374 LESSONS FEOM NATUEE. [CHAr. XII. 



agrees with the assertion &quot;that His ways are not as our 

 ways,&quot; and prepares us to expect a priori that the material 

 world would not exhibit the characters of a piece of human 

 workmanship. Thus considered, and with these limitations 

 and explanations, it can hardly be denied that the action 

 which we discover immanent in the material universe may be 

 rationally taken to be from God. In that universe we find 

 an action the results of which harmonise with man s reason, 

 which is orderly, which disaccords with the action of blind 

 chance and with the &quot;fortuitous concourse of atoms&quot; of 

 Democritus ; but at the same time, an action which ever, in 

 part and in ultimate analysis, eludes our grasp, and the 

 modes of which are different from those by which we should 

 have attempted to accomplish such ends. The inconsistency 

 is surely very great of those who assert that all our know 

 ledge comes from experience, and at the same time affirm 

 that &quot; creative action &quot; is incredible because nature affords no 

 evidence of it. It is so great because that action must 

 necessarily be unperceived and uncomprehended by us, since 

 of creative action we have and can have no experience 

 whatever. The action of God therefore must necessarily 

 be unimaginable by us in its fulness, but its reality and 

 efficiency can be very clearly conceived as incessant and 

 universal in every form of being known to us, and in the 

 far greater number of entirely unknown forms. God is thus 

 neither withdrawn from nor identified with His material crea 

 tion, and no part of it is left devoid of meaning or of purpose. 

 The poet s plaint as to the flower &quot; born to blush unseen, and 

 waste its sweetness on the desert air,&quot; is thus manifestly quite 

 uncalled for ; every creature of every order of existence being 

 ever, while its existence is sustained, so complacently con 

 templated by God that the intense and concentrated attention 

 of all men of science together upon it could but form but an 

 utterly inadequate symbol of such divine contemplation. 

 Mr. Darwin asks * (in reference to the Duke of Argyll s 



* Descent of Man, vol. ii. p. 230. 



