CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



their parts in continuing an unbroken line of life-fellowship. 

 Here, therefore, the doctrine of descent through hereditary 

 transmission comes into the picture. 



But there is not only progressive evolution of modes of 

 fellowship higher and higher and yet higher. There is also 

 dissolution of fellowship. The wholes that have been built 

 up in evolution break down in dissolution. Some day our 

 bodies, with their organs and tissues and cells, will break 

 down into widely distributed molecules and atoms in sundry 

 chemical fellowships. The life-fellowship in our bodies 

 will no longer be the fellowship of life. This is an example 

 of dissolution. But in our children the life-fellowship of 

 tissues and organs continues unbroken to bear onward the 

 torch of progress in evolution. 



I have sought to show that there is abundant evidence, 

 in the world as we know it, of dissolution — may I now say 

 dissolution of fellowship? Without k perhaps the evolu- 

 tion of new and higher modes of fellowship would not be 

 such as we find it to be. But as a matter of fact, in what 

 we may speak of as the age-long process of the building 

 up and breaking down of modes of fellowship, evolution 

 has prevailed over dissolution. Were this not so the higher 

 modes of fellowship would have passed away and would 

 no longer exist. Were this not so we should not be here 

 to discuss this difficult problem, or, through mental and 

 spiritual fellowship, to contribute in some measure to prog- 

 ress in evolution. The world as it now is affords irrefutable 

 evidence that evolution has prevailed over dissolution. 



None the less we should realise that there is in our world, 

 at all levels of natural events, evidence of dissolution of 

 fellowship. Falls to lower status there are; but rise to 

 higher status has won through. Our theme is the prevalence 

 of evolution. And here the passage is upward to something 



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