ieve that, millions of years ago, He created a germ of life and
endowed it with power to develop into all that we see to-day. I object
to the Darwinian theory, until more conclusive proof is produced,
because I fear we shall lose the consciousness of God's presence in our
daily life, if we must accept the theory that through all the ages no
spiritual force has touched the life of man or shaped the destiny of
nations.

But there is another objection. The Darwinian theory represents man as
reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate--the
merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak. If
this is the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can
bind the human mind, we shall turn backward toward the beast in
proportion as we substitute the law of love. I prefer to believe that
love rather than hatred is the law of development. How can hatred be the
law of development when nations have advanced in proportion as they have
departed from that law and adopted the law of love?

But, I repeat, while I do not accept the Darwinian theory I shall not
quarrel with you about it; I only refer to it to remind you that it does
not solve the mystery of life or explain human progress. I fear that
some have accepted it in the hope of escaping from the miracle, but why
should the miracle frighten us? And yet I am inclined to think that it
is one of the test questions with the Christian.

Christ cannot be separated from the miraculous; His birth, His
ministrations, and His resurrection, all involve the miraculous, and the
change which His religion works in the human heart is a continuing
miracle. Eliminate the miracles and Christ becomes merely a human being
and His gospel is stript of divine authority.

The miracle raises two questions: "Can God perform a miracle?" and,
"Would He want to?" The first is easy to answer. A God who can make a
world can do anything He wants to do with it. The power to perform
miracles is necessarily implied in the power to create. But would God
_want_ to perform a miracle?--this is the question which has given most
of the trouble. The more I have considered it the less inclined I am to
answer in the negative. To say that God _would not_ perform a miracle is
to assume a more intimate knowledge of God's plans and purposes than I
can claim to have. I will not deny that God does perform a miracle or
may perform one merely because I do not know how or why He