we cannot find any essential difference in the external forms, or the inner structure of these living, or of these dead: there is this essential difference-one is living, the other is dead; and every living thing has its own path of life.

The energy imparting life to inorganic matter advances. from various centres in definite lines and times, through various grades of organization to the highest varieties of dicotyledons and vertebrata. This progress and variety are not wholly of adaptation, and by the changing incidence of conditions: variations appear even when parents are the same, and their constitutional states the same: plants grown from the seeds of one pod are not alike; and in a litter of pigs, or of kittens, there is seldom uniformity of marking. Like organisms are not universally, nor even generally, found in like habitats; nor very unlike organisms in unlike habitats. Horses, cows, sheep, dogs, afford many examples of variety and improvement; and, but for this capability of improvement, the arts of the breeder and cultivator would be in vain. The rabbit is born naked and blind; but the hare is born covered with hair, eyes wide open, and ready to run for its life. "The unity underlying the differences of the hand, the paw, the fin, the hoof, great as it is, no more makes a man a dog or an ape, than it makes him an elephant or a seal.”1 A young chimpanzee and an infant child are somewhat similar, but the child grows into a man, and the chimpanzee becomes more bestial. "The higher a monkey goes, the more he shows his tail." The chimpanzee is limited to an intertropical climate, and requires an assemblage of certain trees producing certain fruits; but man is a denizen of all lands, from the torrid to the arctic zones. The letters and words of man's book of life are used in God's press for various other publications; but those other publications are no more a part of man, than is a scurrilous performance part of Milton's "Paradise Lost."

Rudimentary Organs.

A Doctrine, Dysteology, the uselessness or purposelessness of organs, is having the attention of scientific men. Almost every animal and plant, besides the obviously useful arrange'Cuvier, "Lecons d'Anat. Comparée," vol. i., 1799.

Rudimentary Organs.

261

ments, has organs, or rudimentary parts, for which there is no use. Eyes which do not see are possessed by animals living in the dark, in caves, or underground. The eyes are good, but covered with a membrane so that no ray of light enters. Many are found in the caves of Styria and Kentucky, they have become blind through so many generations living in the dark, and not using their eyes. We do wrong to think that natural selection preserved the blind, and destroyed the seeing; because those having sight might be liable to "inflammation of the nictitating membrane;" for, indeed, the immense eyes of these blind rats are subject to the objectionable inflammation. There are rudimentary limbs in fish, in serpents, and the slow-worm has a shoulder apparatus. In plants sometimes the stamen, sometimes the pistil, is abortive. Sometimes only one side of the lungs is developed in animals, the other is a useless rudiment; and in all birds only the left ovary is developed to yield eggs. The mammary glands on the breast of all mammals are active only in the female, there are teeth in the embryos of many ruminants which are not developed, most of the higher animals possess muscles that are never employed, birds and insects have wings which are not intended for flight.

If some of these organs are in a state of atrophy through not being used, that partly explains the difficulty. If others are progressing, so as by evolution to advance in life, is this progress voluntary on their part? If so, explain it; If it is the natural process by what arrangement is it natural? The theory of natural selection does not explain the mystery: for rudimentary organs, and some stages in the slow process of change, are hindrances to the animal, losses, not gains. They are not as germs, so that if we amputate a leg a new one buds out; nor do they, as the lizard, possess power of newly forming a limb, or tail, where was no tail nor limb. A portion of the alimentary canal is in birds enlarged and indurated for trituration of food, and we think to explain it by saying, "The gizzard is simply an exaggeration of certain structures and actions which characterise stomachs in general," but over-eating will not form a receptacle for the surplus; nor quick and ravenous devouring lead to

the production of an internal grinding apparatus. Did the liver, pancreas, and smaller glands, grow up by the desire to eat, and was there then a co-operation to localise the excretions? Did the lungs expand themselves out of a hollow bud, and become an air-chamber-simple or compound; and, in fish, form the swim-bladder? To call them an integration or summing up of past adaptive processes, by which modifications were slowly acquired through many generations; is first to assume those modifications, and then to explain the lesser difficulty by a greater. The real cause is utterly unknown.

