yet possessing apparent self-existence and such marvellous capabilities as volition and rationality, and the power of exercising them with the consciousness of an independent being, is certainly a wonderful display of the wisdom and power of God. With apparent inherent life, and the full appearance of willing and thinking independently of any superior power, man is constituted, and justly denominated, an Image and Likeness of God;" for what God is absolutely man is relatively. Nothing could be more complete and perfect than a finite and altogether dependent being possessing God-like powers, with the capability of exercising them without the slightest consciousness of dependence; it is a marvel equally humiliating as it is exalting.

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From what has been stated, we conclude, firstly, that God is a selfexistent Being, consequently, that He is life itself, the Creator and sustainer of everything that exists; secondly that proceeding life, not being organized nor substantial, is not a subject of capabilities; thirdly, that although man is only a recipient of life, yet by reason of that reception he is alive, and by virtue of the powers he possesses he lives; fourthly, that man is so constituted as to possess apparent self-existence, on which is based volition, which is the ground of human responsibility. S. S.

BRITISH ASSOCIATION NOTES.

THE prominent topics at the meeting of the British Association have been the following: In the presidental address, the development of the forms of animal life; and in the several sections, the relations subsisting between mathematics and physics, and between scientific theory and the practical arts; geological evidences of man's antiquity; the distribution and history of the deep sea mollusca; the mathematical theory of waves; the peculiarities of human character and the evidence of the hereditary transmission of moral disposition; the application of brake-power to railway trains; and the telephone. Some of these, as well as many less prominent subjects, we may here afford to pass by. Others, however, afford themes for remark. Thus the President of the Association, Professor Allen Thomson, begins by noting, with a certain exultation, the changed attitude of men of science. Time was when the genera and species of plants and animals were regarded as definite and fixed, each type was believed to have been independently fashioned by the Creator, who, in His infinite wisdom and goodness, had assigned to each creature its own peace and bestowed on it an organization and properties such as to make it a beneficent and, if conscious, a happy addition to the general life of the world. Hereupon the President exclaims, "How different is the position of matters in this respect in our day! when the cautious naturalist receives and adopts with the greatest reserve the statement of fixed and permanent char

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acters as belonging to the different forms of organized beings, and is fully persuaded of the constant tendency to variation which all species show even in the present condition of the earth, and of the still greater liability to change which must have existed in the earlier periods of its formation; when the belief prevails that, so far from being the direct product of distinct acts of creation, the various forms of plants and animals have been gradually evolved in a slow gradation of increasing complexity; and when it is recognized by a large majority of naturalists that the explanation of this wonderful relation of connection between previously existing and later forms is to be found in the constant tendency to variation during development and growth, and the perpetuation of such variations by hereditary transmission through successive generations in the long but incalculable lapse of the earth's natural mutations. In consequence we now hear nothing of creation, or Creator, or of beneficent design or final causes or the like, but of 'tendencies to variation,' struggle for existence,' 'natural and sexual selection,' 'survival of the fittest,' heredity,' atavism,' and and the like. Theism of even the lowest type is superseded by absolute naturalism." Now, we well know that since the beginning of the New Church, and in consequence of its instauration, every department of human thought and research has been illuminated. In one direction, that of studies purely biblical, manuscripts have been discovered, lost languages regained, and hieroglyphics have been compelled to declare their long-forgotten meanings, just as in physical science rocks have begun to recount their history, and out of the dust lessons are read on health and disease and the origin and forms of life. The accumulation of facts, of scientifica, of data which may and in time must become knowledge, scientia, is immense. Still, there is reason to expect that for a long time we shall have more opinion and conjecture than definite knowledge,-that we shall, perhaps for many years, be, in the imperfect, men of learning ere we become in any complete sense learned men. It may even be that as stumbling is one chief mode in which children learn walking, so human progress in knowledge may come through a necessary discipline of mistake and

error.

Pursuing our reference to biblical learning we note that the present result is almost solely a revival with new force of an almost universal scepticism. Men of an effete Church, yea, of a Church positively depraved, are compelled, in so far as honesty survives, to frame their theories in accordance with their errors of belief and the waywardness and corruptions of the corrupted will. The same law will prevail in the scientific world. The whole heart and mind of men being attuned to false ideas of God, or else being distinctly Atheistic, we must expect the publication of theories which will be none the less false for their being connected with and apparently supported by an immense apparatus of even genuine facts. Biblical Criticism furnishes one instance of this, and possibly evolution is but another case of the same kind.

These things considered, the duty of New Churchmen is clear. We are to learn all the facts which science can teach us, and we are to suspect the theories which are so confidently offered. This course is happily illustrated in the records of the recent gathering of the British Association. In the department of Biology, the president of that department, Dr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, in treating of the deep sea mollusca, said, "Although a certain degree of modification may be caused by an alteration of conditions in the course of incalculable ages, our knowledge is not sufficient to enable us to do more than vaguely speculate, and surely not to take for granted the transmutation of species. We have no proof of anything of the kind. Devolution, or succession, appears to be the law of nature; evolution (in its modern interpretation) may be regarded as the product of human imagination."

The inaugural address is further valuable for its authoritative declaration of an important negative result. All the experimental evidence in favour of what is called Spontaneous Generation is discredited. We have absolutely no evidence of the development of even the simplest organisms except by descent from pre-existent bodies of a similar kind. How deeply this want of evidence is felt may be seen in the suggestions that in one way or another, long, long ago, Abiogenesis may have been possible, or that "vital conditions" may have been coeval with chemical and physical properties. What is wanted is a creative energy not Divine.

