THE S:RirTCnAL IDEA OP MIRACLES. 



63 



a personal spiritual author not only of electricity but of the 

 Iniman spirit, in other words, to God. All Christians are monists, 

 but we get our monism out of the first verse of the Bible. 



Where then does nature end and God begin ? AVe are 

 perpetually adjusting and readjusting our answer, delimiting the 

 border of the known and the unknown, of the physical and the 

 spiritual, exploring, in imagination, the regions beyond, some- 

 times almost succeeding in unifying mind with matter, and yet 

 after all bavins' to confess our failure. This is l)ecause we are 

 what we are, in the world but not of the world, in the flesh but 

 not of the flesli. The mysterious ego stands aloof from the 

 phenomena of the physical universe and witnesses for God. If 

 He is inscrutable, so are we. 



§ 2. God's Hand ix Evolution and ix Growth. 



The missing liidv between the beginning of all things and the 

 present state of the world is supposed to lie in the hand of the 

 Evolutionist. At times the word Evolution becomes almost 

 oppressive. It is regarded as the prime minister of creation. 

 Perhaps it is so ; who can say for certain ( but, after all it is 

 only a minister. It is not automatic ; nor is it a substitute for 

 creation — only a suggested method. Moreover, it has to do 

 with the past — mainly if not entirely. It is intended to 

 account for the multiplicity of " kinds " from matter up to 

 man. But now we depend not on fresh processes of Evolution 

 but on post-Evolutionary Growth. I am inclined to think that 

 the power and wisdom of God may be seen more clearly in the 

 phenomena of growth than in the theory of Evolution. Take, 

 for example, the growth of a chicken within its prisonhouse the 

 egg-shell. Here we have a fact staring us dailv in the face. 

 How many millions of years are needed for the development of 

 that chicken from a protoplasmic speck ? It would seem as if 

 a million years of evolution became one day in growth. Bear 

 in mind that in saying this I am not mocking at the labours of 

 the evolutionist, but appealing for a full recognition of the daily 

 miracles of nature in the animal and vegetable world. Every 

 " kind " is a terminus to the preceding process which we now 

 call Evolution ; then Growth comes on the scene and shows us 

 the handiwork of the living Architect of the Universe as He 

 now operates in nature. 



§ 3. DocTPJXES Common to the Bible and Xatukal Science. 



There are certain things which the Bible and natural science 

 teach in common, and we do well to recognise them. I will 



