58 DARWINIANA. 



while human thought is consecutive, Divine thought 

 is simultaneous, embracing at the same time and for- 

 ever, in the past, the present and the future, the most 

 diversified relations among hundreds of thousands of 

 organized beings, each of which may present compli- 

 cations again, which to study and understand even 

 imperfectly as for instance man himself mankind 

 has already spent thousands of years." l In thus con- 

 ceiving of the Divine Power in act as coetaneous with 

 Divine Thought, and of both as far as may be apart 

 from the human element of time, our author may re- 

 gard the intervention of the Creator either as, humanly 

 speaking, done from all time, or else as doing through 

 all time. In the ultimate analysis we suppose that 

 every philosophical theist must adopt one or the other 

 conception. 



A perversion of the first view leads toward athe- 

 ism, the notion of an eternal sequence of cause and 

 effect, for which there is no first cause a view which 

 few sane persons can long rest in. The danger which 

 may threaten the second view is pantheism. "We feel 

 safe from either error, in our profound conviction 

 that there is order in the universe ; that order pre- 

 supposes mind ; design, will ; and mind or will, per- 

 sonality. Thus guarded, we much prefer the second 

 of the two conceptions of causation, as the more phil- 

 osophical as well as Christian view a view which 

 leaves us with the same difficulties and the same mys- 

 teries in Nature as in Providence, and no other. Nat- 

 ural law, upon this view, is the human conception of 

 continued and orderly Divine action. 

 1 Op. di., p. 180. 