The main body of the address consists of a sketch-account of the development of the mammalian ovum. This is most interestingly instructive, but too succinct to admit of presentation in smaller compass. It abounds in evidence of a common plan of organic structure, and would afford material for a new Bridgewater Treatise in evidence of the Oneness of the Divine Love, Wisdom, and Might as revealed in Man, the Microcosm. Professor Thomson asserts that no earnest embryologist can fail to be an evolutionist, and we see that no believer in the Lord in His Second Advent can become acquainted with this branch of science without having not merely his theism confirmed, but his whole theology and his whole conscious motive sanctified by the knowledge.

The limitation of our space forbids for the present any review of other subjects spoken of at Plymouth. We give, however, a few quotations as texts for unwritten, unspoken sermons.

Professor Carey Foster, in the mathematical and physical department, quotes from Professor H. J. Smith, "that a mathematical theory was never to be considered complete till you had made it so clear that you could explain it to the first man you met in the street." This "brilliant exaggeration" is literal truth if for "mathematical theory" we read "doctrinal knowledge or moral maxim." He again suggests, "what is probably a general principle of mental action, namely, that the human mind has no more power to create an idea than the hand has to create matter or energy, our seemingly most original conceptions being in reality due to suggestions from without.”

Here add the words "or from within, i.e. from above," and then reflect thereupon.

We reserve the subject of heredity as connected with character, and conclude with the general remark that the British Association and its congeners have a right to the sympathy and support of New Churchmen, not on the ground of the hypotheses which they advance, but because they stimulate that demand for precise knowledge which is the first external condition for growing acquaintance through creation with its Divine Human Lord.

DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURE OF ART IN THE NEW CHURCH.

THE President of the late Conference, the Rev. R. Storry, alluded, in his opening remarks, to the ignorance of facts frequently shown in popular criticisms on the New Church, and referred to a periodical about the time of the first Exhibition, in which it was asserted the Church had produced nothing in poetry or art. This gross mistake, as regards art, the President challenged by citing the names of Flaxman and Hiram Powers.

When reckless assertions are made in order to disparage truths which are unpopular and disagreeable, it is well that the opponent should be silenced by the force of his own argument. The world does not care to know that such men as Flaxman, Powers, and Oberlin were ornaments of a despised religious society; and if the fact is known to the public reviewer it is sure to be kept in the background.

Although the truth receives not honour from men, it is right that false arguments, intended to foster prejudice, should be adroitly parried. With respect to Flaxman, he has been ranked by critics of authority as, in the grasp and versatility of his genius, hardly inferior to Michael Angelo. And it is evident from the general burst of admiration which greeted the figure of the Greek slave, that Hiram Powers has considerable claims to celebrity. It is a high encomium on these sculptors, that their works exhibit no pandering to a vulgar and meretricious taste.

To these illustrious names we may now add that of Sir Noel Paton, who must take rank among the most learned and eminent of living artists. It must surely be regarded as no mean argument in favour of the New Church, that her two most distinguishing doctrines, and her grand system of Scripture explanation, are at this moment being placed before the world in the most prominent and fascinating works of human genius. And we have a right to make use of such testimony on behalf of the truth.

It is a remarkable fact, that when the senior Dr. Goyder published his admirable work on "Acquisitiveness," some forty years ago, he

spoke of a youthful artist, then only fourteen, to whom he was indebted for the spirited etchings illustrating his book, and for whom he predicted a distinguished career. The words of the venerable phrenologist have been more than verified, for Sir Noel Paton has reached an eminence, I think I may justly say second to none. His genius is of the highest, and his talent has been laboriously cultured. It is probable that the grand truths of the New Church served to nurture and exalt the predilection for allegorical design which seems to be his bent. And he appears to have been gradually led, through classical and similar culture, to the highest subjects of Art—the Immortality of man and the Deity of the Lord. His first great allegory, which won for him at once the patronage of Her Majesty and the concurrent praise of public criticism was his "Mors janua Vitæ." This was followed by a companion picture-"Faith and Reason." His next great attempt was "The Man of Sorrows," which was happily rescued from the conflagration of the saloon at Scarborough twelve months ago. This season he has produced what may probably prove the crowning effort of his genius-" The Great Shepherd." 1

I may here remark on what must be regarded as a prejudice on the part of some persons whom I have met with in the New Church. I have heard it gravely objected that no one could have the least authority for delineating the portrait of the Lord, and that it was a great presumption to attempt such a thing. Now, it must be borne in mind, that no artist presumes to do what is thus imagined. What the artist attempts, is to portray the very highest type of humanity, and make it the vehicle for illustrating some great or endearing lesson recorded in Scripture. The artist's own heart and mind, as enlightened by Scripture and study, must be the measure of his high portraiture. No man can see the Lord as He is in Himself. Nor is He seen the same in the different spheres of the various angelic and earthly states to which He manifests Himself. Why, then, should not Christian art aspire to depict the ideal of the Lord, and to give the best expression it can to those Divine-human feelings which belong to the subject chosen for illustration? Why should Christian art not aim at as lofty an ideal as the art of ancient Greece, whose grand aim was to marry Divinity with Humanity? The imperfection of Art in this respect is but the imperfection common to man in all his efforts to portray the Divine Redeemer-to portray Divinity, whether by pencil or by pen. We cannot, either logically, poetically, or pictorially portray the pure Godhead. But shall we, therefore, fall into the phantasy of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and denude our conceptions and expressions of God of everything human, and take flight at the bare mention of metaphysics?

1 This grand picture has been purchased by Mr. Hare, of the Fine Art Repository, St. Nicholas Street, Scarborough, and is now being executed in line by an eminent French engraver. Sir Noel has also painted a diminished replica of this picture for the Queen, which Her Majesty has graciously determined to send to the Exhibition in Paris next year.