Page:The Theory of Evolution as an Aid to Faith and God.pdf/3

Rh to account for the facts now so well established in the sciences of geology and embryology concerning living organic forms.

When, then, in observing the development of the human embryo we see it assume early a jelly-fish form and later the successive fish, reptilian, and mammalian forms it is known to take on, we have the best evidence ordinarily available that extra-human or divine activitiyactivity [sic] is at work there, and when scientific men tell us that we have muscles for moving the ear, or the skin that man no longer uses, and that there is in the perfectly developed body of a man nearly two hundred of such vestigralvestigial [sic] remains, we know he gives us the best inductive evidence available that super-human purposive activity is even now at work in all of us sustaining those bodies without which we could not form or see any portion of the world which human activity past and present makes it possible for us to reproduce.

Then, just as when a friend utters a word we can be aware that he has meaning and purpose, thought and feeling, which we cannot see and which is intangible, so when we observe our bodies we find ourselves able to believe that divine power and purpose is active there, even the intelligence or "light which is in all things; which giveth life to all things;" or in the language of Paul quoted above, that "he himself giveth to all life, and breath," and "he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, . . . for we are also his offspring."

From such a point of view for regarding the body of man, it would be as superficial and foolish to say that man's body evolved from the lower animals or from monkeys as it would be to maintain that a palace evolved from a hut through the hut's transforming itself with reference to its human environment until it became able to satisfy the needs of a king. Without reference to human activity we could never comprehend the transformation, but with it, all becomes clear. A man who knows how to make a cottage can vary his habit so as to be able to construct a mansion or a palace. It does not lessen for us the dignity and value of the palace to know that essential things arising through the habit of foundation forming, or wall and roof forming, concerned in the building of a cottage, are also found in a palace. Neither can it lessen the value or dignity of a man's body to know that the habit involved in the formation of the essential features of a fish persist in the formation of the essential features of man's body. As the king does not despise his palace because it has in common with an ordinary house rooms and doors and windows, so a man should not despise his body because it has in common with that of a monkey a backbone, or eyes and ears.

The body of a man is to us the phenomenal sign of a vast system of purposes going on now in the divine mind. The body of a fish in Devonian times would have been, if seen by us, significant of a purpose in many respects similar to the purposes now alive for the sake of men, and even of horses or of animals generally. But this similarity in the divine habits involved in the existence of these various bodies argues no identity in the intelligent beings for whose welfare they arise, and more than my reacting now to a tree and then to a stone by the habit or seeing argues an identity between the tree and the stone.

For it is now becoming more and more clear to those who think about ultimate realities that men, animals, and all intelligent beings coexist and are eternal, that "man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence or the light of truth was not created or made, neither indeed can be." This conclusion is expressed in the language of Prof. Rogers thus: "God does not create us by an arbitrary choice of his, so that our nature as human selves is merely secondary and derivative. This nature of ours is an ultimate fact of reality." This is also what Prof. Royce has in mind when he says: "Every moment of every finite consciousness has some unique character."

There is nothing whatever then in the theory of evolution to destroy a belief in God or in man's eternal character, and in his dependence upon God for all but his power to know or will. In fact the coexistence of eternal spirits with God is presupposed by the process of evolution itself, for this process when studied merely exhibits in detail how God has been reacting to the choices of eternal beings. In the language of Prof. Rogers, "God's purposes are constituted by the relation in which his life stands to other—finite—lives existing outside the limits of the physical world which science studies." And again: "If by cause we mean a source for the understanding of things, I am a cause—a part of the cause, that is—of events that happen in the outer world." This is true, and the cause or reason for the existence of any phenomenon, a matter abstracted from in all scientific activity, is never to be found save in terms of the purposes of God in reference to the purposes of other eternal intelligences. His habitual activities found and sustain all of uniformity there is in nature, and his habitual activities create and sustain singularly and separately each and every body that appears in the world. And the universe is the living God, and all that it inhabit live in the light of his shining. "He is in the sum,-and the light of the sun; and the power thereof by which it was made. As also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made. And the earth also, and the power thereof."

From the standpoint of man, God's activities for his sake are only to be measured by many millions of years. Such continuous activity implies a measureless interest in our welfare. Bodies were created for animals, first lower in grade, then higher. New forms came in to displace the older bodily forms perhaps, as biologists say, as sports. These sports would represent a new effort on the part of the Divine Spirit in behalf of the growing powers of eternal beings capable of limitless development. Advances in the organization of bodies were made slowly and tentatively, and seemingly in response to the choices, desires, and increasing powers of intelligent beings. At an appropriate time the creation of a body adequate to the needs of man was achieved. (Whether the creation of man's body took place here or in some other world would not concern the method of creation.) At the very beginning of man's career, it is possible that the Divine Creator would cause to appear upon the earth in connection with this new creation one of the most intelligent of spirits who would strive and suffer to enrich men in their activities. Henceforth there would be. caused to appear among men from time to time as needed, bright spirits to accelerate their increasing life. At all times and among all men the Divine Spirit in whom we live would co-operate with men, aiding in the formation of ideals, inspiring to their realization and conserving advances in life. This He would do largely by habitual, perhaps in the main, semiconscious, reaction to our acts or desires. For as Prof. Rogers thinks: "Every conscious act whatsoever involves the reaction of at least God's experience; stated empirically, even thought involves brain changes." The