Creation and Its Records. B. H. Baden-Powell
origin of such confidence is to be found in the wonderful condescension of God exhibited in the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection.
This is not the place to enter on a detailed examination of the essential importance of these great central facts of Christian belief in establishing faith in the unseen, and distinguishing its grasp from the blind clutches of credulity; but a single consideration will suffice at least to awaken a feeling of a wide vista of possibility when we put it thus: Do we wonder at the spectacle of a righteous man, passing his life in suffering and poverty, seemingly stricken by the Divine hand?—But is not the case altered when we reflect that the Hand that thus smites is a hand itself pierced with the Cross-nails of a terrible human suffering, undergone solely on man's account?
It can be proved easily, by exhaustive examples, to be the case, that wherever the finite is brought into contact with the Infinite, that there must be a dead-lock, a leading up successively to two conclusions, one of which is almost, if not quite, contrary to the other. A very striking instance of this is the question of Predestination and Free-will. From the finite side, I am conscious that I am a free agent: I can will to rise up and to lie down. It is true that my will may be influenced, strongly or feebly, by various means—by the effect of habit, by the inherited tendency of my constitution, by some present motive of temptation, and so forth: but the will is there—the motive-influence or inclining-power is not the will, but that which affects or works on will. A motive pulls me this way, another pulls me that; but in the end, my will follows one or the other. I can, then, do as I please. On the other hand, Infinite Knowledge must know, and have known from all eternity, what I shall do now, and at every moment of my future being: and for Omnipotence to know from all eternity what will be, is, in our human sense, practically undistinguishable from the thought that the Power has predestined the same; and man cannot of course alter that. Here, then, by separate lines of thought, we are brought to two opposite and irreconcilable conclusions. It is so always. We cannot ourselves imagine how a fixed set of laws and rules can be followed, and yet the best interests of each and every one of God's creatures be served as truly as if God directly wielded the machinery of nature only for the special benefit of the individual. The thing is unthinkable to us: yet directly we reason on the necessarily unlimited capability of a Divine Providence, we are led to the conclusion that it must be possible. Here then is the province of Faith.[6]
It is by Faith, then—combined with only a limited degree of knowledge, founded on observation and reasoning—that we understand that "the aeons were constituted by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (the phenomenal has its origin in the non-phenomenal).
While allowing, then, the element of Faith in our recognition of a Creator and Moral Governor of the world, our care is in this, as in all exercises of faith, that our faith be reasonable. We are not called on to believe so as to be "put to confusion," intellectually, as Tait and Balfour have it.
kathrtisqai touV aiwnaV. This implies more than the mere originating or supplying of a number of material, organic, or inorganic (or even spiritual) forms and existences. Whatever may be the precise translation of aiwn, it implies a chain of events, the cause and effect, the type and the plan, and its evolution all included.
The Scripture clearly recognizes the two opposing lines. In one place we read, "Thou hast given them a law which shall not be broken;" in another, "All things work together for good to them that love God."
CHAPTER III.
THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION STATED.
It will strike some readers with a sense of hopelessness, this demand for a reason in our faith. A special and very extensive knowledge is required, it seems, to test the very positive assertion that some have chosen to make regarding the "explosion" of the Christian faith in the matter of Creation.
We are told in effect that every thing goes by itself—that given some first cause, about which we know, and can know, nothing, directly primordial matter appears on the scene, and the laws of sequence and action which observed experience has formulated and is progressively formulating are given, then nothing else is required; no governance, no control, and no special design. So that in principle a Creator and Providence are baseless fancies; and this is further borne out by the fact, that when the Christian faith ventures on details as to the mode of Creation it is certainly and demonstrably wrong. If these propositions are to be controverted, it must be in the light of a knowledge which a large body of candid and earnest believers do not possess.
Fortunately, however, the labours of many competent to judge have placed within the reach of the unscientific but careful student, the means of knowing what the conclusions of Science really are, as far as they affect the questions we have to consider. At least, any inquirer can, with a little care and patient study, put himself in a position to know where the difficulty or difficulties lie, and what means there are of getting over them. His want of technical knowledge will not be in his way, so far as his just appreciation of the position is concerned. Without pretending to take up ground which has already been occupied by capable writers whose books can easily be consulted, I may usefully recapitulate in a simple form, and grouped in a suitable order, some of the points best worth noting.
The theory of cosmical evolution is not, in its general idea, a new thing. The sort of evolution, however, that was obscurely shadowed forth by the early sages of India (much as it is the fashion now to allude to it) really stands in no practical relation to the modern and natural theory which is associated with the name of CHARLES DARWIN, and which has been further taken up by Mr. HERBERT SPENCER and others as the foundation for a complete scheme of cosmic philosophy. The theory is now, in its main features, admitted by every one. But there are a few who would push it beyond its real ascertained limits, and would substitute fancies for facts; they are not content to leave the lacunae, which undoubtedly do exist, but fill them up by hypothesis,[7] passing by easy steps of forgetfulness from the "it was possibly," "it was likely to have been," to the "it must have been," and "it was"!
To all such extensions we must of course object; there are gaps in the scheme which can be filled in with really great probability, and in such cases there will be no harm done in admitting the probability, while still acknowledging it as such. An overcautious lawyer-like captiousness of spirit in such matters will help no cause and serve no good purpose. Nor is it at all difficult in practice to draw the line and say what is fairly admissible conjecture and what is not. There are other gaps, however, that at present, no real analogy, no fair inferential process, can bridge over; and to all speculations on such subjects, if advanced as more than bare and undisguised guesses, objection must be taken.
If this one line had been fairly and firmly adhered to from the first, it can hardly be doubted that much of the acrimony of controversy would have been avoided. It is just as essential at the present moment to insist on the point as ever. But to proceed. Stated in the extreme form, the theory is, that given matter as a beginning, that matter is thenceforth capable, by the aid of fixed and self-working laws, to produce and result in, all the phenomena of life—whether plant, animal, or human—which we see around us. Matter developes from simple to complex forms, growing by its own properties, in directions determined by the circumstances and surroundings of its existence.
If I may put this a little less in the abstract, but more at length, I should describe it thus[8]:—
Astronomers, while watching the course of the stars, have frequently