have been made. First, some say that nature itself is intelligent. By nature they do not mean the material world, but the vis in rebus insita. The forces which are active in the world, are con- ceived of as belonging to a substance or animating principle, or anima mundi. Some who believe in an extramundane personal God, believe that He has created and i-endered immanent in the world this natura naturans, whicli they hold to be the seat of all" the intelligence manifested in the works of nature. This is the only God some scientific men are willing to admit. Material na- ture, it is said, gives no evidence of the existence of a personal Being. We see in nature a mind, a universal mind, but still a mind which only operates and expresses itself by law. " Nature only does and only can inform us of mind m nature, the partner and correlative of organized matter." ^ Baden Powell, in his " Order of Nature," says, that the elevated views of a Deity as a personal God, and Omnipotent Creator, etc., are conceptions which " can originate only from some other source than physical philoso- phy.--
Secondly, some assume that there is in the gqrm of every plant or animal what Agassiz calls " an immaterial principle," to which its organizing power is to be referred. Some connect this with the Platonic doctrine of ideas, as spiritual entities, which are the life and reality of all material organisms.
Thirdly, others refer the intelligence manifested in vital pro- cesses to God; not immediately, but remotely. Men can construct machines to do intellectual work, without the machines themselves being intelligent. We have orreries, and calculating and type- setting machines, which, apparently at least, do the work of mind. If man can make a watch or locomotive engine, why may not God make watches and engines with the power of reproduction ? The analogy, however, between the products of human ingenuity and living organism is very imperfect. No product of human art can think or choose. A type-setting machine may be made, when the proper key is touched, to move an arm in the right direction and to the proper distance to reach the required letter ; but it cannot be made of itself to select from a confused mass of type the letters one after another, and arrange them so as to form words and sen- tences. In other words, matter cannot be made to do the work ot mind. It is admitted that everything is possible with God, but the contradictory is not an object of power. It is a contradiction
1 See this doctrine discussed in the BampUm Lectures for 1865, by Rev. J. B. Mozley p. 96.
2 Edit. London, 1S59, p. 249.
612 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. XI. - Providence.
that the extended should be unextended, that the irrational should be rational. It is, therefore, inconceivable that matter with its blind physical forces should perform the mental work exhibited in the processes of organization and growth.
Fourthly, the intelligence required to account for the processes ( of vegetable and animal life is assumed to be in the everywhere present and everywhere active mind of God himself. This does \ not imply that physical or second causes have no efficiency, or that Ithose causes are merged into the efficiency of God. It simply means that God uses the chemical, electric, photic, and other forces of nature, in carrying on organization and other vital processes in the vegetable and animal worlds. In such processes there is a combination of two specifically different forces ; physical and men- tal. The physical are in the matter used ; the mental in God who uses the matter and its forces. Examples of this combination of mental and physical force are familiar. All voluntary itiotion, on the part of animals, all the works of men, are due to such combina- tion. Walking, speaking, and writing, are possible only so far as mind controls our material organization. In writing, for example, the vital functions are going on in the hand, on which its mobility and susceptibility of nei'vous impression depend ; and the numer- ous voluntary muscles are called into action ; but the guiding power is in the mind. It is the mind that determines what letters and sentences the fingers shall form, and what ideas shall be expressed. I In like manner, it is the ever-present mind of God that guides the i action of physical causes in the processes of animal and vegetable life. And as it would be unreasonable to refer to the physical forces called into activity, when we speak or write, the intelligence indicated in what is uttered or written, so it is unreasonable to refer to the forces of matter the intelligence indicated in the pro- cesses of life.
It is because we cannot raise our minds to any proper apprehen- Bion of the infinity of God, that we find it so difficult to think of Him as thus everywhere present and everywhere intelligently active. This, however, ceases to be incredible, when we think of the marvellous cooperation of the mind and body which take's place in rapid talking, or, more wonderfully still, in a child before a piano, taking in at a glance the whole score, noticing the power and posi- tion of every note, striking eight keys of the instrument at the same time, and moving fifty or sixty voluntary muscles with the rapidity of lightning, and each at the right time, and with the right force. If the mere spark of intelligence in a child can do such wonders,