by 
 that one of the evangelists who prefaced his gospel by 
 the statement that he had undertaken to gather up 
 and critically examine the information possible to be 
 obtained from all sources. It is a usual thing in this 
 world of ours that among the possible sources of infor- 
 mation may be those w^hich are not reliable. How- 
 ever that may be, if we are told that if this incident 
 did not occur then the whole of Christianity is a fable, 
 it might be asked whether it would still be true that 
 the meek and the merciful and the pure of heart are 
 blessed. Or if we ought to cease to believe that such 
 as hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled, 
 in case it should be proved that the infant Jesus was 
 never taken down into Egypt. When it was declared 
 
DIVINE INSHININGS. 171 
 
 to the people of Europe that the sun does uot revolve 
 around the earth, some one might rise and say that if 
 the sun does not revolve around the earth there is no 
 sun. But the sun does shine in the heavens in spite 
 of the now admitted fact that it does not revolve 
 around the earth : and all men are bathed in the light 
 of it and warmed by the heat of it. 
 
 That Christianity was introduced by miracles, i. e., 
 wonderful and abundant inshinings of the light of 
 God's power, I do not doubt. I think it is even capa- 
 ble of demonstration. That the way was prepared for 
 the introduction of Christianity by many glimpses of 
 the light of God's presence, occurring at not infre- 
 quent intervals for many centuries, seems to me the 
 most natural and reasonable thing to believe. Indeed, 
 if the case were to be adequately presented, I am of 
 opinion that aU candid persons who are in any sense 
 theists, and perchance some who are not, would accept 
 such a statement. For the Uncreated Light is ever 
 shining, has ever been shining. Every man born into 
 the world, at any time, as I take it, has stood in the 
 full blaze of the Uncreated Light. But has every 
 man comprehended it? Ah, there lies the difficulty. 
 Say that a child is newly born to-day, and takes his 
 place among us as a member of our human family. 
 Here is the newly born child, and here are all the 
 things which the light of the sun discloses. Such 
 multitude of things of all kinds, and all of them 
 present, and the light of the sun upon them all, — but 
 how much does the child actually see of all ? Nothing. 
 Full disclosure, if you please, of all the ways and works 
 of men and of God, but a very great lack on the 
 part of this new observer. The darkness, we are enti- 
 tled to declare, is all in the observer. Begins then the 
 
172 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 education of the child. What are the earlier seeings 
 of the little observer but most imperfect and dis- 
 torted seeiugs ? Glimpses and consequent wonder- 
 ment ; glimpses increasing. But suppose your little 
 child undertakes to tell what he sees, and what he 
 thinks of what he sees, and to explain causes, there 
 will certainly be much mixture of the real and the 
 apparent in the narration. The child may be entirely 
 simple and candid, and desirous of telling the truth as 
 it actually is, but he will fail in that because he is not 
 sufficiently instructed. The wonderful things coming 
 under the observation of the learner will be told out 
 by him according to his feeble grasp of the subject. 
 
 Now this little child repeats the history of the hu- 
 man race in epitome. We have found that the young 
 of species repeat the physical history of the species ; 
 it is also true that the mental and moral history of 
 our human race is repeated, in effect, by the young of 
 the race. Go back into the far past, and among all 
 nations you will find something of the feelings of men 
 respecting God. In every literature flash the mira- 
 cles. For in every literature there are inshinings of 
 the power of God. Men did not know what these in- 
 shinings were ; they did not refer them to the One 
 and only Supreme God. But they felt that they were 
 surrounded by a power, or powers, of which they tried 
 to speak as well as they knew how. They had strange 
 experiences and tried to tell them. These experi- 
 ences, told and retold, grew into the traditions of 
 tribes and families. They grew into the religious feel- 
 ing, and made up the body of the religion of peoples. 
 We read the tales of Homer, the mythologies of the 
 North and the East, and of the Komans, and of the 
 aborigines of our continent. Are not all these tales 
 
DIVINE INSUININGS. 173 
 
 and mythologies lies ? There is no Odin, no Jupiter, 
 no sun-god, no Brahra. We find the ancients of dif- 
 ferent localities talking about these fancied beings, 
 offering them worship and sacrifices. And we cry- 
 out in a kind of indignation against all these fables. 
 We look down from our lofty height upon them all 
 and say : " Two things or more we your descendants 
 and superiors have to say to you, that your instructors 
 were liars, and those of you who consented to be thus 
 instructed were fools ! " Ah, how small a right have 
 we to take such a lofty tone. The Light was shining. 
 Light of God's power and wisdom, aU along those 
 ages, and among all those people, but it was shining 
 in the darkness and the darkness apprehended it not. 
 The undeveloped mind of the observers of nature 
 could receive at most but the faint glimpses of the 
 Light. 
 
 Respecting the religions of the past, two kinds of 
 feelings exist, as I make out, and neither of them wise 
 or reverent toward God. One is the feeling of dis- 
 dain, bitter, or calm and philosophical, toward all an- 
 cient religions ; legends of the North, myths of the 
 Greek, worship of Egypt, Hebrew theism, Christianity, 
 — all fabulous, and all to be distrusted by rational 
 people, — to be dropped by them into the limbo of 
 forgetfulness. Why waste our time on such childish 
 superstition ? Why give so much as a thought to the 
 futile dreams of dead visionaries, impostors, and myth 
 makers? At once we recognize this as the utterance 
 of infidelity, and protest that it is not a good utter- 
 ance. The other feeling induces those who have it to 
 separate between the Hebrew and Christian religions, 
 and all the other religions of the past. Such a sepa- 
 ration is true, if reasonably guarded. It is not reason- 
 
174 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 ably guarded when we declare that in these two, the 
 one rooted in the other, we have the truth, without 
 admixture of error ; and have in all the outside reli- 
 gions. Northern, Greek, Egyptian, Eastern, nothing 
 but error, unmixed with truth : and not only error, 
 but most mischievous and intentional misrepresenta- 
 tion ; lies, and nothing but lies. That declaration is 
 surely contrary to the spirit of Christianity, which 
 presents God as the Father of men, and the Lover 
 of men of all nations. It denies the shining of the 
 Light as universal. It justifies the hatred of one man 
 to another, of one nation to another. 
 
 But once let it be seen, as John saw, that the true 
 Light IJghteth every man that cometh into the world, 
 and we go free both from the general disdain of infi- 
 delity, and the contempt which many have toward 
 every religion but their own. While upon all men the 
 Light shined, some must have been better prepared for 
 it than others; some must have better interpreted 
 things and their relations than others. Those found- 
 ers of nations, men like Abraham, who best appre- 
 hended the Light, would have most of divine revela- 
 tion. They and their descendants would be best fitted 
 to bless the world and to spread the light. But to 
 assume that Abraham and his descendants had all the 
 truth and no error, and that all others had all error 
 and no truth, would be the same as to assume that 
 the sun does not shine in the heavens for all men, 
 but only in Palestine for a few men. 
 
 Now, if at any time there has been a complete and 
 perfect understanding of events, and of God's relation 
 to them, and if this complete understanding is re- 
 corded, then we have a perfect standard of all truth. 
 Then there is something in which there is not the 
 
DIVINE INSHININGS. 175 
 
 shade of a possible error. We shall have the inshin- 
 ings of God's power and presence given in precisely 
 right statement, and the whole of the truth of the 
 case will be told. But the Apostle Paul, who had 
 seen the Great Light coming upon him with a force 
 and volume so tremendous, confesses that at the sum- 
 mit of his experience, and of the experience of all 
 others, our best knowledge is not a complete know- 
 ledge, but a partial knowledge. " We know in part." 
 He had a vision of being caught up to the third 
 heavens, where he was shown unspeakable things. 
 We interpret it that he had a great experience of 
 heaven, unreportable to others, but that he was here 
 among men, and on earth, when he had this wonder- 
 ful experience. He, however, confesses that he does 
 not know whether he was in the body or out of the 
 body at the time. He does not know whether his 
 body went to the third heaven or not. So great was 
 the wonder, the ecstasy of the vision, so completely 
 was his mind occupied with it, that he was unable to 
 say anything about his body, or whether that went 
 aloft to the skies. To Paul the ascent of a body to 
 the farthest sky was not an impossibility ; to us it 
 is, for our time at least, an impossibility. He does 
 not know whether his body had been among the stars 
 or not. Another man, with soul so highly wrought 
 upon, but without Paul's caution, might easily have 
 been persuaded that he had been in heaven, in body, 
 and in clothes and all. And might most honestly 
 have testified to that effect. The miracle was, I sub- 
 mit, a most real one, a veritable inshining of the Light, 
 but what the relator of it did not know, we are quite 
 sure we know, viz., that his ascent to heaven was a 
 spiritual experience, wonderfully vivid, and not an 
 
176 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 ascension of his person through the air, and through 
 the ether beyond the air, to some locality called the 
 third heaven. 
 
 ,0f miracles, in the sense of breakages or suspen- 
 sions of natural laws, our education in the light of the 
 century in which we live, and our confidence in the 
 reign of law, render us necessarily distrustful. But 
 miracles, in the sense of surprising inshinings of the 
 divine power, we are not called upon by reason or 
 rational philosophy to reject. On the contrary, we 
 must have learned, from the evolution of childhood to 
 adulthood, both in individuals and nations, that the 
 Light that lighteth every man is received by men only 
 as they have their eyes opened and are able to see. 
 We are sure that the darkness comprehends not the 
 light. That the first apprehensions of it are slight and 
 mingled with much error. That the later apprehen- 
 sions of it are not perfect apprehensions, but partial. 
 Therefore, we do find occasion to call in question the 
 manner in which the miracles or inshinings of God are 
 presented to us in the Scriptures, as well as in other 
 books. Must we not agree with Paul and say of those 
 who wrote the accounts of the inshinings of God in 
 the days of Christ, that they knew in part and testi- 
 fied in part ? If they could have told us all, we should 
 suffer no difficulty. 
 
 The purpose of all the inshinings of God's power in 
 the past is manifestly to open our eyes, not to signs 
 and wonders, but to the truth which the signs signify. 
 And that is the actual Divine presence and love and 
 grace. How we come to realize that, whether by 
 dreams and visions or by wonders of any kind, is of 
 little import. And when we do realize it, we have 
 no farther use for miracles. As at noon day, when 
 
DIVINE IN SHINING S. 177 
 
 the sun is shining overhead, we have no use for street 
 lamps. 
 
 Christianity, we are sometimes told, means largely 
 belief in miracles. That a man may have faith in 
 God, he may have religion, but if he has not faith in 
 specific miracles his religion is not Christianity. Need 
 any reader of the New Testament be told that Christ 
 was a reluctant worker of signs and wonders ? That 
 He did not value the faith that was founded upon 
 them ? How reproachfully He says to one : " Except 
 ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe." It 
 could be said now to those who assert that they would 
 give up their religion if they did not believe in mir- 
 acles. If that is so, I do most seriously question 
 whether they would give up the Christian religion : it 
 would be a religion of thaumaturgy. If one believes 
 in signs and wonders, and the like, it is a question for 
 him to ask himself, with emphasis, whether he does in 
 fact believe in the Eternal God, who works all things 
 wonderful and not wonderful. If ho does believe in 
 God, the miracles are of no farther use to him. If he 
 does not believe in God, they are still of no use to him. 
 
 The divine revelation to our race is in general its 
 education, and this education is slow. It proceeds 
 like the education of a child. The child takes first 
 the sound of letters, and is taught to connect the 
 sound with the sign ; then he puts two or three letters 
 together into short words, or syllables ; then he puts 
 syllables together into larger words ; then words into 
 sentences and from that on he goes to such acquire- 
 ment as he may. But the earliest acquirement is the 
 least and conveys the least knowledge. The know- 
 ledge of the sign and its sound is preparatory to fur- 
 ther knowledge. And the main object is the acqui- 
 
178 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 sition of all possible knowledge. As time goes on the 
 childish things are put away. A man has lost the dis- 
 tinct perception of a letter in a word, and of a word 
 in a sentence. 
 
 The religious revelation to our race is an advancing, 
 increasing revelation. The later revelation must needs 
 be in advance of all that precedes. I need hardly be 
 at pains to prove that the latest revelation is that of 
 the universal prevalence of law. Law for all created 
 things, law for all relations and beings. Law for all 
 the heavens as well as for our particular localities. 
 This peculiarly characterizes the education of the past 
 two centuries. That this education is of God need be 
 in no degree doubtful to the one who has the concep- 
 tion of any kind of divine revelation. The idea of 
 universal law has made an impression upon our age 
 second to no other. So profound is this impression 
 that the astronomer, for instance, would readily stake 
 all that he possesses, nay, his life itself, upon the con- 
 stancy of the laws with which he is familiar. Upon 
 an abrupt termination of any law of the heavens he 
 would stake nothing. He cannot soberly consider 
 such a contingency. Is he right? Is it not faith in 
 God, as governing the universe in order, that makes 
 him willing to stake his life upon that order ? And if 
 any religion of man demands of him that he forego his 
 confidence, will he not be justified in saying no to it ? 
 The question of God's power does not arise in such a 
 case ; God could drown the earth in the conflagration 
 of the sun to-morrow ; we have the utmost confidence 
 that such an event will not occur, because we have ob- 
 served the law which governs the movements of the 
 earth. In regard to all the abrupt interferences of 
 God with the order of nature which are recorded in 
 
DIVINE INSHININGS. 179 
 
 all books o£ the ancient time, any man will take them 
 to be true, when he is assured of the actuality of the 
 occurrence by adequate proof. But until that proof 
 arrives he could not believe them in such a way as to 
 stake his life upon them. On the other hand, that 
 righteousness is blessed, that hungering and thirsting 
 for it is blessed, and, in brief, the teachings and life 
 of Christ, he can stake his life upon, because they 
 meet the response of his own intuition. The Brahmin 
 of Dr. Geikie's story employed a kind of magic to open 
 the eyes of his disciple to the universal power and wis- 
 dom of God. Christ employed a power, not magical, 
 but to appearance extraordinary, to open the eyes 
 of His disciples, or to let more of the light shining 
 around them in upon them, in which light He dwelt. 
 How He did this, we have no record. The mode there- 
 fore is unimportant, while the light is of vast impor- 
 tance. In other words, the sign, or wonder, is not 
 of consequence ; but the thing signified is of vast 
 consequence. 
 
 The story of the prodigal son, is it a true story ? 
 In the deepest sense true, in the shallowest sense 
 not true. It is related that Christ opened the eyes 
 of the blind. Whether true or not in the shallowest 
 sense, certainly that was what He was constantly do- 
 ing. He was letting in the light, and how fitting 
 therefore were his words : " While ye have the light 
 believe on the light, that ye may become sons of 
 light." 
 
XIV. 
 
 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AKD THE SURVIVAL OF THE 
 FITTEST. 
 
 " Blessed are the meek (gentle), for they shall inherit the earth." 
 — Matthew t. 5. 
 
 As time goes on the appetite to know what exist- 
 ence is and what it means increases. Men of devel- 
 oped minds wish to understand, and under favorable 
 conditions succeed in understanding, more of existence 
 than was possible in earlier periods. It is not well 
 for us to ask what the use of understanding existence 
 is, because in asking such a question we dishonor our 
 heads and discredit the usefulness of all intelligence. 
 Our minds endow us with the faculties of knowing, 
 and our knowledge must needs be for some useful 
 purpose. 
 
 It is quite possible that bread cost as much per loaf 
 after Newton and Galileo as before, and that the dis- 
 coveries of Archimedes did not at once cheapen the 
 price of a woolen garment. The sun is an immovable 
 body, with reference to the earth and other planets ; 
 yes, but then we must have a dinner, and must proceed 
 as before to earn money to pay for it. The heaven is 
 not a tent or canopy, as appears, but an open space ; 
 yes, but we must plough or reap in that case, as our 
 mistaken predecessors did. What diffei'ence does it 
 make ? Just this difference : that the increase of 
 knowledge with relation to the sun in the heavens will 
 
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 181 
 
 in due time affect all departments of human thought 
 and energy, — will in time affect both price and qual- 
 ity of your loaf of bread, since it will bring in its 
 train other knowledge. I suppose it would be idle to 
 consume the time of an intelligent reader in seeking to 
 establish the practical utility of knowledge ; and yet 
 I have been asked such questions as these : " Of what 
 practical use are discussions upon evolution? Will 
 they help men and women to be better, to be more 
 Christian in character and conduct ? " I unhesitatingly 
 say yes to that, upon the ground that knowledge is 
 power, and may be and ought to be a good power. 
 Moreover, the church has a most important function 
 to fill in the enlightenment of the community for 
 moral and religious ends. 
 
 I confess that I am of the number of those who 
 are solicitous to have the church on the right side of 
 great questions, so far as possible. It is precisely the 
 kind of institution which ought to welcome every ray 
 of light as it comes. And the church requires to be 
 roused to its duty in that matter. Canon Farrar said 
 while he was in America : " If Christianity is to hold 
 her own. Christians must beware of stagnant doc- 
 trines and dead theologies. Theology must learn to 
 change her line voluntarily and by her own insight, 
 and not be forced to do so only when the strangling 
 grasp of criticism is at her throat." 
 
