Page:Evolution and Natural Selection in the Light of the New Church.djvu/10

10 Darwinian theory of evolution, may be, and no doubt is, in a limited degree, true. The same is true, also, in a limited degree, spiritually as well as naturally, the various affections and aspirations in each individual being capable of adaptation to the ever-varying conditions by which he is surrounded. But this process of adaptation or natural selection is not essentially progressive, being limited within the same species; and, similarly, new and successively higher affections must be formed before regeneration is complete, even as new and successively higher species were formed in the process of creation.

Both creation and regeneration require the unceasing exercise, supervision, and creative power of the Love and Wisdom of God, without which all created things would cease to exist. But man, unlike all other created forms, and by virtue of his endowments of liberty and rationality, has the power either to resist the loving efforts of his Creator, and so remain in his carnal or unregenerate state, or to co-operate with his Creator, and develop or progress into a perfect man—the "likeness" as well as the "image" of God. All reason, experience, and revelation prove, to the unbiassed rational mind, that man is not evolved from any lower animal; he differs from them all fundamentally,—physically, mentally, spiritually,—and therefore the origin and end of his existence differ from theirs also. Man, the noblest work of the Divine Architect of the Universe, is human because God is Divinely Human; that is, he is man because God is Essential Man, or God-Man.

Such, in brief, and in the writer's opinion, is the only doctrine of Creation consistent with the beautiful system of New Church philosophy, and he earnestly recommends all who are interested in this, at the present time, most