that it owes its existence to the sun. What makes it a created or dependent object is not the fact that at one time it began to be, but the fact that at every time it is simply an emanation—that it has not at any moment of its being a spark of heat or light which it does not derive from its contact with that source from which it radiates. There is therefore no necessary antagonism between the doctrine of a Divine creation and the doctrine of a world whose matter had no historical beginning. The theist holds that the matter of the world has a perpetual beginning out of history. He holds that in every moment of its existence the world is a created work. He does not look upon it as something which God once made, but which now supports itself; he views it as something which has never been able for an instant to support itself, which is indebted for its every hour of being to the creative will of another, and which, had it even no historical beginning, can never be viewed as aught but the product of a higher power.

There is not, then, any antecedent incompatibility between the claims of evolution and the claims of creation. They are both at one in holding that there never has been an absolute beginning that there never was a time in which some power did not exist. We go on, therefore, to ask whether this alleged incompatibility lies in

the distinctive natures of the two systems themselves. Is there anything in the definition of the word "evolution" which renders it an opposite conception to the idea involved in the word "creation"? Perhaps we shall best arrive at a solution of this question by placing side by side the two most representative systems of creationism and evolutionism-the system of the Book of Genesis and the system of Mr Herbert Spencer.

Mr Herbert Spencer gives the following definition of the word "evolution": "Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." The first thing to which we have here to direct our attention is the word "during." This word marks something which is frequently supposed to denote the opposite of creation; we mean the fact that evolution is not an act but a process. It indicates that the formation of this world was not something which was begun and ended in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, but something which was elaborated step by step, and wrought out day by day. Such a difference between the conception of nature as a sudden emergence into being, and the conception of nature

1 First Principles, § 145, chap. xvii. p. 396.

as a gradual growth and development, has been always supposed to mark the distinction between the ancient and the modern spirit,-between the ages when man thought unscientifically and the age when he has begun to think on the lines of

science.

neous one.

Nor is the supposition, in its essence, an erroThe ancient conception of creative power was certainly the conception of a force acting instantaneously, and the force was considered to be grandly manifested just in proportion to its instantaneousness. But this only serves to render more conspicuous one prominent exception to the rule-the narrative of the Book of Genesis. Here is confessedly the most majestic description of creative power ever given by the pen of man. Yet here, in the most ancient of times, we find an anticipation, not indeed of modern science, but of that spirit which led to modern science-the tendency to view nature as a process. Let us suppose that for the first time the opening chapter of Genesis had now been revealed to the eyes of the world. Let us suppose that, instead of being the best-known fact of literature, it had been suddenly and unexpectedly discovered in our own days amidst the archives of the past. Let us further imagine that it presented itself to our view not with any claim to inspiration which might create an adverse bias in the scientific

mind, but simply and solely as the product of an ancient literary era, and as the work of a speculative mind. We ask, What would in scientific circles be the first impression created by such a discovery? It would be one of mingled respect and wonder. It would be respect for a speculative power which had come so much nearer to the modern spirit than all contemporary literatures, and it would be wonder that in so primitive an age such a view of nature should have been entertained. The revelation made to the scientific mind would be a revelation of the fact, that in a period of remote antiquity, in an age of primitive culture, in a day when the very elements of science were unknown, there had lived a man who had not been afraid to say that the creation of the world had not been an act but a process,-who had dared to affirm, in opposition to all his predecessors, and in contrast with all his contemporaries, that the method by which the world was made was a method slow and gradual, rising from the smallness of first beginnings, and adding quality to quality, until it reached in the fulness of time the symmetry of a completed whole.

Nor would the wonder of the scientific mind be lessened by the reflection that the author of this remarkable poem was a Hebrew. The knowledge of his origin would increase beyond measure the marvel. It would be seen that for a Hebrew to

ΠΙΟ Can the Old Faith live with the New ?

say that the creation of the earth was gradual, was not a natural thing-not a thing to be expected from the tendency of his religion. The tendency of his religion is well known to have been in the opposite direction towards, we do not say an exaggerated view, but an exaggerated expression of the power of God. The leading article of the Hebrew's creed was just the doctrine of Divine power, just the belief that there reigned in the heavens One whose will was omnipotent, whose mandate was irresistible, and from whose sentence there could be no appeal. The wonder would be that to a man holding such a view of God, the notion of a gradual creation should ever for a moment have suggested itself. The writer of the first chapter of Genesis, in attributing to God a six days' work of creation, did certainly not believe that he was thereby recording the marvellous rapidity of His working; it would have been more natural for Him to say that God made the world in six seconds. The fact that he did not say sothe fact that, contrary to the genius of his religion, he described the creative work of God as extending through evenings and mornings—is a proof that there must have been in his mind some sense of scientific congruity, which led him to keep in abeyance the spontaneous national instinct.

It may be said, however, that the narrative of creation, as given in the first chapter of Genesis,