314 CREATION PROGRESSIVE. 



and every animal is, while its life endures, a personal 

 fellow-worker with the Deity, not creating as He 

 creates, absolutely, but an author of relative creations 

 an agent in His hand of changes which force merely 

 physical could never compass. The growth of cellular 

 or vascular tissue, whereby the body, once but a living 

 speck, becomes what God has destined it to become ; 

 the internal action of organized bodies ; animal will ; 

 the reproduction of the species ; all these are ut- 

 terly antagonistic to the physical laws of matter. They 

 are manifestations of that other agency Life, an attri- 

 bute of the personal God : and while the portion of 

 life committed to each lasts, the body performs its won- 

 drous functions. To life it owed its power of growth, 

 and when life is taken from it the laws of matter resume 

 their sway, and the organized body gradually returns to 

 its mineral condition. Take the lime, the phosphorus, 

 the sulphur, the carbon, and the other mineral and 

 gaseous substances, of which the human frame consists. 

 Chemistry demonstrates to us that of such and such 

 quantities of each of these a human body is composed. 

 She can decompose any organic frame into similar ele- 

 ments, but what power can build it up again from the 

 dust ? Who can make the " dry bones live 1 " Organic 

 life is therefore a witness to the power which works by 

 it, and that power is God. And organic life has been 

 progressive. In its earlier days the world was unfit 

 for the dwelling of man how much unfit we cannot 

 tell; and it was tenanted by a Fauna and Flora wholly 

 different from that which the naturalist now sees about 

 him. Gradually the elder races died out and were sue- 



