Part 17

If then it be said that the answer to prayer is a miracle of divine interposition in human history, of which science finds no trace, we do not marvel, for science does not extend its observations to the inclusion of what pertains to the higher life of man. If any man asks for evidence in an exclusively physical sphere that God answers prayer, he asks that evidence should be discovered apart from the conditions involved. A more unscientific demand there could not be. When he refuses to admit that there can be any trustworthy evidence of the answer of prayer apart from the test he proposes, he either misunderstands the Christian doctrine of prayer, or he is criticising a conception of prayer other than the Christian one. If we turn to the philosophy of human life as subjected to moral law, and called to its perfect fulfilment, we do not find any thing but harmonious truth in the suggestion that God cares more for the moral life of man than for the physical universe. If we turn to Scripture, receiving its teaching as to prayer, we find that the promised interposition in man's behalf is even less an illustration of divine power than of Divine righteousness; an evidence that the Divine Ruler seeks righteousness above all things, for the entire significance of the exercise is this, trust in the holy One, and fellowship with Him through life. On this ground alone does He promise an answer to prayer, in this promise making moral conditions the essential test for use of the privilege, requiring the suppliant to subordinate to these all desire of material good. It is towards success in attaining true fellowship with Himself that God is ever giving promise of blessing. It is in full view of the transcendent value of a life of holiness, that the Supreme Ruler is daily condescending to stoop towards His children, that they may be helped in all that pertains to holiness of character and life. The Bible makes it essential to the government of the world, in harmony with fixed law, that God should be the hearer and answerer of the prayer of His intelligent creatures, always pointing to reliance on the Saviour's work as the test of the reality of the exercise, in the case of all who possess the written revelation of His will, in the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ.

FOOTNOTES:

[DJ] The limits of the present discussion make it impossible to include a wider range; but this really embraces the whole question of the miracles of Scripture.

[DK] p. 6.

[DL] p. 11.

[DM] p. 12

[DN] p. 151.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

I.

RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. _Page_ 34.

"He who contemplates the universe from the religious point of view, must learn to see that this which we call science, is one constituent of the great whole; and as such ought to be regarded with a sentiment like that which the remainder excites. While he who contemplates the universe from the scientific point of view, must learn to see that this which we call Religion is similarly a constituent of the great whole; and being such, must be treated as a subject of science with no more prejudice than any other reality. It behooves each party to strive to understand the other, with the conviction that the other has something worthy to be understood; and with the conviction that when mutually recognized this something will be the basis of a complete reconciliation."--HERBERT SPENCER, _First Principles_, p. 21.

II.

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. _Page_ 54.

Professor Tyndall, describing his own experiments, says, "The experiments have already extended to 105 instances, not one of which shows the least countenance to the doctrine of spontaneous generation." Communicated to Royal Society of London, December 21, 1876.--_Nature_, vol. xv. p. 303.

III.

ENERGY AND FORCE. _Page_ 96.

The term Force is by many authors used as equivalent to Energy, rather than as a distinct term for the amount of Energy. Force is thus used by Sir W. R. Groves. "The term Force, although used in very different senses by different authors, in its limited sense may be defined as that which produces or resists motion." ... "I use the term Force ... as meaning that active principle inseparable from matter which is supposed to induce its various changes." ... "All we know or see is the effect; we do not see Force--we see motion or moving matter."--_The Correlation of Physical Forces_, sixth edition, by the Hon. Sir W. R. Grove, pp. 10, 11.

IV.

ALL ORGANIZED EXISTENCE IS CONSTRUCTED ON A COMMON PLAN. _Page_ 131.

