ll our inherited modes of thought. And our
views of the heart of Nature are about as correct as those of our
ancestors were of God. A little more of oriental tendencies of
thought would harm neither our theology nor our life.

What, then, is the biblical idea of Nature? God speaks to the earth,
in the first chapter of Genesis, and the earth responds by "giving
birth" to mountains and living beings. It is evidently no mere
lifeless, inert clod, but pulsating with life and responsive to the
divine commands. While yet a chaos it had been brooded over by the
Divine Spirit. It is like the great "wheels within wheels," with
rings full of eyes round about, which Ezekiel saw in his vision by
the river Chebar. "When the living creatures went, the wheels went
by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the
earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to
go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were
lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creatures
(or of life) was in the wheels." And above the living creatures was
the firmament and the throne of God. So Nature may be material, but
it is material interpenetrated by the divine; if you call it a
fabric, the woof may be material but the warp is God. This view
contains all the truth of materialism and pantheism, and vastly
more than they, and it avoids their errors and omissions.

To the old metaphysical hypothesis of evolution Mr. Darwin gave a
scientific basis. It had always been admitted that species were
capable of slight variation and that this divergence might become
hereditary and thus perhaps give rise to a variety of the parent
species. But it was denied that the variation could go on increasing
indefinitely, it seemed soon to reach a limit and stop. Early in the
present century Lamarck had attempted to prove that by the use and
disuse of organs through a series of generations a great divergence
might arise resulting in new species. But the theory was crude,
capable at best of but limited application, and fell before the
arguments and authority of Cuvier. The times were not ripe for such
a theory. Some fifty years later, Mr. Darwin called attention to the
struggle for existence as a means of aggregating these slight
modifications in a divergence sufficient to produce new species,
genera, or families. His argument may be very briefly stated as
follows:

1. There is in Nature a law of heredity; like beg