188 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



of this natural agency, would be a miraculous intervention. 

 As a matter of fact, however, inorganic nature is destitute of 

 this power of self-vitalization, and consequently no natural 

 agency was superseded or overridden by the initial imparting 

 of life to lifeless matter. Life was not ordained to originate 

 in any other way. Given, therefore, this impotence of inor- 

 ganic nature, it follows that an initial vivification of matter by 

 Divine power was demanded by the very nature of things. 

 The Divine action did not come into competition, as it were, 

 with existing natural agencies, but was put forth in response 

 to the exigencies of nature itself. It cannot, therefore, be 

 regarded as miraculous. 



Nor, finally, is there any warrant for regarding such an 

 initial vivification of matter as supernatural. Only that is 

 supernatural which transcends the nature, powers, and exigen- 

 cies of all things created or creatable. But, as we have seen, 

 if life was to exist at all, a primal animation of inanimate 

 matter by Divine power was demanded by the very nature of 

 things. Here the Divine action put forth in response to an 

 exigency of nature and terminated in the constitution of living 

 nature itself. Now, the effect of a Divine action, by which 

 the natures of things are initially constituted, plainly pertains 

 to the order of nature, and has nothing to do with the super- 

 natural. Hence the primordial constitution by Divine power 

 of living nature was not a supernatural, but a purely natural, 

 event. 



