CREATION AND CREATIANISM. 71 



says, " Quotidiana Dei miracula assiduitate viles- 

 cunt." We think we understand them because 

 they happen so often. 



The instinctive tendency of rational beings is to 

 express the unknown in terms of the known, the 

 unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, and, therefore, 

 though materialists have nothing to say to a 

 primary Creation, those who approach the matter 

 from the idealistic side have grappled with the 

 question. And what have they done for us ? not 

 expressed Creation in language intelligible to 

 reason, for Creation (that is, primary as opposed 

 to derivative creation) refuses to be rationalized, 

 but they have reduced primary creation to deri- 

 vative creation. In other words, they have reduced 

 all creation to that secondary and derivative 

 creation which is familiar to us as evolution. 

 Those who are more anxious to be orthodox than 

 lucid talk about the Divine Idea passing into 

 reality ; those who are more anxious to be lucid 

 than to be Christian talk of the world as a " pro- 

 cessio," or proceeding forth from God. This, then, 

 ^Ts my first difficulty. Am I to believe that the 

 phrase, " In the beginning God created," is equiva- 

 lent to the phrase, " The world is an eternal going 

 out from God " ? And if not, what has evolution 

 done, and how has it helped us in making Creation 

 intelligible? We have been told that, thanks to 

 evolution, "now we understand Creation." But 



