INVOLUTION. 335 



because they appear to us as growths. A miracle is 

 not something quick. The doings of these things may 

 seem to us no miracle, nevertheless it is a miracle that 

 they have been done. 



But, after all, the miracle of Evolution is not the 

 process, but the product. Beside the wonder of the 

 result, the problem of the process is a mere curiosity 

 of Science. For w*hat is the product ? It is not mount- 

 ain and valley, sky and sea, flower and star, this 

 glorious and beautiful world in which Man's body 

 finds its home. It is not the god-like gift of Mind 

 nor the ordered cosmos where it finds so noble an exer- 

 cise for its illimitable powers. It is that which of all 

 other things in the universe commends itself, with 

 increasing sureness as time goes on, to the reason and 

 to the heart of Humanity — Love. Love is the final 

 result of Evolution. This is what stands out in Nat- 

 ure as the supreme creation. Evolution is not prog- 

 ress in matter. Matter cannot progress. It is a 

 progress in spirit, in that which is limitless, in that 

 which is at once most human, most rational, and most 

 divine. Whatever controversy rages as to the factors 

 of Evolution, whatever mystery enshrouds its steps, 

 no doubt exists of its goal. The great landmarks we 

 have passed, and we are not yet half-way up the 

 Ascent, each separately and all together have declared 

 the course of Nature to be a rational course, and its 

 end a moral end. At the furthest limit of time, in 

 protoplasm itself, we saw start forth the two great 

 currents which, by their action and reaction, as Self- 

 ishness and Unselfishness, were to supply in ever 

 accentuating clearness the conditions of the moral 

 life. Following their movements upward through the 



