pores? Who made that life, when they reached the barren shore, grow and
thrive in each after their kind? Who, but the Spirit of God, the Lord
and Giver of life? God let His Spirit proceed and go forth from Himself
upon them; and they were made; and so He renewed the face of the earth.

That, my good friends, is not only according to Scripture, but according
to true philosophy. Men are slow to believe it now: and no wonder. They
have been always slow to believe in the living God; and have made
themselves instead dead gods--if not of wood and stone, still out of
their own thoughts and imaginations; and talk of laws of nature, and long
abstractions ending in ation and ality, like that "Evolution" with which
so many are in love just now; and worship them as gods; mere words, the
work of their own brains, though not of their own hands--even though they
be--as many of them are--Evolution, I hold, among the rest--true and fair
approximations to actual laws of God. But before them, and behind them,
and above them and below them, lives the Author of Evolution, and of
everything else. For God lives, and reigns, and works for ever. The
Spirit of God proceedeth from the Father and the Son, giving, evolving,
and ruling the life of all created things; and what we call nature, and
this world, and the whole universe, is an unfathomable mystery, and a
perpetual miracle, The one Author and Ruler of which is the ever-blessed
Trinity, of whom it is written--"The glorious majesty of the Lord shall
endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in His works."

I believe, therefore, that the Psalmist in the text is speaking, not
merely sound doctrine but sound philosophy. I believe that the simplest
and the most rational account of the mystery of life is that which is
given by the Christian faith; and that the Nicene Creed speaks truth and
fact, when it bids us call the Holy Spirit of God the Lord and Giver of
life.

That this is according to the orthodox Catholic Faith there is no doubt.
Many mistakes were made on this matter, in the early times of the Church,
even by most learned and holy divines; as was to be expected, considering
the mysteriousness of the subject. They were inclined, often, to what is
called Pantheism--that is, to fancy that all living things are parts of
God; that God's Spirit is in them, as our soul is in our body, or as heat
is in a heated matter; and to speak of God's Spirit as the soul and life
of the world.

B