46 THE LIGHT OF DAT 



rational, that creation is not an historical event but 

 a perpetual process, that there is no failure and no 

 disorder in nature, and that to approximate to any- 

 thing like a right understanding of things the per- 

 sonal, or the anthropocentric, point of view must 

 he abandoned. 



Our doctor of divinity is unfortunate in confront- 

 ing the kind of " exceptions " which I aver science 

 cannot recognize with the fact that water, in oppo- 

 sition to all other material substances, expands 

 under a certain degree of cold. But is there any 

 known exception to this law of water ? Has water 

 ever been known to reverse this process in freezing ? 

 If so, the exception would indeed stagger science ; 

 it would be a miracle. A child born of a woman, but 

 without an earthly father, and of a superhuman 

 species, is the kind of exception which I averred 

 science cannot recognize ; but does this bear any 

 analogy to the exceptional behavior of water while 

 freezing, when compared with other substances ? 

 It used to be believed that in every animal that 

 possessed a circulation the blood always took one 

 definite and invariable direction, but in 1824, 

 Huxley says, it was discovered that a class of ani- 

 mals called Ascidians furnished an exception ; the 

 heart of these animals, after beating a certain num- 

 ber of times, stops, and then begins to beat in the 

 opposite way, so as to reverse the course of the 

 blood, which returns by and by to its original direc- 

 tion. Such an exception does not disturb the man 

 of science ; it only teaches him greater caution in 



