which it can be accounted for, and that every one of these lands us in unthinkabilities. Here, again, the laws of thought are hopelessly at loggerheads with unquestionable facts, and Mr. Spencer washes his hands of the whole business in despair.

The world, as we now know, grew; it was evolved by inevitable processes from the primordial germs. The simile of the watch, as Professor Fiske beautifully and convincingly puts it, has been replaced by the simile of the flower. There are still some strangely constituted people, I believe, who shrink from this statement as atheistic. They see the flower being evolved from its seed, and find no difficulty in reconciling this fact with their favourite formula that God 'made' the flower; yet they steadfastly refuse, even with this exquisite analogy before their eyes, to believe that the Universe was in like manner evolved from its seed, because it sounds incompatible with their empirical notions of creation. But we can trace this world-growth back to the very seed itself. We may assert without fear of authoritative

contradiction that the whole visible Universe was evolved from nebula; that this nebula was evolved from discrete elemental molecules; and that these molecules were evolved from ultimate units of protyle, which were the original staple. Now, then; whence came this staple?

Dr. Chapman, in his ingenious and suggestive work on 'Pre-organic Evolution,' speaks of phenomena as eternally and potentially existing in the one Noumenon; that is to say, in other language, that matter was always, from all past eternity, latent in the essence of the Supreme Being. This theory may be applied in either of the two following ways. First, the Universe, differentiated and undifferentiated, is the Eternal Shadow of the Eternal Substance, the Eternal Form of an Eternal Activity. The Eternal Reality was never only Reality, but always Reality as manifested in matter and its changes. This is what Rothe means by his aphorism, 'Ohne Welt, kein Gott.'

"It is quite true," says Dr. Chapman, "that the Reality referred to is termed Cause in the proper philosophical sense of that word, and consequently

the Manifestation is Effect; but the point to be carefully noted is that the causal connection is logical, not chronological. . . . The phenomena which we, from our point of view, arrange as before and after one another, are only, according to the Spencerian conception, the continuation of one great act of the Eternal Reality which has been going on ever since the Eternal Reality has been in existence—that is, from all eternity."

Here manifestation is regarded as a necessary or intrinsic attribute of the Supreme Being; but it may be considered, secondly, as a voluntary or contingent attribute. This alternative represents that at a certain point in duration the Eternal Cause emerged out of abstract existence as a Power active within itself into Power as expressed in other forms of working-in the continuous maintenance of existences which, though manifestations of itself, are nevertheless not itself, which are therefore dependent upon the Eternal Cause, and are not selfsubsistent.

Now it seems to me that this conception, in whichever form we adopt it, is one of consummate grandeur and beauty. It is the most satis

factory suggestion that I have ever met with. It renders both unnecessary and impossible the crude idea of creation out of nothing, which must always violate those innate notions of causality of which, try how we may, we can never wholly rid ourselves. It brings God and the Universe nearer to each other; the Universe, instead of being an arbitrary creation of raw material, subsequently manufactured into organisms and systems, and therefore outside its Maker, is seen to be a part of its Maker Himself, a manifestation of His invisibility, a reflection of His substance, a materialization of His essence, a projection of His thought, a vehicle of His presence, a form in and through which He is eternally exercising His sustaining, vivifying, organizing power. He is the Life which lies at the back of Force, and thus enables Matter to exist, which is more to the world than steam to the engine, breath to the animal, mind itself to man. How can we best express the beginning of this close relationship? Someone has suggested that instead of creation we should say secretion; that we should think

of the Supreme Being, by some law of His own nature, secreting Matter very much as a humble mollusc secretes its shell. The word is perhaps an improvement on the old one, but surely not the best. It introduces a new idea into the order of things, and is not in sufficient harmony with what we know of cosmic processes. May we not venture to apply to this great primæval act the word that we apply to all subsequent acts? May we not apply the principle of evolution to this mysterious event also? Is it irreligious, is it unmetaphysical, is it unscientific, to suppose that evolution did not begin when the ultimate atoms were welded into elemental molecules, but that the atoms themselves-the fine, rare, subtle beginnings of the infinite cosmos—were evolved straight from the structural essence of the great First Cause?

But all this, it will be said, is Pantheism. Suppose it is what then? What matters it, Pantheism or Pot-theism, as Carlyle exclaimed, if it be true? So far from Pantheism, rightly understood, being a theory antagonistic to Monotheism, it is simply one side of it, and