in order that they may adapt themselves to their new locality." Now, with God, the universe is not dual nor fragmentary, but an infinite whole. As to space and time, it corresponds relatively with the Infinity and Eternity of God: therefore, no idea of ours can approach the vastness of creation; and in vain we inflate our conceptions as to the extent of time. The children of imagination are nothing in comparison with the reality. "It is an infinite sphere of which the centre is everywhere, and the circumference nowhere."2 Hence, we conclude that God is for ever, and infinitely all that He is. Creator, He creates eternally. The world is not by caprice, by chance, by hazard, but of reason and purpose Divine. It must stand in our human conception associated with the beginning of revelation as to the eternal Son. "3 All this is miraculous, but we are told-" Science has no room for miracles, for by miracles we understand an interference of supernatural forces in the natural course of development of matter." Again" As far as the eye of science has hitherto ranged through nature, no intrusion of purely creative power into any series of phenomena has ever been observed." Examining the facts on which such statements are founded, the whole philosophy stands self-convicted of inadequacy. It has no explanation of the origin of things. It does not and cannot formulate the whole series of changes passed through by matter in its passage from the imperceptible to the perceptible, nor from the perceptible to the imperceptible. It begins explanations with existences which already have concrete forms, and leaves off while they still retain those forms. Manifestly such existences had preceding, and will have succeeding histories. The assertion-"There is no interference of supernatural forces in the course of nature"-is based on ignorance of the origin, the continuance, and end of things. It assumes that everything is known, when, in reality, not one thing in the world is fully known, but escapes from our every 1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 5: P. G. Tait, M.A. 2 Pascal: "Pensées." "The History of Creation," vol. i., p. 60: Prof. Haeckel. Interference by Divine Energy. research into the unknown. 51 It forgets that "information, however extensive it may become, can never satisfy inquiry; positive knowledge does not, and never can, fill the whole region of possible thought." The protestors against miracles protest too much. Even the method of procedure in the blending of mind and matter in the bodily structure of sentient and rational creatures remains a mystery. Will any one state whether Body is the necessary means of bringing Mind into relationship with space and extension, or of giving it connection. with place and time? Will not the explanation require an explanation? What is the link joining the stupendous machinery which traverses the fields of space, wherein worlds are massed into spheres, revolving with double, treble, or manifold measurement of time in diurnal and annual rotation? Have we sufficient knowledge of the cycles of seasons, and of the changing eccentricity of orbits, either to take them out of, or fit them in to, the purposes of universal government? Can we say whether or not the vast horology of nature is a register to spiritual creatures? Can the knowledge of Materialists occupy and monopolise all this sphere? Nay, and yet the mind will continue to dwell upon these things. Thus, at the very threshold of creation, we are met with occurrences which exceed our present experience, and set at nought material philosophy. Taking nearer things: In what relation do emotions, which are often of the most violent kind, and are neither merely animal nor organic, not purely intellectual nor moral, mingle with other elements of our nature; so that we have sense of fitness, harmony, beauty, sublimity, terror, or their opposites? How do we explain that there is now, and must ever be throughout all future time, an unascertained Something-an Unknown on whom all phenomena and their relations rest? And that at the uttermost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever arise, the question-"What lies beyond?" This, so far as we are concerned, is miraculous, less explainable than would be a voice from the sky. To call it natural is to declare that Nature is a grand miraculous entity. 1 "First Principles :" Herbert Spencer. Take the mechanical view: Physical science asserts, "Nature does not allow us for a moment to doubt that we have to do with a rigid chain of cause and effect, admitting of no exceptions." Enlarge this statement: The theory of gravitation demonstrates that the hosts of Heaven are parts of a vast mechanism, and that the phenomena of Nature are expressible in terms of matter and motion, resolvable into the attractions and repulsions of material particles. On these principles of materialism, our mind, if sufficiently expanded, would be able to follow natural processes from beginning to end. It could see the molecules taking their position, by mutual specific attractions and repulsions, the whole process being the play and result of molecular force. Given a grain of wheat, an acorn, an infant, and their environment, expanded human intellect could trace out, à priori, every step of the process of growth; and, matter being given, we could, by the application of purely mechanical principles, fashion and furnish a world. Well, suppose we admit it all, which we do not, what then? Even on these principles, “we are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some Power by which we are acted upon; though Omnipresence is unthinkable, yet