 If evolution is true, or, to put it in another way, if 
 progress, advancement, is right ; if it is in the divine 
 purpose that advance shall be made, then it follows 
 that the church, in order to be in accord with the 
 divine purpose, must not be a laggard, following in 
 the rear of all progress, or worse still, hindering all 
 progress, and making advancement more difficult : it 
 
182 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 must be in the advance, and keep in the advance. 
 Now the church, which at the beginning took its 
 place in the fore-front of this divine progress, has 
 not always maintained that place. It has very often 
 been in the rear, and sometimes in actual retreat. In 
 a time of transition, like the present, it is of the high- 
 est importance that the church come once more to the 
 front, or it will go far to forfeit the respect and confi- 
 dence of mankind. Very severe and pungent were the 
 words of Professor Morse, uttered at a late meeting 
 of the American Association for the Advancement of 
 Science, and it is most devoutly to be hoped that the 
 church in her future history will effectually refute 
 them so far as the future is concerned. He says, 
 "Judging by centuries of experience as attested by 
 unimpeachable historical records, it is safe enough for 
 an intelligent man, even if he knows nothing about 
 the facts, to promptly accept as truth any generaliza- 
 tion of science which the church declares to be false ; 
 and conversely to repudiate with equal promptness as 
 false any interpretation of the behavior of the universe 
 which the church adjudges to be true." ^ 
 
 Permit me to remind you that evolution is the uni- 
 versal law of becoming. Every thinker has this light 
 shed upon his own pathway, and upon the course of 
 history, and upon the future, if he chooses to avail 
 himself of it. Every one whose deepest consciousness 
 leads him to believe in God may enjoy this additional 
 knowledge, now afforded by the new philosophy — 
 i. e., that God does all things in an ascertainable 
 method, and that method we have now learned to call 
 evolution. It is true enough that we are not able, 
 being finite, to trace any but a small portion of the 
 ^ Hitchcock's Influence of Science, etc. 
 
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 183 
 
 procedures of God. But by generalization we reach 
 beyond our narrow bounds into the boundless and 
 have a reasonable confidence regarding the unseen 
 realities. 
 
 One form of life succeeds another, but not fortui- 
 tously and not whimsically. From the lower gradu- 
 ally rises the higher. In biology we ascend from the 
 moUusk to the fish ; from the fish to the reptile, and 
 so on upward to the primate, man. I suppose that all 
 persons of intelligence, however prejudiced, will admit 
 the great probability of evolution, as applied so far, 
 provided they have taken the pains to inform them- 
 selves on the subject. But evolution, as we have seen, 
 does not cease at physical man. If it did, religion 
 would have no special interest in it one way or the 
 other ; and there would be no such thing as the evolu- 
 tionary philosophy. The same process enters the do- 
 main of intelligence and of moral activity, and goes on 
 and on as far as thought can follow, and farther. It is 
 easy to trace the process of evolution in the individual 
 man ; in fact evei-y one does trace it who is capable 
 of tracing anything. The fond mother watches her 
 babe with a profound interest. She may not put the 
 case to herself in words, but she is an investigator of 
 the most august process of which we have any knowl- 
 edge. From the time a man is born into the world, 
 until he attains full strength of maturity, he is a pro- 
 cess. I speak of him thus, not to reduce the terms 
 or quantities and qualities of his being, but to dignify 
 the word process, as thus applied. He develops, and 
 is an astonishment to his mother, and perhaps to a 
 few other interested onlookers. 
 
 He is a growth, as really as a grass-blade or a tree ; 
 and that, too, as we all thoroughly know, in all de- 
 
184 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 partments of his complex nature. We can fairly see 
 the evolution of his external organism from the pulpy, 
 soft body of early infancy, almost as helpless as in- 
 organic matter itself, through stages of change, with 
 accretion of bone - strength, muscle-power, and bulk. 
 The case is so plain, and so clearly an evolution from 
 first to last, that the wayfaring man, though unscien- 
 tific, cannot err therein. But there is also an interior 
 organism. Is the development of that any less plain 
 than the other ? 
 
 Suppose we assume that the perfect cooperation of 
 all the parts and powers of the child's body constitute 
 an equilibrium. " By the ever-changing number and 
 relative power of the cooperating parts the equilib- 
 rium is ever being disturbed, only to be readjusted on 
 a higher plane, with still more beautiful and complex 
 inter-relations." (LeConte.) The interior or men- 
 tal life of the child is also in movement, going on from 
 lower to higher stages. The parents see this progress, 
 which first shows itself in indefinite ways, and gradu- 
 ally grows more and more definite. There is a dawn- 
 ing of intelligence, indicated by the acquirement of 
 language, which grows from obscure sounds to dis- 
 tinct articulation. Faculties or abilities emerge to 
 view, as the teeth show themselves in the gums. And 
 so the process goes on. 
 
 So far there need be, and there is, no collision of 
 opinion. The individual man is an evolution, and all 
 observers know it, however reluctant they may be to 
 express it in terms of the coming philosophy. But 
 this process is not an exception ; it is not a case by 
 itself. The evolutionary philosophy distinctly involves 
 the principle that the law of evolution is the method 
 of the growth of society, that is, of the aggregate of 
 individuals, as well as of the single person. 
 
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 185 
 
 To many persons the idea of the evohition of soci- 
 ety presents difficulties almost insurmountable. So- 
 ciety is so complex, so under influences of a million 
 diverse and contradictory sorts, and there are so many 
 things which appear merely incidental, and there are 
 so many separate and conflicting wills involved, that 
 it is difficult to see how there is a law of social de- 
 velopment. Well, of course, there are difficulties all 
 along the path of the investigator. 
 
 A number of years ago Mr. Joseph Cook made a 
 very brilliant paragraph respecting a certain phenom- 
 enon in the Indian Ocean. There is a thing in those 
 waters known as the Neptune's Cup. It has a base, 
 a stem, and a cup, and in shape is like the goblet 
 in common use. It is about six feet high and three 
 in breadth. It is built by polypi, each one being 
 so small as to be almost imperceptible. These crea- 
 tures build without consultation, first the base, then 
 the stem, the top of which they widen out to the 
 proper symmetry for a cup, and then they go on up 
 with this hollow cup. These workers cannot talk ; 
 they work independently. 
 
 There is a law of the individual life, of course, but 
 there is very plainly also a law of the associated life. 
 It is neither less nor more mysterious than other phe- 
 nomena, however, although it strongly impresses the 
 observer. Why it is the polypi build a goblet, instead 
 of a basket or a box, it is impossible to say. It is by 
 observing what the creatures actually do build that we 
 gain a little knowledge concerning them. Human 
 beings, so far as we know them in the historic periods, 
 are social ; that is to say, they universally devote them- 
 selves to society building. You cannot study the 
 human being, certainly above the level of his phys- 
 
186 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 ical development, without at the same time studying 
 the society he makes. And he never lawlessly makes 
 society, — any more than the polyp of the Indian 
 ocean makes the Neptune's Cup by mere freak. On 
 the whole the evolution of society is perhaps the plain- 
 est department of evolution. One needs no tools, no 
 high-power lenses, no chemic analyses, to possess him- 
 self of the main features of this development. He 
 requires no special training. 
 
 We cannot fail to see, if we see at all, the succes- 
 sion of progressive social changes. We have on the 
 earth to-day specimens of society in all or many of its 
 forms. The Papuan society is primitive, savage ; the 
 Central African societies also savage ; and there are 
 the less savage, near the borders of that continent, 
 and elsewhere ; the semi-barbarous, and the barba- 
 rous ; the semi-civilized and the civilized. And in civ- 
 ilization we behold the constant struggle for higher 
 and higher points of development. All this is spread 
 chart -like before us for our intelligent inspection. 
 And not only so, but history shows that these differ- 
 ent forms of society have grown out of each other. 
 
 If we start with the family, or what may corre- 
 spond with the family, as the unit, we perceive that 
 families were in a struggle with each other for sub- 
 sistetice. They adopted means of defense. They 
 grew into tribes, grouped their separate habitations 
 for defensive purposes. All this of course grew out 
 of the struggle for existence. Then came the walled 
 villages and small cities. In time tribes united their 
 forces against conquerors and pillagers, and so grad- 
 ually societies came together to form a larger society. 
 The patriarch or chief became a king, and ruled a com- 
 posite society. The kingdoms, however, were them- 
 
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 187 
 
 selves tending all the time to unity. The strongest 
 would conquer or absorb the weaker until what is 
 known as universal monarchy arose. The Babylo- 
 nian, Medo-Persian, the Greek, the Roman, succeeded 
 each other as universal monarchies. The tendency 
 was predominantly toward bulk, or size. Then came 
 the movement which appears to run in the opposite 
 direction ; the rupture of the Roman power, the rise 
 of feudalism, the development of the modern king- 
 doms and nationalities. But this movement was not 
 in a direction opposite to gradual development ; for 
 there is observable an improvement in the quality 
 of society. Absolutism began to give place to repre- 
 sentative forms of government, and other limitations. 
 The will of the governed began to be consulted, as in 
 the Parliament, the Reichstag, the Chamber of Dep- 
 uties, and the like. The quantitative development 
 gives place to the qualitative. The extension of the 
 social cohesion from the family to the universal mon- 
 archy is succeeded by the gradual modification of the 
 function of government. Notions of liberty and other 
 elements of modern civilization are fostered and in- 
 creased. 
 
 Schools are multiplied for the education of the 
 people, so that they may sustain the responsibility 
 of a new citizenship. And thus the history of the so- 
 cial development of the race is seen to be an upward 
 march. Certainly one who studies this march of im- 
 provement will not look into the past to find a golden 
 age. He will not find that, or semblance of it, in that 
 direction. 
 
 Social development is marked, as is all other prog- 
 ress, with branch movements, and even with retro- 
 grade movements. Society often appears, and per- 
 
188 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 haps now as mucL. as ever, to stand in danger from 
 evil and hostile forces within itself. The danger is 
 real, and not to be passed lightly over, but it is of a 
 temporary nature; and he may enjoy a serene confi- 
 dence in the continued march of social improvement, 
 who has discovered in evolution the mode of the cre- 
 ation of a Wise and Beneficent Creator. The one 
 thing which apparently interposes most obstacles to 
 human progress and happiness is the grasping and 
 greedy selfishness of many. The thoroughly selfish 
 man haughtily proposes the furtherance of his own 
 schemes for personal advantage, and is careless of the 
 woes he may inflict upon many by his selfish course. 
 Combinations of selfish and powerful men arise, as 
 in the past, so now, and become corporate forces, with 
 which it seems almost idle to contend. They threaten 
 to dominate the world. And on the other hand des- 
 perate men arise from the ranks of the discontented 
 and threaten the peace and order of society from be- 
 low. Thus over organized society resounds the thun- 
 der of a dominating power, and from beneath comes 
 the shaking of the earthquake of revolt. But with 
 thunder overhead and earthquake beneath we may be 
 sure that the best shall prevail. ' So far as social de- 
 velopment is concerned it will not be hindered. The 
 law of the survival of the fittest, a law which has 
 suffered greatly from careless and ignorant misrepre- 
 sentation, is the law of the universe and the law of 
 the Lord. 
 
 Glance at the book of the kings of nature, as re- 
 corded in geologic pages. In the Siluro-Cambrian 
 ages were no true fishes, and nothing higher than 
 fishes. In vast numbers, in great variety of form, 
 and often in great size, the moUusks were the rulers 
 
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 189 
 
 of the seas. There was no competition, and the mol- 
 lusk, of low organization, had the monopoly of power. 
 He then was the lord of creation. In the latter part 
 of this Paleozoic period fishes made their appearance, 
 and, being of higher organization, they rapidly usurped 
 the dominion of the mollusk, and the moUusk began 
 to dwindle in size and importance. The fish was the 
 lord of creation. In Mesozoic times, reptiles, find- 
 ing favorable conditions, increased in size and variety 
 until land and water swarmed with them. "Never 
 before or since have reptiles existed in such numbers, 
 in such variety of form, or assumed such huge pi'opor- 
 tions, nor have they since been so highly organized as 
 then. They quickly became rulers in every realm of 
 nature : rulers of the sea, swimming reptiles ; rulers 
 of the land, walking reptiles ; and rulers of the air, 
 flying reptiles." (LeConte.) The day of the rule of 
 the fish was over, and the reptile reigned in its place. 
 Mammals were introduced, of a low type, and not able 
 to assume the supremacy. But they were of higher 
 organization than the reptiles, and belonged to the 
 grand march of improvement, and in the Tertiary 
 period, having increased in number, size, and variety, 
 they overpowered the reptile-ruled world, and assumed 
 the higher place. Finally, in the Quaternary, man 
 comes upon the scene, contending dubiously for a 
 while with the great mammals, but soon acquiring 
 mastery through superior intelligence. The huge and 
 dangerous mammals are destroyed, or are being de- 
 stroyed, useful plants and animals are preserved and 
 made serviceable. 
 
 In all these kingdoms the lower is supplanted by 
 the higher, and the higher in due time comes to sov- 
 ereignty, because most fit, by organization, for rule. 
 
190 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 No matter in what weakness it begins, the quality of 
 its organization determines its fitness. Then tlie sup- 
 planted sinks, not into extinction, but into a secondary 
 or lower place in the general economy. And as these 
 changes progress the whole organic kingdom arises, 
 not only in its higher forms, but in complexity. When 
 man is reached he finds himself the final ruler of the 
 series, the final lord of creation, because his structure 
 best fits him for that purpose. 
 
 But compare man with the mammals lowier down, 
 and he must seem to have a very poor outlook indeed 
 in competitions of force. In physical strength he does 
 not rank with the tiger of the jungle not only, but he 
 does not even rank with the reptile, nor the fish, nor 
 the mollusk. His organization is higher, and the pro- 
 cesses which go on in him are of a higher and more 
 delicate sort. Muscular strength has ceased to hold 
 supremacy, — that is, so far as all that is below man 
 is concerned. Now, man having appeared upon the 
 earth to be its lord, must needs go through a pro- 
 cess of creation as a society. Who among men shall 
 rule? At first, as we may well conceive, it shall be 
 the strongest. He who excels other men in ferocity 
 and strength of muscle will be king, or the equivalent 
 thereof. 
 
 There was a time on this earth when the best was 
 simply physical power. But something greater and 
 better than that grew up ; intelligence. Put intelli- 
 gence and physical power together and you have that 
 which is more potent than either could be separately. 
 And along with intelligence come the faint rudiments 
 of a moral sense. 
 
 Very weak, very easily overcome at first, but cer- 
 tainly bound to dominate the earth in due time. 
 
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 191 
 
 Link together physical power and untempered intelli- 
 gence, and you have the cunning and crafty subtlety 
 which smothers all opposition. For a time that is the 
 best possible. But the development of the moral fac- 
 ulties assumes proportion, and that is the time when 
 our human history, as human, may properly be said 
 to begin. That is the final best. That, following 
 every precedent of the preceding ages, must prevail. 
 So that, while the most ferocious and muscular man 
 ruled in his little clan, under that Divine Providence 
 which had in every geologic period conserved the best 
 until it grew from the weakest to the most powerful, 
 the human soul began its development. As I take it, 
 it is of that development chiefly the Bible gives us the 
 history. In the older portion of the Bible we behold 
 the soul of man in weakness, making its struggle for 
 existence, so to speak. Struggling with a Philistine 
 environment, and with the inherited forces of a lower 
 nature, it seems like a losing warfare. The few of 
 Israel stand out in loneliness for meroyand judgment; 
 the many are under the rule of the lower nature. 
 
 At last One ascends a mountain and announces 
 that the soul of man is to be the ruling power of the 
 world. That mercy and peace and purity and right- 
 eousness are to become the policy of the government 
 of the earth. 
 
 At the very moment when these wonderful words 
 are spoken, they are contradicted by all experience, all 
 history, as history must then have been read, and by 
 almost all philosophy. At that very moment perhaps 
 the Roman populace may have been gathered in holiday 
 trim to witness the cruel sports of the arena. Roman 
 dames and dandies may have been looking down from 
 their seats upon bloody gladiatorial shows, or clapping 
 
192 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 their hands as lions were set loose upon human prey. 
 Certainly, many years after Christ had declared that 
 the gentle should inherit the earth, when the Flavian 
 Amphitheatre (whose ruins still stand) had been built, 
 the gentle were cast to the hungry beasts under the 
 applause of the dominant power of the world. 
 
