182 REV. G. F. WHIDBORNE, M.A., ON QUESTIONS INVOLVED 
9. There seems a natural tendency in men’s minds to seek 
after unity in the essence of things. The “ unities” of the 
poets no less than the uniformitarian and evolutional 
theories of scientists are phases thereof. The importance of 
this tendency is not to be minimized: it may be the 
instinctive groping after truths whose real roots and 
meanings have not yet been scientifically fathomed and 
comprehended. But on the other hand it is possible that an 
interim result of this tendency may be the narrowing and 
restriction of the greater truth from the failure of present 
discovery to reach its centre. We learn by mathematics 
that all parallei straight lines meet at infinity; to the 
unassisted human eye they would appear to meet very much 
sooner. It must be said that the arguments of evolution do 
make for this underlying unity in creation. But it may be 
that the extreme evolutionist is seeking its origin too near ; 
that he is prematurely uniting chains of life whose wats 
start really far beyond his ken ; that the telescope of his 
research gathers up unity too quickly from the inadequacy 
of its focal length to penetrate to its true source; and that 
improved telescopes may hereafter dissolve the nebula now 
seen and reveal unfathomed distances in the cosmical mystery 
of life. For from the point of view of the Christian thinker the 
unison of nature must have a far wider range, a much deeper 
seat, than has yet been dreamed of in the naturalist’s 
philosophy.* He finds its source and final explanation at no 
point short of the Unity of God. 
10. In the evidence of any detailed facts to evolution one 
very “shim” danger cannot be too carefully observed. Simili- 
tudes, however striking, do not of necessity point to a common 
original. The ancestry of the horse, for instance, has been a 
favourite subject with evolutionists. It 1s well known to be 
an awkward fact that lines of descent have been worked out 
deducing it from two distinct sets of ancestors. Again, having’ 
had to study carefully the critical marks upon the cephalo- 
thorax of Bronteus, I was amused at noting their exact agree- 
ment with the lines on a baby’s face. No one, I imagine, 
would argue that this quaint similitude indicated relationship. 
But, were such a striking resemblance observed in nearly 
* “Tlicre: voovpev karnptio Bar Tovs ai@vas pywate Oeov, eis TO pr) €K 
pawomévoy Ta Breropeva yeyovéva.”—Heb. xi, 3. By faith (the evidence 
of the unseen) we realize that the ages have been builded up by the 
vere of God, so that not from phenomena have the things we see been 
made. 
