external forms or the inner structure of these living, or of those dead: there is essential difference—one is living, the other is dead; and every living thing has its own path of life, its own labour working to an end. Not end by time as a river drowning all; not by past sadness and gladness, thinking and no thinking, coming to nothing; but that consummation when sin and tears, pain and death, are no more; because God maketh all things new (Rev. xxi. 4, 5). The energy imparting life to inorganic matter advances from various centres, in definite lines and times, through grades of organisation to the highest varieties of dicotyledons and vertebrata. The progress and variety are not wholly of adaptation, nor by changing incidence of conditions. Variations appear when parents are the same, and constitutional states the same. Plants grown from the seeds of one pod are not alike. In a litter of pigs, or of kittens, there is seldom uniformity of marking. Like organisms are not universally, nor even generally, found in like habitats; nor very unlike organisms in unlike habitats. Horses, cows, sheep, dogs, afford many examples of variety and improvement; and, but for this capability of improvement, the arts of breeder and cultivator would be in vain; nevertheless, one cannot be improved into the other. The rabbit is born naked and blind; the hare is born covered with fur, eyes wide open, ready to run for its life. "The unity underlying the differences of the hand, the paw, the fin, the hoof, great as it is, no more makes a man a dog or an ape, than it makes him an elephant or a seal." 1 A young chimpanzee and an infant child are somewhat similar, but the child grows into a man, and the chimpanzee becomes more bestial. "The higher a monkey goes, the more he shows his tail." The chimpanzee is limited to an intertropical climate, and requires an assemblage of certain trees producing certain fruits; but man is a denizen of all lands, from the torrid to the arctic zones. Similar letters and words of man's book of life have been used in God's press for various other publications; but those other are no more parts of man, than is a scurrilous libel part of Milton's 66 Paradise Lost." Rudimentary Organs. A Doctrine, Dysteology, the uselessness or purposelessness 1 Cuvier, "Leçons d'Anat. Comparée," vol. i. 1799. Rudimentary Organs. 249 of organs, attracts attention. Almost every animal and plant, besides the obviously useful arrangements, has organs or rudimentary parts, for which there is no purpose. Eyes which do not see are possessed by animals living in the dark, in caves, or under ground. The eyes are good, but covered with a membrane so that no ray of light enters. Rats found in the caves of Styria and Kentucky, may have become blind through so many generations living in the dark. Natural selection preserves not the blind, and destroys the seeing; because those having sight might be liable to "inflammation of the nictitating membrane;" for the eyes of these blind rats are subject to the objectionable inflammation. There is more here than our science knows. Blind rats (Aspalax typhlus) and the proteus (Salamander) have a skin-covering of the minute eye which is not larger than a poppy seed. The equally small eye of the mole (Talpa Europaa) is provided with a small circular eyelid, hidden under the fur. There are rudimentary limbs in fish, in serpents, and the slow-worm has a shoulder apparatus. In plants sometimes the stamen, sometimes the pistil, is abortive. Sometimes only one of the lungs is developed in snakes, and in all birds only the left ovary is developed to yield eggs. The mammary glands on the breast of mammals are active only in the female; there are front teeth in the young of many ruminants, as in the calf, which are not developed. Most higher animals possess muscles that are never employed; some birds and insects have wings not intended for flight. In the profound depths of the ocean are crustacea with eyes, others with rudimentary eyes; the former could see were there light, the latter are incapable of seeing. Precious truth is here, but in strange disguise. Pass on: If some of these organs are in a state of atrophy through disuse, the difficulty is partly explained. If others are progressing in life, is this progress' voluntary on the animal's part? If so, explain it. If it is the natural process, by what arrangement is it natural? Natural selection does not unravel the mystery: for rudimentary organs, and some stages in the slow process of change, are hindrances to the animal, losses—not gains. They are not as germs, so that if we amputate a leg a new one buds out; nor do they possess power to form a limb or tail, where was no tail nor limb. A portion of the alimentary canal in birds is enlarged and indurated for trituration of food, and we think to explain it by saying "The gizzard is simply an exaggeration of certain structures and actions which characterise stomachs in general," but over-eating will not form a receptacle for the surplus, nor quick and ravenous devouring lead to the production of an internal grinding apparatus. Did the liver, pancreas, and smaller glands, grow up by the desire to