 And since that day what horrors of cruelty have 
 been enacted, even under the name of Him who taught 
 that mercy was good, and cruelty evil, and that the 
 gentle should rule the world ! The reverberations of 
 our own great artillery rolling over an hundred battle- 
 fields have hardly yet died away in silence, and num- 
 berless battalions of armed men across the sea stand 
 at attention ready for the command to shoulder arms 
 and march any whither, and yet we are confronted with 
 the promise that the best shall prevail, and that not 
 the brutal man, not the crafty man, but the gentle 
 man shall rule. It is strange to us, if not incredible. 
 But if well looked to, it is the mute teaching of the 
 rocks under our feet, which enclose the central heats 
 of the globe. They tell the story of ages of struggle ; 
 they tell of the survival and ultimate reign of the fit- 
 test. And they more than hint that the fittest of to- 
 day is not the fittest of millions of years ago ; and 
 from other sources of information we learn that the 
 fittest for sovereignty is the soul in which the king- 
 dom of the Christ, the law of gentleness, mercy, peace, 
 and purity is enthroned. 
 
 Even to this day the law of the survival of the fit- 
 test is misunderstood, and is not infrequently animad- 
 verted upon by divines who are able to see in it only 
 the old highwayman's motto, " Might makes right." 
 There was a time when might did make right ; it was 
 when the reptile triumphed over the fish, when the 
 
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. 193 
 
 mammal triumphed over the reptile, when primitive 
 man conquered his place in the economy of nature ; 
 but that all belongs to the dim past. Now, to sum it 
 all up in a word, that society is most fit which is most 
 Christlike. 
 
 The Christlike is on the ascendant. It still strug- 
 gles with a hostile environment, but it gains. Society 
 cannot be entertained with scenes of blood and cruelty 
 any more. Society has its mercy, too, and raises its 
 hospitals for the care of the sick, its asylums for the 
 insane, the blind, the incapable, the poverty-stricken. 
 Mark it well : eighteen centuries ago cruelty was the 
 fashion ; to-day charity is the fashion. This signifies 
 a development along lines which are determined by 
 no individual human will, but along the lines of the 
 divine creative purpose. 
 
 The evolutionary philosophy coheres with the teach- 
 ings of the Christ. He not only announced His doc- 
 trines of the conduct of life, but at the same time an- 
 nounced their ultimate kingship. In days when the 
 gentle man was at a discount, pushed to the wall in 
 the general struggle. He declared that it was the gen- 
 tle man who should inherit the earth. And here is 
 this scientific doctrine of the survival of the fittest, 
 substantiated by boundless proofs, expanding in mean- 
 ing as the proofs accumulate, landing us finally upon 
 the very mount of outlook where He stood, and en- 
 dorsing His word. For it is the relatively gentle who 
 has, since human history began, inherited the earth, 
 in each epoch. That is, the relatively superior, in re- 
 spect of mildness and reasonableness, has been grad- 
 ually supplanting the inferior and fiercer, in all the 
 progressive portions of society. Thus the " race is 
 not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," bwt to 
 
194 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 the fittest ; and the fittest is not such " by might nor 
 by power," but by spiritual and moral quality. 
 
 And so, I think, the evolutionist can contemplate 
 the conditions and movements of society vs'ith a degree 
 of calmness ; and the Christian evolutionist, certainly, 
 ought to be able to contemplate them with an increas- 
 ing hopefulness. After having looked backward, un- 
 der the interpreting guidance of evolution, we must 
 look forward to better social conditions. And as to 
 social problems, such as now arise, they never can be 
 settled upon other than right grounds, and in accord- 
 ance with the universal law of survival. 
 
 A society whose constitution involves necessarily 
 injustice to any class of people, cannot long survive, 
 except by change or repentance. A society in which 
 reasonableness and mildness cannot flourish, and come 
 to sovereign influence, is undermined. Therefore, it 
 becomes every one who desires the welfare of society 
 to make it so far as he can a gentle society, to be him- 
 self gentle. Above all, to have no confidence in any 
 cruel methods, or unjust procedures ; to trust not in 
 mere cleverness, and craftiness ; but to trust in the vic- 
 torious principles of righteousness, and follow them. 
 And that essentially is belief in Him who said, 
 "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the 
 earth." 
 
XV. 
 
 SOCIAL CONSOLIDATION. 
 
 "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." — 
 Galatians vi. 2. 
 
 It is comparatively easy to see why a chair is made, 
 and how. It is desirable to have something to sit 
 upon. A slab or a plank can have holes bored in its 
 under side, and three or four sticks of equal length can 
 be driven in these holes, and the seat is made. Then 
 for comfort it is desirable to have a back for your 
 seat ; that is easily arranged. And then arms, per- 
 chance even rockers. Then for additional comfort, 
 or luxury, let us have cushions in our chair. That is 
 the evolution of the chair, from the rough stool to the 
 elaborate and ornate article of furniture with carved 
 wood and satin cushions. And there is no mystery 
 about it which cannot be explored. Such and such 
 pieces of wood for legs, such metal things with wheels 
 in them for castors, such material for the upholstery, 
 etc. But the chair remains always what it was, except 
 that it gradually wears out. 
 
 If we look at something through which force is to 
 operate the thing is more complex. An engine with 
 its furnace, its boiler, and the like, for example. The 
 force is generated within the thing, and the requisite 
 modes for the conveyance and application of the force 
 must be provided. Pipes, valves, pistons, and other 
 such devices must be placed in right relation with each 
 
196 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 other, so as to make the whole correspond with an 
 organism. That our skill is competent to do. 
 
 But there is a very common piece of mechanism, 
 which we may call animal mechanism, which is made 
 up of valves and pipes, and a kind of piston, and 
 other gearing, and we are forced to inquire how these 
 different pipes and valves and things are made. It 
 has been discovered that all of these parts wkich go 
 to the sum total of an animal mechanism are made 
 by the association of cells together. These life-cells 
 build every pipe and every valve and every tissue of 
 the mechanism. Some of them make the heart, some 
 of them the lungs, and in fact every part is made 
 by the association of these little cells. 
 
 If a skillful artist should undertake to make a bee, 
 he would not make it in the way the actual bee is 
 made. He would make his tiny bee machinery, part 
 by part, and put it together, and enclose it in a case 
 like the exterior form of the bee. But the actual bee 
 is made by a sort of differentiation of these little cells 
 of which its anatomy is composed. Some of the cells 
 form the brain, or what we may call the brain of the 
 little creature, and some of them form the breathing 
 apparatus, and some the wings, and some the eyes, and 
 some the sting and its encasement. Now, why the 
 cells proceed thus, and how it is they form, part of 
 them a brain or an eye, and another part of them a 
 sting, we do not know. So far we have found no 
 means of determining between the different character 
 of different cells. They are all said to look alike, and 
 seem in every way alike. But this differentiation goes 
 on, and is part of that inscrutable process which na- 
 ture presents us at every turn, and which, to my mind, 
 is to be ascribed simply to the Divine Wisdom. But 
 
SOCIAL CONSOLIDATION. 197 
 
 in our tHinkiiig we have learned to distinguish these 
 cells, learned to individuate them ; and we have ar- 
 rived at the conclusion that they, by their diverse as- 
 sociation together, build the complex structure of all 
 animal mechanism, and all the organs thereof, external 
 and internal. 
 
 There is a law of creation which we have inferred 
 extends through all creation, — for wherever it has 
 been applied it has been found to work, — the law 
 of growth. All animal mechanism is builded by 
 growth. We know that the cells receive nutriment, 
 divide, and subdivide, and thus the growth goes on. 
 Well, the same law applies to the great mechanism 
 or organization called society. You do not suppose 
 that God created the mountain, and did not create the 
 trees at its base or the plants and shrubs which reach 
 up to the snow line ? We are all of us very sure that 
 if the mountain is a creation, all is a creation. And, 
 moreover, the creation is of a certain definite kind. 
 As you ascend a mountain you perceive that the cli- 
 mate changes. And at the same time you perceive 
 that God does not create the hardy little arctic shrubs 
 at the warm base of the mountain and the large trees 
 at the snow line. He follows an order in this as in 
 everything. The arrangement of vegetation is deter- 
 mined by the conditions. 
 
 Certainly we may conclude, we are driven to con- 
 clude, that if God made the stars and the earth, with 
 its rivers and oceans, and the plants and man. He does 
 not leave society out of creation. While it is true 
 that the will of individuals has a very important bear- 
 ing upon the structure of society, it is also true that 
 there is a Will and a Wisdom mightier than the indi- 
 vidual wills of all combined. And there is a law of 
 
198 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 social development. Every individual in the body 
 politic is like the individual cell in the body physical, 
 and performs some function of one sort or another. 
 Therefore it is with society as it is with the bee. Some 
 individuals gravitate to the head, or brain, of the 
 body politic, and to an extent do the thinking or gov- 
 erning of it ; some gravitate to industry or production ; 
 and some gravitate to the offensive and defensive 
 department. Some societies are like some bees, and 
 appear to develop much more of sting than of honey. 
 These are the strongly military societies, like the 
 North German and others of the present time. In 
 other societies the industrial functions predominate, as 
 in the English and the American. But in every soci- 
 ety you will perceive, if you look well into it, that 
 there is a body-growth. Society, like the individual 
 organism, has its head, its feet, its hands, its eyes, its 
 heart. .The analogy could be pursued at length were 
 it necessary, but it is not. 
 
 Within recent times this body-growth of society has 
 been more rapid and more clearly defined than of 
 old. And this has been brought about by ascertaina- 
 ble causes. When Watt made his first high-pressure 
 engine in Glasgow in 1761, he was simply carrying 
 out some ideas which had accumulated in his own 
 very active and inventive brain. Doubtless he did 
 not stop to consider that in making a construction 
 of iron and brass he would very greatly modify the 
 social order of the world. But that is what he did. 
 He created a new industry, and one destined to af- 
 fect enormously almost every other industry in the 
 world. For the construction of that Watt engine was 
 followed gradually by the laying of iron tracks all 
 over Europe and this continent, and by the creation 
 
SOCIAL CONSOLIDATION. 199 
 
 o£ a new and rapid commerce on all waters. Not 
 only so, but this more rapid commerce both by land 
 and water was contemporaneous with, and made nec- 
 essary, a more rapid production on the part of labor. 
 Hand production gives place to machine production. 
 In a pioneer society, such as was on this continent a 
 century ago, the settler could do a large proportion of 
 the things necessary to be done for his own necessi- 
 ties. He could be his own carpenter, and build his 
 own dwelling and barns, such as they were. He could 
 mend his own broken implements. His wife and 
 daughters could make the cloth for domestic purposes, 
 and could sew it into necessary clothing. The fuel 
 was at hand, in the trees of the forest which was to be 
 cleared out of the way. The food was to be derived 
 from the crops of the ground, from the flock and herd ; 
 and the very few luxuries could be obtained, or could 
 be left unobtained, as the case might be. Then grad- 
 ually came the differentiation of industries. Some per- 
 son more skillful than others became a carpenter, and 
 devoted himself to that. Some other person became 
 a smith, and erected his forge ; and another, who could 
 contrive some kind of transportation for goods, brought 
 the luxuries, loom-made cloths and thread, and various 
 household conveniences, and had a store of them at 
 some centre of population. But the introduction of 
 machinery vastly increases and makes more rapid this 
 differentiation of society. The industrial world is, 
 before our eyes, becoming socialized. 
 
 To make a new machine which shall do the work of 
 many skilled hands, worthily excites our admiration 
 for the inventor. And we declare that the inventor 
 is a helper in the general progress of the world. 
 Such he undoubtedly is. But his work nevertheless 
 
200 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 has an importance entirely separate from its mechan- 
 ical features. Its immediate effect may be to throw 
 many hundreds of men out of employment. And in- 
 asmuch as these hundreds live by their work, and sup- 
 port their families by it, it follows that this invention 
 may prove a fatal thing to them. In thickly popu- 
 lated regions, where the laborers are more numerous 
 than occasion requires, or precisely as numerous, the 
 introduction of machines which will diminish the de- 
 mand for labor may be looked upon as a calamity. 
 It has been so regarded. In England the machines 
 were regarded for a time as the enemies of the work- 
 ing man. And when the attempt was made to put 
 them in operation, the mob spirit was aroused, and 
 desperate men threatened to carry fire and destruc- 
 tion through the community. It was easy enough for 
 a reader of the news, seated in his comfortable chair, 
 and sipping his cup of coffee, to declaim against the 
 folly and brutality of the English working man, who 
 set himself against the progress of inventions. But 
 the English working man was thinking of bread and 
 his hungry children. He was saying to himself that 
 there was positive murder in the machineries, because 
 they would make his labor unnecessary. In one view 
 of the case, of course, the man was foolish in thus 
 attempting to obstruct the irresistible progress of 
 things. But he did not know much about progress. 
 He did know that there must be some food for the 
 family, and some kind of shelter and clothing for 
 them. That was the knowledge which had principal 
 influence upon him. What he proposed to do in the 
 emergency was to make some sort of a struggle for 
 existence. And doubtless he must have felt a des- 
 perate discouragement as he came to know that his 
 
SOCIAL CONSOLIDATION. 201 
 
 struggle was with a giant of steel and steam. Enough 
 to say of this struggle for existence, that a wholesale 
 condemnation of our fellow-men, without having first 
 put ourselves in their place to discover, if possible, 
 the cause of their action, thus gaining a sympathetic 
 view of the case, is no wise proceeding for any one. 
 
 But the opposition to machineries was in fact an 
 opposition to God's continuous creation of society, 
 and simply could not by possibility be successful. 
 One might as well fight against the stars in their 
 courses as to seek to obstruct the new order of things. 
 And for fifty or more years, while inventions have 
 gone on multiplying themselves, and doing more and 
 more effective work, our human society has been oc- 
 cupied in shifting its ground, so as to contrive to live 
 under the new conditions. 
 
 I suppose the statesmen of some centuries ago com- 
 placently deemed themselves fully competent to deal 
 with all the problems of government and society. I 
 do not undervalue the greatness of those men, but 
 statesmen of that kind would be of no use to us now. 
 Ludicrously insufficient would be their wisest meas- 
 ures. The reason of that is that we have a new soci- 
 ety which, under Divine Providence, is getting itself 
 created day by day. The inventor goes on with his 
 inventions as though under impulsion from a Power 
 greater than himself, as indeed he is. And if he were 
 to be remonstrated with, as a disturber of the peace 
 or order of society, if he were to be shown that by his 
 invention work will be taken frojn a million pairs of 
 hands and given to mere machines which do not re- 
 quire bread and clothing, he is nevertheless moved on 
 to do his work, halting at no such consideration. Re- 
 curring to the principle already laid down, that as is 
 
202 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 the Individual life-cell to the physical body, so Is the 
 individual human being to the body politic, it is quite 
 evident that the life-cell which rises to the brain must 
 do brain-work, and no other. And the man who be- 
 longs to the thinking part of the social body must do 
 his work as a thinker, unhindered by considerations 
 of temporary policy. 
 
 We witness many new movements peculiar to our 
 times ; and among others, combinations of men and 
 interests in strong association. These movements are 
 differently regarded by different people. By some 
 they are regarded with anxiety, not to say with in- 
 dignation; by others with a calm attention, to dis- 
 cover if possible the meaning of them. Tills last is 
 manifestly the best state of mind. 
 
 In 1841 a railroad was completed between Roches- 
 ter and Syracuse. If I mistake not, a railroad had 
 already been laid between Syracuse and Schenectady, 
 which latter place had been earlier connected with 
 Albany by an iron track. About that time, perhaps 
 earlier, a railroad was constructed between Roches- 
 ter and Tonawanda. And from Albany to New York 
 was the Hudson River road. It is unimportant to 
 our present purpose to note the origin of the various 
 roads, or to be accurate about the dates of their con- 
 struction. But there were several companies, or dis- 
 tinct organizations, operating these roads in some 
 loose sort of connection with each other. Then came 
 about a consolidation of these various interests, from 
 Albany to Buffalo, under one government, with the 
 laying of a new track from Syracuse to Rochester. 
 It appears, however, to have been left to the genius 
 of Commodore Vanderbilt to connect all these rail- 
 roads in a compact system, and to include in that 
 
SOCIAL CONSOLIDATION. 203 
 
 system roads west of Buffalo. Genius is sometimes 
 rewarded in this world, and Mr. Vanderbilt reaped 
 an immense personal benefit from the result of his 
 schemes. But what was the result to the public? 
 If we assume that the consolidation of the railroad 
 interests began under the management of Mr. Van- 
 derbilt in 1861, and that it practically consummated 
 itself in 1869, the gain to the country by the con- 
 solidation is estimated to be as high as six hundred 
 millions of dollars a year.^ The gain to New York 
 State alone is estimated at seventy -five millions a 
 year. I am not able to verify these estimates, but 
 suppose them to be approximately correct. But it is 
 by the rapidity and continuity of transportation the 
 public is vastly benefited. I suppose the so-called 
 Vanderbilt combinations are matched by the Scott 
 combinations in Pennsylvania, and by other railroad 
 combinations elsewhere. But aside from the eco- 
 nomic results, it is difiicult to see how society, con- 
 stituted as it has come to be, could possibly dispense 
 with these Immense systems of railroad transporta^ 
 tion. I look upon Mr. Vanderbilt as one of the great 
 inventors, able to grasp and comprehend these vast 
 schemes so complex and so far-reaching. 
 
