160 REV. CANON R. B. GIRDLESTONE^ M.A., ON 



It is evidently an attribute of man to speculate, to observe, 

 and to draw conclusions. If you pay a visit to the Zoological 

 Gardens you will notice the anxious and careworn faces of apes. 

 They look as if the problems of existence were too much for 

 them. But it is all facial ; nothing comes of it. It is not so, 

 however, with man. If he has not innate ideas he certainly 

 has innate tendencies and capacities reaching far beyond the 

 struggle for daily existence, pushing backwards and forwards in 

 time, and onwards and upwards in space. Some men are born 

 explorers ; they do pioneer work in Africa or New Guinea, in 

 Mars or Sirius, or perhaps they devote a lifetime to the habits 

 of a particular beetle, microbe, or element. Every phenomenon 

 has a history. What led up to it ? and what follows after it ? 

 The answer never completely satisfies us, but it stimulates us 

 to further research, and then, when we seem nearer our goal 

 than ever before, we have to hand on our torch to others, and 

 we die. 



To put it shortly (as Mr. George de Tunzelniann says in his 

 late work on the Problem of the Universe, chap, xxiv), mind is 

 always unifying nature. Every man has a vested interest 

 in the world and a share in the universe. He is not a mere 

 lump of organised matter, but is gifted with energy, will, 

 intelligence, purposive action, which put him en rapport with 

 the First Cause of nature. Man is God's prime minister upon 

 earth. It may be true that the protoplasm of a mushroom is 

 physically indistinguishable from the protoplasm of a man, but 

 there is that mind-stuff in the man associated with the brain 

 cell — but not secreted by it (as Haeckel vainly teaches) — which 

 is intended to fit him for his high office. The passage from 

 moneron to man is a very extended one, and an unseen hand 

 has been engaged on it all the way up. Evolution is meaning- 

 less without Elevation. It is God who lifts up at every step 

 and stage, and He has not finished yet. His Word stands for 

 the expression of His mind and purpose, and the processes of 

 nature are the letters which spell out the Divine message, and 

 it is our business to decipher these letters. Eor a late and full 

 development of this thought let me refer to Dr. Wallace's last 

 and best book, The World of Life, in which, after forty years 

 of reflection, he has advanced to the position that the elements, 

 the cells, the processes of germination, growth and variation, 

 the cosmic changes which contribute to variation of species — 

 all imply an infinite and absolute Creator of all that exists or 

 can exist. All is planned by His mind and effected (primarily) 

 by His fiat. 



