matter stops the order of evolution at the point where the new force handles matter by its new method. It has no respect to the process below except to use its material according to a higher law. The processes are as distinct as the forces. To call the plant-force a development from the chemical force because in the action of the two their boundaries touch, is like saying that the internal policy of the United States is a development from that of Mexico, because the two adjoin each other. And to call the whole upbuilding of the world from nebula to man a process of evolution without break of continuity, when every step upward demands a new force, and each new force handles matter by a new method; and when creative acts must be assumed to account for the beginning of life, and of the fundamental types even of the animal kingdom, and much more for the origin of rational and conscious life, and when one type is never found to merge itself in another, to say that such an upbuilding of the world is but a process of evolution, is to cover a nebulous confusion of ideas by a word that means everything, and therefore nothing.

The world presents too large a problem for a complete solution by any one as yet. We know in part. But, this pyramidal hypothesis, uniting the two elements of supernatural interposition and evolution, while it gives a rational unity to the system and is more accordant with facts, certainly has one advantage; it excludes and eschews that confusion and unseemly mixture of all things which is fatal to the exclusively evolutionary hypothesis. It gives a basis in theory, as well as in fact, for science. It makes a distinction in kind, besides the degree of development, between man and the rhizopod.

We have always believed in evolution. We subscribe to it in many forms and on different planes; not only on the lower, but in human thought, in Christian life, in the unfolding of revelation itself in human history, through religious institutions and individual experience, and in the organic life of the great body of believers. There is no dispute about this. But evolution as advocated by Spencer, Tyndal, and Huxley through the inherent potences of atoms, by a mere continuity of force operating by its own necessary laws, without creations, that is ever progressive but with no end to reach; and that

has a rational method, but with no intelligence to arrange or direct, is to do violence to all rational ideas; is to assume facts which no one can establish, and is to deny facts in Nature and rational life which are as evident as axioms in mathematics. It rests on an empiricism that does violence to first truths. We know we are not mere cogs in the great wheel of Nature, turning as we are turned, and grinding on to answer no purpose, without responsibility or character. The testimony of criminal law, of individual conscience and of the literature of all ages, affirms out of the depths of the human soul, moral law, obligation, responsibility, and therefore freedom of moral action. A theory which comes squarely in conflict with consciousness, with the first truths on which all reasoning depends, and with manhood itself, cannot live. When we are told that these worlds move in space without a purpose; that these systems of life ascending step by step as the movement of a divine thought, till a rational empire emerges to give meaning and value to the system, are but the product of forces lower than those of the brute; that there is no hope for us beyond the grave, and no reign of righteousness for humanity on earth, let it not be told us in the name of reason, of science, or of humanity, when it is an outrage upon them all. Nor let it be told us with an easy flippancy and careless exultation, as if it were a small thing to set our faces toward the blackness of darkness forever! It is a wonder that such a theory should now be received by rational men, as the great achievement of modern science, when it destroys the foundations of science, and dehumanizes the race!

It is the right of the scientist, if he will, to forego introspection, and limit his inquiries to the observation of phenomena, and to second causes. It is the special province of science. But let him not assume to deny what is above and beyond that chosen boundary. He can easily mystify himself about what is invisible and deeper than experience, as if Nature were the only reality, and the supernatural were a dream. But if spirit did not penetrate Nature, and shine through it, and organize it into life, it would instantly drop dead as a corpse, and dissolve, for aught we know, into nothingness. Hæckel pronounces the theory of a self-forming, self-sufficing world, to be so conclu