 Some one has said : " The inventor, the man of 
 science, is the great disturber of' existing conditions. 
 He renders worthless great masses of capital which 
 had been valuable, he takes away the hereditary 
 occupation of vast numbers of laborers who may be 
 capable of doing no other kind of work." Yes, the 
 inflammatory anarchist, with all of his eagerness to 
 break the established usages and principles of society, 
 is not to be compared with the inventor as a disturber ; 
 1 Beljrend'g Sqcicilisni and Christianity. 
 
204 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 for the inventor makes social readjustment absolutely- 
 necessary. And I would have you mark that this is a 
 part of the perpetual creation of society. It cannot 
 be hindered ; it is well that it cannot. 
 
 If any movement, broadening and deepening as 
 times goes on, proves itself to belong to the evolution 
 of society, if it is not retrogressive in its tendencies, 
 then it behooves all intelligent persons to take heed of 
 that movement, not to oppose it, but to fall in with 
 it, as a veritable divine process, so as to be ready to 
 make the best of it. Now if there is any well-marked 
 movement of society to-day, it is the movement toward 
 combination of men and interests. It may be called, 
 if such a word were in the dictionaries, socialization. 
 
 Railroad combinations we have already briefly 
 traced. However such consolidations may have been 
 brought about, they have been formed, and, as we 
 have discovered, not to the detriment but to the very 
 great advantage of the public. If you examine some 
 insects very carefully, you will find an absence of a 
 well-defined circulatory system. The blood appears to 
 go to various parts of the system, not through veins or 
 arteries, but in a kind of promiscuous manner. But 
 as development goes on, the channels for the blood are 
 formed, in tubes and minute capillaries. That is to 
 say, certain of the life-cells have the function of form- 
 ing such organs. Well, it is not fanciful to say that 
 our railroad systems and our means of transportation 
 form the circulatory system of the social body, and 
 some men and much power in the shape of capital go 
 to the making of these veins and arteries of social 
 circulation. Other men and other capital go to the 
 making of our social nerve system, the telegraph ; and 
 these, too, as we have seen, have a distinct tendency 
 
SOCIAL CONSOLIDATION. 205 
 
 more and more to consolidate. I believe it is gen- 
 erally understood tliat the great idea of this consol- 
 idation originated practically within the past thirty 
 years. Then, too, it is easy to see how much advan- 
 tage to the public accrues from the possession of a 
 slower means of communication, afforded by the pos- 
 tal system. We certainly should be at an inestimable 
 loss if it were left to some haphazard lack of system, 
 to get our newspapers and letters to their destination. 
 
 I beg you to notice that these social combinations 
 do not come as the result of any elaborate philosophy 
 of human conditions. They are not made by the phi- 
 losophers, but by the necessities of the case ; that is to 
 say, they come in the orderly development of society. 
 And any philosophy of human relations which can be 
 of use to us must be formed upon an acknowledg- 
 ment and wise consideration of these facts. 
 
 But it must be confessed that this process of social- 
 ization presents some formidable features in our own 
 time, and that the minds of many are greatly dis- 
 turbed thereby. I refer, of course, to the industrial 
 combinations on the one hand, and the capitalistic 
 combinations on the other. Inasmuch as industry is 
 so important a part of the social life of any people, and 
 inasmuch as the tendency of the time is so strongly 
 toward combination, it becomes inevitable that such 
 combination will be made, and that it will become 
 more and more potent and strong as time goes on. 
 The hope of breaking the combinations of industry 
 will not be likely to be cherished very long by any one 
 who studies his own times. But this industrial combi- 
 nation, which is as natural as a railroad combination, 
 is offset at once by a combination of capitalistic inter- 
 ests. And these two mighty forces first appear as at 
 
206 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 war with each other. That is to be expected. But 
 let us look for a moment at the process. We first 
 have the trades' unions. The industry of each par- 
 ticular trade gets itself into combination for the ben- 
 efit of the limited number of those engaged in that 
 particular trade. In England, after the introduction 
 of the modern machineries, arose the cutlers' union, 
 the grinders' union, the moulders' union, the union of 
 pattern makers, and a host of others. In this coun- 
 try, after the consolidation of railroads, arose the 
 brotherhood or union of locomotive engineers, of con- 
 ductors ; the trades' imions began to flourish. Then 
 followed the attempt to unite these, as the short and 
 separate railroads were united, into a comprehensive 
 union of all labor interests. The first attempt was not 
 as wise as later attempts will probably be, and doubt- 
 less will be succeeded by attempts more sagacious. 
 
 But the consolidation of the capitalistic interests, 
 or as we say the formation of trusts, is by perhaps the 
 majority of the people regarded as a more formida- 
 ble menace to the welfare of society than any other 
 which has ever been made. If, however, we take into 
 consideration the practical inevitableness of it, we 
 may learn to look upon it as an important factor in 
 the continuous creation of society. It certainly would 
 be foolish to imagine that the capitalist could sit idle, 
 and see his capital dissipated, when by combination 
 with his brother capitalists such a calamity could be 
 averted. Whatever the motive of the individual may 
 be, we are called upon to study the facts, and they 
 may be summarized in the language of Professor 
 Andrews ("Journal of Economies," January, 1889) : 
 " The associational system of business is in its present 
 magnitude a thing of recent origin. It took its life 
 
SOCIAL CONSOLIDATION. 207 
 
 from' the marked and immediate success of the Standi 
 ard Oil Trust, created in 1882. The career of this 
 Titan agency has stimulated on all hands the most 
 earnest efforts to imitate or rival it. There is scarcely 
 a single industry in the country which has not, either 
 bodily or in some of its phases or departments, passed 
 under this or that form of associational management. 
 Reports of fresh schemes for business amalgamation 
 literally crowd the press. Joining hands, massing 
 energies, that is emphatically the order of the day in 
 economic affairs." 
 
 I have endeavored thus at some length to present 
 to view that tendency toward social combination which 
 characterizes especially our times. The social func- 
 tions become more and more differentiated, and society 
 itself becomes more and more compacted. It is not 
 my purpose either to criticise or defend these impor- 
 tant movements or any of them. I simply mark them 
 as among the more important phenomena in the pres- 
 ent evolution of society. In the material world there 
 are two forces, the centripetal and the centrifugal. 
 Both of them are in constant operation throughout the 
 universe. In human affairs the same two forces are 
 seen : the socialistic, or centripetal ; the individualis- 
 tic, or centrifugal. Both have their appropriate places 
 in the development of society. From my stand-point 
 I look upon the present predominance of the social 
 centripetal force as certainly the work of that Divine 
 Wisdom without which there would be no society and 
 no student of it. 
 
 He who clothes the grass of the field, which to-day 
 is and to-morrow is cut down and withereth, shall He 
 not much more work in the higher and highest planes 
 of nature? It must be obvious to any devout and 
 
208 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 faithful observer, who really observes, that socializa- 
 tion comes, not by the will of the individual man, but 
 by the will of the Creator of man and of his society. 
 "Except the Lord build the house they labor in 
 vain that build it." To the Christian, that is, to the 
 one who thinks of God as Jesus Christ thought of 
 Him, there will be discerned in all this great movement 
 toward the consolidation of society the operation of a 
 Benevolent Creator, and not some blind operation of 
 chance or of an arbitrary force. He will learn to con- 
 nect the word " Father " with it, as he has learned to 
 connect that word with some of his personal experi- 
 ences, and will expect, as the outcome of all social con- 
 solidations, a human brotherhood, wherein human life 
 shall become beautiful and gracious, and human soci- 
 ety shall be welded, not into conflicting departments, 
 but into a cooperating and wonderfully diversified 
 unity. 
 
 I said that it did not concern my present purpose 
 either to criticise or defend these great movements 
 which tend to social combinations of all kinds. Cer- 
 tainly, in respect to some of them, the very sharpest 
 criticism would be applicable. But what then ? Many 
 a slave-ship has been built and launched for that infa- 
 mous traffic which has afterward proved most service- 
 able in the suppression of the slave trade. And 
 whether a ship floats the black flag, or other, pro- 
 vided she is stanch and well compacted, she will serve 
 a useful purpose, when rightly manned and officered. 
 
 Human society, consolidated, as we now see it, into 
 a body of diverse departments and functions, must 
 come to have a right spirit or soul in it ; and the right 
 soul for such a body must need be, to put it in mod- 
 em phraseology, altruistic. " Bear ye one another's 
 
SOCIAL CONSOLIDATION. 209 
 
 burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ," is the an- 
 cient statement of modern altruism. There is no way 
 in which these burdens can be borne, except by com- 
 bination, and the consolidation of society makes an 
 easy yoke and a light burden. 
 
 I believe social consolidation will add incalculably 
 to the wealth and welfare of the world ; that it will 
 vastly increase an economical use of that wealth ; that 
 it will add to and not subtract from the liberty of the 
 individual ; that it will relieve men from the exasper- 
 ating pressure of the motives of fear ; that it will ren- 
 der the serving of our fellow-men a pleasure to us. 
 The evolution of society opens before us as the grand- 
 est arena of the operation of a benevolent God. 
 
XVI. 
 
 SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 
 
 " For I say, through the grace that "was given me, to every man 
 that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought 
 to think." — Romans xii. 3. 
 
 Veky difficult has it been to many thoughtful per- 
 sons to place a proper limit to self-esteem, or self-esti- 
 mation. We are individual and have our separate 
 responsibilities ; we are also members of a society. 
 Which is the more important ? There are times when 
 self-estimation rises ; other times when it diminishes 
 both in individual experience and in national or as- 
 sociated experience. In the times of absolute despot- 
 ism, the general education of people is toward a depre- 
 ciation of the valuation of the individual. If people 
 are supposed to exist for the benefit of a governing 
 body, or a single ruler, the individual is a very unim- 
 portant factor in anything. He is a mere drop in a 
 stream which carries a boat. The boat afloat on the 
 stream is the governing body, and that is every- 
 thing ; and the drop in the stream, i. e., the individ- 
 ual citizen, is nothing. Were the drop gone alto- 
 gether out of the stream, what harm ? In times and 
 places wherein a man may have his head cut off at a 
 nod of satrap or shah, the individual life is looked 
 upon as of no moment. One may indeed cling to life, 
 but that will be more from the animal instinct than 
 from an intelligent valuation of life. 
 
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 211 
 
 Then, too, men seem to have learned from Nature 
 herself that the individual is nothing. The genera^ 
 tions come and go in quick succession. The rivers 
 run into the sea, but the sea is not full, and the waters 
 return w^hence they came. Evaporation, and precipi- 
 tation in rain or snow, the running of streams and 
 livers, and the same old round over and over again. 
 An Oriental king, who was also something of a philos- 
 opher, came to the conclusion that life and all its con- 
 cerns belonged to the order of vanities. A vanity is 
 something of slight account. From his stand-point — 
 which was not the best — he was right about it. But 
 a very different stand-point has been taken since his 
 time. 
 
 I desire .to call your attention to the fact that the 
 earlier education of our race has been to a great ex- 
 tent socialistic. And even intensely so. Society has 
 been made everything of and the individual has been 
 made nothing of. Society, represented by the govern- 
 ment of it, has determined everything. Up to a com- 
 paratively late period society, or its government, its 
 head, prescribed pretty much all things. And it did 
 so not only in regard to outward things, such as social 
 conduct, but also in respect to a man's beliefs and 
 thoughts. The government, representing society at 
 large, determined the clothes that should be worn by 
 the people, and the colors of the cloths that must be 
 used in the making of these clothes. That which is 
 now left to the indefinite despotism of fashion, was 
 then regulated in a more definite manner. Among 
 the Romans, for instance, purple was reserved for the 
 emperor, and other colors for different classes of the 
 population. This still survives to some extent in the 
 Roman church, the spiritual princes and other digni- 
 
212 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 tarles being distinguished from others by the colors of 
 their official costumes. The occupation, behavior, at- 
 titude, and bearing of men were not left to individual 
 choice or caprice, but were established by society. 
 Such a state of things belongs to the more primitive 
 stage of the evolution of society. This, I think, de- 
 serves the careful consideration of all thoughtful men, 
 and especially of all religious men. We have our 
 Bible, coming from the Hebrew portion of the race, to 
 give us the history of the growth of the now dominant 
 religion, and that from its very roots. We regard the 
 study of this book profitable, largely because it gives 
 us the development of religion, and so throws great 
 light upon our path. 
 
 But there is an unwritten book, or book written only 
 in detached portions, to disclose to us the manner of 
 divine creation as it has been carried on in all races. 
 That too has its very great lesson for us. Founda- 
 tions, although hidden from casual view, are of im- 
 mense import. They underlie structures which rest on 
 them, and depend upon them. The foundations of our 
 civil and social structures of the present, it will be well 
 for us to remember, must determine in some measure 
 the shape and character of that which is now being 
 builded. When, therefore, we find, as we do find, that 
 socialism is no new thing under the sun, but a very old 
 thing, and that it is practically fundamental to any 
 society, we do well to give due heed to that, and to 
 endeavor to see what it means. 
 
 I shall ask you to discharge from your minds those 
 ideas of socialism which belong characteristically to 
 its modern phases. At present I have nothing to say 
 of the socialism which has its apostles in Berlin and 
 Brussels, in Paris and in London, in which latter city 
 
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 213 
 
 the socialistic sentiment and philosophy have grown 
 from nothing to very considerable proportions within 
 the past ten years. These developments are very im- 
 portant, no doubt, but not so important, as it appears 
 to me, as the earlier socialism of a slower growth, and 
 which was all but universal. It appears tliat all na- 
 tions, tribes, clans, and other associations were social- 
 istic. Witness is borne to this by the traditions and 
 histories of Europe and the East, by the monuments 
 and ruins, by the communal houses and villages and 
 other remains on our own continent. What I mean by 
 the socialism of early society is simply that society 
 was everything and the individual was nothing. But 
 we must have learned that such a society is not the 
 best ; it may be, and very often has been, the worst. 
 And therefore we behold, in the very midst of an all- 
 prevalent socialism, another movement, very faint and 
 feeble at first, but acquiring strength and momentum 
 as time went on. This was a movement, not to coun- 
 teract and destroy socialism — for that would be the 
 destruction of society itself, and the possibility of it — 
 but to correct and balance and prevent the excesses of 
 socialism. Prophets and teachers, like those of Israel, 
 arise, one after the other, seeking to arouse a sense 
 of individual responsibility and to develop individual 
 worth. They ascribe the evil character and the degra- 
 dation of the nation to the lack of a true individualism. 
 Socrates, who of all the Greeks is the most venerated, 
 in his apology before his judges, declares that he has 
 not aspired to high place in the state, that he has 
 made it his work to go about among the people, from 
 man to man, to question each one, to expose to each 
 one his own wrong state, his ignorance and vanity, and 
 rouse him to a change of life and improvement of con- 
 
214 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 duct. I am aware that there are those who believe 
 that because God cared for Hebrews, and had teachers 
 and prophets for them, He therefore cared nothing for 
 Greeks and others, and provided no instruction or in- 
 structors for them. Whereas the fact that God cared 
 for Hebrews, and taught them by prophets and teach- 
 ers, is a grand testimony that He cared for Greeks, and 
 all other peoples, and provided such instruction for 
 them as was fit. And this divine instruction, the best 
 teaching, has appealed to, and has developed personal 
 responsibility. According to it, the individual is no 
 mere drop in the stream of humanity, an insignificant 
 atom in a mass, but a distinct moral being, and as 
 important in his place as the total society is in its 
 place. 
 
 And when the Christ appeared. He taught, not in 
 opposition to this instruction of the law and prophets 
 of an earlier period, but in expansion or fulfillment 
 of it. He appealed to the individual conscience and 
 judgment as no other has done. And yet He has been 
 understood by many to be preeminently the teacher 
 of socialism. He and His apostles are credited with 
 having been in a way both socialists and communists. 
 Indeed, it must be confessed that the Christian church, 
 upon its first organization after the day of Pentecost, 
 was communistic in polity. Nevertheless I would 
 invite your attention to the fact that mere socialism, 
 or socialism by itself, was the less developed form of 
 human association. And it did not prove itself good, 
 but very often, and very much the reverse of good. 
 That kind of socialism demands and makes necessary 
 an undervalued individual ; that is, an ignorant and 
 enslaved individual. How can you get good society 
 when all the materials which are to compose it are 
 
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 215 
 
 base, or of inferior mental and moral quality? Where- 
 fore it may be properly said of Jesus Christ that He 
 of all teachers of mankind was the individualist. Be- 
 cause He above all others seems to have left society, 
 as such, to shift for itself, and to have turned His atten- 
 tion almost exclusively upon the individual. He did 
 not propose a conservation of the society He found ; 
 He even predicted its dissolution and downfall. He 
 did propose a regeneration of individual life, a devel- 
 opment of that upon the right basis. And of course 
 the efEect of that would be, in the nature of the case, 
 a very different society. It would be a society con- 
 structed not upon the principle of outward compul- 
 sions, but upon the inner life of the individuals com- 
 posing it. Accordingly the efEect of His teaching 
 is a new movement toward personal liberty. It was 
 long in gathering force, because the church became 
 increasingly socialistic in its practice and policy. 
 After the conquest of the Roman empire , by the 
 Christian religion, the church took its model largely 
 from that empire, and became, and continues to be, 
 a socialistic organization. It very early and very 
 strongly interfered with personal liberty, such liberty 
 as there was, and prescribed to men, as the older social- 
 isms had done, their opinions and faiths, or in other 
 words their thoughts. The individual was denied the 
 right of convictions or of private j udgment ; everything 
 was referred to the society as represented by its gov- 
 erning: head. Thus the intense individualism of Jesu*- 
 was entirely lost sight of, and in place of it the old 
 socialism established itself. Of course some of the 
 teachings of Christ were put into this old socialism, 
 but it was new wine in old bottles, and in due time 
 produced its legitimate result of breaking the bottles 
 more or less. 
 
