it does away with the doctrine of miracles, or that it supposes God to sanction every act with which his creative power is connected, does not seem to have even plausibility. A miracle is not simply an event due to the immediate agency of God, for then every act of conversion would be a miracle. But it is an event, occurring in the external world, which involves the suspension or counteracting of some natural law, and which can be referred to nothing but the immediate power of God. The origination of life, therefore, is neither in nature nor design a miracle, in the proper sense of the word. This exercise of God's creative energy, in connection with the agency of second causes, no more implies approbation than the fact that He gives and sustains the energy of the murderer proves that He sanctions murder.
4. Finally this doctrine of traducianism is held by those who contend for the old realistic doctrine that humanity is a generic substance or life. The two theories, however, do not seem to har- monize, and their combination produces great confusion and obscu- ritv. According to the one theory the soul of the child is derived from the soul of its parents ; according to the other theory there is no derivation. One magnet is not, or need not be derived from another ; one Leyden jar is not derived from another ; nor one galvanic battery from another. There is no derivation in the case. The general forces of magnetism, electricity and galvanism, are manifested in connection with given material combinations. And if a man be the manifestation of the general principle of humanity in connection with a given human body, his human nature is not derived from his immediate progenitors.
The object of this discussion is not to arrive at certainty as to what is not clearly revealed in Scripture, nor to explain what is, on all sides, admitted to be inscrutable, but to guard agahist the adoption of principles which are in opposition to plain and impor- tant doctrines of the word of God. If traducianism teaches that the soul admits of abscission or division ; or that the human race are constituted of numerically the same substance ; or that the Son of God assumed into personal union with himself the same numer- ical substance which sinned and fell in Adam ; then it is to be re- jected as both false and dangerous. But if, without pretending to explain everything, it simply asserts that the human race is propa- gated in accordance with the general law which secures that like begets like ; that the child derives its nature from its parents thi'ough the operation of physical laws, attended and controlled by the agency of God, whether directive or creative, as in all other
7G PART n. ch. m. — origin of the soul.
cases of the propagation of living creatures, it may be regarded as an open question, or matter of indifference. Creationism does not necessarily suppose that there is any other exercise of the immediate power of God in the production of the human soul, than such as takes place in the production of life in other cases. It only denies that the soul is capable of division, that all mankind are composed of numerically the same essence and that Christ assumed numerically the same essence that sinned in Adam.