SVNTHESIS 0|f THE NATURAL AND TttE SUPERNATURAL 



earliest manifestations of life. Whether it be a plant, or an 

 animal, or a man, or a society of men, or even the human 

 race as a whole, we never think we know it thoroughly till 

 we have seen it in its whole history as a gradual process, 

 whereby without haste and without rest it has changed 

 from less to more, yet preserving through all the 

 revolutions of its being the characteristic quality or 

 tendency which distinguishes it from all other creatures in 

 the universe." This view of life "carries us beyond the 

 superficial view of former da3^s when we looked on history 

 as a chronicle of stirring events, and wonderful, but 

 incomprehensible revolutions of fortune." This new 

 knowledge of life makes clear to us also that " the 'child is 

 father to the man,' and that from boyhood to manhood and 

 from manhood to old age we detect the same individual 

 nature, and link each individual speech with that which 

 preceded it. In like manner we have come fo look on 

 history, not as a play of chance and arbitrary will, but' as 

 the development of one natural character through many 

 vissitudes which test and try, but never break the thread 

 of connection with the past, or prevent us from seeing that 

 they are all the same life." {b) But the invisible, yet real, 

 thread of connection, which connects the human life of any 

 particular age with human life of all preceding ages, 

 revealing to us that they are the same life, goes farther 

 back. It binds the life of man with the life of the world 

 in which he lives. Away back at the beginning of things, 

 as science, by its hypothesis of evolution, is making clear, 

 the creative Energy which, while more than nature, dwells 

 in nature, gathered together her innumerable host of 

 atomic workmen and formed, so to speak, the first labor 

 union. After years and years of organized and organizing 

 labor, she turned out as Keble, I think, says, this '* green 

 globe which floats through space ' * and on an arc of which 

 we Canadians have our home and heritage. And she has 

 done more than this for us. She has created conditions in 