216 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 With Luther came the revival of the individualistic 
 teachiugs of Christ. It was private faith against the 
 society faith. It was the emergence of the private 
 individual from his long enslavement into the begin- 
 nings of liberty. The importance of this revolt of 
 Luther from the haughty and long-seated socialism of 
 the church can hardly be overestimated. Without par- 
 ley it may be admitted to the critics that what Luther 
 did chiefly stand for in his conflict with the powers 
 that were, was the right of Luther.to exercise a private 
 judgment. We may as well consent that he did not 
 care so greatly for the right of those who differed with 
 him, as for his own. He had his weaknesses in com- 
 mon witli all of us. He would not yield to Zwingle 
 an equal right with himself to exercise his private 
 judgment, it is claimed. Very well ; grant it. In 
 fighting his battle, however, he fought ours. If he 
 held his principle in an imperfect way, he still held 
 it strongly and bravely, in his own time, and under his 
 circumstances. The doctrine is sufficiently plain, and 
 becomes plainer, however the teacher of it may restrict 
 it, or however inconsistently he may hold it. Personal 
 liberty, the right of the individual as respects that 
 which is most inward and vital, carries aU other rights 
 with it. At last the individual has got a recognition 
 in the world ; not any longer to be regarded by the 
 intelligent as a mere drop in the stream, or an atom 
 in a mass, but as a separate moral being, distinctly 
 invested with rights, and especially to have his own 
 judgments and convictions, and to guide himself by 
 those judgments and convictions. I suppose the rise 
 of the idea of personal liberty in modern times will be 
 dated differently by different thinkers, but to my mind 
 no such distinct cause of it is anywhere visible in all 
 the horizon of history as this man Lutlier. 
 
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 217 
 
 In any event the great idea of personal liberty has 
 come, and doubtless it has come to stay. In various 
 ways it has been developing, and with great disturb- 
 ance of the old equilibrium. It is becoming quite evi- 
 dent that the old socialism cannot long hold the new 
 individualism, either in church or state. If the char- 
 iot of the French monarch, making swift journey from 
 Paris to Versailles crushed some child of the peasant, 
 it represented the state roUing over and crushing the 
 indiviilual. When the tables were turned, and the 
 individual asserted himself, and began to shear off the 
 heads of his oppressors, that represents the individual 
 rolling over and crushing the state. But this revolt 
 of individualism is one of the most frightful of all 
 phenomena yet seen on this earth, resulting in that 
 welter of aU confusions and terrors known as the 
 French Revolution. 
 
 I have spoken of Christ as preeminently the teacher 
 of individualism. I have spoken of the revival of 
 personal liberty (an idea which had been retired by 
 the Roman church) under the leadership of Luther. 
 It is well that we should examine the teachings of 
 Christ with reference to this matter. He did not 
 teach that society is everything and the individual 
 nothing. He did seem to esteem the individual as 
 the court of last appeal.^ And yet it was a mob, 
 that is, a mere aggregation of individuals, skillfully 
 managed, that demanded His crucifixion. Foreseeing 
 ihat. He still held on His way, addressing Himself to 
 persons, counseling and commanding them to forsake 
 every evil way, and to do righteousness and to be 
 righteous. Such counsels and commands are intensely 
 
 1 "And why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ? " — 
 Luke xii. 57. 
 
218 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 personal. What does it all mean ? Does this appeal 
 to the individual, this putting the individual to the 
 front, prove salutary? Suppose society were every- 
 where broken, and every private person did according 
 to his own will, would that by possibility be a good 
 state of things ? The very opposite of a good state of 
 things. An unendurable state of things. But sup- 
 pose that the will of every individual were good and 
 excellent. Then, of course, except for errors of judg- 
 ment, there would be nothing to fear. But as men 
 are now, if the barriers of social organization — bar- 
 riers from custom and law — were thrown down, un- 
 speakable calamities would immediately follow. With 
 all the restrictions and restraints imposed by law and 
 usage the selfishness of men renders life not worth 
 living to multitudes. Abolish the restraints and no 
 one would have a life worth living. At least no one 
 would have a life of which he could reasonably be sure 
 from day to day, whether worth living or not. There- 
 fore the socialism, even of that kind which makes so- 
 ciety everything, and the private individual nothing, 
 has had its exceedingly important use. Even that is 
 a part of the divine order, the divine creation. Body- 
 making antedates soul-making. And so the ancient 
 societies, depending on force and exterior compulsion, 
 were as necessary as any other stage of creation. 
 
 Jesus emphasized the worth and value of the indi- 
 vidual. But there was an end in view. That was 
 the reconstruction of society. Though a man is indi- 
 viduated, and set off as by himself, a moral and re- 
 sponsible being, his conduct inevitably and always has 
 a social reference. The old fundamental law for the 
 individual is at the same time the bond of society. 
 For if the first of the two commandments on which 
 
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 219 
 
 hang all law and all the prophets is, " Thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all tliy mind and with all thy 
 soul and with all thy strength " (and that is individu- 
 alistic), the second is like it, but is socialistic : " Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And it becomes 
 evident at a glance that the teachings of Christ, so 
 direct and so personal, must end in socialism of a 
 pure sort. Let the individual be developed in the 
 highest degree therefore, and made as strong as possi- 
 ble in his personal character ; let his personality not 
 be crippled and restricted, but expanded, and he will 
 all the better serve the uses and purposes of society. 
 
 It is a tradition of the Jews that when the temple 
 known as the Temple of Solomon was builded, it was 
 accomplished in a wonderfully quiet manner, so that 
 " there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of 
 iron heard in the house while it was in building." In 
 quarries near to, or possibly remote from, Jerusalem, 
 the stones were taken out and fashioned in most care- 
 ful manner. One group of stone-cutters here, and 
 another there, and others in various places where there 
 was supply of the material, were at work cutting, shap- 
 ing, smoothing, and in every way bringing each stone 
 to some special shape. An observer would see these 
 men at work in various localities, each one devoting 
 his attention to one stone, and would wonder about it. 
 " Why do you so carefully shape these stones ? Why 
 not, instead of doing that, build something of them ? 
 Stones are good for nothing left separate as you leave 
 them, be they never so deftly fashioned. Why not 
 expend your enterprise, not in shaping them one by 
 one, but in getting all the stones of whatever shape 
 together into some kind of walls here, — any kind of 
 walls? You can have your strong cement, to keep 
 
220 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 the stones from falling apart. Do you not see that 
 we are here to set up walls and enclose spaces with 
 them?" Yes, that is partly what we are here for. 
 But the workman would keep on with his labor, con- 
 triving to get a true edge on the stone in hand, get- 
 ting it to right size, chipping, hammering, smoothing, 
 until that one stone should be to his mind. And 
 doubtless this workman would know little enough of 
 the use of the stone, when he had got done with it. 
 That might be in the head of the designer, or in Sol- 
 omon's, but not definitely in his. But when these 
 stones are brought together on Zion's hill, because 
 each one was of true proportion and size, and had 
 been dealt with by itself, it at once became part and 
 parcel of a building of proportion and beauty, a mar- 
 vel to all Israel and the Gentiles. And the building 
 ascends into the air, silently and coherently, the noise 
 and strain and bustle of building for once absent. 
 
 I suppose this Hebrew tradition, if strictly read, 
 would imply that no mortar was used, inasmuch as no 
 sound of trowel was heard. The stones so well pre- 
 pared as not to require a fastening. That is, to say 
 the least, doubtful. But if you can imagine individ- 
 ual men and women so true and excellent and respon- 
 sible in character as to be right altogether, adequately 
 blending justice and mercy and all other excellent 
 qualities in their conduct, then you can imagine a 
 society which is not strongly bound together by out- 
 ward laws and restrictions. Outward laws, police, 
 criminal courts, and the like are for evil-doers and not 
 for well-doers. Were all well - doers they would be 
 useless. But for the present and probably for some 
 time to come such a society is to be imagined ; it is 
 not likely to be realized. 
 
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 221 
 
 A certain Christian apostle, who had a keener in- 
 sight than most men of his time, shrewdly perceived 
 that personal responsibility and liberty would inevita- 
 bly be carried to excess. From an under-estimate 
 people would swiftly go, when once started, to an over- 
 estimate of themselves. No matter how guarded the 
 Christian teachings as against selfishness, how explicit 
 in respect to self-denial, the most of people are not 
 learners of related truths, but truths isolated. There- 
 fore the warning Paul raises against excessive indi- 
 vidualism. He declares there is another truth, sup- 
 plementary of a true individualism, a truth which just 
 balances it. And then he goes on in a strain of so- 
 cialistic teaching almost unparalleled in literature. 
 He likens true society to a physical body, with vari- 
 ous members, and all the members vitally cooperative. 
 
 Excessive individualism renders men almost incapa- 
 ble of cooperation. We know how the idea of per- 
 sonal liberty has grown, and especially in this country 
 where the conditions have been most favorable. The 
 proposition that men do think more highly of them- 
 selves than they ought to think needs only to be 
 stated, and requires no demonstration. It is easy to 
 see how the principle has worked economically. Com- 
 petition is said to be the life of trade. Well, it is 
 also the life of war. One man competes vdth another 
 in trade. He goes on in competition until it becomes 
 often a sort of life-and-death struggle with the other. 
 What is it but the old struggle for existence waged 
 by countless races of animals and plants ? It is the 
 same thing, only carried into a higher plane. If men 
 beat their swords into plowshares and their spears 
 into pruning-hooks, and yet contrive in some manner 
 to kill each other, or deprive each other of necessary 
 
222 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 subsistence by means of these peaceful instruments, 
 the difference is not material. It is the old battle of 
 man with man, only not so ostensibly cruel. With un- 
 limited competition there i^ simply unlimited struggle 
 continued. The stronger will succeed and the weaker 
 will go to the wall. But that tends to throw society 
 back again into primitive socialism, wherein the strong 
 prevailed and ruled society, and the private individ- 
 ual was sunk out of consideration. Against unlimited 
 competition, therefore, rises the protest of mankind ; 
 and as has been suggested by an able thinker the very 
 competitors themselves are the first to discern the evils 
 of it. They are the ones who take measures to coun- 
 teract it, and have been forced to form their combi- 
 nations of monopoly in manufactured goods, and in 
 labor. An illustration is furnished by the writer al- 
 luded to, showing what necessarily results from rig- 
 orous enforcement of the law of competition. Take 
 the competition between laborers for wages : " The 
 real strife is between two or more laborers, and not 
 between labor and capital, as is generally supposed. 
 . . . Let us suppose that when times are good and the 
 laborer is getting good wages, he thinks he can sup- 
 port a family and marries. Or he may do so in the 
 heyday and flush of youth and without any thought 
 for the future. Whatever leads him to marry, his 
 family becomes a " fixed charge " upon him to support. 
 It is obvious that it is extremely important for his 
 own, his family's, and the social well-being, that he 
 earn enough to support them decently, to give them 
 wholesome food, warm clothing, and a fair education. 
 Hard times overtake him, the demand for labor slack- 
 ens, the married man has to compete with the single 
 man, and the latter, having only himself to support, 
 
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 223 
 
 can afford to work for less. But the former has more 
 depending on him ; he must find work or his family 
 will perish, and so the competition goes on until star- 
 vation wages are reached and they can go no lower. 
 His wife and children die for want of proper food, 
 and he is just able perhaps to keep body and soul to- 
 gether." 1 
 
 A man ought to esteem himself so that he shall 
 employ his physical, mental, and moral faculties, and 
 develop them aright. It is the weakest and least 
 effective, and possibly vainest, inan who lacks a due 
 self-respect. He who has no self-respect does not 
 know how to respect his fellow-man. But he ought 
 not to over-esteem himself, since, if he does, he is not 
 related justly to his fellows, and adds to the social 
 friction. He is a constant factor in the ill-condition 
 of men and cannot avoid so being. Let him there- 
 fore consider that while he is a moral being, and must 
 stand strong in his own personality, he nevertheless 
 belongs to a body of many members. And the better 
 he is in his personality, the purer, the more decisively 
 right, the better it shall be for that body. So the 
 Apostle Paul expands the teaching of Christ, and it 
 is probable that a still farther expansion along lines 
 of scientific thought will increasingly enlighten our 
 times. 
 
 No one can tell what revolutions and counter revo- 
 lutions of society may have already stored themselves 
 up for explosive operation within the new century or 
 even half century. No one can know what character 
 the revolutions will take, whether the earth, as often 
 before, shall be drenched in blood, or not. It is idle 
 to speculate. It is perhaps worse than idle to antici- 
 
 1 R. Matthews, Competition and Monopoly. 
 
224 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 pate evils which may never come. Sufficient for the 
 day is the evil thereof. But of one thing we may be 
 sure, that from a perverted and excessive individual- 
 ism ill will come, because in itself it is an evil, and the 
 parent of a numerous brood of evils. On the other 
 hand, a mechanical socialism which crushes the indi- 
 vidual, or reduces him to a mere factor in the state, 
 cannot make any permanent success in this world, 
 since it is a recurrence to a primitive type. And the 
 chariot wheels of creation do not roll in that direction. 
 
 I believe there will be a new socialism, in which the 
 individual will not be crushed and insignificant. It 
 seems to be coming with rapidity. World-wide com- 
 merce is bringing it. Telegraphs under water and over 
 land are bringing it. Interchange of opinion is bring- 
 ing it. Agitation brings it. Opposition brings it. 
 But how shall its quality be determined ? Some men 
 would make society as a log-hut is made. The chop- 
 pers chop each tree down off from its own roots, and 
 trim off the branches, and saw it into lengths, and hew 
 off the knots, and then pile up the timbers. But the 
 trees are gone, and logs are left. And when the thing 
 is done, it is only a log-hut. You cannot any longer 
 make society in that way, because we more and more 
 see that society is composed of living people, and the 
 life of each has its roots in God. The thing to do is 
 to make the tree good and let it grow and branch as it 
 will. 
 
 We come therefore to the fundamental proposition 
 of religion, and that is simple and intensely personal. 
 "Thou, O man, whoever thou art, hast thy conscience, 
 through which thou has speech with the Eternal One. 
 Thou art an evil-doer. No new or old contrivance of 
 society can make thee a doer of good. Whatever 
 
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 22.3 
 
 social reconstruction may come in the future, it is 
 necessary for thee to cease from thy perverseness now ; 
 to be no longer a transgressor of the laws of life. The 
 past, reaching back into the hazy infinities, thou canst 
 in no wise change. For much of it thou wert not 
 responsible. But the present is in thy hands. Thou 
 hast thine inheritance from the lower races to contend 
 with ; thou hast thy tendencies to evil which have come 
 to thee from a thousand sources. But the imperative 
 upon thee now is to cease to do evil and to learn to do 
 well, and thy God is thy Saviour. Put thy trust in 
 Him, and seek good to pursue it, and thou shalt pre- 
 vail. And thus shalt thou help to bring in a better 
 and nobler social state." 
 
XVII. 
 
 FAITH AND INTUITION. 
 
 "Now faith is the assurance (confidence ) of things hoped for, the 
 proving (conviction) of things not seen. For therein the elders had 
 witness borne to them " — Heb. xi. 1, 2. 
 
 " Yet I doiibt not through the ages 
 One increasing purpose runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widened 
 With the process of the suns." 
 
 LocKSLEY Hall. 
 
 Faith is a word which "belongs chiefly to religion. 
 It certainly does not belong to science. Faith is 
 spoken of, in one important definition of it, as a confi- 
 dence of things hoped for, a conviction of facts when 
 they are not seen. The man of science has a convic- 
 tion of facts after he has seen them and properly tested 
 them, and not before. That may be said to be the dif- 
 ference between religion and science ; and unless that 
 difference is borne in mind, one will be confused in 
 respect to the whole matter. Many people feel that 
 whatsoever is not scientific is not true, and that since 
 faith is something entirely separate from science it is, 
 to say the least, unimportant. Or perchance faith is 
 worse than unimporta,nt ; it may be altogether untrue ; 
 therefore science ought to fight it, and if possible de- 
 stroy it. And there has been, there is now,, a conflict 
 between science and faith. Who is responsible for this 
 conflict? It seems to me that there is a divided re- 
 sponsibility, and that it belongs to the representatives 
 of science and the representatives of religion. 
 
