made to share
in the life which thus consumes it; but life of its own it cannot
obtain. Now here, as it seems, the acceptance of the two evolutions
lands us in acceptance of a miracle. The creation of life is unaccounted
for. And it much more exactly answers to what we mean by a miracle than
it did under the old theory of creation before Evolution was made a
scientific doctrine. For under that old theory the creation of living
creatures stood on the same footing as the creation of metals or other
inorganic substances. It was part of that beginning which had to be
taken for granted, and which for that reason lay outside of the domain
of Science altogether. But if we accept the two evolutions, the
creation of life, if unaccounted for, presents itself as a direct
interference in the actual history of the world. There could have been
no life when the earth was nothing but a mass of intensely heated fluid.
There came a time when the earth became ready for life to exist upon it.
And the life came, and no laws of inorganic matter can account for its
coming. As it stands this is a great miracle. And from this conclusion
the only escape that has been suggested is to suppose that life came in
on a meteoric stone from some already formed habitable world; a
supposition which transfers the miracle to another scene, but leaves it
as great a miracle as before.

Nor, if it was a miracle, can we deny that there was a purpose in it
worthy of miraculous interference. For what purpose can rank side by
side with the existence and development of life, the primary condition
of all moral and spiritual existence and action in this world? In the
introduction of life was wrapped up all that we value and all that we
venerate in the whole creation. The infinite superiority, not in degree
only, but in kind, of the living to the lifeless, of a man to a stone,
justifies us in believing that the main purpose of the creation that we
see was to supply a dwelling-place and a scene of action for living
beings. We cannot say that the dignity of the Moral Law requires that
creatures to be made partakers in the knowledge of it, and even
creatures of a lower nature but akin to them, must have been the results
of a separate and miraculous act of creation. But we can say that there
is a congruity in such a miracle, with the moral purpose of all the
world, of which we are a part, that removes all difficulty in believing
it. Science, as such, cannot admit a mirac