74 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



rejects it, and compares it with " some modern 

 theories which deny the dogma of creative activity 

 in God." 1 But at last I discovered that the words 

 quoted came not from the orthodox Duns Scotus, 

 but from the heterodox and pantheistic John 

 Scotus Erigena, who lived four centuries before. 

 John Scotus, like a true pantheist, explains how the 

 world goes forth from God, and rightly denies, on 

 his principles, that there is such a thing as " creatio " 

 at all. 



Such an exception proves the rule. The idea of 

 Creation is inseparable from our Christianity. It 

 cannot be made intelligible as evolution, for 

 evolution, in the only sense in which it seems con- 

 sistent with Christianity, presupposes it. In one 

 sentence, All evolution is creation^ but all creation 

 is not evolution. Christianity is therefore in its 

 essence dualistic> and open to the objections com- 

 monly brought against a dualistic theory. We may 

 wish that it was not, that it would consent to be 

 rationalized. We may deal gently with those who 

 in their desire for a Monism accept pantheism or 

 even materialism because it is more " philosophical," 

 but the fact of creation, which is unphilosophical 

 in the sense that it cannot be expressed in language 

 that we know, and as that creative activity of God 

 which we call evolution can, that fact stands for 

 us at the very entrance of Christianity. " In the 

 1 Liddon, University Sermons, First Series, p. 241. 