FAITH AND INTUITION. 227 
 
 In the first place, the scientific man has been held to 
 a most strict and punctual attention to facts and phe- 
 nomena. It is his business to be accurate. He finds 
 facts and their relations. That is of exceedingly high 
 value, as we all must acknowledge. Now the religious 
 man comes in contact with the scientific man, and pro- 
 ceeds to talk from his stand-point of faith. But this 
 religious man is not at all clear as to the nature of 
 faith itself, and presents to the scientific man an arti- 
 cle of faith which proves contrary to some finding of 
 science ; the scientific man bluntly declares that this 
 article of faith is opposed by an article of science. 
 The representative of faith insists that the science 
 must be in fault. The scientific man rejoins that he 
 can prove the finding of science to the reason of any 
 intelligent mind. And the religious man declines to 
 accept this proof. The effect of such an attitude is 
 often to rouse in the mind of the scientific man a feel- 
 ing of derision toward faith. He says to himself : " It 
 is evident that faith consists in believing something 
 whether it is true or not. And it appears also that the 
 people who have faith are not so concerned as to the 
 truth of a matter as they ought to be. They care only 
 for faith. I therefore can have no use for faith. As 
 an honest man I will contrive to get along without it." 
 
 But is not the scientific man in fault in taking such 
 a stand ? Clearly in fault, if you will look well into 
 it. For it is his business to make cautious examina- 
 tion of the facts and phenomena which fall under his 
 observation. And here is a phenomenon of which he 
 makes only a careless observation. Ought he not to 
 consider that the religious man who does not care for 
 the truth of an article of his faith is precisely the kind 
 of a person to misrepresent faith or anything else? 
 
228 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 Ought he not, then, to get at some real representation 
 of it ? Certainly he ought, before he indulges in an 
 attack upon faith. There is a vast deal of misrepre- 
 sentation in the world, and not a little carelessness. 
 It is the duty of the scientific man, a duty more im- 
 perative upon him than upon others, to guard him- 
 self against these misrepresentations and all this bulk 
 of human carelessness. It is unscientific not to do so. 
 
 A scientific man knows what science is. How did 
 he find out? Suppose he had stopped some person on 
 the street, the first person he happened to meet, and 
 asked him : " My friend, will you have the gbodness to 
 tell me what science is ? " " With pleasure," the per- 
 son responds; "I know all about it. Science consists 
 in boiling some dirty liquid over a spirit lamp, in a 
 test-tube, and getting a vile odor in the room. That is 
 science." Well, the inquirer thinks that he will not 
 interest himself in science if that is it. Presently he 
 meets another man and asks him, " What is science?" 
 " I can tell you. It is having your pockets full of 
 bottles, and carrying around a tin box, and picking up 
 worms and snails for the bottles and putting weeds in 
 your tin box. That is science." And that is n't entic- 
 ing. And so the man, ambitious of being a votary of 
 science, concludes that he will not turn his attention 
 that way. Of course any person fit to be a student of 
 science would not seek its definition in that manner. 
 And why one should take the answers of any kind of 
 a religious man, in definition of faith, is difficult to 
 comprehend. 
 
 Connected with the history of the development of the 
 Christian faith is a story. This story occupies a few 
 lines in a book of almost incomparable beauty and 
 truth. I refer to the book known as that of Jonah. A 
 
FAITH AND INTUITION. 229 
 
 representative of faith carries this story to a scientifio 
 man as an article of faith. He says : " It is necessary 
 for you tp accept this tale, and believe it, if you would 
 be a partaker in the Christian faith." The scientific 
 man hears the story, and at once declares that he can- 
 not believe it. "Well, but you must believe it, because 
 it belongs to the general volume of our faith." " But 
 I cannot believe it. I know something about whales. 
 And I know that whales are not made to swallow such 
 a large object as a man. They don't feed upon that 
 sort of food. Then if by any means a man were swal- 
 lowed by a whale, it would be sure death to the man. 
 That is what I see to be the truth of the case." Now 
 if the man insists upon the belief of this tale, as being 
 an article of faith, he has simply misrepresented faith, 
 and has done so in a way which is excusable only upon 
 the ground of lack of information. And while it is 
 perfectly right for the scientific man to reject that 
 particular statement or any like it, it is not right for 
 him to draw a wide conclusion from such insufficient 
 data as to the invalidity of faith itself. 
 
 I would ask your attention to a definition of the word 
 faith, as given by an unknown writer. It is found in 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, the authorship of which is 
 probably beyond discovery. Perhaps it is better that 
 the maker of this definition is unknown, since the 
 definition must rest upon its own merit, rather than 
 upon the authority of any great name : " Faith is a 
 confidence of things hoped for ; a conviction of facts 
 when they are not seen." That the facts or truths 
 here spoken of are not facts in history, or facts in any 
 kind of visibility whatsoever, is evident enough from 
 the definition. They are facts or truths which lie be- 
 yond investigation, and which cannot be proved. We 
 
2C0 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 may well consider that in an indefinite manner all 
 sorts of men, given at all to contemplation, have come 
 to some degree of hope that there is a Great Being 
 who has an interest in us. A great Invisible Being, 
 who has created, and who in some way upholds, all 
 things. Hope stirs in the heart ; hope that behind all 
 clouds, storms, human vicissitudes, and evil is One 
 who is stable and good. This hope deepens. And 
 there comes a confidence and a conviction in respect 
 to the hoped for and the invisible. Many of the men 
 of old had this confidence and conviction, and lived 
 "according to faith." The most interesting portion 
 of history dates from this confidence and conviction. 
 It was this which gave the moral tone to those leaders 
 of men who led to better things. 
 
 Look, I pray you, at these ancient worthies, spoken 
 of as living "according to faith." What were their 
 sources of information ? They looked abroad at 
 things, and saw the sky full of stars at night, full of 
 sunlight by day. Saw everything in fact which na^ 
 ture continually presents to the contemplative soul. 
 Biit how about all these things ? How did they come 
 to be ? The answer to that question must be given, if 
 it is given at all, from within. Do what one may to 
 reason out final cause, from a great mass of effects, or 
 to show by sparks of logic that there is a Being, like 
 ourselves in some way, only on a scale of measureless- 
 ness, if we may so speak, and we get nowhere. De- 
 sign and designer, and all that business so familiar 
 to the mind of mankind for a long time, helps little 
 enough to find the invisible. And these worthies of 
 old knew little enough of the logical method of find- 
 ing out God. I suspect that no man of any age did 
 ever or could accurately reason out and prove a final 
 
FAITH AND INTUITION. 231 
 
 cause, which was even approximately final. But al- 
 v.'ays the man who found God did so, not as a philos- 
 opher, but by the high light of his own intuitions. 
 If the simple story of Abraham is taken as a repre- 
 sentative story of these ancient worthies who lived 
 according to faith, you will clearly see what the faith 
 is. We first encounter this man in some Eastern land, 
 a member of a religious community. He is a man of 
 the contemplative sort, hopeful, too, as may be seen, 
 and quite convinced of the feebleness and folly of the 
 religion prevailing around him. There were reasoning 
 processes in his mind, and those probably of a high 
 order for the time ; but it is not by these he finds 
 God. It is by direct intuition or by faith, which is 
 another name for the same thing. And this grows in 
 him until his surroundings become intolerable to him, 
 and he moves out of them to others. Probably to our 
 childish imagination there has been presented the pic- 
 ture of Abraham as receiving a visit from God. But 
 there is nothing in the history of such men to lead us 
 at all to think of God as a visitor. It seems that 
 Abraham felt intuitively that there was an. invisible 
 government for him and for all men. A right and 
 steadfast government. A guide for him and for all 
 others, so far as they would consent to guidance. 
 And not a guidance by custom, and popular usage, 
 nor by a religion which comes by descent — but by 
 faith, or intuition. That is the meaning of Abraham 
 and his history. 
 
 It cannot be too strongly asserted that faith, what 
 may be properly called faith, does not come from 
 proof. At least it does not come from scientific proof, 
 and it does not in any way relate to visibilities. For 
 if you take the word intuition, and put it in place of 
 
232 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 faith (not indeed as a complete synonym for it, but as 
 being of the same order in philosophy that faith is in 
 religion), and try to use it upon things recorded in his- 
 tories, sacred or other, your intuition is of very small 
 use to you as thus applied. History records the death 
 of CaBsar at the hands of conspirators. You accept 
 the story. But your intuition, if it touches the matter 
 at aU, does so very remotely. You cannot knov\r by 
 faith that somebody stabbed a Roman named Caesar. 
 Some one writes the event down. It gets itself thus 
 recorded in the history, and corroborated in various 
 ways. There is nothing improbable about it. It is 
 accepted as one of the visibilities of time. But when 
 you find that many people supposed that a beautiful 
 statue of a goddess or a god was made in heaven, and 
 was let down out of heaven to be put in a temple, that 
 involves a very different group of principles. There 
 is improbability in that. And that is rejected. 
 
 There is, in these latter days, under grace of heaven, 
 a science, growing more complete in its tools and 
 means, and in skillful use of them, to which all phe- 
 nomenal things are referred. It is precisely the prov- 
 ince of science to deal as best it may with the visibil- 
 ities, past and present, and not with things hoped for 
 and invisible. Science knows that the winds are not 
 contained in and imprisoned under some mountain, to 
 be let out on occasion by a wind-god; Science knows 
 something of the laws of storm-movements and storm- 
 centres, and the like ; and out of this knowledge, to- 
 gether with the careful observation of conditions, gets 
 the probabilities of the humidity of the air, the tem- 
 perature and other things for particular localities. 
 Science can indeed look a little ahead, in this manner. 
 But it casts its glance backward too, and is compelled 
 
FAITH AND INTUITION. 233 
 
 to do away with the old poetical-religious notion o£ 
 gods of storms and dungeons of winds. In discovery 
 of actual facts, lying in visibility before the eyes of 
 men, and actual relations of these facts, science must 
 needs change the feelings and information of intel- 
 ligent people with reference to ancient things. 
 
 But has this province of science anything what- 
 ever to do with the intuition ? I fail to see that it 
 has. For faith, by its definition, is the inward convic- 
 tion and confidence of the invisible and the hoped-for. 
 And science has to do strictly with the visible. That 
 is to say, the respective departments of faith and sci- 
 ence are widely separate. And it would not be diffi- 
 cult to see this if men were careful to distinguish 
 faith, as always of the order of intuition ; an inward 
 conviction and confidence. But they do not thus care- 
 fully distinguish, and mischief enough is the result 
 of it. Revelation is looked upon very largely as the 
 object of faith. Now revelation is distinctly a visi- 
 bility, and therefore could not be an object of faith, 
 unless faith failed to be intuitive. Says the unknown 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by whom the 
 definition of faith is given : " By faith (not because 
 we have been told so) we understand that the ages 
 were set in order by the word of God." A great many 
 people understand nothing of the sort. It is because 
 they lack the intuition. Andj-pne who has the intui- 
 tion cannot prove his own conviction to one who lacks 
 it.^ What proof is there? The heavens declare the 
 glory of God to such as are convicted of God. They 
 declare something to others, but not the glory of God. 
 
 But to return to the proposition of the unknown 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By faith we 
 understand that the ages were put in order or framed 
 
234 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 together, by the word of God. We might look back 
 at the geologic ages. We might go back thousands 
 of centuries, possibly, to that age in which the earth 
 was devoid of life. And starting there, look upon the 
 beginnings of life in its lowest form. In the lifeless 
 age, the air, as we discover, must have been loaded with 
 carbonic acid, and no organism could live under such 
 circumstances. Vast quantities of this poison are with-, 
 drawn to be united with lime, thus forming limestone ; 
 and there was the age of vegetation and water animals. 
 More of the carbonic acid gas was withdrawn by 
 vegetation, the carbon becoming coal ; and air-breath- 
 ing animals came. It was their age. The process of 
 the withdrawal of the carbonic acid gas from the at- 
 mosphere, repeated often, was always making a higher 
 age possible. And meanwhile certain minerals of the 
 metallic sort are formed by slow chemical processes, 
 leaching through the soil to form veins for future use. 
 But animals caimot make any use of coal, nor are they 
 artificers in iron and the other metals. To the man 
 who has the intuition of Mind and Will, there is 
 abundant evidence of prevision in all these geologic 
 ages. That is to say, the ages were being set in or- 
 der, with reference to a higher order to follow. To 
 some minds, the ages simply grew out of each other 
 according to some method. And that is all that can 
 be said or thought on the subject. But to the mind 
 which has the intuition of God, that is, the man of 
 faith, this much is evident : that these ages were not 
 left ungoverned, but were subject to the mind of One 
 who is continually preparing the way for the higher, 
 and the highest, product of creative wisdom. Deadly 
 carbonic acid here, having its reign and purpose, was 
 not to be a finality, and was not left to be always 
 
FAITH AND INTUITION. 235 
 
 deadly, but set in such relations as to be of incal- 
 culable service in due time. 
 
 Then when man is at last reached, he stands upon 
 the vantage ground of ordered ages. For there is an 
 order, and not mere chaotic disorder, under his feet. 
 An order into which he will more and more penetrate 
 as he acquires the use of his faculties. Lights stud 
 the space above him, masses upon masses of them, 
 scattered, as appears, by mere chance; but as time 
 goes on he will be amazed at the spectacle of a wide- 
 spreading order in the sky, in which every tiny light- 
 point stands. 
 
 Now the spectacle of order, which order science is 
 continually laying bare to our inspection and admira- 
 tion, would seem to make the intuition of an Ordainer 
 of it easy and natural. It would seem so. But it has 
 not universally proved so. There are other factors in 
 the problem, which present difficulties. In the case 
 of our ancient worthies, Abraham and others, the in- 
 tuition prevailed over the difficulties. In the case of 
 multitudes the difficulties prevail over the intuition. 
 Hume, the historian, dining once vrith a company of 
 learned men, eighteen in number, remarked that he 
 did not think there were any atheists, and was sur- 
 prised to find that in the company were fifteen athe- 
 ists, " and three did not know what to think of it." 
 
 Let us continue to look upon the ages, which by 
 faith are understood to be set in order or framed to- 
 gether by the word of God. Man is here, his age 
 having come ; but his age is of many ages. Begin- 
 ning with the absence of moral life, the feeble first of 
 that comes, and the increase, amidst confusions and 
 occasional apparent chaos. And meantime, according 
 to faith, or the intuition, God is setting all this in 
 
236 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 order. Well, we look back upon these human ages, 
 and are not pleased with them. Prevailing ignorance, 
 brutality, cruelty, bloodshed, rapine, and robbery, the 
 strong in power and luxury, and the weak in slav- 
 ery and want, and the people making to themselves 
 gods of mud and other plastic material. Gods they 
 had which appear as carnivorous monsters, hungry 
 and thirsty, with an insatiable appetite for human 
 flesh and sufferings. And is it possible that God had 
 an order in those unblest ages ? A kind of atmos- 
 phere loaded with moral carbonic acid, and not aU of 
 it by any means yet withdrawn, seems to have hung 
 heavy over them. And yet a betterment of conditions 
 and of moral atmosphere continually shows itself. An 
 order thus does make its appearance. Chiefs, kings, 
 universal monarchs, conquerors, come upon the stage 
 one after the other, to play their respective parts. 
 The very powers that are, be they good powers or the 
 contrary, are ordained of God. The powers which 
 crush other powers are ordained of God. The king is 
 dethroned, not by chance and not by grim caprice of 
 a mob, but by divine ordinance. 
 
 Then God is responsible ? Yes ; above all other 
 conceivable beings, responsible ; holding a sovereign 
 responsibility, however, in connection with a subject 
 responsibility of His moral creatures, unto which we 
 do well that we take most earnest heed. For it is 
 this subject responsibility with which we have to do, 
 and not with the sovereign responsibility. This is a 
 thing deep beyond our present fathoming, and not to 
 be profitably dwelt upon now. But in all ages God 
 has raised up such men as had faith, or intuition, to 
 do the best work of creation, and chiefly to forward 
 the revelation upon its course. These men of faith are 
 
FAITH AND INTUITION. 237 
 
 not described to us as perfect men, nor as perfectly- 
 informed men. They have their intuitions of the 
 hoped for and the invisible in connection with their 
 respective ages. They live in the midst of the visi- 
 bilities of their times and are duly impressed by them. 
 But they are represented to us as depending immedi- 
 ately upon God, as men of faith. Their life and work 
 are governed by that dependence. They endure as 
 seeing Him ■«!'ho is invisible. 
 
