This is the final triumph of Continuity, the heart secret of Creation, the unspoken prophecy of Christianity. To Science, defining it as a working principle, this mighty process of amelioration is simply _Evolution_. To Christianity, discerning the end through the means, it is _Redemption_. These silent and patient processes, elaborating, eliminating, developing all from the first of time, conducting the evolution from millennium to millennium with unaltering purpose and unfaltering power, are the early stages in the redemptive work--the unseen approach of that Kingdom whose strange mark is that it "cometh without observation." And these Kingdoms rising tier above tier in ever increasing sublimity and beauty, their foundations visibly fixed in the past, their progress, and the direction of their progress, being facts in Nature still, are the signs which, since the Magi saw His star in the East, have never been wanting from the firmament of truth, and which in every age with growing clearness to the wise, and with ever-gathering mystery to the uninitiated, proclaim that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." FINIS. FOOTNOTES: [96] "Principles of Biology," p. 294. [97] "Principles of Biology," vol. ii. pp. 222, 223. [98] Philosophical classifications in this direction (see for instance Godet's "Old Testament Studies," pp. 2-40), owing to their neglect of the facts of Biogenesis can never satisfy the biologist--any more than the above will wholly satisfy the philosopher. Both are needed. Rothe, in his "Aphorisms," strikingly notes one point: "Es ist beachtenswerth, wie in der Schöpfung immer aus der Auflösung der nächst neideren Stufe die nächst höhere hervorgeht, so dass jene immer das Substrat zur Erzeugung dieser Kraft der schöpferischen Einwirkung bildet. (Wie es denn nicht anders sein kann bei einer Entwicklung der Kreatur aus sich selbst.) Aus den zersetzten Elementen erheben sich das Mineral, aus dem verwitterten Material die Pflanze, aus der verwesten Pflanze das Thier. So erhebt sich auch aus dem in die Elemente zurücksinkenden Materiellen Menschen der Geist, das geistige Geschöpf."--"Stille Stunden," p. 64. [99] "First Principles," p. 440. [100] "In Memoriam." Transcriber's Endnote: Two significant typographical errors have been corrected in the Greek text on Page 263. The sentence originally read: "And Paul afterward carries out the classification consistently, making his entire system depend on it, and throughout arranging men, on the one hand as πυενματικός--spiritual, on the other as φυχικός--carnal, in terms of Christ's distinction." The amended text replaces πυενματικός with πνευματικός, whilst φυχικός now reads as ψυχικός. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, by Henry Drummond