Many human emotions, probably all the sensual feelings, are found in the beast; and it is asserted, with some humour and much rashness, that the highest faculties of emotion and intellect are mere outgrowths from lower animal life. For example-the mother sense of all senses is Touch, and the parrot is the most sensible of birds because of its tactual power; but we may just as well say, "The parrot has great tactual power because it is one of the most sensible birds, and by the same intelligence evokes speech from otherwise discordant tones." A hawk, a raven, even a canary, may sometimes equal the parrot in intelligence. The elephant multiplies his experiences through the tactual range and skill of his trunk; but the dog, with less tactual power, is sagacious enough to be the friend of man. Feline animals are said to be more sagacious, because of their paws, than hoofed animals; but the horse, though hoofed, excels all the feline animals in the world. If prehensile lips are the cause of sagacity the cow ought to excel, for she has prehensile lips and a cloven hoof. No warrant, moreover, exists for believing that parrot, elephant, horse, dog, or cow, can educate itself to the surpassing of nature, and extend brute powers into the domain of human reason. Men, however, who lose the knowledge of God, can and do go down into a low animal substratum of being, and suffer loss. Not distinguishing the nobler organs and functions, they use them as if only of animal species; but God knows the difference, and holds men responsible for the use of that difference. He expects them to regard one another as rudimentary angels, rather than progressive beasts: for an angel may be called man in

corporeal, and man an angel corporeal. He is animal in so far as he partakes of precedent forms; and in so far as an animal is a plant, and a plant is inorganic; but, as a reasonable creature clothed with body, and formed in the image of God, he is but little lower than the angel.1

The whole of Nature, thus viewed, is in every part interpenetrated by the Supernatural; or, if you will, the Supernatural is Natural: for all things blend in one splendid unity. That which we call miraculous may be the working of a law x so fine, yet wide and intermittent, that only highest wisdom can comprehend and use it. The discoveries of science are true revelations of the Divine presence and work, are a psalmody in praise of His Wisdom and Might. Our life, rooted in the Divine Life, is a mystery, a holy thing. Mere animal minds die, human minds are immortal; this is part of their grandeur, and, ever growing into wider range, subordinates intellectual to moral perfection. Our cosmical life, brought out like lower animal-life, from simple elements by the Almighty, is springing, through strange interaction with things around, to complex powers and desires; we are becoming involved, deeper and deeper, with great principles of moral government, and with a future wherein holiness will be vindicated.

1 Comenius said the same thing long ago:-"Homo dici potest angelus eo sensu, quo homo ipse animal, animal planta, planta concretum, etc. dicitur id est, propter inclusam præcedentis formam, nova solum superaddita perfectione. Homo enim creatura est rationalis ad imaginen Dei condita, immortalis; est et angelus, sed majoris perfectionis ergo a corpore liber. Nihil igitur aliud est angelus quam homo a corpore nudus, nihil alind homo, quam angelus copore vestitus."-John Amos Comenius, Physicæ ad Lumen Divinum Reformandæ Synopsis.

STUDY XV.

COMPARISON OF THE TWO DIVINE ACCOUNTS.

"In the spiritual childhood of the world, outward signs were needed to make known God's power and rule. The secret springs of the machinery were displayed; but, when the fulness of time was come, men were no longer to walk by sight, but by faith.”—Memorials of a Quiet Life.

THE world is that theatre on which the drama of our life is played. Possibly we should not trouble ourselves with what goes on behind the scenes, unless fresh influxes from the region beyond our own experience, and beyond our ancestors' experience, came in upon us as from an ocean, surrounding our island world. Reflection on the nature of things also discloses that there are two modes of existence, and on two different planes: Real existence, which we feel or perceive; and Ideal, that which is imaged in our consciousness, or of which we have conception. Conscious, in this manner, of existence, of co-existence, of pre-existence; the necessary movement of thought is with the flow of things, and we cannot conceive of a creation without a Creator, nor of effect without cause. We carry, so to speak, a universe within us, and a measure for all things. Deep as is our conviction of the reality of a world behind the field of phenomena, we are puzzled by statements that it stands in no relation to us, nor have we faculties by which to know it.

Both statements we utterly deny. It is possible to reduce all phenomena to one cause, to see the many in the One, and the One in the many. The ablest metaphysicians say "The phenomena we deal with are bi-polar, on the one side objective and on the other subjective, and these are the twofold aspects of reality" that double-sidedness which enforces the conviction that to the positive equation of the world must be added the spiritual equation, as that inner meaning which explains the whole. For example, to account for the consciousness we