 Now the faith of modern times is not characteris- 
 tically of that same intuitive kind. It has been dis- 
 turbed and confused by the taking in of a great host 
 of visibilities, or assumed visibilities, as proper objects 
 of faith. They are not such, and in the nature of the 
 case could not be such. For we have found faith to 
 be a conviction of invisible facts or truths. There- 
 fore those things which properly belong to the domain 
 of science do not properly belong to the domain of 
 faith. 
 
 Many Christians regard the Bible as an object of 
 faith. It is most manifestly one of the visible things 
 in this world of ours open to the inspection of all 
 men. It is a record of the faiths of men of faith. It 
 is therefore the record of the revelation. It gives us 
 a view of how the ages have been set in order by the 
 word of God. This record is a phenomenon, and as 
 such it is taken in hand by scientific experts of one 
 kind and another. In the study of it, such a study 
 as has been given no other book, a great many incred- 
 ible things have been found. That is, things incred- 
 ible to the man of science. In the ages which this 
 book gives record of, the distinction between the cred- 
 ible and the incredible, which now obtains, was not 
 made. It could not have been made. And the so- 
 
238 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 called faith of many has been shaken. But no scien- 
 tific criticism has successfully assailed the intuition. 
 And the intuition is the faith of the men of faith. 
 Conviction of the invisible, confidence of the hoped- 
 for. That I take to be unassailable. What is faith 
 in the Bible ? It is confidence in the work done by 
 men of old. So much of that work as corresponds 
 with intuition is valid to us — and only so much. I 
 beg you to note that it was by such best judgment of 
 various men our Bible took the shape in which we 
 have it now. "Was their best judgment infallibly 
 correct ? The whole case turns on that. If we have 
 such supreme confidence in the men who determined 
 what books should go into the Bible, as that we accept 
 their decision as final, then we have faith in men, 
 and not the intuitive faith of Abraham and other 
 worthies. 
 
 But who are these men ? Let us see. The first 
 century of our Christian era produced a large num- 
 ber of literary works beside those contained in the 
 New Testament. It became therefore necessary to 
 determine upon the canon. Those works which were 
 of genuine apostolic origin, and those which truly rep- 
 resented the Christian truth, must, in some manner, 
 be separated from the bulk of the literature. But it 
 was impossible to draw a distinct line, because repre- 
 sentative men differed in regard to the value of dif- 
 ferent books. The Epistle of Barnabas, that of Jude, 
 and to the Hebrews, and the Shepherd of Hermas, 
 were highly regarded by some and not by others. 
 Down to the middle of the second century Christians 
 used the Old Testament exclusively for their authori- 
 tative expositions of truth. Up to the beginning of 
 the third century we do not find any one speaking of 
 
FAITH AND INTUITION. 239 
 
 the New Testament writings as inspired in the same 
 sense in which the Old Testament was held to be in- 
 spired. But then the interest of the church began to 
 centre around the later writings. The books were col- 
 lected. There was doubt in regard to the Epistle of 
 Jude, the second of Peter, second and third of John, 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, and others. Upon the 
 other books there was a general consensus, except as 
 to the book of Revelation, which was regarded with 
 disfavor by the Western church. Suffice it to say that 
 in the year 360 the Council or Synod of Laodicea 
 made the first official list (not including the Reve- 
 lation of John), and forbade the public reading of 
 uncanonieal books. In the year 405 Pope Innocent I. 
 fixed the canon by decree, as it now stands.^ 
 
 I conceive that the final fixing of the canon of 
 the New Testament by decree of the Pope, at the 
 opening of the fifth century, was and is of the high- 
 est importance ; that the decision in respect to the 
 books admitted and excluded was a wise decision. 
 But all this belongs not to the province of faith, or 
 the intuition. The Bible is with us incalculably val- 
 uable if used as an aid to faith, and not as its object. 
 For the moment it is made an object, science assails 
 the position and carries it. Because science plainly 
 enough declares some things recorded as phenomena 
 in the book are not credible. And when once that is 
 discovered to be true, as soon or late it will be, the 
 faith will be made shipwreck of, being in fact not 
 faith, but some semblance thereof. 
 
 It becomes necessary therefore to inquire whether 
 the Christian church has not unwittingly shifted its 
 centre, and whether in so doing it is not inflicting a 
 
 ' See Professor Sumner in Johnson's Cyclopedia. 
 
240 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 very grave hurt upon Its own most sacred cause. If 
 it has gone from the intuition, or the confidence in 
 the hoped for and the conviction of the things which 
 are not seen, which characterized the ancient worthies 
 and which also characterized Christ and His apostles, 
 then surely there can be no doubt that it has shifted 
 its centre. If it takes any visible event, or any event 
 of which it assumes to offer proof that it was visible 
 at one period in the history of the world, and presents 
 that as an object of faith, it invalidates faith itself. 
 It makes it quite other than the actual faith presented 
 in the Bible. There is melancholy testimony that the 
 church has committed this capital error. For it has 
 come to be insisted upon that the Christian faith in- 
 cludes a considerable variety of visible things; and 
 that one lacks the Christian faith if he does not accept 
 and believe these things. But faith is a conviction 
 of the invisible. That is the essential nature of it. 
 I do not say that it is independent of history, for his- 
 tory has much to do in the development of the con- 
 viction. But I do say that a man has faith, if like 
 Abraham (a man without a Bible) he is convicted of 
 the unseen God and Governor of all, if he recognizes 
 and obeys the voice of God within himself. 
 
 It has been said that the highest product of evolu- 
 tion in nature is the rational being called man — the 
 being with a soul. But the most important processes 
 of evolution are the later ones. And it is this crea- 
 tion, so to speak, of the intuition in man, this bring- 
 ing of him face to face with his Creator by means of 
 his own inward convictions, which is the noblest pro- 
 cess of evolution we can at present know. It is this 
 which forms and completes man in the image of his 
 Creator. 
 
FAITH AND INTUITION. 241 
 
 The inward conviction undoubtedly takes different 
 shape and color in different souls. For some it is a 
 simple conviction of righteousness, and of the conse- 
 quent devotion of the man himself to the following of 
 righteousness. Among the confusions of argumenta- 
 tion one holds fast to that. In others the conviction is 
 mainly of a Being who is the righteous Guide to our 
 lives, and our Creator. In others the conviction is of 
 immediate duty, as a divinely sacred thing to be done. 
 But in any case the conviction is the faith. Eternal 
 truths become the object of eternal confidence. One 
 passes out of the shows of time by faith and into the 
 realities whicb cannot be made in any wise a show of. 
 The province of science is the outward. The province 
 of faith or intuition is the inward. I do not for a mo- 
 ment claim that the outward is not of importance, 
 since so large a proportion of our life is in it. But 
 I protest against the confusion of the two provinces. 
 Let the scientific man deal with all outward facts and 
 phenomena, and by all means let him deal with them 
 as best he can ; he cannot disturb the faith of any one 
 who has faith. But if your faith rests upon things in 
 his province, outward things, the disturbance, even to 
 the extent of overthrow, is almost sure to come, soon 
 or late. 
 
 Let a man believe what he perceives to be true, 
 however that truth comes to him ; let him cast him- 
 self on that truth, and commit himself to it, and he 
 for his part wiU belong to the company of those who 
 through faith have wrought righteousness in this 
 world. 
 
 " Without faith it is impossible to please God," we 
 are told. It is by our intuition He approaches us, 
 gets a hearing with us, heals us of our inward disor- 
 
242 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 ders, and so draws us into His salvation. But there 
 is no healing of our inward disorders in pinning our 
 belief to any or all historic events, though they be 
 without exception true, for what we need is not more 
 and more of the outward, but a creation of our in- 
 ward life. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 CONDITIONS ATTENDING THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 
 
 " Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh the har- 
 vest." — John iv. 35. 
 
 " Whose fan is in his hand. ' ' — Matthb w iii. 13. 
 
 The law of increase demands more careful consid- 
 eration than all are prepared to give it. For it is a 
 law which does not lie superficial and clear before 
 the eyes of men. There is a mystery about it. In 
 certain of the lower ranks of nature it is perhaps gen- 
 erally observed ; in the higher ranks of nature it has 
 been less clearly discerned. 
 
 Of a handful of wheat two dispositions may be 
 made. It may be ground into flour and baked into 
 bread and eaten ; in which case it is so much energy 
 transferred to human vitality. It may be thrown 
 away into the ground, in which case it would appear 
 to be lost. Here then are two dispositions to be made 
 of wheat, or other such thing ; the transfer of it as 
 energy into the current of human life, with a little 
 loss in the transformation, on the one hand ; and a 
 total loss to the current human life, on the other. 
 
 But the total loss is seen to be, after all, the great- 
 est gain, if properly investigated, since the handful of 
 wheat or other grain thrown into fit ground becomes 
 from thirty to a hundred fold, or perchance a thousand 
 fold increased. Now doubtless the major portion of 
 the grain that is each year harvested is sent to the 
 
244 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 markets for consumption, and the lesser part is re- 
 tained to be cast into the ground for future harvests 
 and food. One cannot tell which is the more impor- 
 tant, the wheat which is used for food or that which 
 is used for seed. Certainly each is most important 
 in its own time and place. But the grain which is 
 cast away into the soil, to be swallowed up by it, to be 
 dissolved away there, and leave no visible remnant of 
 itself, is the portion which has the increase. 
 
 Truth comes to the mind of a man ; the man per- 
 ceives it, and begins to order ,his life by it. He 
 digests it, and the energy of It becomes his energy. 
 And he gives it to others. Now in this giving it to 
 others, — a thing which he is bound to do, — he is 
 doing that which he himself is often tempted to look 
 upon as waste and loss. And there is a loss about it, — 
 a wastage, because all people are not fitly prepared for 
 truth. All people are not simple-minded and candid. 
 Very many are full of cares of various kinds, and are 
 so anxious to get on in the world, or so anxious to 
 maintain the ground they have achieved, that they 
 cannot take interest in truth, especially if it have the 
 aspect of new truth. They cannot endanger their 
 prospects, poor souls. And others are too superficial 
 for a steady and constant interest in any truth. And 
 others still are unapproachable by truth. Or at least 
 a truth will lie upon their minds like a pebble upon 
 a beach, rolled in by one wave and roUed out by an- 
 other. Wherefore there is a good deal of wastage in 
 the giving forth of truth, for which due allowance 
 must needs be made. But in spite of wastage, the 
 law of increase holds in truth as it does in the lower 
 ranks of nature. 
 
 The conditions attending the progress of truth are 
 
THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 245 
 
 perplexing ; in fact, to some minds it is perplexing 
 that there should be any progress at all. That truth 
 should grow, enlarge itself, and develop, is more than 
 they appear able to think. Because to many truth is 
 a something, as it were of a mineral kingdom, a pre- 
 cious jewel, to be hoarded, laid up, carefully guarded. 
 This precious something has been taken in hand as by 
 a lapidary, and cut into fit shape, facets made upon it, 
 and finished "to a nicety, and then given as a sublime 
 trust to a man. " Here is truth for you, fixed in defi- 
 nite shape, to be kept. Take it and keep it, hand it 
 down to your children in precisely this shape. Do not 
 tamper with it, let it not be scratched nor marred in 
 any wise, but protected." He who thinks that truth 
 is of such a mineral nature, a jewel to be guarded 
 and handed down to his successors in just its orig- 
 inal shape, must feel about it as did the man in the 
 parable, who, being entrusted with a talent, took it 
 and hid it in a napkin, and so kept it safe and intact. 
 But that man in the parable was named a wicked 
 and slothful servant, you will remember, and had his 
 talent taken away from him. He was told, after all 
 the careful and scrupulous hiding of the talent, that 
 he ought to have put it through a process of exchange 
 and enlargement ; that, and not secretion and careful 
 guarding, being the proper use of talents. Wonder- 
 fully tenacious have men been of the truth they have 
 had given them. A certain faithfulness they have 
 displayed in their guardianship of it. Only they have 
 mistaken the nature of truth, believing it to be some 
 crystal formation belonging to the mineral kingdom, 
 rather than a vital something, to* grow and change the 
 form of it. If we speak of truth as a jewel, our 
 whole meaning in such a simile is that truth is a 
 precious thing ; simply that. 
 
246 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 The careful and competent farmer who gets due in- 
 crease and reward for his labor proceeds in a manner 
 well worth intelligent consideration. When his field 
 is plowed and suitably mellowed to his purpose, he 
 casts the seed into it. And then he takes a look at 
 the fences which surround that field. Sees to it that 
 they are sufficient for their purpose, and will keep out 
 all intrusion of cattle and other animals. Then shuts 
 the gate and leaves that field thus guarded.' The wheat 
 springs up and the cattle look over the fence. They 
 would like to get at the grain but are not permitted. 
 The wheat grows in a beautiful manner until the heat 
 and light and rain have done their work upon it and 
 it turns white. Then, behold, everything is complete 
 in that field. Every stalk is complete, every leaf is 
 complete. Every stalk is crowned with its golden 
 crown of the perfected grain. The farmer goes- and 
 looks at it. Then some morning he throws open the 
 gate and sends in his workmen with cradle or other 
 device, to cut down all this complete growth. Down 
 it goes before the ruthless blade, and is bound in bun- 
 dles. Well, that is something, at least. The bundles 
 are orderly, and they are removed to the barn. There 
 then is stored up this treasure. But that is not the 
 end of it. In modern times the farmer brings a great 
 machine to his barn. The wheat which had been 
 fenced in for a time, protected and guarded within a 
 closed gate, which had afterward been stored up in so 
 careful a manner and sheltered, is torn from its place, 
 the bundles broken, and all cast into the roaring ma- 
 chine which eats it up like the devouring monster it is. 
 And the stalks of it, and the chaff of it are cast out- 
 side as refuse, while the little grains which loaded 
 the golden heads stream out and are measured and 
 
THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 247 
 
 sent to the world's market to feed mankind. Except 
 for this mankind would go hungry. 
 
 This is the process which would be infinitely per- 
 plexing to the inexperienced. A great contrast shows 
 itself between the first stages and the last. The first 
 are careful and guarded and protective ; the last dis- 
 ruptive, violent, and apparently wasteful. But the 
 contrast is simply between the seed-time and the har- 
 vest. And we may imagine a child to have watched 
 the field, to have been delighted with the growth of the 
 crop, to have rejoiced in its final perfection. This 
 child would protest against the reapers going in at the 
 gate to level the fair growth. He would be appalled 
 at the coming of the machine, with all - devouring 
 mouth. And how many there are who have the feel- 
 ings of this child, with reference to the way in which 
 truth itself is sometimes dealt with. 
 
 To see a truth, which has grown to its shape and 
 proportions in statements, wrested in some manner 
 out of such statements, and in fact cleared of them, 
 is a most grievous sight to many a man whose mind 
 has been impressed by the truths in them. Yet we 
 discover, if there is in us a faculty of discovery, that 
 there are moral seed-times and harvest-times. Surely 
 the teachings of Christ would open our eyes to that 
 fact. There is a time when truth is as it were new 
 given. The truth which has gathered and grown in 
 human experience is taken from its old relations and 
 restrictions and made to serve the purpose of a new 
 sowing. And there is a time when truth is fenced 
 about and guarded. By that Divine Providence which 
 rules in the affairs of men, the truth is left unmo- 
 lested. The gate is shut upon it by the exceedingly 
 conservative opinions and feelings of men, so that it 
 
248 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 shall not be tampered with. In such times truth is 
 not much investigated, and it is held in a vague, 
 indefinite way. The real meaning or purpose of it is 
 not sharply inquired into. Such a period we find in 
 the Jewish history, and repeated again in the Chris- 
 tian history of a half score of centuries. The form 
 of the truth is sacredly cherished. The critical anal- 
 ysis of it hindered and forbidden. Then there comes 
 on gradually the time of sifting, doubt, inquiry. That, 
 as it appears, is the threshing time. And very pain- 
 ful it proves to the lovers of the form of truth, or the 
 dogma. No doubt a fiery time, and a time of tribula- 
 tion to them. 
 
 The son of a Jewish priest, a man who had lived in 
 a peculiar and ascetic manner, a recluse, and possibly 
 a member of one of those little communities which 
 withdrew from the general community of Jewish soci- 
 ety, lifted his voice at the fords of the Jordan, where 
 travelers were passing, in protest against the life of 
 the nation. Declared that it was a false kind of life, 
 and to be abandoned, or that nation would be like 
 a tree against whose roots the woodman lays his axe, 
 to cut it down. Therefore all must be changed and 
 rectified. The symbol of this man's mission and 
 message was the rite of baptism. He invited and 
 implored and commanded the people to change, and 
 to wash off the evils of their time, by their repentance. 
 He also declared that a Mightier One should take up 
 his work, and go on with it. And the kind of work 
 of this Mightier One he described in a figure of 
 speech. " Whose fan is in His hand, and He will 
 thoroughly cleanse His threshing floor." These are 
 the words which describe the mission of the Succes- 
 sor of John. We are probably aware that a fan of 
 
THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 2^9 
 
 the kind mentioned is not of the merely ornamental 
 order, not for the personal comfort of the one who 
 carries it, but is one of the instruments of the har- 
 vest. Its office is to blow away chaff, and get the 
 grain free of it. A most important thing to do, if it 
 comes in the proper time. Moreover, such is the feel- 
 ing of the ascetic prophet in the wilderness with ref- 
 erence to this chaff that he goes on to say that an 
 unquenchable fire will be kindled in it, so as to effect 
 its disappearance and utter removal from the world. 
 Could we but examine the heart of this devoted 
 man of the desert, should we not find him deeply sor- 
 rowful over the formalism of his countrymen, who 
 cherished every form of truth in so precise a way as 
 to lend weight to the suspicion that they had neither 
 thought for nor interest in the truth itself? We 
 conclude that such was the feeling of this prophet. 
 And that it was entirely justified. A people devoted 
 to chaff is necessarily a chaffy people, having for the 
 most part a chaff-religion, and a most unreal chaff-life 
 in general. Doing things prescribed to them, and 
 having little or no rational conception of their mean- 
 ing. That I take to be so deplorable a condition for 
 a man or a people as to stir the heart of a reformer 
 to its depths. 
 