as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the presence of this Power." Hence, the nature of things, their mechanical adjustment, leads to the conception of an Omnipresent Energy. If it be said "Everything that comes into Nature, or is in nature, or goes out of nature, is part of nature, or natural" -that, meaning the within and the without, includes the supernatural; and concedes the argument by confessing that something not in nature may come in, remain in, or go out. That nature arises out of, is sustained by, is interpenetrated in every part, and passes into the supernatural, is capable of proof. Every organism, whether animal or plant, possesses, besides the obviously useful arrangements of its organisation, other arrangements, the purpose of which it is utterly impossible to find out. Morphologists look upon the forms of animals and plants as something which cannot at all be "First Principles :" Herbert Spencer. Is Everything in Nature Natural? 53 explained mechanically. Attempted explanations, by means of descent and modification, rest, for all their power and meaning, on a deep and far-reaching law, at present unknown. Go yet lower the origin of every simple salt crystal, obtained by evaporating its mother liquid, is no less mysterious as to its first cause, and no less incomprehensible in itself than the most complex animal. When gold and silver crystallize in a cubical, bismuth and antimony in a hexagonal, iodine and sulphur in a rhombic form of crystal, the ultimate cause is in every case hidden from us. Resolve all the appearances, properties, and movements of things into manifestations of energy within space and time, then energy, space, time, pass all understanding. Even materially and mechanically regarded, our own beginning is unexplainable and full of mystery. The germ, in and with which we began to exist, was, like every other germ, without any discoverable difference; but, in the process of development, it acquired the differential characteristics of the sub-kingdoms; then successively the characteristics of its class, order, family, genus, species, race. Come to our own identity or personality, that of which every one is conscious, the most certain of all facts, even this is a thing which cannot truly be known-knowledge of it is forbidden by the very nature of thought. It is unwise, therefore, for atheistic physicists to try to erect so elaborate an argument, and such universal denial, on absolute nescience. They cease to be guides when they forsake their own line of things. If, knowing that matter and thought, even in their simplest elements, are incomprehensible-both ends being beyond mental grasp they speak as if things were in their grasp and fully known, they are deceivers. A mechanical process does not explain all things; every explanation eventually leads to the inexplicable; the deepest truth that we can get at rests upon something which is infinitely beyond. It is quite true, in one sense, physical science knows, or is destined to know everything, but, in another sense, it knows nothing. Ask the materialist, Whence came matter and energy? Who or what formed molecules? Who or what made them run into organic forms? He has no answer. "His mind may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain хи x True. I is not absolutely asserted. but is implied, if matter is not eternal, that cannot be rationally held by Threshold of Creation. 54 range of notes, beyond which, in both directions, we have an infinitude of silence." The same fact is put in other words,"After all, what do we know of this terrible 'matter,' except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical states of our own consciousness."2 We neither know nor can know anything of matter, save through the medium of our senses, and these senses rest upon our intellect, so that we only know matter by mind-the visible by the invisible. "The sciences have in this respect one common aim, to establish the supremacy of intelligence over the world;"s not the supremacy of the world over intelligence. Hence, so far from matter being the only thing we can know amongst the many unknown, and the only certainty amongst those which must for ever remain uncertain, it is, if not inferior in certainty, surely subordinate to that greater truth-the existence of mind. Whoever knows that matter and all its forms are shown to be the more marvellous, the more they are investigated, and, in their ultimate natures, absolutely incomprehensible, will know also that the attempted interpretation of all phenomena in terms of matter, motion, energy, is not merely an erroneous reduction of our complex symbols of thought to physical symbols, but an endeavour to explain our consciousness, or mental phenomena, by the matter and material phenomena of which we are conscious; as if a disquisition on a flower would explain the hand that grasps, the eye that sees, the intelligence that discerns. It is a presumptuous, ignorant attempt to bridge over that chasm between consciousness and physics, which must ever remain intellectually impassable. It must strike even the most careless who realise the supremacy of mind that God, being the Creator of all things, the all things must include matter. (Col. i. 16.) The Bible does not tie us down to the fact that God did absolutely create matter; but we, believing that He did, that He brought it out of the invisible, seek to justify and verify our faith, for "every advance in our knowledge of the natural world will, if "Matter and Force :" Prof. Tyndall. "The Physical Basis of Life :" Prof. Huxley. 3 "On the Relation of Natural Science to General Science:" Prof. Helmholtz. |