maintained that the living organisms have become adapted, through natural selection, to the conditions of the lifeless world. But this, at any rate, implies a capacity of mutual adaptation; and the more we take away the design of this from the constitution of the brute material world, the more we increase the reason for believing in the exercise of design in making living organisms capable of becoming adapted to their conditions. Even if we suppose life to have been produced naturally from lifeless matter, we cannot exclude design from the creation of matter with such marvellous capacity. If we admit creation at all, we cannot exclude design; else, we must have the credulity to believe that the whole is the result of chance. For we have above shown that brute unreasoning necessity is virtually equivalent to chance. On the other hand, the clearer are the indications of design in the whole constitution of things, the greater are the probabilities, the practical proofs, that the whole is not the result of pure chance, or its equivalent, brute unreasoning necessity. If we are told that science only knows things as they are, that is true. But science brings with it much belief, and men of science, even in the sphere of science itself, believe a great deal more than science has ascertained.

(3) Apart from the fundamental sense of right or ought, as distinguished from useful or prudent, which is the basis of the moral faculty, the doctrine of evolution as applied to morals is not a reasonable cause of apprehension to one who believes in God and in a creative purpose. What has been evolved under the necessary conditions of our existence must be regarded as forming part of the original design, and tending, as it manifestly does, to the welfare of men, is itself a practical indication of that design, and carries with it all its authority. As a matter of fact, while the recognition of the obligation of justice, veracity, and goodness, seems to be original and innate, evolution has always played a large part in determining many of the practical lines of human duty. Where it fails, as I have endeavoured to show, is in producing the feeling of duty itself, what is called "the categorical imperative." But even if that has been evolved also, to the Theist it commends itself as part of the original design in creation, and so carries with it Divine authority. It is for those who do not believe in God that the Theist has cause to dread this application of the doctrine of evolution. And to the non-Theist,

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if he cares for virtue, I think it should be a cause of apprehension also. For it makes conduct to depend on each person's own perception of utility, or else on the degree in which he chooses to be amenable to public opinion, without any prior sense of obligation. For if it is part of the hypothesis that this sense of obligation is likewise evolved, yet the theory at the same time practically does away with it, by teaching that it is an obligation imposed by man, and not by a higher authority. That the utility of virtue, as it is commonly understood, viewed in regard to mankind in general, is to a large degree demonstrable, falls in with the Theistic view of obligation. But the person who does not perceive this utility, or prefers what he thinks useful or pleasant to himself, if he is taught that his conscience and all sense of obligation is a mere human product, is left at large to do what he likes, without the restraint of that conscience which he has learned to regard as devoid of all prior and fundamental authority. If the consideration of this fatal tendency cannot outweigh positive proof of the theory in question, it shows where the theory fails as a foundation of virtue. And it may reasonably lead men to pause in their generalization, and to confine the theory to those limits, within which positive proof of its truth may be found. It is admitted that evolution has determined many of the now recognized lines of duty. If it can be shown that it has determined them all practically, it has not, as I have tried to prove, produced the sense of duty itself. But even if it were shown that it has produced that also, the Theist would still see in this the result of Divine purpose, and find therein a Divine foundation of morality, the fitness of which in itself, or as otherwise shown, is correlated with that design. I may here quote a few words from Clement of Alexandria which, while reserving the original moral constitution of man, make provision for the social evolution of duty. "By nature God created us social and righteous. We are not, therefore, to say that the right is shown by positive enactment only, but should understand that the good of creation is kindled up by the commandment, the soul being educated by instruction to will to choose what is best." purei d'av κοινωνικοὺς καὶ δικαίους ὁ θεὸς ἡμᾶς ἐδημιούργησεν· ὅθεν οὐδὲ τὸ δίκαιον ἐκ μόνης φαίνεσθαι τῆς θέσεως ῥητέον· ἐκ δὲ τῆς ἐντολῆς ἀναζωπυρεῖσθαι τὸ τῆς δημουργίας ἀγαθὸν νοητέον, μαθήσει παιδευθείσης τῆς ψυχῆς ἐθέλειν aipeîobai tò kárλıσтov.—Stromat. i., p. 286 C. Sylburg.

