ON THE EVOLUTION MATERIALISM AND THEOLOGY. 331 



headed materialism, so often slain in the course of the 

 history of philosophy, rises up alive and aggressive ; and 

 this time seemingly armed at all points, and threatening: 

 to all the higher interests of man, the belief in God, the 

 reality of virtue, the hope of a hereafter. Surely, we 

 are inclined to think, these recurrent phenomena, this 

 repeated resurrection and apparition of the spectre of 

 materialism, betokens something significant. What may 

 it mean ? And can we give any answer to it ? For a 

 real answer seems urgently required in our time once 

 again. 



You have, indeed, shown, we say to the new mate-' 

 rialist, that the universal mind has not worked accord- 

 ing to men's former rude conceptions; that it did not 

 suddenly call the spheres into being from out the blank 

 and empty abyss ; did not conceive, create from nothing, 

 and then fashion and piece together the parts of animal 

 organisms as a watchmaker puts together the parts of a 

 watch. We allow that the Power which we postulate 

 did not reveal His will to men in the moral law handed 

 down from heaven by special miracle to chosen instru- 

 ments. Nevertheless, though you have shown how 

 matter and mechanical laws might have been the parent 

 of the physical worlds, you have not yet, we conceive, 

 satisfactorily shown how they could have been the 

 sources of the spiritual world ; and you have not shown 

 us what first moved matter itself from its original state 

 of eternal rest, or what impressed law and order on the 

 materials of the universe. 



You have not shown how mere homogeneous matter, 

 be it hydrogen gas or other uniform substance, however 

 refined, could run of itself into order and harmony, as 

 disclosed in the mathematical figures and motions of the 

 earth and planets and myriad sidereal worlds ; motions 