eat, and co-operate to localise the excretions? Did the lungs expand themselves out of a hollow bud, and become an air-chamber—simple or compound; and, in fish, form the swim-bladder? To call them an integration or summing up of past adaptive processes, by which modifications were slowly acquired through many generations, is to explain the lesser difficulty by a greater. If we say "Rudimentary limbs prophesied of quadrupeds; and serpents with rudimentary limbs are quadrupeds aborted; these are evidence of atrophy, those a potentiality of advance"--why do the same so greatly differ? Probably, they are marks of unity in variety; links between progress and retrogression; a mingling of power and weakness. So far as we understand, reason and right are everywhere; and knowing what we do of Infinite Wisdom we are ten times more fully persuaded than if we did understand. We put off our shoes when we approach the Burning Bush that is not consumed. It is good to forsake self, and pass into the beautiful life and peace of Jesus Christ. For Many human emotions, probably all the sensual feelings, are found in the beast, and it is asserted, with some humour and much rashness, that the highest faculties of responsibility and intellect are outgrowths from lower animal life. example the mother of all senses is touch, and the parrot is the most sensible of birds because of its tactual power; but we may just as well say "The parrot has great tactual power because it is one of the most sensible birds, and by the same intelligence evokes speech from otherwise discordant tones." A hawk, a raven, a canary, may equal the parrot in intelligence. The elephant multiplies experience through the tactual range and skill of his trunk; but the dog, with less tactual power, is sagacious enough to be the friend of man. Feline animals are said to be more sagacious, because of their paws, than hoofed animals; but the horse, though hoofed, excels all the feline animals in the world. Natural and Supernatural One Unity. 251 If prehensile lips are the cause of sagacity, the cow ought to excel, for she has prehensile lips and a cloven hoof. No warrant exists for believing that parrot, elephant, horse, dog, cow, can educate itself to surpass Nature, and extend brute powers into the domain of human reason. Men, however, can and do go down into a low animal substratum of ⚫ being, and suffer loss: not using aright their nobler organs and functions. God expects them to regard one another as rudimentary angels, rather than progressive beasts: an angel may be called man incorporeal, and man an angel corporeal. Man is animal, so far as he partakes of precedent forms; and so far as an animal is a plant, and a plant is inorganic; but, as a reasonable creature clothed with body, and formed in the image of God, he is but little lower than the angel.1 It is well to regard truth as a body in which the Holy Spirit dwells; and indeed truth is the key to open our hearts unto Him Who is the Truth and the Life. Nature, thus viewed, is interpenetrated by the Supernatural; or the Supernatural is Natural: for they blend in splendid unity. God is not imprisoned in the laws of Nature, nor are they the grave of His omnipotent free will. That which we call miraculous may be a work so fine, wide and intermittent, that only highest wisdom can comprehend and use it. We trace back animals, plants, and others which preceded them; our continents and mountain ranges, the solid rocks of which they are composed; aye, the very fabric of the solar system itself; to their several origins at distinct points of time-so can maintain that since our earth began no succeeding year saw it precisely as it was the year before, yet all the variety blends in unity. The discoveries of science are true revelations of the Divine presence and work, are an explanation of God's usual way of doing things, are a psalmody in praise of Wisdom and Might. Our life, rooted in the Divine Life, is a holy thing, part of a moral spiritual system. Mere animal minds die, 1 Comenius said the same thing long ago-"Homo dici potest angelus eo sensu, quo homo ipse animal, animal planta, planta concretum, etc., dicitur id est. propter inclusam præcedentis formam, nova solum superaddita perfectione. Homo enim creatura est rationalis ad imaginens Dei condita, immortalis; est et angelus, sed majoris perfectionis ergo a corpore liber. Nihil igitur aliud est angelus quam homo a corpore nudus, nihil aliud homo, quam angelus corpore vestitus."-John Amos Comenius, Physicæ ad Lumen Divinum Reformandæ Synopsis. human minds are immortal; their grandeur, ever growing into wider range, from intellectual to moral perfection. Cosmical life, brought out like lower animal life, from simple elements by the Almighty, springs through strange interaction with matter to complex powers; we are becoming involved with great principles of moral government—with a future wherein holiness will be vindicated; and men enabled to take part in moral government will herald that day of mighty life when more glorious worlds shall represent the perfection of power and wisdom and love. "The seen shall bear the unseen: God hath sown the germ, Felix Melancthon. |