---

These words contain the germ of all natural and moral philosophy. There are two great underlying ideas — First, the abstract argument from design that intention and purpose, not blind chance, has evolved the most wondrous mechanism of the animal frame; second, the parallelism between the laws and working of mind and of matter, proceeding from one and the same Author. Each has its laws of sequence, causes produce results, and those results intended and foreseen in both cases alike. As the ear is made for hearing and the eye for seeing, so He that gave man knowledge, or, what is the same thing, the power of acquiring knowledge, intends it to be used; and if, as in the case of the heathen, the moral light is perverted, suffering, punishment, as a necessary law or consequence must ensue. Chance is set aside, as it is now by the student of physical science, dismissed like the older idea of fate. On the scientific doctrine of chances, the evolution of such a mechanism as the eye is, as has been shown by Professor Pritchard, almost incalculable. "Blind law," the next hypothesis, is equally insufficient. Hence some of the ablest exponents of the doctrine of evolution maintain that the circle of evolving laws or forces must certainly be ruled by some Intelligence, either inherent and immanent, or else transcendental and probably personal, guiding and superior to them all. One of the foremost living naturalists and a champion of the doctrines of evolution maintains

(1)  that atoms are centres of force,

(2)  that force is known to us as Will,

(3)  that the Will that governs the world is the will of higher intelligences, or of our own supreme intelligence; that we cannot account for man's physical peculiarities, much less for his consciousness, his language, his volition, or his moral sense by evolution simply, that there is a feeling, a "sense of right and wrong in our nature, antecedent to, and independent of experiences of utility" (Wallace).A "Blind Intelligence," immanent in matter or not, by no means solves the problem. "What are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalculae or animal life, not alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself, emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the "mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation." But when, passing beyond the notion of a blind intelligence, we accept the fact that He that made the eye could see, that there is a relation between a personal Supreme Being, and His creation; we find far fewer difficulties. There are difficulties, but the fact of the possibility of the theory is admitted by all. John Stuart Mill designated it as the most persuasive of all arguments for Theism. It explains the world; and, what is more, it does what no other theory does, it finds a first ground for all existing things. The theory of design stands undisturbed by the doctrine of evolution. No laws impressed upon matter or upon mind, banish a God from the world He has made. We do not necessarily press the idea of design in each detail, but we maintain that, throughout the universe, there is a general fitness, a correlation of function with power, which point to a prescient antecedent Intelligence. Above all is this correlation manifest in organic structures, animal and vegetable. Mind is presented to us throughout the universe. And, as evolution in the organic world, carries out the Will of a prescient Intelligence, so, in the moral world, sin or evil, by a natural consequence, entails punishment. "He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not He correct, for He knoweth?" We are here brought face to face with the greatest admitted difficulty in the world as we know it: the existence of evil, and of suffering as a consequence of evil. Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to separate the material and moral government of the world. Parallel laws rule both. The existence of man now throws light on the final cause of the animated creation. To be consistent with the plan adopted by God, it was necessary to evolve successively the long line of vertebrates from the Silurian epoch to the present day. Man's rudimentary organs are suggestive of evolution. But in his moral nature he stands apart from animals by a gap which neither observation nor philosophical reasoning has ever bridged. Nor can we conceive of any force capable of being differentiated into the Will, a power which may act in direct opposition to the forces of nature. Evolution could not by natural laws produce man. As Mr. Wallace writes, "If it be proved that some Intelligent power has guided or determined the development of man, we may see indications of that power in facts which by themselves would not seem to prove its existence." Among these he adduces the brain, with its convolutions far beyond the needs or use of the savage, the absence of hair on the back of even the lowest races, and the hand, which has all the appearance of an organ prepared beforehand for the advance and use of civilized man, and one which was indispensable to render civilization possible. But why should evil be introduced? Simply because of God's will. Man was made a moral free agent. Moral evil has been defined as the conscious abuse of means, instead of using them for the ends for which they were designed. An animal cannot be guilty because it obeys natural laws without reflecting upon them. Man can and does reflect, and uses his freewill to obey or not: but he has disobeyed. The heathen did not choose to retain God in their knowledge. Here comes in the distinctive feature of God's moral government. In all else, a gradual process is wrought out by natural laws. But moral evil has come in, and, as nature cannot always effect a cure without external aid, so natural processes alone could not restore humanity. The impetus of evil was too strong; the natural instincts of goodness were overborne. God steps in as the physician, and by the revelation of His Son enables humanity to rise from its moral degradation. Neither out of Greek philosophy, nor out of Judaism, nor out of any other existing system could the teaching or the work of Christ have been evolved. The results have proved it. No other system has ever done for man what this has done, and is doing, in elevating the degraded. Christ's teaching of universal love and everlasting life through Himself, has done what no other religion or philosophy ever attempted. If evil be the necessary concomitant of Freewill, it is no less a recognized law of nature as a result of the struggle for existence. Pain and death are spoken of as physical evils. Let it be so. But death is a necessary accompaniment in the natural world of the struggle for existence, and pain is a necessary and benevolent provision for maintaining the instincts of self-preservation. So in the moral world, misery, the result of sin, and sin itself, or the misuse of powers and faculties, are the necessary concomitants of Freewill. Why does evil exist? Why do animals exist? Why do I exist? There is no answer except for Christianity. There is but one explanation of our existence here, and Revelation gives it. It was to render man's life here probationary in every way. The future existence of man is the only interpretation of his existence here, and the more we wait for our final redemption in patience and hope, the less shall we feel the penal character of physical evil here. And in spiritual life there is the same doctrine of development as in the natural, for what is the growth in grace but the evolution of the perfect man in Christ from the germ of the Holy Spirit's planting? That Holy Spirit and His work may be an enigma, but it is no greater enigma than the origin of physical life. For both we claim an origin, and that origin divine. And the doctrine of evolution, which deduces all natural life from the germ, on the origin of which it does not speculate, is exactly parallel to the doctrine of theology, which deduces all spiritual life from the heaven-implanted germ, and all man's spiritual future from the unfolding of that grand revelation of the Will of God, that "what the law could not do," etc. (Romans 8:3).

(Canon Tristram.)

---

---

KJV: He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?

WEB: He who implanted the ear, won't he hear? He who formed the eye, won't he see?