wanted even to complete the ideal of the first creation. The sacrificial life had after all been only breathed into the nostrils; there was wanted a life whose inmost spirit should be animated with the breath of sacrifice, and whose distinctive characteristic should be the impartation to others of a quickening power.

It will be seen that this development of the principle of evolution is thus at the same time a development of the principle of suffering. "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow," is a sentiment which has obtained place in those sacred writings which represent the doctrines of the old faith. The old faith and the new are thus at one in finding a niche for sorrow in the natural order of development; the old faith declares that it is involved in intellectual development itself, the new that it emerges out of that process which intellectual development implies. The old faith and the new have this in common, that they both assign a reason for the existence of something which to the eye of common observation seems in a providential system unreasonable; they both claim for suffering a place in the order and not in the disorder of the universe, and in so doing they both exalt our view of the universe as we actually behold it.

It has often, indeed, been observed, that the actual existence of animal happiness decreases as we

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ascend the ladder of being. The increase of knowledge is verily an increase of sorrow we might almost say, an evolution of sorrow. As we proceed from spontaneity to consciousness, and from consciousness to self-consciousness, we proceed from the absence to the presence of care. One of the poets of ancient Israel has very strikingly expressed this thought in his description of the comparative unrest of man in the order of creation he tells us that the sparrow has a house and the swallow a nest for herself, but that the human soul longs and faints for a place in which to dwell. The sentiment is very beautiful, and it is not less scientifically true. If happiness be the fitness of an object for its environment, then man is of all creatures the least in possession of happiness, for he is of all creatures the least in harmony with his environment. This fact of man's comparative unrest in creation has seemed to many a blot in the system of Providence. It has been to them a source of wonder that the greatest existence in the circle of earthly things, and the existence which confessedly forms the centre of that circle, should be less in possession of rest than the creatures which occupy the circumference. it is when we turn to the law of development that we find the best vindication of the ways of Providence. There are two ways in which an object may be unfitted for its environment; it may be

But

unfitted by defect, or it may be unfitted by excess. A creature may be too small for the conditions which surround it, in which case it will be crushed by them; or it may be too large for the conditions which surround it, in which case it will be oppressed by them. The appearance of man upon the scene was manifestly an introduction of the latter case. Here was a being, gifted with natural powers, whose action was much more accelerated than the action of the powers of nature. It was inevitable that such a being should in process of time outgrow his environment. Now the outgrowth of one's environment is at one and the same time a source of sorrow and an evidence of dignity. It involves that sorrow which springs from evolutionary unfitness, from the absence of adaptation between a life and its surroundings; it necessitates a sense of want and a feeling of privation. Yet the very existence of a feeling of privation which the environment of life cannot supply, is itself an infallible proof that the life has been to some extent enlarged and dignified-an unmistakable evidence that it already holds within itself the prophetic anticipation of an environment more ample and more suited to its higher being. Therefore it is that in the teaching of the old faith there is ever a distinction drawn between two orders of sorrow-a sorrow that does, and a sorrow that does not, need to be repented of. There is

ever a distinction drawn between that suffering which is simply sensuous, and that suffering which is pre-eminently supersensuous-between the misery that springs from the love of the animal nature, and the unrest that flows from the sense of that nature's inadequacy. What is meant by that utterance which is written on the very threshold of the temple of Christianity—“ Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted"? No religion would contend that mourning is in itself a sacred thing; and Christianity in particular bases its opposition to sin on the argument that it leads to sorrow and death. But the mourning which Christianity pronounces blessed is a sorrow which originates not in the presence but in the absence of death. It comes from the fact that the soul has obtained such an influx of life as to render the old conditions of life no longer endurable. It has become too large for its former dwelling-place, and is therefore unfitted for its past environment. The mourning which Christianity calls sacred, is a sorrow which springs from the same source which caused the heart of the Psalmist to faint within him-the absence in the present state of things of a tabernacle or dwelling-place sufficiently commodious to satisfy the longings of the thirsty soul.

To sum up. The providential law of God's government in the system of evolution is identical with the providential law of God's government in

the sphere of the old faith-the principle of perfection through suffering. The providential place of suffering in the world is more vindicated in the doctrine of evolution than in any other view of nature, except that embraced in the direct teaching of Christianity. The very nature of an evolution. from the imperfect to the perfect type of existence demands the presence and the experience of suffering, and demands that the suffering shall be most present and most experienced precisely in those beings whose evolution towards the higher type is most marked and unmistakable. The forces of evolution do not, and cannot in the nature of things, move with equal speed towards perfection; they are not themselves equal in value, and therefore they cannot produce equal results. Life must necessarily move more swiftly than matter towards the goal, and mind must necessarily in its turn outrun the progress of life. This outrunning of progress—this leaving behind of the old environment, though it undoubtedly marks a stage of higher dignity-cannot be divorced from an experience of present sorrow. Old things have passed away, but new things have not yet come; and the developing life, by the very fact of its development, has been in the meantime unclothed without being clothed upon. Such a result cannot be produced without an experience of deep unsatisfiedness, a longing and fainting of the soul.