changes according to the impulses that go out from God, but God remains unchanged. All that possesses form, all organization must be destroyed in the incandescent process of forming world-bodies, but the divine, the intellectual principle is indestructible; and when matter under the impulses that went forth from God, has reached the grade of development at which organization is possible, then the divine principle steps into force as the positive element, and that is life. This positive element works on and on, steadily producing higher forms and higher organizations, until in man it fashions itself into a self-recognizing, conscious and individual essence, which, as derived from God, is indestructible, and after the consummation of its earthly organism, is capable, as an individual, intellectual being, of an infinitely progressive development.

“So far man can attain by a chain of logical deductions; but to define the idea that lies at the basis of the world-order is impossible; just as also a man will never be in a condition to find out or to comprehend how the working of the intellectual element, upon the substance capable of change, is made possible. Life is the self-manifested working of the intellectual element upon matter. Man never understands the laws of life, though he can understand the laws necessary for the preservation of life, since he can deduce them from the outward manifestations of life. Man must be contented with this; he can never understand God; and since life is the expression of the divine activity, its origin must ever remain a mystery to him.”

Though concurring generally in the foregoing views (which may have been materially modified by their channel) I do not accept them as a finality. That a brooding spiritual power has to do with all development and progress I do not doubt. But this power is not necessarily a monotonous and universal influence like gravitation or caloric. There is no reason to forbid special acts of the creative spiritual energy, for we observe to-day the production of plants and of beautiful fabrics by spiritual power where the necessary conditions exist. Moreover, the greatest potency of spiritual power is at the beginnings in the most plasmic conditions of matter. It is in the animal germ and the vegetable seed that the invisible world is most potential, and I am inclined to think that naturalists have attached too much importance to the exterior environment, and too little to the interior conditions in which the higher potencies of organization are to be found, and in which alone we may find the entrance of life from the true world of life.

The hasty conclusions of naturalists as to evolution do not explain the evolution and the vast variety of the vegetable kingdom. To attribute this to any power of modification by environment, when we see how little environment can do to make any essential change in vegetation, would require more credulity than I would consider justifiable in the pursuit of scientific truths. So in the evolution of the animal kingdom, I believe the power of the physical environment has been greatly overrated.