TBE PRE-REQUISITES OF A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 



235 



DiSCUSHION. 



The Chairman : The Lecture to which we have listened, with 

 profound attention and indisputable profit, is now open for 

 discussion. I should prefer to reserve my remarks for a later stage, 

 because I do not wish to abridge the discussion. The first three 

 speakers may be allowed six minutes each, and subsequent speakers 

 five minutes each. 



Mr. M. L. EousE, B. A., B.L. : I am heartily in agreement with the 

 last part— and in a measure with the whole — of the paper, which I 

 think admirable ; but I do not see that we are bound to accept 

 Evolution in order to perceive an ordered creation. I would say 

 that Evolutionism is not necessary in order to prove that all created 

 things live and move and have their being in God. Surely 

 Reproduction is enough for that. If Paley found the watch, or a 

 savage finds the watch, he says: "If this has been made by some 

 wonderful being, with all its interlocking checks and balances, and 

 so on, how much more wonderful must be the God who created that 

 being ! " Yes, but God has not only created a tree, but put in the 

 tree a seed, which contains within itself another, and that another, 

 for ten thousand generations. How would it then be with the 

 watch if within it was another, and within that another, and so on 1 

 Here we see the living and moving of God in Creation, namely, 

 in the reproducing, the putting of reproductive life into that first 

 tree. 



Again I would say — to take the old argument — you have one 

 animal made for another, and that one for another, and so on. 

 The tarantula kills the humming-bird, a kind of lizard kills and 

 eats the tarantula, a larger bird kills and eats the lizard, and so on. 

 These creatures were meant to be preyed upon by one another. I 

 do not hold with the prevalent idea — which I do not believe prevails 

 much among scientific people — that when death entered the world 

 to Adam there was not previously death, or a devouring of 

 one animal by another. We distinctly read in the Psalms that 

 " the young lions seek their meat from God," and therefore that 

 must have been the case from the beginning. 



If ordinary creatures were allowed to multiply freely, they 

 would fill the earth to the exclusion of others. It has been found 



