permanent relation between the infinite
and the finite, between the moving changes we know in part, and the
Power, after the fashion of that observation, unknown, which is itself
"unmoved all motion's source." (Hymn of the Church-- Rerum Deus tenax
vigor, Immotus in te permanens.)

With regard to man it is hardly necessary, even were it possible, to
illustrate the application of this bolder faith. When the record of his
high extraction fell under dispute, we were driven to a contemplation of
the whole of his life, rather than of a part and that part out of sight.
We remembered again, out of Aristotle, that the result of a process
interprets its beginnings. We were obliged to read the title of such
dignity as we may claim, in results and still more in aspirations.

Some men still measure the value of great present facts in life--reason
and virtue and sacrifice--by what a self-disparaged reason can collect
of the meaner rudiments of these noble gifts. Mr Balfour has admirably
displayed the discrepancy, in this view, between the alleged origin and
the alleged authority of reason. Such an argument ought to be used not
to discredit the confident reason, but to illuminate and dignify its
dark beginnings, and to show that at every step in the long course of
growth a Power was at work which is not included in any term or in all
the terms of the series.

I submit that the more men know of actual Christian teaching, its
fidelity to the past, and its sincerity in face of discovery, the more
certainly they will judge that the stimulus of the doctrine of evolution
has produced in the long run vigour as well as flexibility in the
doctrine of Creation and of man.

I pass from Evolution in general to Natural Selection.

The character in religious language which I have for short called
mechanical was not absent in the argument from design as stated before
Darwin. It seemed to have reference to a world conceived as fixed. It
pointed, not to the plastic capacity and energy of living matter, but
to the fixed adaptation of this and that organ to an unchanging place or
function.

Mr Hobhouse has given us the valuable phrase "a niche of organic
opportunity." Such a phrase would have borne a different sense in
non-evolutionary thought. In that thought, the opportunity was
an opportunity for the Creative Power, and Design appeared in the
preparation of the organism to fit the niche. The idea of the niche
and its occupant growing togethe