sively established that it should be taught as a scientific dogma in schools, and of course displace at once the delusions respecting free-will, morality, and religion. But Dr. Maudsley while assuming that moral freedom is a delusion, thinks it a fortunate delusion, which has been necessary to the proper evolution of man. He even thinks it necessary still to teach it, doubtless as a pious fraud, till man is so thoroughly evolved that morality shall become an organized and inherited instinct, as automatic as the twitching of a frog's leg under the electrical current. Well, this is not strictly scientific-to love man more than truth. But we will hope the two are not antagonistic, but one; so we can love them both before the automatic ages dawn. And the theory of Hæckel and Spencer can hardly be entitled to rank as a scientific dogma, till they dare to meddle with the invisible ether as a factor in it, and one which now confounds all their notions of matter and force; not while our Jevonses affirm that even its corner-stone, the doctrine of the "Conservation of Energy," is not securely laid; not till our LeContes, good evolutionists as they are, cease to affirm that the world in advancing to higher stages of being may, on the basis of science itself, require constant increments of energy, the evolution of one part being at the expense of other parts, so that the continuous evolution of the Universe as a whole, by forces within itself, is impossible. Viewed from all sides the prospect is, that long before the universe will get on without a God, the scientific world will get on without this theory of evolution. And before we shall need to give up supernatural Revelation as a myth, science may enlarge her boundary beyond phenomena, and take account of certain facts of consciousness and of spiritual life, quite as certain as any phenomena. It may see that the historic development of the truest manhood is but the embodiment of Christian truth. Thus human experience itself may be the demonstration that Christ, the divine-man, is the "Way, the Truth, and the Life."

ARTICLE VI.-FORCING TRUTHS AND DUTIES INTO ANTAGONISM.

Ir is too much to expect of any man that he shall be able to see things on all their sides, and to arrange schemes in which every fact and every principle shall have its true place and adjustment. This is a necessary consequence of our human limitation. But there is a more serious evil; and the bad effects of it appear in connection with much of our thinking and reasoning.

There are some men with minds so constituted that it seems to be very difficult, if not quite impossible, for them ever to contemplate unlike ideas and duties save in the relation of antagonism. They never rise into that large apprehension of matters where apparent differences become easily reconciled, and notions which have an opposite look on the face of them fall into a real harmony. They are natural born specialists. They see some one thing clearly, and they hold to it tenaciously; but their thoughts never sweep out in wide circuits, and their views and systems are always one-sided for the reason that certain elements of fact and principle which are essential to completeness, but which do not happen to be in the line of their fancy or their interest, are sure to be overlooked and excluded. Conceptions which belong together, and duties which ought to walk hand in hand, are set over against each other in a scowling attitude, instead of being arrayed as the co-factors of a higher unity. The single constituent elements which go to make up the complex whole of a truth or an obligation are forced into unnatural and mischievous conflict. Particular duties are picked out and insisted on in a way to make one think, by contrast, of the Master's words about doing some things, and being likewise careful not to leave others undone. They hold all their notions, whether in philosophy, or politics, or religion, in a narrow partisan spirit; and a truth or a duty which they think ought to be especially commended becomes to them what a client is to a zealous

advocate something to be vindicated at the expense of every. thing else. The many members are never instructed that they all belong to one body, and have a common end to subserve; but they are worked up into a temper of mutual jealousy, and made to assume threatening postures. The hand is inflamed with a spirit of opposition to the foot; the eye is magnified by belittling the value of the ear. It is never this and that; it is this or that; or what is still more probable-it is this against that. It does not seem to occur to these men that two things can be true at once, and two obligations binding.

How often, for instance, one hears the claims of great benev olent causes pressed in a tone and by arguments calculated to excite hostility toward other kindred and equally important causes. The impression made by these appeals is not that one is to help this along with other objects which must have a place in any large plan of Christian work, but rather that this par ticular cause is to be selected and aided in the spirit of a preference which amounts to opposition to all the rest. The theory of the procedure seems to be that of the unscrupulous contractor who weakens one wall to get materials to strengthen another, and not of the wise master-builder who keeps an eye on the whole structure, and endeavors to give symmetry and a uniform solidity to every part of the edifice. Enterprises which have a common warrant in Scripture command and in human need, and a common outlook and promise of good, and which, therefore, ought to be kept on the best of terms with each other, and to receive the fostering sympathies of all, are narrowly and wickedly antagonized.

Much of our sectarianism, and nearly all of that which is hard and bitter, comes about in this same way. Over-stress is laid on some one doctrine, while other doctrines equally vital, and which, if recognized and advanced into their true position, would tend to modify extreme views, and reduce all to a proper balance, are not so much ignored as stoutly and determinedly fought. There are differences of view which are radical, and which no amount of skill in reasoning, and no most patient groping after some common bond of unity, can ever bring into agreement. But there are particulars also, not a few, in which men, now at variance, would be found to be at one, if, like