LECTURE V.*

MODERN VIEWS ON THE EVIDENCE FROM MIRACLES IN PROOF OF DIVINE REVELATION.

IN

N the line of argument which I have hitherto pursued in the course of these Lectures, I set out with the assumption that there is an Author of Nature, and that man was created with freedom of choice and will. I endeavoured to account for the unhappy condition of this world in its present state, as the result of human freedom, for the imparting of which I tried to assign good and sufficient reasons. I then endeavoured to show that there was nothing in the existing state of the world, under such circumstances, inconsistent with the power and wisdom, the goodness and righteousness of God, at the same time pointing out the reasons for ascribing these attributes to the Creator. I then attempted to make good the two assumptions of man's freedom and of an Author of Nature, with which I set out, and I made all along a comparison. of ancient and modern conceptions in regard to all these subjects. I now proceed to consider the occasion arising

* Delivered on Sunday, February 24, 1878.

from the manner in which man has abused his freedom, for some communication from God over and above what may be learned from the observation of the external world, or found written in our own nature; the manner in which alone such a communication can be guaranteed to have come from God; and the possibility or credibility of the supernatural proofs of such a communication in accordance with ancient and modern views on these subjects. And, as I have already intimated, whatever difficulty we may feel in accounting for God's creation of beings endued with freedom, under the entire foreknowledge of its abuse, at any rate our belief in God's goodness naturally suggests to us the reasonableness of expecting that He should communicate to us some remedy for ills we have brought on ourselves through the misuse of the freedom bestowed upon us.

The words of our Lord which I have read for a text give the key-note of much of what I have to say on the present occasion. The significant expression in them is the word "hitherto." It seems to me that our Lord did not intend to mark any distinction between the work of the Father in times past and His own work thenceforward. So far from this, the added clause, " and I work," without any fresh indication of time, plainly connects itself with the word hitherto, and expresses the conjoint work of Father and Son all along, and that without intermission from the beginning of the world until then. But it is not as a proof of our Lord's pre-existence and perpetual union with the Father that I now refer to this passage, but as declaratory of the perpetual activity of the Divine operation throughout the entire course of the world's history, as distinguished from a work finished and left off at the first creation. The

occasion of our Lord's speaking in this way will show what He intended. He had healed a man on the Sabbath day, and bid him take up his bed and walk. The Jews were offended at this, and accused Him of breaking the Sabbath. The relevancy of our Lord's answer to this accusation is plainly this :-Though the works of creation were finished and God rested on the seventh day, yet the rest was not from continued operation, nor the completion of the works a cessation of God's activity. The works were only finished in regard to kinds, according to the comprehensive classification of them contained in the first chapter of Genesis. The rest and cessation was only from the creation of things other in kind, and not included under that classification, but by no means a rest from the Divine activity still carried on in the continuance of the world from the first day until now. The things brought into existence at the first in their several kinds, whether those

* In my work entitled Genesis and its Authorship, revised edition, 1873, I endeavoured at some length to show that the distribution of the works of creation in Gen. i. is artificial, that it is in fact a comprehensive classification under the so-called elements of the ancients, divided into a double series, each part consisting of three members. In the first series we have light, which the ancients identified with elemental fire, then the gaseous and fluid liquids, under the names of water and the " expanse or atmosphere, miscalled firmament in our Version after the Latin translators, and, thirdly, the earth with its vegetable clothing. The members of the second series correspond in order with these, being what Thomas Aquinas calls their occupants, habitatores eorum, the heavenly luminaries corresponding to light, the animals that occupy the air and water answering to the second member of the first series, and corresponding to the third, the animals, including man, that dwell on the dry land. These are represented as so many days' work of the Divine Artificer; and the classification being comprehensive enough to include all the works of Nature, God is then said to have finished His works, finished them in the completeness of their kinds, and to have rested by the cessation from creating others not comprehended in the foregoing enumeration.