328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



outside of it ; and in this aspect he is the very type and image of the super- 

 natural.* 



By Nature we understand all visible things, including man so 

 far as he can be observed by the naked eye or the microscope — his 

 morphology, his physiology, his histological development. But 

 for a Christian this does not exhaust human nature. For him 

 visible Nature is the segment of a circle, " we see but in part." 

 And the visible is not coextensive with the known. Bather the 

 ultimate explanation of "the things which are seen" is to be 

 sought in "the things which are not seen." There are forces 

 which refuse to be measured by " foot-pounds," facts which for- 

 ever must escape the microscope, realities which cast no bands 

 upon the spectrum field, a life which the scalpel can neither dis- 

 cover nor destroy, A Christian believes with Mr. Darwin " that 

 man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than 

 he now is," and finds it "an intolerable thought that he and all 

 other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after 

 such long-continued slow progress " ; \ but he holds it in a differ- 

 ent way and on different grounds. And, believing in the truth of 

 man's divine nature, he can watch without anxiety, not without 

 interest and gratitude, the work of those who are showing us 

 man's place in the physical world. Darwin tells us that, as he 

 lay on the grass on an April morning at Moor Park, amid the 

 joy of opening spring-tide, he " did not care one penny how any 

 of the beasts or birds had been formed."]; Amid the supreme 

 realities of the moral and spiritual world, or in the devotional 

 study of the Word of God, it becomes a matter of relative unim- 

 portance to a Christian whether he is to trace his pedigree back 

 directly or indirectly to the dust. For it is God's world after all. 

 We believe in the resurrection of the body as well as the immor- 

 tality of the soul. That which is material is not "common or 

 unclean " : 



"What we are [says Kingsley], we are by the grace of God. . . . Saint Francis 

 called the birds his brothers. Whether he was correct, either theologically or 

 zoologically, he was plainly free from that fear of being mistaken for an ape, 

 which haunts so many in these modern times. Perfectly sure that he himself was 

 a spiritual being, he thought it at least possible that birds might be spiritual be- 

 ings likewise, incarnate like himself in mortal flesh ; and saw no degradation to 

 the dignity of human nature in claiming kindred lovingly with creatures so beau- 

 tiful, so wonderful, who (as he fancied in his old-fashioned way) praised God in 

 the forest, even as angels did in heaven.* 



With regard to all this higher side of man's nature, Mr. Darwin 

 was an agnostic. He uses the word more than once of himself, 

 and yet, with that transparent honesty which characterizes all that 

 he did, he admits the difificulty as well as the unsatisfactoriness 



* " Unity of Nature," p. 308. \ i, p. 282. % i, p. 4*71. * " Trose Idylls," pp. 24, 25. 