 The Harvester makes his first appearance. He is 
 the Harvester of the old, and the Sower of the new. 
 For it is well for us to remember that there is no ab- 
 solutely new thing under the sun. 
 
 It has been objected to Christ that He produced no 
 
 new thing. That He was not original, and the like. 
 
 It is true. The new springs out of the old. But the 
 
 ■ great thing is to get the new out of the old. If we 
 
 ^ carefully scrutinize the work of Christ, shall we not 
 
250 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 behold Him always separating between the outward 
 and the apparent, and the inward and true? He casts 
 away nothing of worth which has grown up in human 
 experience. He casts away but the transient, and 
 gathers the abiding into His garner, wherewith to feed 
 the world, and to sow the world with the new tidings. 
 
 This then is the character of the opening of the 
 Christian dispensation. Preeminently the time of the 
 fan ; a harvest of the growths of the elder times. Tem- 
 ple, ritual, altar, sacrifices, the priesthood, the sacred 
 traditions, the law and the prophets, all yield to the 
 Harvester the real substance that is in them, which real 
 substance they had protected, fenced in, and infolded. 
 Heal substance is thus got into usable condition, and 
 is set forth, not as a thing to be looked at and admired, 
 not to say worshiped, but to be incorporated in life as 
 best we may. It is sown in the lives, thinking, and 
 conduct of man to grow as it may. If one is at pains 
 to look back of Christ, at the mission of Isaiah, Jere- 
 miah, Micah, Amos, and other of the prophets, he will 
 plainly enough see that they too endeavored to do that 
 which in a fullness of time the Christ did. For they 
 deplored above all the formalism of their times, and 
 sought to awaken in the breast of Israel a distrust of 
 all forms, and a discernment of their meaning. It was 
 over and over asserted by them that God does not re- 
 quire things to be done which were set down in their 
 law. He had given forth those things to contain a 
 teaching for the people. They perversely neglected 
 the teaching, and kept up the things. 
 
 It is almost as good as axiomatic that we have seed- 
 time and harvest in our moral affairs ; that if there is 
 such a thing as seed-time, the harvest must naturally 
 follow it. But no harvest comes because a man pro- 
 
THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH.- 251 
 
 poses to have it come. The farmer, who should open 
 his gate and summon his reapers while his crop is yet 
 in the green, would do foolishly and be at loss. And 
 he would be no fit farmer. The sun, with its heats 
 increasing and intensifying as the season rolls along, 
 brings the harvest in due course ; the showers and 
 moisture bring it. The man observant of their work 
 wisely does his work in accord therewith. 
 
 Now we have come to a time in human history 
 which we may fairly call critical. I mean a time be- 
 yond all others, of criticism. Everywhere stands the 
 critic, armed and equipped, as the law of criticism di- 
 rects, keenly bent on pursuing his vocation whoever or 
 whatever may oppose. The critical spirit, evoked in 
 modern times, is by no means on the wane ; on the 
 increase rather, and in all departments of human inter- 
 est. We have our daily dose of criticism in the morn- 
 ing and evening paper, our semi-weekly, and weekly 
 dose, our semi-monthly, and monthly, and bi-monthly, 
 served out to us with regularity. It is no new thing 
 imder the sun, of course, but quite new in the extent 
 of it, and the facility by which it gets itself within the 
 notice of all men. A critic may be, and unhappily 
 often is, sufficiently censorious and acid in his criti- 
 cism to render himself obnoxious to men of peaceful 
 inclination. He is not always, possibly not often, a 
 soft voice crying persuasively in the wilderness of hu- 
 man affairs. Not a harmonious and fascinating voice, 
 — a kind of piercing shriek oftentimes. But clearly 
 enough with something to do and say, nevertheless. 
 A critic may magnify his office to the point of making 
 it the one office at present of use to mankind. He 
 may thus abuse it, and render himself and his work of 
 smallest use to any one. But in the Divine Providence 
 
252 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 there is a use of criticism in the proper time of it, to 
 be highly vahied by all men. For a critic is a har- 
 vester of our human experiences and opinions. And 
 his particular utility is to separate between value and 
 the lack of value. He stands studious and eager to 
 attend upon that work. In business and so-called 
 practical affairs of daily concern, words and sentences 
 convey definite ideas. That is what words and sen- 
 tences are for. The man of affairs who should re- 
 ceive by mail a letter out of which nothing is to be 
 gotten but confused jargon, would quickly tear up 
 that letter and consign it to wastage. Now it is in 
 religion that words and sentences are necessarily least 
 definite in meaning. Many of the terms of religion 
 are great and trench upon the unspeakable, if not the 
 unthinkable. Yet if religion is closely to relate itself 
 to our lives and conduct, it is necessary to have defi- 
 nite meanings in it. In critical times especially we are 
 forced to find these meanings. And here is the critic 
 to help ; to thresh off the verbiage, historic incident, or 
 any other covering which has grown upon the truth, 
 and lay it bare to you, so that you may have it and 
 know it and digest it. 
 
 What is known as the higher criticism prevails, and 
 goes on to prevail in our day, more and more exten- 
 sively, since no closure can be put upon it. Both 
 higher criticism and lower, and of all shades and 
 grades between, really have but one purpose in them ; 
 viz. : to come at the abiding and the useful. Infidel 
 critic, semi-infidel, or any other kind of critic, what can 
 he do but criticise according to the best light or twi- 
 light, or no light which is in him ? He can do nothing 
 against the truth ; that is beyond the power of man. 
 Oxen, the plodding and patient beasts of burden, were 
 
THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 253 
 
 employed by the ancients upon the threshing floors, to 
 tread out the corn. And there may be ox-critics, plod- 
 ding laborious through our sacred things, heedless of 
 the meaning of them, who yet, if they tread out some 
 corn for us, we may thank God for them and what 
 they have done. Whatever the critic may be, if he 
 but produces in us the due discrimination between the 
 useful and the not useful, the transient and the abid- 
 ing, he at least serves our cause and the cause of God, 
 irrespective of his own personal motive. 
 
 A sower went forth to sow. The field was the mind 
 and moral nature of man. Out of such sowing has 
 come a growth, known in a general way as Chris- 
 tianity. But when you consider what the soil is, that 
 it is the human mind with its faculties of logic and 
 imagination and the like, a crop of dogma was to be 
 expected. And it came. The Christ having threshed 
 out of the chaff of Israel's experience the simple and 
 naked truths of righteousness and faith in God, sowed 
 the field with those truths. And those truths came 
 up, not without weeds. Man's logic, his imagination, 
 his arithmetic even, went into the composition of the 
 growths. The fall of man through the guilt of the 
 first man, the imputation of that guilt to his posterity, 
 the death of aU men in sin. The redemption, effecting 
 a new start of our race in Christ, the imputation of His 
 righteousness to the number chosen in Him, the ever- 
 lasting punishment of those not chosen in Him. These 
 things grew up, bearing resemblance to the very things 
 the Christ had threshed away in the dogmas of the 
 rabbins of the Jews. It was as natural that these dog- 
 mas should grow from the seed of truth as that straw 
 should grow from the seed of wheat. For the imag- 
 ination put upon the track of hunting out the reason 
 
254 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 of the sinfulness of man, and the necessity for redemp- 
 tion and the like, built up the dogma of the fall, of 
 imputation, and aU the rest of it. All this was explana- 
 tory and philosophical, as philosophy then went. And 
 now comes the critical examination of all these things. 
 The fall of man, descent of the race from some higher 
 plane, is subjectecTto the test oI~our various'Bndings 
 in natufeT UnmistakabTe evidences of the rise and not 
 the fall of man, as a race, are abundant enough to dis- 
 prove 'thatjdogma.' But the grain of truth which has 
 grown in that stalk and the chaff of it, is the fall of 
 men, each one, into sin, upon temptation. The impu- 
 tation of guUt from the ancestor to the children is also 
 threshed out, and the grain of truth in it discovered 
 and laid bare. Each man is under hereditary influ- 
 ence as a portion of his environment. 
 
 As distinguished from these philosophical terms, 
 such as imputation and redemption, there are favorite 
 phrases of symbolism in popular and evangelistic use, 
 such as the " blood of Christ." This phrase is held in 
 dearest regard by many a Christian who has not even 
 sought out its meaning, who has felt that to pry into 
 its significance would be nothing short of an unwar- 
 rantable profane intrusion into the sacred mysteries. 
 The mere outwardness, husk, or form of a truth has 
 thus been regarded sacred, and the truth itself made 
 nothing of. 
 
 But we live in a world of progress, of change. 
 There is one law which is all inclusive, and that is the 
 law of development. Stop to that law or its working 
 is unattainable. And truth, sacred truth, must also 
 have its course of development and progress. It can- 
 not long be contained in any statement or mass of 
 statements. It ii^creases by its own vitality and out- 
 
THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 255 
 
 grows the most elaborate and finished form in which 
 any age can put it. And above all, religious truth is 
 not stationary ; a jewel cut and fashioned by skillful 
 device ; it is in the nature of seed, inclosing the ele- 
 ments of growth, else it is no vital truth. Thousands 
 of anxious and earnest souls are doing what they may 
 to keep the Christian truth within the compass of orig- 
 inal statements. Statements in the New Testament, or 
 the Bible as a whole; or those which have been cut 
 (and dried) by the medieval doctors. It is useless. 
 As well try to keep oak-trees iu acorn forms. And 
 if you do keep oak tB^es in the acorn, you get oak trees 
 never to the end of time, and have nothing but your 
 acorns. 
 
 With respect to truth and its development in the 
 world, there may be said to be four states of mind. 1. 
 Opposition ; a repression of and active hostility to the 
 development of truth. This is obviously the worst 
 state of mind for a human being. Paul's word for it, 
 " The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against 
 all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold 
 down the truth in unrighteousness ; because that which 
 may be known of God is manifest in them" (Romans 
 i. 18, 19). To hold down, restrain, restrict the pro- 
 gress of truth, by whomsoever done, by religious man 
 or irreligious, is a practical impiety, plainly deserving 
 the wrath of heaven and earth. 2, Indifference. A 
 most barren and hopeless state of mind, truly, upon 
 the face of it, unfit for a being such as man. 3. Anx- 
 iety. A nervous dread of progress or change. It does 
 not occur to any among us to have an anxiety for the 
 integrity of the heavens above us. We do not fear 
 that the keenest eye will detect anything there to dis- 
 balance and overset the order. With his biggest and 
 
256 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 most space-penetrating telescope one is able at most to 
 bring to view the thing that is, and that wiU injure us 
 not a whit to know. The church treated Galileo as if 
 he had dared to demolish the sun, moon, and stars ; 
 whereas he did but rid the world of some of its super- 
 ficial chaff theories respecting the heavens. The main 
 danger is not that truth will get a damage, or will suf- 
 fer an overthrow, but that it will meet a tardy or cold 
 reception from men, who will thus damage themselves. 
 And 4. There is a calm state of mind with reference 
 to the progress of truth, born of confidence, result of 
 faith, toward which all men would do well to strive. 
 And if our own times are times of abounding criti- 
 cism, rife with skepticism and doubt, and movements 
 of all kinds, they bode not evil to us. It is the win- 
 try season of repressed or frozen mental activity which 
 is to be dreaded. Ages wherein night brooded over the 
 earth, and men were held bound and repressed in their 
 opinions and speech, we have learned to look upon as 
 dark ages. A winter of barren content ; from which, 
 thank God ! we have emerged, to come to a time of 
 activity and growth. 
 
 I hold it to be the duty of every intelligent person, 
 and particularly of every adult religious person, to be 
 as discriminating and careful in judgment in the mat- 
 ters of faith as in any other matters ; nay to be more 
 careful and scrupulous in that regard, if possible. 
 There are certain things respecting which one is not 
 driven to doubt. The fundamental intuitions, for ex- 
 ample, such as that righteousness is blessedness. That 
 we can gather into our garner as a certainty. Or that 
 God is. Express it how you may ; as Paul expresses 
 it, or as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews ex- 
 presses it, as Herbert Spencer expresses it, as Matthew 
 
THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 257 
 
 Arnold expresses it, or as you for yourself can best ex- 
 press it. For the most of us that is a certainty. Our 
 own personal responsibility, too, though a question in 
 debate, is yet to most of us, and I doubt not to all of 
 us, practically a certainty. The teachings of Christ 
 and the life of Christ commend themselves to us, 
 when once we get at them. They verify themselves 
 to us. In regard to many other things which have 
 been understood to belong to the Christian religion, 
 but which have really belonged to theology, there is, 
 to say the least, less of certainty. If they are true, 
 and altogether true, we have not the means to verify 
 them. We must take them upon testimony, and that 
 the testimony of men of whom we know little. They 
 therefore do not belong to our certainties. They do 
 not exist as solid rock under our feet for us to take our 
 stand upon for time and for eternity. And then as to 
 a host of things, which have grown with the growth 
 of our religion, can we not see that they belong to 
 the transient and changeable which characterize all 
 growths ? We need but examine and test them, with 
 that judgment which God has given us, to perceive 
 that they do not stand in the judgment. They are like 
 the chafE which the veind blows away. They have had 
 their purpose, whatever they are, and performed that 
 to the end of it, and we shall best serve the divine 
 method to let them go. For they are not only not 
 verifiable, but are found to be but emptied forms, con- 
 taining nothing of use or truth. 
 
 The philosophy of evolution renders necessary a 
 restatement of Christian truth. That some restate- 
 ment is necessitated seems patent to the dullest com- 
 prehension. But that it becomes necessary under any 
 stress whatever to abandon any truth is absurd. In- 
 
258 THE CONTINUOUS CREATION. 
 
 deed an abandoned truth is just as much a truth as one 
 accepted. The Bible itself is subject to criticism or 
 the judgment of mankind. It were a mischief, and a 
 very grave one, that we should employ no judgment 
 upon it. Nothing comes within the range of the phe- 
 nomenal of which any man or men can have the right 
 to say, " You must not exercise your judgment upon 
 this." The Bible is a growth, and therefore has come 
 according to the law of vital growths ; it has its abid- 
 ing elements, and its elements of transition and change. 
 I pluck the rose from the bush, and leave the bush. I 
 pick the orange from the tree, and make no attempt to 
 swallow either the tree or the orange skin. And what 
 are all genuine attempts at teaching religion, but the 
 disengagement of the truth inclosed in passage of Holy 
 Writ from its envelopment of incident, or song, or pro- 
 verb, or parable, or story, and the giving forth of that 
 as the thing sought ? 
 
 The serious concern of all men ought to be to know 
 the truth, and to commit themselves to it. Not to 
 commit themselves to the uncertainties, but the cer- 
 tainties. So far as they do that, they will have no fear 
 of the threshing process of criticism which comes at 
 various periods, and has now come. They will know 
 that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. 
 They will be sure that there is a Lord of the seed- 
 time and a Lord of the harvest. Instead of praying 
 the Lord of the harvest that He will restrain the labors 
 of the critic, they will rather pray that He will send 
 more laborers into His harvest, so that more and more 
 the truth shall be brought into vital relation with the 
 lives of men, and so that men shall actually live, with 
 increasing success, the lovely and loving life of the Son 
 of God. 
 
THE PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 209 
 
 Says the prophet Jeremiah : — 
 
 The prophet with whom is a dream, let him tell a dream ; and 
 he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What 
 is the chafE to the wheat ? saith the Lord. 
 
 And Isaiah says : — 
 
 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? 
 saith the Lord : I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the 
 fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or 
 of lambs, or of great he goats. When ye come to be seen before 
 me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts ? 
 Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination unto 
 me ; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I 
 cannot away with ; . . . Wash you, make you clean ; put away 
 the evil of your doings from before mine eyes : cease to do evil ; 
 learn to do well ; seek judgment, righten the oppressed, judge 
 the fatherless, plead for the widow. 
 
 And Mieah says : — 
 
 He hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth 
 the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and 
 to walk humbly with thy Grod ? 
 
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