"Biologists turn to the physical organization of man. They examine his whole structure, his bony frame, and all that clothes it. They resolve him into the finest particles into which the microscope will enable them to break him up. They consider the performance of his various functions and activities, and they look at the manner in which he occurs on the surface of the world. Then they turn to other animals, and taking the first handy domestic animal--say a dog,--they profess to be able to demonstrate that the analysis of the dog leads them, in gross, to precisely the same results as the analysis of the man; that they find almost identically the same bones, having the same relations; that they can name the muscles of the dog by the names of the muscles of the man, and the nerves of the dog by those of the nerves of the man, and that such structures and organs of sense as we find in the man, such also we find in the dog; they analyze the brain and spinal cord, and they find that the nomenclature which fits the one answers for the other. Moreover, they trace back the dog's and the man's development, and they find that at a certain stage of their existence, the two creatures are not distinguishable the one from the other; they find that the dog and his kind have a certain distribution over the surface of the world comparable in its way to the distribution of the human species.... Thus biologists have arrived at the conclusion that a fundamental uniformity of structure pervades the animal and vegetable worlds, and that plants and animals differ from one another simply as modifications of the same great plan. Again they tell us the same story in regard to the study of function. They admit the large and important interval which, at the present time, separates the manifestations of the mental faculties observable in the higher forms of mankind, and even in the lowest forms, such as we know them, mentally from those exhibited by other animals; but, at the same time, they tell us that the foundations or rudiments of almost all the faculties of man are to be met with in the lower animals; that there is a unity of mental faculty, as well as of bodily structure, and that here also, the difference is a difference of degree and not of kind."--Lecture on "The Study of Biology," by Professor Huxley, _Nature_, vol. xv. p. 219. Delivered at South Kensington Museum, London, December 16, 1876. On the grounds here admirably summarized, it is clear that the whole organism of our world has been constructed on a common plan. This being true, similarities will appear in process of development, and in the structure and functions of different orders. This similarity, however, does not help us to explain "the large and important interval" which appears when mental characteristics are considered. It makes the diversity of mental power more difficult to explain by reference to organism, in fact contributing to the strength of evidence for mind as a form of existence distinct from organism.

V.

EMBRYOLOGY. _Page_ 131.

I have not felt warranted to include in the text any summary of results secured by the important, but very difficult, investigations concerning the growth of animal life in the womb. This whole department of inquiry is in such an unfinished and uncertain state, that there is not warrant to found upon the evidence already obtained any general argument as to its bearing on a theory of evolution. The most competent observers admit that they are perplexed by facts ascertained, and confess that they can not as yet offer an explanation. To others all is as plain as possible; embryology supplies a convincing proof of the accuracy of an evolution theory; but these are scientific theorists who see by imagination, and are impatient of uncertainty. There are certain general considerations which must interpose difficulties in the way of constructing an argument from Embryology to evolution of species. (1) The action of environment before birth is altogether different from the action of environment after birth. (2) The theory of the evolution of species emphasizes this difference by insisting on the struggle for existence. (3) This difference being admitted, an argument from the one to the other can not hold. In the line of discovery the point of chief interest has been the fact that in some cases embryonic life shows a transition through lower forms analogous to lower orders of animal existence prior to reaching the mature stage when birth occurs. But in connection with the facts ascertained, two things are to be remarked. (1) Evidence of transition is most striking in the history of animal life developed external to the parental life, as in the transition from _larvæ_ to _pupæ_ among insects, and in the changes in the life of the tadpole. (2) If it be admitted that there is a common plan of structure for all organism, it is implied that there must be similarities in process of development. The question requiring answer, therefore, is whether in the gradual development from the germ, any further resemblance to lower orders appears than is to be anticipated on the admission of a common plan for organic structure. There are singular examples of transition. But there are no illustrations of uniform progress in the case of the higher orders such as would warrant the supposition that a history of evolution of the species can be read in the development of the foetus. The supposition has, however, found currency in not a little of our scientific teaching. The incompleteness of this evidence may appear from examples. Take the tadpole. Huxley states the facts thus,--"The tadpole is first a fish, then a tailed amphibian, provided with gills and lungs, before it became a frog." This is development outside parental life, and does not belong to evidence in Embryology. Confining attention to embryonic life, let us take Huxley's statement, biologists "trace back the dog's and the man's development, and they find that at a certain stage of their existence, the two creatures are not distinguishable the one from the other." What is the inference to be drawn? If the two are not distinguishable, our powers of distinguishing are insufficient, for no biologist suggests that the two are alike. The difficulty of distinguishing two germs, or two examples of foetus, is analogous to the difficulty which Darwin has pointed out of distinguishing the orders of dogs when they are six-days-old puppies, or the breed of three-days-old colt, or of nestling pigeons. At these stages, the animals may be so similar, that it is hardly possible to distinguish them, and yet in the full grown state they are quite different (Darwin's _Origin of Species_, sixth edition, p. 391). Mr. Darwin has presented the outstanding facts thus;--"The very general, though not universal, difference in structure between the embryo and the adult;--the various parts in the same individual embryo, which ultimately become very unlike and serve for diverse purposes, being at an early period of growth alike;--the common, but not invariable resemblance between the embryos or larvæ of the most distinct species in the same class;--the embryo often retaining whilst within the egg or womb, structures which are of no service to it, either at that or at a later period of life."

