ore
marvellous becomes the miracle of the eye, the ear, each bodily organ,
when recognized as a climax to whose consummation each successive stage
of the world has contributed. How much more significant of purposive
intelligence than any special creation is this related whole, this host
of co-ordinated molecules, this complex system of countless interwoven
laws and movements, all driven forward, straight to their mark, down the
vistas of the ages, to the grand world consummation of to-day? What else
but omniscience is equal to this?

All law, then, we should regard as a divine operation; and all divine
operation, conversely, obeys law. Whatever phenomena we consider as
specially divine ought, then, to be most orderly and true to nature.
Religion, as far as it is genuine, must, therefore, be natural. It
should be no exotic, no foreign graft, as it is often regarded, but the
normal outgrowth of our native instincts. Evolution does not banish
revelation from our belief. Recognizing in man's spirit a spark of the
divine energy, "individuated to the power of self-consciousness and
recognition of God," as Le Conte aptly phrases it; tracing the
development of the spirit-embryo through all geologic time till it came
to birth and independent life in man, and humanity recognized itself as
a child of God, the communion of the finite spirit with the infinite is
perfectly natural. This direct influence of the spirit of God on the
spirit of man, in conscience speaking to him of the moral law, through
prophet and apostle declaring to us the great laws of spiritual life and
the beauty of holiness,--this is what we call revelation. The laws which
it observes are superior laws, quite above the plane of material things.
But the work of revelation is not, therefore, infallible or outside the
sphere of Evolution. On the contrary, one of the most noticeable
features of revelation is its progressive character. In the beginning,
it is imperfect, dim in its vision of truth, often gross in its forms of
expression. But from age to age it gains in clearness and elevation. In
religion, as in secular matters,--it is the lesson of the ages, that
"the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

How short-sighted, then, are they who seek to compress the broadening
vision of modern days within the narrow loopholes of mediaeval creeds.
"There is still more light to break from the words of Scripture," was
the brave protest of Robinson to