ii8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of what we call natural processes ? There is no doubt that a 

 theory of " special creation," as against " creation by derivation " 

 (for this is the true antithesis), possesses a strange attraction for 

 some minds, just as some cling to a Calvinistic theory of " im- 

 mutable decrees," though at the price of making God an arbi- 

 trary, if not immoral, despot. But we do not really make God 

 more mighty by ascribing to him actions which are unintelli- 

 gible, nor do we derogate from his power by showing that the 

 Maker of heaven and earth is not autocratic, or capricious, or 

 irrational, but works according to law. 



It may, however, be said : " Creation is a great mystery. 

 Why attempt to theorize about it ? To speculate upon a mystery 

 is to rationalize it." There seems to be only one answer to this 

 objection, and it is that reason is the gift of God and not of the 

 devil, and therefore it can not be wrong to try and understand 

 what we believe. Preaching at St. Paul's on Christmas-day, on 

 the supreme mystery of the Incarnation, Dr. Liddon says : 



It was perhaps inevitable that the question should be asked, How such a 

 union of two natures which differ as the Creator differs from the creature — as 

 the infinite differs from the finite — was possible ? It might be enough to reply 

 that with God all things are possible — all things, at least, which do not contra- 

 dict his moral perfections — that is to say, his essential nature. . . . But, in 

 truth, it ought not to be difScult for a being possessed of such a composite nature 

 as is man to answer this question. 



And he proceeds to draw out the analogy suggested and jus- 

 tified by the Athanasian Creed, " As the reasonable soul and flesh 

 is one man, so God and man is one Christ." If it is not wrong, 

 nay, if it is a very necessity of Christian reason to ask how the 

 union of God and man is possible, it can not be wrong to ask. 

 How is creation possible ? and to answer it by the analogy of 

 what we see and know. 



But the moment this question is asked in the present state of 

 scientific knowledge, two things become increasingly apparent : 

 (a) the enormous difiiculties which on the theological side alone 

 a theory of " special creation " has to face ; and (6) the remark- 

 able gain to theology if evolution rather than " special creation " 

 is true. In both cases we propose to put the scientific evidence 

 for evolution on one side, and treat it as a bare hypothesis. 



(a) Nothing has brought out the difficulty of the "special 

 creation " theory more strongly than the modern science of com- 

 parative embryology. It has added enormously to our knowl- 

 edge of the existence of (apart from its suggested explanation of) 

 rudimentary organs, and rudimentary organs have always been 

 a difficulty in the way of the "special creation" hypothesis. 

 Take the case of the whale. As Prof. Flower pointed out at 

 the Reading Church Congress, it possesses in the embryo state a 



