death, rather than degrade their manhood by unworthy concessions to priestly, popular, or royal power or prejudice.

I have assumed that all teaching, which is genuinely Christian, must not only accept but also incorporate, everything in the way of verified science which reaches us, whether from the pen of a Darwin or a Wallace, an unbelieving Haeckel, with his 4000 radiolaria in the proof, or the Darwinian Jesuit, Father Wasman, with his 4000 species of ants. But I have not assumed that the final word of science on the question of origins has yet been spoken. I have even questioned whether either the word God or the word Nature taken by itself, is the one the use of which is calculated to throw most light upon the various phases and stages of world formation, or the whole history of our own planet.

I may cite here one of the latest words of the great Ernest Haeckel. On page 94 of his "Last Words on Evolution" he says:

"We may instance, as a peculiarly interesting fact in the psychic life of the unicellular radiolaria, the extraordinary power of memory in them. (The italics are mine.) The relative constancy with which the 4000 species transmit the orderly and often complex form of their protective flinty structure from generation to generation can only be explained by admitting in the builders, the invisible plasmamolecules of the pseudopodia, a fine 'plastic sense of distance,' and a tenacious recollection of the archi

tectural power of their fathers.

The fine, formless

plasma-threads are always building afresh the same. delicate flinty shells with an artistic trellis-work, and with protective radiating needles and supports always at the same points of their surface."

Continuing he refers to Ewald Hering's word concerning memory as "a general function of organized matter." And this word of Hering's has certainly a very wide application, if memory is involved in all repetitions of a given act, which are to be witnessed in the successive generations of given species of living organisms.

Memory of this sort is to be found in the vegetable as well as in the animal world. It stands revealed, too, every time a crystal takes shape or a chemical combination is effected. Hydrogen is never exploded in the air without remembering to take up one unit of oxygen for every two of its own, and so to form water. Water itself never forgets to expand when freezing. In short each element has a perfect memory touching its own ways and a perfect memory also for the possibilities of other elements in relation to itself. When we come to chemical marriage we find each element perfectly schooled in the allowable and the forbidden, and never witness a case of miscegenation, though perhaps we do see some instances of mismating, which are speedily followed by a loosening or a complete severance of the tie. We never find the sweet briar mistaking its peculiar fragance for that of the hedge rose, nor the fir

putting on the garments of the spruce, nor the birch those of the maple. And the tree which lives its life altogether alone from the start has as good a memory as the one that is in the way of getting lessons from its elders. The truth is that memory, in the sense in which these great scientists have used it, is common to all matter, whether organized or otherwise it is as truly the inheritance of the element hydrogen as of the radiolaria.

How shall we account for this? Laws are only constantly applied rules or forces steadily used in given directions. What or who applies them? Nature? Nature is everything in general and nothing in particular. Haeckel's latest word is "that the highest concept, God, lies in those laws themselves-those great eternal, iron laws, based upon the very nature of things, according to which the entire world proceeds."

We have three things here, or two things and a person. We have "the great eternal iron laws," "the very nature of things upon which they are based" and "lying in those laws themselves the highest concept, God"; and it would seem that while "God" is but "the highest concept," or idea, of some human mind, "the great eternal iron laws" manage to carry on the work of a person infinite in every highest attribute known to man, upheld, as these laws continuously are, by "the very nature of things"! Among their other achievements these "great eternal iron laws" put

memory into things animate and inanimate, in such a triumphant way that they simply never forget! This is a stupendous achievement. But while one agrees at once that the thing has been done, one pauses before the description of the doer and asks himself whether, with God and great eternal iron laws to choose between, he would not have changed God from "the highest concept" to an infinite person, and regarded him as doing everything according to the counsel of his own will in the irresistible manner suggested by "the great eternal iron laws" of our scientist. That done, God would also appear in the case as himself "the very nature of things."

This is what I have done. And, besides, I have taken the liberty of suggesting that it is as Life that God has been producing and fashioning all things from the first. Laws are dead iron things, Nature is vague and indefinite, but, as all men know, Life has in it intelligence, with both the memory and the imagination, of which so many evidences are to be found by the student of things past and present on this planet and elsewhere. Life possesses also, as every man knows, Volition and Conscience. Above all, it possesses love. Surely it is upon this Life, as the very nature of things, that the laws are based, according to which the entire world proceeds. Every evolutionist knows that the movement of things has been upward from the start and that it is upward still. The higher characteristics of Life are con

stantly subjugating to their uses the lower; and these on their part are not crippled or crushed, but exalted and glorified in the process.

The blind man's concept of the central body of our planetary system is not the only sun there is. But for the existence from of old of that vast center of attraction and source of light and heat, neither he nor his concept would ever have found a place on this planet. "God, the highest concept," is but a testimony to the existence of God, the foundation and, at the same time, the builder of all that is. To do as Haeckel does and make “great eternal iron laws" the vast Creator of all things, is to ask men to believe that nature places law above personality. But this is an achievement contrary to all human experience and, therefore, miraculous. If one must have miracles, he need not be blamed if he prefers to trace them back to the will of an infinite person, for this does not contradict experience. Moreover the infinite person simply must do surpassing things, if he acts at all, and a worthy personality can neither be inactive nor fail to do deeds worthy of himself. These latter conclusions also are based upon experience. It was the self-manifestation of the all embracing Personality that produced "the highest concept." This statement, if I understand Haeckel's latest positions, is one which he himself might not dispute.

No one need entertain any misgivings touching inspiration and revelation. That matter is sim