THE DIVINE SOIL 



His origin as revealed by science fills and appalls 

 the imagination: as revealed by theology it simply 

 baflSies and dumfounds one. Science deepens the 

 mystery while yet it gives the reason and the imagi- 

 nation something to go upon; it takes us beyond 

 soundings, but not beyond the assurance that cause 

 and efiFect are still continuous there beneath us. I 

 like to think that man has traveled that long, ad- 

 venturous road, that the vrhole creation has pulled 

 together to produce him. It is a road, of course, 

 beset with pain and anguish, beset with ugly and 

 repellent forms, beset with riot and slaughter; it 

 leads through jungle and morass, through floods 

 and cataclysms, through the hells of the Meso- 

 zoic and the Cenozoic periods, but it leads ever 

 upward and onward. 



The manward impulse in creation has doubtless 

 been checked many times, but never lost ; all forms 

 conspired to further it, and it seemed to have taken 

 the push and the aspiration out of each order as 

 it passed on, doommg it henceforth to a round of 

 life without change or hope of progress, leaving 

 the fish to continue fish, the reptiles to continue 

 reptiles, the apes to continue apes ; it took aU the 

 heart and soul of each to feed and continue the 

 central impulse that was to eventuate in man. 



I fail to see why our religious brethren cannot find 

 in this history or revelation as much room for crea- 

 tive energy, as large a factor of the mysterious and 

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