VI.

NON-ADVANCEMENT OF LOWER ORDERS. _Page_ 158.

Mr. Darwin's answer to the difficulty put by Agassiz is this;--"On our theory the continued existence of lowly organisms offers no difficulty; for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, does not necessarily include progressive development,--it only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its complex relations of life."--_Origin of Species_, sixth edition, p. 98. This wears the aspect of a limitation of the theory, and to that extent an acknowledgment of the force of the reasoning of Agassiz.

VII.

PROTOPLASM. _Page_ 131.

"Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life;" thus "all living forms are fundamentally of one character." "All the forms of Protoplasm which have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union." Thus there is "a general uniformity in the character of the Protoplasm, or physical basis of life, in whatever group of living beings it may be studied."--HUXLEY'S _Lay Sermons_, p. 142.

VIII.

NUMBER OF SPECIES OF INSECTS. _Page_ 193.

Professor Huxley mentions that "Gerstsæcker in the new edition of Broun's 'Thier-Reich' gives 200,000 as the total number of species of _Arthropoda_." In this connection Mr. McLauchlan, when claiming that there are 200,000 species of Insects, adds, "In one order alone (_Coleoptera_) it is estimated that 80,000 species have been described."--_Nature_, xv. p. 275.

IX.

FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS BY INSECTS. _Page_ 170.

Dr. Hermann Müller's Observations are described in _Nature_, vol. xiv. p. 175; vol. xv. pp. 317, 473; vol. xvi. pp. 265, 507.

X.

ANTS. _Page 192._

Mr. McCook's Observations are summarized in _Nature_, vol. xvii. p. 433.

XI.

LIKENESS OF THE APE'S BRAIN TO THE HUMAN BRAIN. _Page_ 225.

The close resemblance of the brain of the ape to that of man, has been held to prove that the ape comes next to man in intelligence. But the facts bearing on this suggestion are fitted to occasion serious perplexity to its upholders. First stands the resemblance of bodily structure as largely explaining similarity of brain. The results of electric stimulation of the monkey's brain lend additional force to this consideration. Again, facts are wanting to support the claim for superior intelligence in behalf of the monkey and ape. The habits of the ape in its natural state afford little evidence of an encouraging kind. The ape gathers together a few sticks for a nest, in comparison with which the work of very small birds presents marvels of architecture. And nest-building seems the highest evidence gathered from the natural habits of the animal, when we compare it with leaning the back against a tree for rest, or staunching the blood of a wound. In the captive state the ape gives no such evidence of superior intelligence as the similarity of its brain to the human, would lead us to expect, if brain structure afford the test of intellectual power. Even after allowance has been made for sudden transition from the wild state to the captive, the evidence of capability does not appear which the theory requires. The highest results reached by training monkeys, do not support a claim for intellectual superiority. These are mainly forms of mimicry, generally inferior to the efforts of some other animals. Add to these considerations the evidence as to the singular intelligence shown by ants, and the theory which measures intellect by brain structure is placed at a great disadvantage. Whether science may not ere long point to some theory of mind connected with animal existence must be matter of uncertainty. If, however, the easy and familiar operations of our own intelligence are analyzed and classified; and if a statement of the ascertained functions of the brain is laid alongside, it will appear that nothing known to us in the action of brain, can supply a science of the operations of the human mind.

XII.

THE LARGE SIZED OR MULTIPOLAR CELLS. _Page_ 257.

On the functions of the large sized cells, it seems desirable to add a few words as to the direction in which evidence as to their functions actually points. For this purpose, a further quotation is desirable, referring to the number of fibres or processes passing off from these large cells, distinguishing those which branch out into a fine net-work, and those which pass directly to a nerve fibre. "One at least of the processes of a multipolar nerve cell does not branch, but becomes directly continuous with a nerve fibre, and has been named the axial-cylinder process."--Professor Turner's _Human Anatomy_, i. 201. This taken with the facts given in Lecture VII, seems to favor the conclusions, (1) that the large cell spreads nerve energy through the tissue of the brain, while each has at least one direct line of communication with the system of nerve fibres; (2) that the large cell has intimate and extended relations with the motor system.

XIII.

THE CONCEPTION OF DUTY. _Page_ 273.

"Duty! Thou great, thou exalted name! Wondrous thought that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but by merely holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not always obedience,--before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel,--whence thy original?"--KANT'S _Critique of Practical Reason_.

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