of creative energy, and the chief object of Divine care, is almost irresistibly driven to the belief that the soul’s career is not completed with the present life upon the earth.  Difficulties on theory he will naturally expect to meet in many quarters; but these will not weaken his faith, especially when he remembers that upon the alternative view the difficulties are at least as great.  We live in a world of mystery, at all events, and there is not a problem in the simplest and most exact departments of science which does not speedily lead us to a transcendental problem that we can neither solve nor elude.  A broad common-sense argument has often to be called in, where keen-edged metaphysical analysis has confessed itself baffled.

Now we have here seen that the doctrine of evolution does not allow us to take the atheistic view of the position of Man.  It is true that modern astronomy shows us giant balls of vapour condensing into fiery suns, cooling down into planets fit for the support of life, and at last growing cold and rigid in death, like the moon.  And there are indications of a time when systems of dead planets shall fall in upon their central ember that was once a sun, and the whole lifeless mass, thus regaining heat, shall expand into a nebulous cloud like that with which we started, that the work of condensation and evolution may begin over again.  These Titanic events must doubtless seem to our limited vision like an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes.  They disclose no signs of purpose, or even of dramatic tendency;[18] they seem like the weary work of Sisyphos.  But on the face of our own planet, where alone we are able to survey the process of evolution in its higher and more complex details, we do find distinct indications of a dramatic tendency, though doubtless not of purpose in the limited human sense.  The Darwinian theory, properly understood, replaces as much teleology[19] as it destroys.  From the first dawning of life we see all things working together toward one mighty goal, the evolution of the most exalted spiritual qualities which characterize Humanity.  The body is cast aside and returns to the dust of which it was made.  The earth, so marvellously wrought to man’s uses, will also be cast aside.  The day is to come, no doubt, when the heavens shall vanish as a scroll, and the elements be melted with fervent heat.  So small is the value which Nature sets upon the perishable forms of matter!  The question, then, is reduced to this:  are Man’s highest spiritual qualities, into the production of which all this creative energy has gone, to disappear with the rest?  Has all this work been done for nothing?  Is it all ephemeral, all a bubble that bursts, a vision that fades?  Are we to regard the Creator’s work as like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking them down?  For aught that science can tell us, it may be so, but I can see no good reason for believing any such thing.