THE GENESIS OF NATURE. 



5J 



have restricted Himself to this one method of producing all the 

 phenomena we see ? Is it probable that so oreat, so wise, a 

 Life-Giver should have followed this somewhat roundabout 

 plan of causing every kind of life He gave to earth to pass 

 through the lowest phase of life imaginalole ? The earth has a 

 handmaid, the moon, which collects the sunlight and reflects it 

 on our globe. But because we know this, should we be justified 

 in arguing that all the sunlight ought therefore to be collected 

 by the moon, before it can reacli the earth ? Is it not rational 

 for the sun to send us its light (as it does) in other ways as 

 well ? Does tlie moon leave no room for direct radiance ? So, 

 assuming for the sake of argument that evolution is one way 

 by which God chose to work, does it therefore exclude all other 

 ways ? Might not direct beams of life have come to earth from 

 God throughout the ages ? Is it scientific to limit without 

 proof the methods of the Infinite to one alone, and that a way 

 whose aptness for all purposes is liable to doubt ? We speak 

 only of probability. His way may have been ahvays so. But, 

 certainly, it is not easy to imagine, that in introducing new 

 elements of creation into the world, in building up new stages 

 of advance throughout the ages, He sliould have caused them 

 all to come by that single mundane way of evolution. It is 

 not so easy to imagine that in making all the stars He should 

 have caused the one primeval substance, separated to each, to 

 evolve, independently and separately, into the materials wliich 

 the spectroscope reveals to us now to exist in all. A wider 

 theory of method than evolution seems capable of supplying 

 seems needed adequately to explain the manifold works of the 

 Creator. A larger theory of life than any that has yet been 

 scientifically formed, seems required to fulfil the correspondences 

 implied by the Biblical conception of God. 



13. The Biblical conception of God fulfils all reqiiirements of 



science. 



We may therefore finally assert, that the Scriptural 

 conception of God fulfils, and more than fulfils, all the 

 requirements of modern science in the realm of nature. 

 Discovery has not yet spread out a result which exhausts the 

 powers of that conception. There are no signs that it can 

 ever do so ; indeed it may be said that it has become 

 fundamentally impossible that it ever can. For if it is to 

 rebut it, its only possible line of argument must be to show 

 that the discovered facts of nature are as a whole incongruous 

 with our conception of God ; and when, as we have seen, the 



