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E. WALTER MAUNDER, P.R.A.S., ON 



Dr. Irving infers that I have not made up my mind about 

 Evolution. I had quite made up my mind that it would be foreign 

 to my purpose to discuss it here. The chapter before us deals with 

 Creation, and Creation is not a phase of Evolution. I should like 

 to distinguish between two things which seem to me very different, 

 namely, the past physical history of the world, and the account of 

 its being brought into existence. For Scripture distinguishes 

 clearly between two different modes of the Divine action, and 

 we ought to do the same. There is that action which Scripture 

 speaks of as " upholding all things by the word of His power " ; or 

 which we express by the " continuity of nature," or " the operation 

 of the law of causality." It is within this field, and this field only, 

 that Science can work, for "if the law of causality is acknowledged 

 to be an assumption which always holds good, then every observa- 

 tion gives us a revelation, which, when correctly appraised and 

 compared with others, teaches us the laws by which God rules the 

 world. "''^ But there is also that other Divine action : "by Him 

 were all things created " ; that is, He called them into being. 



There should be no difficulty in distinguishing between the tv/o 

 thoughts. For example, let us assume that man has come, by 

 descent, that is to say by successive generation, from a lower animal ;. 

 say a lemur of Madagascar ; his modifications having been brought 

 about by natural and sexual selection, by the struggle for existence, 

 and the force of environment. If this be so, it affords us an example 

 of Evolution, but no instance of Creation ; and we must search into 

 the ancestry of the lemur before we reach the Creation of Man. 

 However far we can trace back man's unbroken descent — provided 

 always that there has been no special Divine interposition, no new 

 material, conditions or powers introduced — we are dealing simply 

 with Evolution, and not at all with Creation. 



If I read this chapter rightly, we are herein told expressly that 

 the past history of the world has not been a single evolution ; but 

 that eight times— as Mr. Bishop well points out — the Creator has 

 introduced new powers or new conditions, which did not arise 

 necessarily and continuously out of those previously existing. In 

 other words, it gives us no statement for, or against, the descent of 

 man from a lower form, but it tells us expressly that he was not 



Theory of Observations, Tliiele, page 1. 



