which is now persistently put on one side, that in this matter man is a great exception in the order of nature. While every other living thing is striving for its own good, man alone is found choosing what he knows to be for his hurt. No theory of evolution is complete, then, which ignores the fact of sin in man. Men have tried again and again to explain it, and they have only succeeded in explaining it away. Sin cannot be explained, for it is irrational-the one irrational, lawless, meaningless thing in the whole universe. And the wilfulness which in the Fall separated man from his true good-that is, God-is reproduced in every sin, and is everywhere a disturbing cause in the reign of law, a check to progress and a barrier to knowledge.

Side by side, then, with all that science tells us of the evolution of man at the first from lower forms of life, and all that history tells us of the progress of man since, in civilization and knowledge, we see the fact of sin casting its shadow upon human history and holding man back from his full development. This is the fact which lies at the basis of all religions, and which moral systems universally recognize, though they can neither explain nor remove it. And science has taught us that we must be true to facts. It is because he is true to facts, that a Christian evolutionist refuses to acquiesce in the easy optimism of

F

those who see but one side of human development, and ignore the fact of sin; it is because he sees in sin the great obstacle to the true development of man, that he claims on the side of progress the Gospel of One Who came "to save His people from their sins."

IV.

CREATION AND CREATIANISM.

I HAVE called this paper "Creation and Creatianism," because, so far as I could see, these were the two points on which Christians cannot afford to be hazy and indistinct. Of course, no words can be used which do not carry with them associations other than those which the words imply, and therefore, at the risk of platitudinizing, I have put down certain propositions which none of us will refuse to accept, and which certainly no terms I use are intended to contradict.

I. The first is the truth which, in a one-sided way, Pantheism has seized, a principle which is especially important now in the face of the practical Deism of some scientific writers. God's Creative activity is present everywhere. There can be no division of labour between God and Nature, or God and Law. For "if He thunder by law, the thunder is still His voice." The plant which is produced from seed by the natural laws of growth is His creation. The brute which is born of the natural process of generation is His creation. The plant

or animal, which by successive variations and adaptations becomes a new species, is His creation.1 It follows that terms like "interference" have no meaning. God cannot interfere with Himself.

2. The second principle is that which the equally one-sided system of Deism has seized, and which is the safeguard of Theism against Pantheism, however disguised. God is not nature, and nature is not God. Any system therefore which logically carries with it the identity of God and Nature, or obscures the line which separates them, contradicts this principle and is destructive of true Theism.

Now, Creation in its theological sense implies the recognition of both these principles conditioning one another, and hence it has been said, "Belief in creation is a necessary outwork of any true theism whatever; deny creation, and you deny God." 2 But if Creation includes God's omnipresence in the world of nature, and His separation from Nature, it has more meanings than one, and these have to be defined. Now, the theological distinction is between primary and secondary, or original and derivative creation, or immediate and mediate, or supernatural and natural. God creates in the first

1 Cf. W. S. Lilly, Cont. Rev., 1883, p. 119. "The budding of a rose and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ are equally the effect of the One Motive Force which is the cause of all phenomena."

2 Liddon, Some Elements of Religion, pp. 59, 60. Cf. Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 244. "No one can at the same time accept the Christian religion, and deny the dogma of creation."

sense when the creative act turns that which is not into that which is. He creates in the second sense (mediante naturâ, as the Schoolman says) in all those processes to which properly the name of evolution or development is given. Such a distinction is recognized by Haeckel, as creation of matter and creation of form.1 Of the first, Creation in its narrow sense, science knows nothing; the second properly falls under the cognizance of science.2

In order to bring this question to a point, I will for the sake of argument assume, what I do not believe, that, given a certain πρórn λn, the process known as evolution will cover everything. Haeckel, of course, believes this, for he moves in the region of matter, and spirit for him means matter subtilized. The religious instinct, like the gregarious instinct, is the result of organization.

Now, with those evolutionists who, like Haeckel and Darwin, start from the material side, the defenders of Creation have no real quarrel. Indeed, though science can know nothing of it, a primary creation of matter is even probable. For we must

1 History of Creation, vol. i. pp. 8, 9.

2 "It is plain that physical science and 'evolution' can have nothing whatever to do with absolute or primary creation." Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 261. See too his quotation from Baden Powell's Essay. Cf. also some useful quotations in Luthardt, Fundamental Truths, pp. 360, 361, and Tyndall, Use and Limits of Imagination in Science, p. 49. "Evolution does not solveit does not profess to solve-the ultimate mystery of this universe. It leaves, in fact, that mystery untouched."