CHAPTER XIV.

THE CENTRIFUGAL AND CENTRIPETAL TENDENCIES OF FALSE AND GENUINE SCIENCE.

A KIND of rival to the Christian doctrine of Creation, with its corollary in the unity of the whole universe, has been devised of late in the doctrine of Evolution. This, however loudly extolled, is very vague and indefinite, so that many of its disciples seem to attach no definite meaning to the phrase. Mr Spencer, one of its great admirers and patrons, confesses that it ought rather to be called a doctrine of involution, that is of the winding up and involving, rather than evolving, the great complex cottonball of the universe. By his definition, Evolution is really nothing more or less than a process of cooling, by which a primitive nebula, excessively rare at first, is condensed, and all the heat and motion generated by that condensation are dissipated and lost in infinite space; so that the result would be a great sluggish central mass, a kind of monstrous extinguished sun. If we strive to define the doctrine, as a substitute or rival for the doctrine of creation, we must view it as shewing the necessary consequences of physical change in the whole universe of life and lifeless matter, when once the conceptions of a Creator, of a creation, of a Supreme and Guiding Intelligence, and all specific laws ordained by such a conscious intelligence have been set aside and excluded. Evolution will thus express the results of motion and perpetual

change in all actual existences, when special acts of creation, and all special laws instituted by the wisdom of the Creator, have been excluded. Then the universe will exhibit to us nothing but a Proteus without reason or intelligence, going through a series of endless changes, without conscious design, or any intelligible end and purpose in those changes.

Now what must be the demonstrable result of an evolution consisting in endless motion, without any guiding law or superior intelligence? Let us conceive a universe consisting of an almost infinite number of material atoms; some associated in the forms of living things; the greater part not so aggregated, guided by no intelligence, and subject to no optional law appointed by such an intelligence, but simply moving on continually without rest, under the first law of motion alone. That law is that every atom or body, unless deflected by some force, will persevere in its actual motion uniformly in a straight line. To trace the result of Evolution, we must take every point or spot in which there is any atom of matter in the universe, and draw from it a straight line in the direction of the actual motion of that atom, reaching out infinitely into empty space. The effect then of evolution must be to transfer all the atoms of the universe from their actual places, to some spot in the further extension of these lines, and to transform the whole into some semblance of an immense hedgehog piercing infinite space with mathematical lines diverging from each other in all conceivable directions. The atoms in no finite time would reach any end of their expanding and diverging progress, but this must lead them farther and farther apart from each other, since the directions of their actual motion are infinitely various. If any two were moving in parallel lines, and there were the least difference in their velocities, they might approach for a

short time, but must ultimately diverge, and be wider and wider apart. What then must be the result of an evolution in which there is simply continuous and interminable change, with no guiding and controlling law? The whole universe would expand and separate into a rarity greater than that of the most rarified gas, and every part of it, severed from the rest, would be lost for ever in outer darkness.

To escape from this inevitable result of a doctrine of pure evolution, we must re-introduce by stealth, some of the elements which the atheist professes himself able to dispense with; either special acts of creation, or special laws ordained by a superior intelligence, or other theistic elements, introduced by mere caprice or blind guesswork, or from the inventive imagination of the speculator, to disguise the utter nakedness of a theory of evolution pure and simple. We must re-introduce the notion of a guiding intelligence, capable of choosing some one out of many alternative laws or positions, and of guiding changes towards definite and rational results. As for instance, a law of "natural selection," when there is no intelligence capable of an act of choice, and when selection of any kind must be a self-contradiction and a chimera. Or again, a law of the "survival of the fittest," when life has been pronounced to be a combination of successive changes without any one to combine them, and any survival would be a continuance of one series of changes of ever-changing atoms, longer than another series, while neither series has any limit but a past or future eternity. Survival is impossible in a scheme of the universe where there is nothing but sets of atoms that have existed from eternity, and will co-exist for ever. A survival of the fittest is equally a contra

Idiction in the scheme of the atheist. There can be no degrees in the fitness of a set of atoms to fulfil any

definite purpose, when a creator, and special acts of creation, have been set aside as dreams of superstition; and a new term, "persistence of Force," is expressly invented, lest the phrase, preservation of Force, should let in the unwelcome idea of a Supreme Intelligence, who is at once the Creator of all things, and the Preserver of men. These phrases then are only fig-leaves stolen from the trees in the Paradise of God, that field where fitness, choice, life, intelligence, and beauty, are prodigally revealed on every side, so as to disguise the utter nakedness of a creed which admits no choice, or fitness, or moral beauty, no creative power, or providential wisdom. This is the latest birth of the spirit of unbelief, in which a universe that had its beginning some way or other, without any First Cause or Beginner of its existence, is left by its unknown author, to evolve or involve itself through interminable ages of change; and the wisdom of the Creator, if there be a Creator, is supposed to be best maintained, by denying His interference with the great machine which has proceeded from Him, when He has once set it going. He is thus likened to the bird which He singles out as lowest in the scale of animal intelligence. "The ostrich which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them," and whose conduct He thus describes : "She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers; her labour is in vain without fear; because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath He imparted to her understanding." (Job xxXIX. 13— 17.) What is that glorious perfection and invariability of the order of nature, which the author before us says, is emphatically contradicted by the Christian doctrine of redemption, and by the Resurrection of Christ, and the promise of the life to come after death? It consists in

imputing to the only wise God that very course of conduct towards the noblest works of His hands, which He Himself pronounces to be the proof of a folly and lack of understanding which falls below the average standard of the birds of the air.

There is a tendency towards unity in all true Science. No part of it can be wholly isolated from the rest; any branch broken off from the common stem of truth withers and ceases to grow. The first and highest source of this unity is found in the doctrine of creation. The MANY are all made by ONE. The multitude of derived existences, with all their laws, circumstances and conditions of being, are derived from the will of the one Perfect and Self-existent Being. We find a reflection of this truth, this unity of all creation, as created, in the law of universal gravitation. The usual mode of expressing this law seems to me doubly defective. It seems to place the action of every atom of matter in every place where it is not, and to represent the nature of that action as a selfish tendency to attract and absorb every other being or atom into itself. Newton did not give this name to the law he discovered. He expressly states it as capable of three different modes of expression, Impulse, Attraction, or Appetency. When A tends towards B, it is surely more natural to regard A than B as the seat and centre of that tendency, and that the tendency is not that of B to pull A into itself, but of A to transport itself out of its actual place, and unite itself with B. The law then of attraction is really a law of universal appetency, a tendency of each material atom to link itself in turn with every other atom of the material universe, to travel out of itself into nearer fellowship with each of its neighbours in turn, and that in proportion to their nearness. It is thus analogous in the lowest field. of nature to appetite in higher creatures, and to the moral