"Think of it! An endless evolution, an eternal working, an infinite causation, and yet an effect so finite. Nature has been working upward from eternity, and has just passed the long-armed ape who begat prognathus, as prognathus begat the troglodyte homo. What becomes of our doctrine of progress? As sure as mathematics, it should have been all evolved, all that we now have, over and over again--all _out_, or far more _out_ than has come out, incalculable ages ago. An eternal ante-past of progressive working. To what a height should it have arisen! It should have transcended all our ideals. The most exalted finite being should have been reached, the most exalted that our minds can conceive, instead of this creature man, so poor, so low; for you will bear in mind that I am speaking of him as measured by no higher scale of value than that afforded by this physical hypothesis--man evolved from nebular gas--man just coming out of darkness, and so soon to return to darkness again--_e tenebris in tenebras_. This all comes from that hideous [Greek: hysteron proteron], that inversion of all necessary thinking. Nature first, it says--matter first, an impalpable nebulous nihilism first, the lowest and most imperfect first; life, thought, reason, idea, their junior products, and God, therefore, the last product, if there be a God at all, or anything to which such a name can possibly be given. And we are asked to adopt this, and call it grand, whilst rejecting as narrow and soul-contracting the revelation which makes God first, reason first, idea first, the perfect first,--as has been said before--the imperfect and the finite ever a departure from it, whether in the scale of order or of time, whether as exhibited in processes of lapse and deterioration or the contrary seeming of recovery and restoration in cyclical rounds. The two schemes have two entirely different modes of speech. Says the mere physical hypothesis: In the beginning was the nebula, and all things were in the nebula, and all things were self-evolved from the nebula--even life, thought, consciousness, idea, reason itself, having no other source. The other speaks to us in language like this: [Greek: En archê ên ho Logos], "In the beginning was the Word," the [Greek: Logos], the Reason, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being by Him. In Him was life," [Greek: Zôê], and "from this life"--not from motions, or molecules, or correlated forces, or the vibration of fibres, or the arrangements of nebular atoms, but from this life of the Logos, the eternal Reason--"came the light of men"--the mind, reason, conscience of humanity--even "the light that lighteth" every rational being "coming into the cosmos."--Prof. Lewis, 'The Kingdom of God' (Dickinson's Theological Quarterly, No. 6). NOTE XXIII., page 195. THEOLOGICAL INFERENCES FROM THE DOCTRINE OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.