into the account.

"It is in the domain of life, however, that this necessity becomes
most apparent; and it is in the plant that we first clearly perceive a
visible testimony to that unseen which is the counterpart of the seen.
Life in the plant opposes the outward rush of force in our system,
arrests a part of it on its way, fixes it as potential energy, and
thus, forming a mere eddy, so to speak, in the process of dissipation
of energy, it accumulates that on which animal life and man himself
may subsist, and asserts for a time supremacy over the seen and
temporal on behalf of the unseen and eternal. I say for a time,
because life is, in the visible universe, as at present constituted,
but a temporary exception, introduced from that unseen world where it
is no longer the exception, but the eternal rule. In a still higher
sense, then, than that in which matter and force testify to a Creator,
organization and life, whether in the plant, the animal, or man, bear
the same testimony, and exist as outposts put forth in the succession
of ages from that higher heaven that surrounds the visible universe.
In them, too, Almighty power is no doubt conditioned or limited by
law, yet they bear more distinctly upon them the impress of their
Maker; and, while all explanations of the physical universe which
refuse to recognize its spiritual and unseen origin must necessarily
be partial and in the end incomprehensible, this destiny falls more
quickly and surely on the attempt to account for life and its
succession on merely materialistic principles.

"Here again, however, I must remind you that creation, as maintained
against such materialistic evolution, whether by theology, philosophy,
or Holy Scripture, is necessarily a continuous, nay, an eternal
influence, not an intervention of disconnected acts. It is the true
continuity, which includes and binds together all other continuity.

"It is here that natural science meets with theology, not as an
antagonist, but as a friend and ally in its time of greatest need; and
I must here record my belief that neither men of science nor
theologians have a right to separate what God in Holy Scripture has
joined together, or to build up a wall between nature and religion,
and write upon it 'no thoroughfare.' The science that does this must
be impotent to explain nature, and without hold on the higher
sentiments of man. The theology that does this must sink into mere
superstition.

"In conclus